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Bruno Madrigal never thought about the fact that he had seen Colonel Buendía almost immediately after his birth.
Without having felt the senseless folly of war, without having lost faith in the ideals of the Liberal Party (1), and without having come to terms with the all-consuming loneliness that gnawed at his insides like vinegar, Colonel Aureliano Buendía carried the flame of civil war on his shoulders and generously sowed its seeds in every town. His squad found allies in every city through golden fish, and as soon as a partisan cell grew stronger, the fire of war would ignite the very next day, shaking the air with shouts: "Long live the Liberal Party! Long live Colonel Buendía!"
Only once was the usual course of events disrupted: when Colonel Buendía noticed people fleeing from a house, a man and a woman holding three infants in their arms. One of the children was awake and looking directly at him, too intently and attentively, with a gaze that was all too familiar to Aureliano — he had seen it every morning as he leaned over the water to wash his face. A familiar premonition of death briefly touched his heart, and without thinking, Colonel Buendía fired at the fleeing people, but the bullet somehow deflected from its target, hitting the stone wall of the house and leaving an ugly dent on the old plaster. A few people rushed to chase the fugitives, and less than an hour later, a distant boom reached their ears, and over the jungles a glow burst forth, illuminating the sky for a moment, as if morning had decided to arrive a few hours early.
"Damn conservatives! They blew up the gunpowder," cursed Gerineldo Márquez, but Colonel Aureliano did not hear him. The premonition of death receded, leaving behind only one thought: "This is the end of everything."
Many years later, Bruno awoke with a sense of impending doom. The dream, tangled and nebulous, filled with fire and smoke, the smell of gunpowder and the anguished whinnying of horses, had already faded from his memory, leaving behind only one word: "Macondo." What this word was — a name, a surname, the name of a town, or just a collection of sounds — Bruno did not know, but the premonition of something bad did not leave him all day. At night, the dream returned — Bruno wandered through the winding and tangled streets of an unknown city. In the fog that enveloped the town, elusive faces flickered and then vanished, while the deafening whisper of repeated names shattered the loud cry of a newborn baby, followed by the resonant sound of a funeral bell: "Macondo."
In the morning, still hearing that word humming in his head, Bruno called upon his gift, hoping for a clearer answer: would this misfortune touch his family and their little town? The sand, instead of rising like a dome, swirled around Bruno, spiraling up, and there, in the ghostly reflections of green light, he saw the people from his dream again. They disappeared, blurred by time, and reappeared, caught in an endless spiral, striving for a single point. Bruno saw a huge house, almost swallowed by the jungle, saw a woman in a bloodstained shift, lying on a birthing bed surrounded by midwives — her face was contorted with a torturous scream, and then he saw an infant left in the bed. The whirl of sand subsided, and a plate of prophecy fell miraculously without breaking onto the cave floor. Picking up the emerald glass, Bruno stared at the image of ants diligently crawling somewhere on the ground, and, sighing, cast the prophecy aside. There were no answers in this future, only the promise of some misfortune.
Dissatisfied, Bruno wandered all over the Encanto, asking new people who had come from the outside world if they had ever heard of "Macondo," whatever it might be, but no one had any idea what he was talking about. A pulling, cold premonition made Bruno say goodbye to his family, and after long preparations, farewells, and tearful promises from his nephews to take care of his rats as if they were their own children, he left the land where he had lived his entire life.
Unbeknownst to him, Bruno retraced Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s path, albeit in reverse order. At one railway station, luck finally smiled upon him: an old engineer, reeking of aguardiente(2) and tobacco, remembered that long ago, trains indeed used to pass through the town with the strange name Macondo, but that was probably a hundred years ago, or perhaps even two hundred, and the railway in those parts had long since become overgrown and rusted, while the town itself lay abandoned. Once a month, a postman on his mule passed by the forgotten Macondo, carrying letters for those lost souls who stubbornly clung to existence in that wretched place.
After several hours of persuasion, Bruno managed to convince the postman to take him to Macondo, and all the way, the old man in his poncho-paisa(3) about the government, reminiscing about some gringos with bananas, but as soon as Bruno tried to ask him about it, the old man fell silent, grumbling that there was nothing to say.
"Here it is, your Macondo," the postman muttered, stopping the mule, and Bruno, thanking the old man for his help, climbed out of the cart, brushing off the chicken feathers that had stuck to his cloak.
Once, this was probably a land of prosperity and unseen wonders, but now Bruno could only see ruins. The rainwashed walls of houses twisted in different directions, mangrove trees broke through the gaping holes in the zinc roofs, and the streets were a scatter of muddy puddles with rare patches of dry ground.
