Summoned by Big Mama, he crossed the plaza in his pajamas, leaning on two canes, and he installed himself in the sick woman's bedroom. Only when he realized that Big Mama was dying did he order a chest with porcelain jars labeled in Latin brought, and for three weeks he besmeared the dying woman inside and out with all sorts of academic salves, magnificent stimulants, and masterful suppositories. Then he applied bloated toads to the site of her pain, and leaches to her kidneys, until the early morning of the day when he had to face the dilemma of either having her bled by the barber or exorcised by Father Anthony Isabel.
Nicanor sent for the priest. His ten best men carried him from the parish house to Big Mama's bedroom, seated on a creaking willow rocker, under the mildewed canopy reserved for great occasions. The little bell of the Viaticum in the warm September dawn was the first notification to the inhabitants of Macondo.
When the sun rose, the little plaza in front of Big Mama's house looked like a country fair. It was like a memory of another era. Until she was seventy, Big Mama used to celebrate her birthday with the most prolonged and tumultuous carnivals within memory.
Demijohns of rum were placed at the townspeople's disposal, cattle were sacrificed in the public plaza, and a band installed on top of a table played for three days without stopping.
Under the dusty almond trees, where, in the first week of the century, Colonel Aureliano Buendia's troops had camped, stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets.
In the midst of the confusion of the agitated mob, prints and scapularies with Big Mama's likeness were sold. The festivities used to begin two days before and end on the day of her birthday, with the thunder of firewords and a family dance at Big Mama's house. The carefully chosen guests and the legitimate members of the family, generously attended by the bastard line, danced to the beat of the old pianola which was equipped with the rolls most in style.
Big Mama presided over the party from the rear of the hall in an easy chair with linen pillows, imparting discreet instruction with her right hand, adorned with rings on all her fingers. On that night the coming year's marriages were arranged, at times in complicity with the lovers, but almost always counseled by her own inspiration. To finish off the jubilation, Big Mama went out to the balcony, which was decorated with diadems and Japanese lanterns, and threw coins to the crowd.
That tradition had been interrupted, in part because of the successive mournings of the family and in part because of the political instability of the last few years. The new generations only heard stories of those splendid celebrations. They never managed to see Big Mama at High Mass, fanned by some functionary of the Civil Authority, enjoying the privilege of not kneeling, even at the moment of the elevation, so as not to ruin her Dutch-flounced skirt and her starched cambric petticoats.
The old people remembered, like a hallucination out of their youth, the two hundred yards of matting which were laid down from the manorial house to the main altar the afternoon on which Maria del Rosario Castaneda y Montero attended her father's funeral and returned along the matted street endowed with a new and radiant dignity, turned into Big Mama at the age of twenty-two.
The medieval vision belonged then not only to the family's past but also to the nation's past. Ever more indistinct and remote, hardly visible on her balcony, stifled by the geraniums on hot afternoons, Big Mama was melting into her own legend. Her authority was exercised through Nicanor. The tacit promise existed, formulated by tradition, that the day Big Mama sealed her will the heirs would declare three nights of public merrymaking. But at the same time it was known that she had decided not to express her last wishes until a few hours before dying, and no one thought seriously about the possibility that Big Mama was mortal.
Only this morning, awakened by the tinkling of the Viaticum, did the inhabitants of Macondo become convinced not only that Big Mama was mortal but also that she way dying. Her hour had come. Seeing her in her linen bed, bedaubed with aloes up to her ears, under the dust-laden canopy of Oriental crepe, one could hardly make out any life in the thin respiration of her matriarchal breasts.
Big Mama, who until she was fifty rejected the most passionate suitors, and who was well enough endowed by Nature to suckle her whole issue all by herself, was dying a virgin and childless. At the moment of extreme unction, Father Anthony Isabel had to ask for help in order to apply the oils to the palms of her hands, for since the beginning of her death throes Big Mama had had her fists closed. The attendance of the nieces was useless.
