Two months later Amaranta ?rsula went to Brussels. Aureliano Segundo gave her not only the money from the special raffle, but also what he had managed to put aside over the previous months and what little he had received from the sale of the pianola, the clavichord, and other junk that had fallen into disrepair. According to his calculations, that sum would be enough for her studies, so that all that was lacking was the price of her fare back home. Fernanda was against the trip until the last moment, scandalized by the idea that Brussels was so close to Paris and its perdition, but she calmed down with the letter that Father Angel gave her addressed to a boardinghouse run by nuns for Catholic young ladies where Amaranta ?rsula promised to stay until her studies were completed. Furthermore, the parish priest arranged for her to travel under the care of a group of Franciscan nuns who were going to Toledo, where they hoped to find dependable people to accompany her to Belgium. While the urgent correspondence that made the coordination possible went forward, Aureliano Segundo, aided by Petra Cates, prepared Amaranta ?rsula’s baggage. The night on which they were packing one of Fernanda’s bridal trunks, the things were so well organized that the schoolgirl knew by heart which were the suits and cloth slippers she could wear crossing the Atlantic and the blue cloth coat with copper buttons and the cordovan shoes she would wear when she landed. She also knew how to walk so as not to fall into the water as she went up the gangplank, that at no time was she to leave the company of the nuns or leave her cabin except to eat, and that for no reason was she to answer the questions asked by people of any sex while they were at sea. She carried a small bottle with drops for seasickness and a notebook written by Father Angel in his own hand containing six prayers to be used against storms. Fernanda made her a canvas belt to keep her money in, and she would not have to take it off even to sleep. She tried to give her the chamberpot, washed out with lye and disinfected with alcohol, but Amaranta ?rsula refused it for fear that her schoolmates would make fun of her. A few months later, at the hour of his death, Aureliano Segundo would remember her as he had seen her for the last time as she tried unsuccessfully to lower the window of the second-class coach to hear Fernanda’s last piece of advice. She was wearing a pink silk dress with a corsage of artificial pansies pinned to her left shoulder, her cordovan shoes with buckles and low heels, and sateen stockings held up at the thighs with elastic garters. Her body was slim, her hair loose and long, and she had the lively eyes that ?rsula had had at her age and the way in which she said good-bye, without crying but without smiling either, revealed the same strength of character. Walking beside the coach as it picked up speed and holding Fernanda by the arm so that she would not stumble, Aureliano scarcely had time to wave at his daughter as she threw him a kiss with the tips of her fingers. The couple stood motionless under the scorching sun, looking at the train as it merged with the black strip of the horizon, linking arms for the first time since the day of their wedding.
On the ninth of August, before they received the first letter from Brussels, Jos?Arcadio Segundo was speaking to Aureliano in Melquíades?room and, without realizing it, he said:
“Always remember that they were more than three thousand and that they were thrown into the sea.?
Then he fell back on the parchments and died with his eyes open. At that same instant, in Fernanda’s bed, his twin brother came to the end of the prolonged and terrible martyrdom of the steel crabs that were eating his throat away. One week previously he had returned home, without any voice, unable to breathe, and almost skin and bones, with his wandering trunks and his wastrel’s accordion, to fulfill the promise of dying beside his wife. Petra Cotes helped him pack his clothes and bade him farewell without shedding a tear, but she forgot to give him the patent leather shoes that he wanted to wear in his coffin. So when she heard that he had died, she dressed in black, wrapped the shoes up in a newspaper, and asked Fernanda for permission to see the body. Fernanda would not let her through the door.
“Put yourself in my place,?Petra Cotes begged. “Imagine how much I must have loved him to put up with this humiliation.?
“There is no humiliation that a concubine does not deserve,?Fernanda replied. “So wait until another one of your men dies and put the shoes on him.?
In fulfillment of her promise, Santa Sofía de la Piedad cut the throat of Jos?Arcadio Segundo’s corpse with a kitchen knife to be sure that they would not bury him alive. The bodies were placed in identical coffins, and then it could be seen that once more in death they had become as Identical as they had been until adolescence. Aureliano Segundo’s old carousing comrades laid on his casket a wreath that had a purple ribbon with the words: Cease, cows, life is short. Fernanda was so indignant with such irreverence that she had the wreath thrown onto the trash heap. In the tumult of the last moment, the sad drunkards who carried them out of the house got the coffins mixed up and buried them in the wrong graves.