Living to Tell the Tale
Page 55
The farewell party at Guillermo Cano’s house was so tumultuous that when I arrived at the airport the plane had already left for Cartagena, where I was to sleep that night in order to say goodbye to my family. By a stroke of luck I boarded another one at noon. It was just as well, because the domestic atmosphere had expanded since the last time, and my parents and brothers and sisters felt capable of surviving without the lifeboat that I was going to need more than they in Europe.
I traveled to Barranquilla by highway very early the next day to take the flight to Paris at two in the afternoon. In the bus terminal in Cartagena I ran into Lácides, the unforgettable porter at The Skyscraper, whom I had not seen since that time. He fell on me with a real embrace and his eyes full of tears, not knowing what to say or how to treat me. After a hurried exchange because his bus was arriving and mine was leaving, he said with a fervor that touched my soul:
“What I don’t understand, Don Gabriel, is why you never told me who you were.”
“Ah, my dear Lácides,” I answered, more pained than he, “I couldn’t tell you because even I don’t know who I am yet.”
Hours later, in the taxi that took me to the airport in Barranquilla under the ungrateful sky, more transparent than any other in the world, I realized I was on the Avenida Veinte de Julio. In a reflex that had formed part of my life for the past five years, I looked toward the house of Mercedes Barcha. And there she was, slim and distant, like a statue seated in the doorway, wearing a green dress with golden lace in that year’s style, her hair cut like swallows’ wings, and with the intense stillness of someone waiting for a person who will not arrive. I could not avoid the awful premonition that I was going to lose her forever on a Thursday in July at so early an hour, and for an instant I thought about stopping the cab to say goodbye, but I preferred not to defy again a destiny as uncertain and persistent as mine.
On the plane I was still tortured by stomach spasms of remorse. At that time there was a fine custom of putting on the back of the seat in front of you something that in plain language was still called writing materials. A sheet of notepaper with gold edges and a matching pink, cream, or blue envelope of the same linen paper, sometimes perfumed. In my few previous trips I had used them to write farewell poems that I turned into little paper doves and sent flying when I got off the plane. I chose sky blue and wrote my first formal letter to Mercedes seated in the doorway of her house at seven in the morning, with the green dress of a bride without a beloved and the hair of an uncertain swallow, not even suspecting for whom she had dressed at dawn. I had written her other playful notes that I improvised at random and had received only verbal and always elusive responses when we happened to run into each other. This was not meant to be more than five lines to give her official notice of my trip. But at the end I added a postscript that blinded me like a flash of lightning at midday at the very instant I signed it: “If I do not receive an answer to this letter within a month, I will stay and live in Europe forever.” I did not allow myself time to think about it again before I put the letter in the mailbox at the desolate airport in Montego Bay at two in the morning. It was already Friday. On Thursday of the following week, when I walked into the hotel in Geneva at the end of another useless day of international disagreements, I found her letter of reply.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
COLLECTED STORIES
IN EVIL HOUR
INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES
LEAF STORM
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES
NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING
NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
STRANGE PILGRIMS
THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH
THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH
THE STORY OF A SHIPWRECKED SAILOR
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
‘My favourite book by one of the world’s greatest authors. You’re in the hands of a master’ Mariella Frostrup
‘On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on …’
When newly-wed Ángela Vicario and Bayardo San Román are left to their wedding night, Bayardo discovers that his new wife is no virgin. Disgusted, he returns Ángela to her family home that very night, where her humiliated mother beats her savagely and her two brothers demand to know her violator, whom she names as Santiago Nasar.
As he wakes to thoughts of the previous night’s revelry, Santiago is unaware of the slurs that have been cast against him. But with Ángela’s brothers set on avenging their family honour, soon the whole town knows who they plan to kill, where, when and why.