In the struggle, for the first time in a week, the dying woman pressed against her chest the hand bejeweled with precious stones and fixed her colorless look on the nieces, saying, "Highway robbers.
That was the end of a tradition: Magdalena had renounced her inheritance in favor of the Church. At dawn Big Mama asked to be left alone with Nicanor to impart her last instructions. For half an hour, in perfect command of her faculties, she asked about the conduct of her affairs.
She gave special instructions about the disposition of her body, and finally concerned herself with the wake. It was then that she asked them to seat her in her rattan rocker so that she could express her last wishes.
Nicanor had prepared, on twenty-four folios written in a very clear hand, a scrupulous account of her possessions. Breathing calmly, with the doctor and Father Anthony Isabel as witnesses, Big Mama dictated to the notary the list of her property, the supreme and unique source of her grandeur and authority. Reduced to its true proportions, the real estate was limited to three districts, awarded by Royal Decree at the founding of the Colony; with the passage of time, by dint of intricate marriages of convenience, they had accumulated under the control of Big Mama.
In that unworked territory, without definite borders, which comprised five townships and in which not one single grain had ever been sown at the expense of the proprietors, three hundred and fifty-two families lived as tenant farmers. Every year, on the eve of her name day, Big Mama exercised the only act of control which prevented the lands from reverting to the state: the collection of rent. Seated on the back porch of her house, she personally received the payment for the right to live on her lands, as for more than a century her ancestors had received it from the ancestors of the tenants.
When the three-day collection was over, the patio was crammed with pigs, turkeys, and chickens, and with the tithes and first fruits of the land which were deposited there as gifts. In reality, that was the only harvest the family ever collected from a territory which had been dead since its beginnings, and which was calculated on first examination at a hundred thousand hectares.
But historical circumstances had brought it about that within those boundaries the six towns of Macondo district should grow and prosper, even the county seat, so that no person who lived in a house had any property rights other than those which pertained to the house itself, since the land belonged to Big Mama, and the rent was paid to her, just as the government had to pay her for the use the citizens made of the streets. On the outskirts of the settlements, a number of animals, never counted and even less looked after, roamed, branded on the hindquarters with the shape of a padlock.
This hereditary brand, which more out of disorder than out of quantity had become familiar in distant districts where the scattered cattle, dying of thirst, strayed in summer, was one of the most solid supports of the legend.
For reasons which no one had bothered to explain, the extensive stables of the house had progressively emptied since the last civil war, and lately sugar-cane presses, milking parlors, and a rice mill had been installed in them. Aside from the items enumerated, she mentioned in her will the existence of three containers of gold coins buried somewhere in the house during the War of Independence, which had not been found after periodic and laborious excavations.
Along with the right to continue the exploitation of the rented land, and to receive the tithes and first fruits and all sorts of extraordinary donations, the heirs received a chart kept up from generation to generation, and perfected by each generation, which facilitated the finding of the buried treasure. Big Mama needed three hours to enumerate her earthly possessions. In the stifling bedroom, the voice of the dying woman seemed to dignify in its place each thing named.
When she affixed her trembling signature, and the witnesses affixed theirs below, a secret tremor shook the hearts of the crowds which were beginning to gather in front of the house, in the shade of the dusty almond trees of the plaza. The only thing lacking then was the detailed listing of her immaterial possessions. She didn't manage to finish. The laborious enumeration cut off her last breath. Balthazar's marvelous afternoon.
Montiel's widow. One day after Sunday. Artificial roses. Big Mama's funeral. There are no reviews yet. Be the first one to write a review. Books for People with Print Disabilities.
Internet Archive Books. In reality, that was the only seemed to dignify in its place each thing named. When she harvest the family ever collected from a territory which had been affixed her trembling signature, and the witnesses affixed theirs dead since its beginnings, and which was calculated on first below, a secret tremor sho o k the hearts of the crowds which examinati on at a hundred thousand hectares.
