His vision wavered, and for a still, secure moment he saw the goddess of his people, someone he later called Durga, stroking a giant beast of a cat with the mane of a lion and the stripes of a tiger, with fangs that jutted out at least a foot from its thick, sinister muzzle.
Remedios only noticed him when he fell at her feet, startling her with his free-flowing tears.
He cried as his people had cried at the feet of the maker of the world several years prior, the genetic memory of which, still imprinted upon his soul, had led him to Remedios the Beauty in the first place.
She stroked his head with the same tender attention she had given the kitten, who had run off behind a door when the big brown man fell at its mistress's feet and was now peeking out at the two of them with great interest. A long while the man remained there, sobbing his eyes out, while Remedios the Beauty patted him on his emaciated back and stroked his haywire hair, which she found delightful in contrast to the rigorously set, pompously undisturbed hair of all the men who had ever dared approach her in person before.
The man stayed on in the house as an uninvited guest, doting on Remedios the Beauty, who remained as impassive to him as she was to everyone else. Ursula and Fernanda, who were dead set against this arrangement due to their ever-present fear of a scandal involving the girl none but Colonel Aureliano Buendia could truly understand, got an almighty shock when the Indian showed himself to not only be capable of resisting Remedios the Beauty's irresistible appeal, but against the very idea of treating his goddess, and the goddess of his people, as an object of lust.
Their natural suspicions were only quieted when, one morning, Ursula saw the Indian happening to come upon Remedios the Beauty in the kitchen, both Ursula and the Indian having woken up at unusual hours due to disturbing dreams of their respective fathers that made each of them get a drink of water.
Remedios, who didn't have any usual hours of sleeping or waking, had come into the kitchen to drink some water, and, assuming everyone in the house to be asleep, she had jumped at the chance to go about without the black cassock she had woven for herself, comfortable in her nudity not because of the absence of company but because of the absence of the censure she usually faced from Ursula, Fernanda, Amaranta, and the other women of the house for going about the house without dress, as was her wont.
The Indian glanced at her pure, virginal form, and began to weep religious tears, staring unabashedly and without lust at the most beautiful woman that had ever been seen in Macondo, or anywhere else.
He later explained to Ursula that Durga was his people's mother goddess, the feminine energy from which all of creation had sprung forth, and harboring lust for one's own mother was certainly not a crime he was keen on committing. After all, he said, we are born naked, and we are always naked underneath our clothes, so why should it affect anyone simply to see another's naked body?
Ursula would not have believed him at all if not for the chance encounter in the kitchen, because she remembered all the men who had wasted away, gone mad, killed themselves because they could not rid themselves of the memory of even a fleeting glimpse of Remedios the Beauty. The Indian, however, seemed completely immune to it, and found solace in simply sitting by Remedios's feet, happily observing her as she went about her unintelligible routine.
After Remedios the Beauty flew to heaven, the Indian left the house of his own accord and was never seen again in Macondo. Ursula didn't get the company she sought from Fernanda in talking about this matter, but she reminded herself that it was not just her family that was a bunch of lunatics, and that satisfied her curiosity on the matter.