‘A masterpiece’ Evening Standard
‘A work of high explosiveness – the proper stuff of Nobel prizes. An exceptional novel’ The Times
‘Brilliant writer, brilliant book’ Guardian
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
COLLECTED STORIES
‘The stories are rich and unsettling, confident and eloquent. They are magical’ John Updike
Sweeping through crumbling towns, travelling fairs and windswept ports, Gabriel García Márquez introduces a host of extraordinary characters and communities in his mesmerising tales of everyday life: smugglers, bagpipers, the President and Pope at the funeral of Macondo’s revered matriarch; a very old angel with enormous wings. Teeming with the magical oddities for which his novels are loved, Márquez’s stories are a delight.
‘These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is essence of Márquez’ Guardian
‘Of all the living authors known to me, only one is undoubtedly touched by genius: Gabriel García Márquez’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no one else can do’ Salman Rushdie
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
IN EVIL HOUR
‘A masterly book’ Guardian
‘César Montero was dreaming about elephants. He’d seen them at the movies on Sunday ...’
Only moments later, César is led away by police as they clear the crowds away from the man he has just killed.
But César is not the only man to be riled by the rumours being spread in his Colombian hometown – under the cover of darkness, someone creeps through the streets sticking malicious posters to walls and doors. Each night the respectable townsfolk retire to their beds fearful that they will be the subject of the following morning’s lampoons.
As paranoia seeps through the town and the delicate veil of tranquility begins to slip, can the perpetrator be uncovered before accusation and violence leave the inhabitants’ sanity in tatters?
‘In Evil Hour was the book which was to inspire my own career as a novelist. I owe my writing voice to that one book!’ Jim Crace
‘Belongs to the very best of Márquez’s work … Should on no account be missed’ Financial Times
‘A splendid achievement’ The Times
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
INNOCENT ERÉNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES
‘These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is the essence of Márquez’ Guardian
‘Eréndira was bathing her grandmother when the wind of misfortune began to blow …’
Whilst her grotesque and demanding grandmother retires to bed, Eréndira still has floors to wash, sheets to iron, and a peacock to feed. The never-ending chores leave the young girl so exhausted that she collapses into bed with the candle still glowing on a nearby table – and is fast asleep when it topples over …
Eight hundred and seventy-two thousand, three hundred and fifteen pesos, her grandmother calculates, is the amount that Erénd
ira must repay her for the loss of the house. As she is dragged by her grandmother from town to town and hawked to soldiers, smugglers and traders, Eréndira feels herself dying. Can the love of a virgin save the young whore from her hell?
‘It becomes more and more fun to read. It shows what “fabulous” really means’ Time Out
‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do’ Salman Rushdie
‘One of this century’s most evocative writers’ Anne Tyler
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
LEAF STORM
‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do’ Salman Rushdie
‘Suddenly, as if a whirlwind had set down roots in the centre of the town, the banana company arrived, pursued by the leaf storm’
As a blizzard of warehouses and amusement parlours and slums descends on the small town of Macondo, the inhabitants reel at the accompanying stench of rubbish that makes their home unrecognizable. When the banana company leaves town as fast as it arrived, all they are left with is a void of decay.
Living in this devastated and soulless wasteland is one last honourable man, the Colonel, who is determined to fulfil a longstanding promise, no matter how unpalatable it may be. With the death of the detested Doctor, he must provide an honourable burial – and incur the wrath of the rest of Macondo, who would rather see the Doctor rot, forgotten and unattended.
‘The most important writer of fiction in any language’ Bill Clinton
‘Márquez is a retailer of wonders’ Sunday Times
‘An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate, and extremely funny’ Sunday Telegraph
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
‘An amazing celebration of the many kinds of love between men and women’ The Times
‘It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love …’
Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza’s impassioned advances and married Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half century, Florentino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina. Having sworn his eternal love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again.
When Fermina’s husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?
