He had not stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns… — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
He had not stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize in the smell of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death, at all times and in all places. He had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions at arms took to be boldness, but the more her image wallowed in the dunghill of war, the more the war resembled Amaranta. That was how he suffered in exile, looking for a way of killing her with his own death.
No había dejado de desearla un solo instante. La encontraba en los oscuros dormitorios de los pueblos vencidos, sobre todo en los más abyectos, y la materializaba en el tufo de la sangre seca en las vendas de los heridos, en el pavor instantáneo del peligro de muerte, a toda hora y en todas partes. Había huido de ella tratando de aniquilar su recuerdo no sólo con la distancia, sino con un encarnizamiento aturdido que sus compañeros de armas calificaban de temeridad, pero mientras más revolcaba su imagen en el muladar de la guerra, más la guerra se parecía a Amaranta. Así padeció el exilio, buscando la manera de matarla con su propia muerte.
p. 182Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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p. 30
Aureliano gave her a look that wrapped her in an atmosphere of uncertainty.
"Somebody is coming," he told her.
Úrsula, as she did whenever he made a prediction, tried to break it down with her housewifely logic. It was normal for someone to be coming.
p. 55