All the chtlrch belJs tolled for the dead. Only a few low cafes ofr her last breath. At the National Capitol, where the beggars tification of the family's pmvcr, Big Mama emitted a loud belch wrapped in newspapers slept in the shelter of the Doric columns and expired. When the President entered his office, moved by the capital saw the picture of a twenty-year-old woman on the first vision of the capital in mourning, his Ministers were waiting for page of t11e extra editions, and thought that it was a new beauty h.
For many years Big endure in the memory of future generations. The upper strata dom over human improvisation. In troubled times, Big Mama contributed unheard-of proportions, while her body filled with bubbles in secredy t r weapons for her partisans, but came to the aid of the harsh Macondo September.
For the first rime, people spoke her victims in public. Between the Palace reception hall and the little paved patio which resOlmded throughout the Republic, made prestigious whidl had served the viceroys as a cochh'c, there was an interior by the spokesmen of the printed word. Until, endowed with a garden of dark cypresses where a Portuguese monk had hanged sense of reality in that assembly of aseptic lawgivers, the historic L himself our of love in the last days of the Colony.
Despite his blahblahblah was interrupted by the reminder that Big Mama's noisy coterie ofbemed. But that night his trembling had the strength of a pure atmosphere of the written law. Orders were issued to premonition. Then the full awareness of his historical destiny embalm the cadaver, while formulas were adduced, viewpoints dawned on him, and he decreed nine days ofnational mourning, were reconciled, or constitutional amendments were made to and posthumous h onors for Big Mama ar the rank befitting a pertuit the President to attend the burial.
Recovered from the 1 vision network, the Nation's Leader truste d that the funeral rites drowsiness of the torpid days of August, the Supreme Pontiff for Big Mama would set a new example for the world. Was at the window watching the lake where the divers were Such a noble aim was collide nevertheless with certain to searching for the head of a decapitated young girl.
For the last grave inconveniences. But that evening, in an unforeseen substitution, the sacrifice. In the funeral.
Weakened by their weeping, the nine having heard any news of the commotion, and then the somber nephews sat the wake bes ide the body in an ecstasy of reciprocal promontory of Castel Sane Angelo on the: edge of the Tiber. At surveillance. Peter's Basilica mingled with And still the cracked tinklings of Macondo.
Inside his stifling tent across more days. On his nocturnal lengthy, stifling nights. Thus he lived ing things at Big Mama's ftmeral. His Holiness suffered that for interminable weeks and months which were protracted by night , for the first time in the history of the Church , from the the waiting and the heat, until the day Father Pastrana appeared fever of insomnia and the torment of the mosquitoes.
In the streets crowded with '. H"ts, before the astonished eyes of the crc wds who had seen him inau hawkers of fried f xkis, and lottery stalls, and men with snakes gurated without knowing who he W,18 and who only nov;' could wrapped around their necks who peddled a balm which would give a true a,,'Count of his existence.
There they were, awaiting the supreme moment: the In the second rank, in a serene array of mcmrning crepe, washerwomen of San Jorge, the pead fishers from Cabo de 1a paraded the national queens of all things that have been or ever VehL the fishermen from Cienaga, the shrimp fishermen from will be.
Stripped of their earthly spkndor for the first rime, they TaSd]era, the sorcerers from Mojajana, the salt miners it'om marched by, preceded by the universal queen: the soybean Manaure, the accordionists from VaUedupar, the tine horsemen queen, the green-squash queen, the banana qneen, the me,il of Ayapel, the ragtag musicians from San Pelayo, the cock yucca queen, the guava queen, the coconut queen, the kidney breeders from La Cueva, the improvisers from Sabanas de bean queen, the mile-long-string-of-ig1.
Now the Supreme Pontiff could ,1scend to Heaven in body. Open navigation menu. Close suggestions Search Search. User Settings.
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