One Hundred Years of Solitude

return at night. One morning
she saw that the red ants had
left the undermined
foundations, crossed the
garden, climbed up the
railing, where the begonias
had taken on an earthen color,
and had penetrated into the
heart of the house. She first
tried to kill them with a
broom, then with insecticides,
and finally with lye, but the
next day they were back in
the same place, still passing