Stumbling and scooping up liquid mud with his sandals, Bruno walked through the winding streets of the dead city that had appeared to him in his dreams. Soon, he began to encounter old almond trees lining both sides of the street, like an honor guard guarding the peace of the dead patriarch. And there, at the end of the road, Bruno saw the very house that had appeared to him in visions: almost buried under the onslaught of the jungle, with flowers growing out of its walls, a collapsed roof, and empty window sockets, from which shutters had been torn away, the house patiently awaited his arrival.
Entering the patio, Bruno saw a large man with a shaggy beard and a mane of tangled gray hair, carelessly draped over his shoulders, sitting by a sprawling chestnut tree. The man laughed like a madman, frequently slapping his thighs and poking his fingers into the ground. Glancing down at his feet, Bruno saw reddish ants hurriedly scurrying somewhere, and at that moment, all parts of his vision finally fell into place.
Ignoring the madman in the patio, Bruno ran through the house, hearing the echoes of voices long gone. In the room to which the ants were so eagerly rushing, there was a heavy stench of blood and death, and Bruno stopped at the threshold, noticing a woman lying on the bed in a blood-stained nightgown, her face covered by the edge of a sheet. A barely audible feeble whimper shattered the stillness, and Bruno stepped into the room, crushing the ants under his sandals. In the cradle, a baby squirmed, no more than a day old. Noticing a couple of reddish ants already crawling up its tiny leg, Bruno hurriedly scooped the child into his arms, brushing the insects onto the ground.
"You’re wasting your effort," rasped a rough, hoarse voice from behind him, and turning around, Bruno saw an old gypsy in a worn velvet vest and a black hat with drooping brims. "I predicted his future long ago, back when his parents weren't even conceived. The ants will eat him, and the Buendía line will come to an end."
"You know, señor, I can see the future too," Bruno replied, cradling the infant, who, feeling the warmth of life, began to squirm like a lizard. "And my niece taught me that sometimes you have to look at it from different perspectives."
"Sobrinos y sobrinas, tías y tíos… The end is the same: a pig's tail and ants, but before that — only loneliness and eternal rain," the gypsy laughed and coughed at the same time, passing through a flower-covered wall and leaving behind a pungent smell of root beer.
"I wanted to name him Rodrigo," Bruno heard a soft voice coming from the bed: the fabric covering the deceased woman's face stirred slightly. "But Aurelito insisted that our son should be named after his great-grandfather... or great-great-grandfather, Colonel Buendía, so he could win thirty-two uprisings."
"I will call him Rodrigo, señora," Bruno promised, and with a gasp, he shrugged his shoulders, shaking off the ubiquitous ants that were resolutely determined to fulfill the dead gypsy's prophecy.
"Leave. And take my child, who was conceived in love," the woman asked, and the fabric on her face fell still once more.
The return journey was harder, largely because of Rodrigo Buendía, who, sensing that his life was given a second chance, cried louder and louder. There was no mention of finding a wet nurse or even a goat in this town, and Bruno, lovingly reassuring the infant, set off on foot. Upon reaching the nearest village, he managed to trade a couple of prophetic fragments for a bottle of goat's milk and a clean cloth, and so, soaking the fabric in milk and giving it to the baby, Bruno reached the railway station.
Thanks to his numerous nephews, Bruno knew how to handle newborns, and neither dirty diapers, nor loud crying, nor the acrid smell of excrement frightened him. He returned to Encanto slightly unsteady from lack of sleep, but Rodrigo Buendía no longer resembled a frail newborn rat; instead, he cried with all the might of his lungs, which he had surely inherited from his distant ancestor, José Arcadio Buendía.
Julieta and Pepa, having had their fill of entertaining the child, immediately got to work: little Rodrigo was bathed, fed, and wrapped in warm, soft blankets. Of course, the sisters couldn't help but notice the piglet's tail, which caused the baby Rodrigo extra discomfort during diaper changes, but Bruno convinced them that whatever had caused this flaw, the tail was not a bad omen.
"But what will you do with him?" asked his mother, Doña Alma. "Will you raise him like your own son?"
"The poor child has already suffered enough since his birth to end up with an adoptive father who chats with rats!" Bruno protested, absently rocking Rodrigo, who looked surprisingly serious and attentive, as if he truly understood what they were talking about. "I will raise him like my nephew."
"And I will help, as if he were yet another cousin of mine," offered Mirabel. "I’ve slept in the nursery for so many years that it won’t be hard for me to watch over him. After all, Lola will soon have her own kids, one more or one less..."
Thus, Aureliano Rodrigo Babilonia Buendía found a family that embraced him wholeheartedly. He grew up receiving as much affection and care as the Dolores’s daughters, sitting in the corner for mischief just like them, and he fell asleep to the gentle voice of Mirabel, singing him the same lullabies she sang to the twins.
