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Suddenly, like the stampede in that world of happy unawareness, came the news of Gaston’s return. Aureliano and Amaranta ?rsula opened their eyes, dug deep into their souls, looked at the letter with their hands on their hearts, and understood that they were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation. Then she wrote her husband a letter of contradictory truths in which she repeated her love and said how anxious she was to see him again, but at the same time she admitted as a design of fate the impossibility of living without Aureliano. Contrary to what they had expected, Gaston sent them a calm, almost paternal reply, with two whole pages devoted to a warning against the fickleness of passion and a final paragraph with unmistakable wishes for them to be as happy as he had been during his brief conjugal experience. It was such an unforeseen attitude that Amaranta ?rsula felt humiliated by the idea that she had given her husband the pretext that he had wanted in order to abandon her to herfate. The rancor was aggravated six months later when Gaston wrote again from Léopoldville, where he had finally recovered the airplane, simply to ask them to ship him the velocipede, which of all that he had left behind in Macondo was the only thing that had any sentimental value for him. Aureliano bore Amaranta ?rsula’s spite patiently and made an effort to show her that he could be as good a husband in adversity as in prosperity, and the daily needs that besieged them when Gaston’s last money ran out created a bond of solidarity between them that was not as dazzling and heady as passion, but that let them make love as much and be as happy as during their uproarious and salacious days. At the time Pilar Ternera died they were expecting a child.
In the lethargy of her pregnancy, Amaranta ?rsula tried to set up a business in necklaces made out of the backbones of fish. But except for Mercedes, who bought a dozen, she could not find any customers. Aureliano was aware for the first time that his gift for languages, his encyclopedic knowledge, his rare faculty for remembering the details of remote deeds and places without having been there, were as useless as the box of genuine jewelry that his wife owned, which must have been worth as much as all the money that the last inhabitants of Macondo could have put together. They survived miraculously. Although Amaranta ?rsula did not lose her good humor or her genius for erotic mischief, she acquired the habit of sitting on the porch after lunch in a kind of wakeful and thoughtful siesta. Aureliano would accompany her. Sometimes they would remain there in silence until nightfall, opposite each other, looking into each other’s eyes, loving each other as much as in their scandalous days. The uncertainty of thefuture made them turn their hearts toward the past. They saw themselves in the lost paradise of the deluge, splashing in the puddles in the courtyard, killing lizards to hang on ?rsula, pretending that they were going to bury her alive, and those memories revealed to them the truth that they had been happy together ever since they had had memory. Going deeper into the past, Amaranta ?rsula remembered the afternoon on which she had gone into the silver shop and her mother told her that little Aureliano was nobody’s child because he had been found floating in a basket. Although the version seemed unlikely to them, they did not have any information enabling them to replace it with the true one. All that they were sure of after examining an the possibilities was that Fernanda was not Aureliano’s mother. Amaranta ?rsula was inclined to believe that he was the son of Petra Cotes, of whom she remembered only tales of infamy, and that supposition produced a twinge of horror in her heart.
Tormented by the certainty that he was his wife’s brother, Aureliano ran out to the parish house to search through the moldy and moth-eaten archives for some clue to his parentage. The oldest baptismal certificate that he found was that of Amaranta Buendía, baptized in adolescence by Father Nicanor Reyna during the time when he was trying to prove the existence of God by means of tricks with chocolate. He began to have that feeling that he was one of the seventeen Aurelianos, whose birth certificates he tracked down as he went through four volumes, but the baptism dates were too far back for his age. Seeing him lost in the labyrinths of kinship, trembling with uncertainty, the arthritic priest, who was watching him from his hammock, asked him compassionately what his name was.
“Aureliano Buendía,?he said.
“Then don’t wear yourself out searching,?the priest exclaimed with final conviction. “Many years ago there used to be a street here with that name and in those days people had the custom of naming their children after streets.?
Aureliano trembled with rage.
“So!?he said. “You don’t believe it either.?
“Believe what??