‘A love story of astonishing power and delicious comedy’ Newsweek
‘A delight’ Melvyn Bragg
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES
‘A velvety pleasure to read. Márquez has composed, with his usual sensual gravity and Olympian humour, a love letter to the dying light’ John Updike
‘The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself a gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin …’
He has never married, never loved and never gone to bed with a woman he didn’t pay. But on finding a young girl naked and asleep on the brothel owner’s bed, a passion is ignited in his heart – and he feels, for the first time, the urgent pangs of love.
Each night, exhausted by her factory work, ‘Delgadina’ sleeps peacefully whilst he watches her quietly. During these solitary early hours, his love for her deepens and he finds himself reflecting on his newly found passion and the loveless life he had led. By day, his columns in the local newspaper are read avidly by those who recognize in his outpourings the enlivening and transformative power of love.
‘Márquez describes this amorous, sometimes disturbing journey with the grace and vigour of a master storyteller’ Daily Mail
‘There is not one stale sentence, redundant word, or unfinished thought’ The Times
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING
‘A story only a writer of Márquez’s stature could tell so brilliantly’ Mail on Sunday
‘She looked over her should before getting into the car to be sure no one was following her …’
Pablo Escobar: billionaire drugs baron; ruthless manipulator, brutal killer and jefe of the infamous Medellín cartel. A man whose importance in the international drug trade and renown for his charitable work among the poor brought him influence and power in his home country of Colombia, and the unwanted attention of the American courts.
Terrified of the new Colombian President’s determination to extradite him to America, Escobar found the best bargaining tools he could find: hostages.
In the winter of 1990, ten relatives of Colombian politicians, mostly women, were abducted and held hostage as Escobar attempted to strong-arm the government into blocking his extradition. Two died, the rest survived, and from their harrowing stories Márquez retells, with vivid clarity, the terror and uncertainty of those dark and volatile months.
‘Reads with an urgency which belongs to the finest fiction. I have never read anything which gave me a better sense of the way Colombia was in its worst times’ Daily Telegraph
‘A piece of remarkable investigative journalism made all the more brilliant by the author’s talent for magical storytelling’ Financial Times
‘Compellingly readable’ Sunday Times
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL
‘An imaginative writer of genius, the topmost pinnacle of an entire generation of Latin American novelists of cathedral-like proportions’ Guardian
In a decaying Colombian town the Colonel and his sick wife are living from day to day, scraping together funds for food and medicine. Each Friday the Colonel waits for a letter to come in the post, hoping for the pension he is owed that will change their lives. While he waits the Colonel puts his hopes in his rooster – a prize bird that will make him money when cockfighting comes into season. But until then the bird – like the Colonel and his ailing wife – must somehow be fed …
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
‘Superb and intensely readable’ Time Out
‘An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December …’
When a witch doctor appears on the doorstep of the Marquis de Casalduero prophesizing a plague of rabies in their Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims – until, that is, he hears that his young daughter, Sierva María, was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive.
Sierva María appears completely unscathed – but as rumours of the plague spread, the Marquis and his wife wonder at her continuing good health. In a town consumed by superstition, it’s not long before they, and everyone else, put her survival down to a demonic possession and begin to see her supernatural powers as the cause of the town’s woes. Only the young priest charged with exorcising the evil spirit recognizes the girl’s sanity, but can he convince the town that it’s not her that needs healing?
‘Brilliantly moving. A tour de force’ A.S. Byatt
‘A compassionate, witty and unforgettable masterpiece’ Daily Telegraph
‘At once nostalgic and satiric, a resplendent fable’ Sunday Times
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
‘The greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years. Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do’ Salman Rushdie
‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice …’
Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where José Arc
adio Buendía and his strong-willed wife, Úrsula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquíades excites Aureliano Buendía’s father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.
Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendía household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds…
‘Should be required reading for the entire human race’ New York Times
‘No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Márquez’s writing’ Sunday Telegraph
‘It’s the most magical book I have ever read. I think Márquez has influenced the world’ Carolina Herrera
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
STRANGE PILGRIMS
‘Filled with greedy joys, with small pleasures, polished like apples against a sleeve’ Observer