Although Bruno, fulfilling his promise, immediately told Rodrigo the truth about his origins, the boy still called him "Papa" and Mirabel "Mama," not understanding why such strange expressions appeared on their faces. Possessing a thoughtful and reasonable disposition, like all the Aurelianos before him, Rodrigo soon learned not to call them that, at least in public, but at night, when nightmares of giant red ants haunted him, he would cry out for Mama Mirabel and Papa Bruno, and both of them would come to nursery, comforting and embracing him, driving away the monsters from his dreams with their warmth and kindness. They both cared for him lovingly, just like Tía Dolores and Tío Mariano cared for their own children, and sometimes Rodrigo saw that Papa Bruno and Mama Mirabel looked at each other the same way Tío Mariano and Tía Lola did. The names of his real parents, which Papa Bruno told him, were just empty sounds to Rodrigo.
No one was surprised that five years after Rodrigo’s arrival in Encanto, three doors lit up on the wall of the Casita instead of two — for the Lola’s daughters and one for him. When Mirabel led him to the door to find out what gift her named cousin possessed, she, without realizing it, felt almost a maternal pride in him, delighting in how much their little one had grown. And Bruno, standing above next to Alma, looked at Rodrigo with a fatherly love. When Rodrigo touched the doorknob, his door flared to life, illuminating the patio with a bright light. A clear pattern emerged on the golden wood: Rodrigo himself, inexplicably turned away from the people, lying on his side with an hourglass, an old camera, and three yellow butterflies hovering over Rodrigo’s silhouette, in memory of his grandfather Mauricio Babilonia, who never learned that he had a grandson.
His gift was to see the past, and Bisabuela Alma jokingly remarked that Bruno should stop confusing the child and just adopt him, since their gifts were so similar.
"And then marry Mirabel so she could really be my mom?” asked Rodrigo immediately, and an awkward silence fell in the patio, which was broken by Abuelo Félix, who suggested everyone start the fiesta. Amid the loud music and boisterous conversations, no one heard how Rodrigo whispered apologies to Papa Bruno and Mama Mirabel, who assured him that they were not upset at all and blamed him for nothing.
When Rodrigo turned ten, his piglet tail, which had not caused him much trouble, although it had been inconvenient for wearing trendy slim pants, suddenly dried up and fell off by itself. When Rodrigo picked it up — thin and dry, like a piece of string — a surge of knowledge about the past washed over him. Now he understood why Papa Bruno and Mama Mirabel could never truly adopt him and why he had grown that tail in the first place.
If things had been different, had Rodrigo grown up in the Buendía house, surrounded by the ghosts of the past trapped in the relentless cycle of time, this knowledge would have broken him, pushing him onto the path of his ancestors, the endless Aurelianos and José Arcadios, who repeatedly ended their lives in solitude. But Rodrigo, conceived in love, albeit forbidden, grew up in the Madrigal family, surrounded by care and affection. As a result, he spent the whole evening in his room, mentally studying the portraits on the interwoven branches of their family tree. He saw his great-great-grandfather, José Arcadio Buendía, married to his cousin, leading people to the Promised Land. He saw his namesake, Colonel Aureliano, attacking the town where Alma and Pedro lived, and he witnessed the solitude — terrifying, merciless, and relentless — invading the colonel's soul, taking away everything dear and precious to him, turning the man into a living stone. He saw the massacre of the banana company, which no one wanted to remember, and witnessed his real parents wandering through the empty rooms of the house, engaging in love games and caresses. He even saw how his mother died while he was placed in the crib and instantly forgotten, immediately surrendering him to the embrace of solitude, which longed to consume the last of the line.
That evening, Rodrigo no longer called Bruno "Papa" or Mirabel "Mama," fully realizing how painful it was for them to hear those words—not because he was unloved, but because it was their unattainable dream. Firmly resolved that no branch of the Buendía family would flourish on that decayed tree, Rodrigo approached Padre Flores for advice, who, after sighing, agreed to help the boy get into the seminary for his studies.
"Do you want to become a Pope?" asked his not-bisabuela Alma, who, Rodrigo knew, bore a striking resemblance to his true bisabuela Ursula.
"No, I'm not José Arcadio," he replied, digging at the ground with his big toe. "I just want to stay here in Encanto when Padre Flores grows old."
Many years later, Padre Rodrigo Aureliano Babilonia Buendía, named Madrigal, led the parish in Encanto. He had neither a wife nor children of his own; he did not raise revolts, did not toil in an alchemical laboratory trying to decipher decayed prophecies, and did not craft golden fish. He simply lived peacefully with himself and with love for the family that had become dear to him, and thus was the happiest of the Buendías — the only one who was not lonely.