One Hundred Years of Solitude

across the way. He spent half
his life in the back of the
store, scribbling in his extra-
careful hand in purple ink and
on pages that he tore out of
school notebooks, and no one
was sure exactly what he was
writing. When Aureliano first
met him he had two boxes of
those motley pages that in
some way made one think of
Melquíades parchments, and
from that time until he left he
had filled a third one, so it