When the pirate Sir Francis Drake attacked Riohacha in the sixteenth century, Úrsula Iguarán's… — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
When the pirate Sir Francis Drake attacked Riohacha in the sixteenth century, Úrsula Iguarán's great-great-grandmother became so frightened with the ringing of alarm bells and the firing of cannons that she lost control of her nerves and sat down on a lighted stove. The burns changed her into a useless wife for the rest of her days. [ . . . ] Her husband, an Aragonese merchant by whom she had two children, spent half the value of his store on medicines and pastimes in an attempt to alleviate her terror. Finally he sold the business and took the family to live far from the sea in a settlement of peaceful Indians [ . . . ] Several centuries later the great-great-grandson of the native-born planter married the great-great-granddaughter of the Aragonese. Therefore, every time that Úrsula became exercised over her husband’s mad ideas, she would leap back over three hundred years of fate and curse the day that Sir Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha.
Cuando el pirata Francis Drake asaltó a Riohacha, en el siglo XVI, la bisabuela de Úrsula Iguarán se asustó tanto con el toque de rebato y el estampido de los cañones, que perdió el control de los nervios y se sentó en un fogón encendido. La quemaduras la dejaron convertido en una esposa inútil para toda la vida. [ . . . ] Su marido, un comerciante aragonés con quien tenía dos hijos, se gastó media tienda en medicinas y entretenimientos buscando la manera de aliviar sus terrores. Por último, liquidó el negocio y llevó a la familia a vivir lejos del mar, en una ranchería de indios pacíficos [ . . . ] Vario siglos más tarde, el tataranieto del criollo se casó con la tataranieta del aragonés. Por eso, cada vez que Úrsula se salía de casillas con las locuras de su marido, saltaba por encima de trescientos años de casualidades, y maldecía la hora en que Francis Drake asaltó a Riohacha.
p. 30Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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“What did you expect?” he murmured. “Time passes.”
“That’s how it goes,” Úrsula said, “but not so much.”
When she said it she realized that she was giving the same reply that Colonel Aureliano Buendía had given in his death cell, and once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle.
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