忽然，在他俩幸福得失去知觉的这个王国里，箭一般地射来了加斯东将要回来的消息。奥雷连诺，布恩蒂亚和阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜睁着眼睛，面面相觑，他们搁心自问时，才明白他俩已经结为一体，宁死也不愿分离了。于是，阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜给丈夫写了一封信，信的内容充满了矛盾：她向加斯东保证说，她很爱他，十分希望重新见到他，但同时又承认她怎样受到了命运的不幸安排，没有奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚，她就活不下去，跟他俩的担忧相反，加斯东回了一封平静的信，几乎象是父亲写的信，整整两页纸提醒他们防止变化无常的感情，信的结尾毫不含糊地祝愿他俩幸福，就象他自己在短暂的夫妻生活中感到的那样。加斯东的行为完全出乎阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜的意料。她认为自己给了丈大托词，使丈夫抛弃了她，任命运去支配她。她觉得自己受到了侮辱。半年以后，加斯东从利奥波德维尔＊又写了封信给她，说他终于重新找回了飞机，信里除了要她把他的自行车寄去之外，并没有什么其他内容，因为在他看来，他留在马孔多的一切，只有自行车才是唯一珍贵的。这封信使她更加恼火，奥雷连诺。 布恩蒂亚耐心地劝慰大发雷霆的阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜，竭力向她表示他能成为一个跟她同甘共苦的好丈夫，加斯东留下的钱快要用完时，各种日常的操心事就落到了他俩身上，一种休戚与共的感情把他俩紧紧地联结在一起——这种感情虽然没有那种令人目眩、吞噬一切的情欲力量，却能使他俩象情欲最炽烈时那样相亲相爱，无比幸福。在皮拉·苔列娜去肚的时候，他们已经在等待自己的孩子了。
怀孕期间，阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜曾想用鱼脊骨编制一些项链去卖，可是除了梅尔塞德斯买去大约一打之外，其他主顾一个也没找到。奥雷连诺·布思蒂亚这才第一回明白过来，他那语言上的才能、渊博的知识以及罕见的记性（他能把那些似乎是他不熟悉的遥远的地方和各种琐碎事情一一记住），都跟他妻子收藏的世代相传的首饰箱一样无用，想当初单是箱里首饰的价值大概就抵得上马孔多最后一批居民的全部存款。但他俩终于奇迹般地活了下来。阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜既没有失去良好的情绪，也没有失去爱情上的创造才能，却养成了饭后坐在长廊上的习惯，仿佛要把晌午时刻昏昏欲睡、浮想联翩的神态保持下去似的，奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚总是陪伴着她。有时他俩就那么默默无语、面对面地坐到深夜，彼此凝望着休息。在这种恰然自得的沉静中，他俩的爱情仍跟早先在响声不停的廖战中一样炽烈。只是渺茫的未来使他俩的心灵总是转向过去。他俩常常忆起失去的天堂中连绵不断的雨景；他们怎样在院子的水塘里僻哩啪啦地戏水，怎样打死一只只蜥蝎，把它们挂在乌苏娜身上；怎样跟乌苏娜老太婆逗乐，假装要活埋她的样子。这些回忆向他们揭示了一条真理，从他们能够记事的那一刻起，他俩在一块儿就始终是幸福的。阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜想起，有一天午后，她走进首饰作坊，菲兰达向她悦，小奥雷连诺不知是谁家的孩子，他是从一个漂在河上的柳条筐里捡来的。在他俩看来，这个解释不足为信，但是他俩没有更可靠的材料来代替这种说法，在探讨了一切可能性之后，他俩深信不疑的一点是，菲兰达决不可能是奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚的母亲。阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜倾向于这样一种看法：他可能是佩特娜·柯特生的儿子，但关于这个妇人的情况，她记得的仅仅是各种污秽丑恶的流言蜚语，所以这种猜测在他们心里不免引起反感。
他怀疑自己可能是妻子的弟弟，这种想法不时折磨着他，使他忍不住钻到神父的屋子里去，在那些潮气侵蚀、虫子至坏的文献中，寻找自己的出身的可靠线索。他发现，一本最老的出生登记簿上提到一个奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚，说他在少年时代曾受过尼康诺。 莱茵纳神父的洗礼，又说他当时曾想通过玩巧克力把戏来证明上帝的存在，奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚顿时产生一线希望，以为他自己可能就是十七个奥雷连诺当中的一个，他在四大本厚书里寻出这十七个奥雷连诺受洗礼的记录，但他们受洗礼的日期，离他的年龄实在太远，正在一旁受着风湿痛折磨的神父，从自己的吊床上望见奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚激动得不住地哆嗦，被血统的问题搞得晕头转向，便同情地问他叫什么名字。
“奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚，”他说。
“那么，你就不要白白地折磨自己了，”神父满有把握地大声说：“多年以前，这儿就有一条街用过这个名称，当时的人都习惯用街名来给自己的儿女起名字。”
奥雷连诺不觉气得浑身颤抖。
“哼！”他说。“这么说，你也不相信罗。”
“相信什么？”
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