As a young boy, Aureliano Segundo asks Ursula to see the locked room where Melquiades had stayed and had written tomes of undecipherable (to most) words:
"He demanded so much, promised with such insistence that he would not mistreat the things, that Ursula gave him the keys. No one had gone into the room again since they had taken Melquiades’ body out and had put on the door a padlock whose parts had become fused together with rust. But when Aureliano Segundo opened the windows a familiar light entered that seemed accustomed to lighting the room every day and there was not the slightest trace of dust or cobwebs, with everything swept and clean, better swept and cleaner than on the day of the burial, and the ink had not dried up in the inkwell nor had oxidation diminished the shine of the metals nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where Jose Arcadio Buendia had vaporized mercury. On the shelves were the books bound in a cardboard-like material, pale, like tanned human skin, and the manuscripts were intact. In spite of the room’s having been shut up for many years, the air seemed fresher than in the rest of the house." (p. 199)
When Meme, on a visit home from the convent, brings along 68 classmates and 4 nuns:
"When they finally left, the flowers were destroyed, the furniture broken, and the walls covered with drawings and writing, but Fernanda pardoned them for all of the damage because of her relief at their leaving. She returned the borrowed beds and stools and kept the seventy-two chamberpots in Melquiades’ room. The locked room, about which the spiritual life of the house revolved in former times, was known from that time on as the ‘chamberpot room.’ " (p. 280)
To this, when Jose Arcadio Segundo is awaiting the troops’ invasion of the house, and their breaking into this little room where he has been in hiding. The officer forces open the door:
"The officer had it opened and flashed the beam of the lantern over it, and Aureliano Segundo and Santa Sofia de la Piedad saw the Arab eyes of Jose Arcadio Segundo at the moment when the ray of light passed over his face and they understood that it was the end of one anxiety and the beginning of another which would find relief only in resignation.
" (…) There was the same pureness in the air, the same clarity, the same respite from dust and destruction that Aureliano Segundo had known in childhood and that only Colonel Aureliano Buendia could not perceive. But the officer was only interested in the chamberpots.
" ‘How many people live in this house?’ he asked.
" ‘Five.’
"The officer obviously did not understand. He paused with his glance on the space where Aureliano Segundo and Santa Sofia de la Piedad were still seeing Jose Arcadio Segundo and the latter also realized that the soldier was looking at him without seeing him. Then he turned out the light and closed the door. When he spoke to the soldier, Aureliano Segundo understood that the young officer had seen the room with the same eyes as Colonel Aureliano Buendia." (p. 334)
The power of Melquiades extends beyond his life. The manuscripts he left are eventually read by Jose Arcadio Segundo who never leaves the room, taking his meals through the window and filling up all seventy-two chamberpots.
Why does the room remain fresh and clean through the years? Why do only two people see it differently–Colonel Aureliano Buendia and the office come to arrest Jose Arcadio Segundo? What is the magic force that renders him invisible to that officer and ensures his safety?
This one’s a real toughie. I must consider the "space" of the room, its center in the Buendia house and yet kept pristine, a sanctuary from the world and apart as well from the space of time. Is it all of history enclosed within its confines, or is it the future? Jose Arcadio Segundo is content in the room, sees Colonel Buendia as a fake and finds some intense reading of the old parchments of Melquiades.
"On the shelves were the books bound in a cardboard-like material, pale, like tanned human skin,.." Is this symbolic of humanity, the book of life that mankind writes as he lives it?
Strange, this lone cell of solitude that is untouched by the drama that goes on immediately around it, where all are in separate cells of their own mental making as restricting as walls of stone.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology