THE DAY THAT Florentino Ariza saw Fermina Daza in the atrium of the Cathedral, in the sixthmonth of her pregnancy and in full command of her new condition as a woman of the world, hemade a fierce decision to win fame and fortune in order to deserve her. He did not even stop tothink about the obstacle of her being married, because at the same time he decided, as if itdepended on himself alone, that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had to die. He did not know when or how, buthe considered it an ineluctable event that he was resolved to wait for without impatience orviolence, even till the end of time.

He began at the beginning. He presented himself unannounced in the office of Uncle LeoXII, President of the Board of Directors and General Manager of the River Company of theCaribbean, and expressed his willingness to yield to his plans. His uncle was angry with himbecause of the manner in which he had thrown away the good position of telegraph operator inVilla de Leyva, but he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are notborn once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them overand over again to give birth to themselves. Besides, his brother's widow had died the year before,still smarting from rancour but without any heirs. And so he gave the job to his errant nephew.

It was a decision typical of Don Leo XII Loayza. Inside the shell of a soulless merchant washidden a genial lunatic, as willing to bring forth a spring of lemonade in the Guajira Desert as toflood a solemn funeral with weeping at his heartbreaking rendition of "In Questa Tomba Oscura."His head was covered with curls, he had the lips of a faun, and all he needed was a lyre and alaurel wreath to be the image of the incendiary Nero of Christian mythology. When he was notoccupied with the administration of his decrepit vessels, still afloat out of sheer distraction on thepart of fate, or with the problems of river navigation, which grew more and more critical everyday, he devoted his free time to the enrichment of his lyric repertoire. He liked nothing better thanto sing at funerals. He had the voice of a galley slave, untrained but capable of impressiveregisters. Someone had told him that Enrico Caruso could shatter a vase with the power of hisvoice, and he had spent years trying to imitate him, even with the windowpanes. His friendsbrought him the most delicate vases they had come across in their travels through the world, andthey organised special parties so that he might at last achieve the culmination of his dream. Henever succeeded. Still, in the depth of his thundering there was a glimmer of tenderness that brokethe hearts of his listeners as if they were the crystal vases of the great Caruso, and it was this thatmade him so revered at funerals. Except at one, when he thought it a good idea to sing "When IWake Up in Glory," a beautiful and moving funeral song from Louisiana, and he was told to bequiet by the priest, who could not understand that Protestant intrusion in his church.

And so, between operatic encores and Neapolitan serenades, his creative talent and hisinvincible entrepreneurial spirit made him the hero of river navigation during the time of itsgreatest splendour. He had come from nothing, like his dead brothers, and all of them went as faras they wished despite the stigma of being illegitimate children and, even worse, illegitimatechildren who had never been recognised. They were the cream of what in those days was calledthe "shop-counter aristocracy," whose sanctuary was the Commercial Club. And yet, even when hehad the resources to live like the Roman emperor he resembled, Uncle Leo XII lived in the oldcity because it was convenient to his business, in such an austere manner and in such a plain housethat he could never shake off an unmerited reputation for miserliness. His only luxury was evensimpler: a house by the sea, two leagues from his offices, furnished only with six handmadestools, a stand for earthenware jars, and a hammock on the terrace where he could lie down tothink on Sundays. No one described him better than he did when someone accused him of beingrich.

"No, not rich," he said. "I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing."His strange nature, which someone once praised in a speech as lucid dementia, allowed himto see in an instant what no one else ever saw in Florentino Ariza. From the day he came to hisoffice to ask for work, with his doleful appearance and his twenty-six useless years behind him, hehad tested him with the severity of a barracks training that could have broken the hardest man. Buthe did not intimidate him. What Uncle Leo XII never suspected was that his nephew's courage didnot come from the need to survive or from a brute indifference inherited from his father, but froma driving need for love, which no obstacle in this world or the next would ever break.

The worst years were the early ones, when he was appointed clerk to the Board of Directors,which seemed a position made to order for him. Lotario Thugut, Uncle Leo XII's old musicteacher, was the one who advised him to give his nephew a writing job because he was a voraciouswholesale consumer of literature, although he preferred the worst to the best. Uncle Leo XIIdisregarded what he said concerning his nephew's bad taste in reading, for Lotario Thugut wouldalso say of him that he had been his worst voice student, and still he could make even tombstonescry. In any case, the German was correct in regard to what he had thought about least, which wasthat Florentino Ariza wrote everything with so much passion that even official documents seemedto be about love. His bills of lading were rhymed no matter how he tried to avoid it, and routinebusiness letters had a lyrical spirit that diminished their authority. His uncle himself came to hisoffice one day with a packet of correspondence that he had not dared put his name to, and he gavehim his last chance to save his soul.

"If you cannot write a business letter you will pick up the trash on the dock," he said.

Florentino Ariza accepted the challenge. He made a supreme effort to learn the mundanesimplicity of mercantile prose, imitating models from notarial files with the same diligence he hadonce used for popular poets. This was the period when he spent his free time in the Arcade of theScribes, helping unlettered lovers to write their scented love notes, in order to unburden his heartof all the words of love that he could not use in customs reports. But at the end of six months, nomatter how hard he twisted, he could not wring the neck of his diehard swan. So that when UncleLeo XII reproached him a second time, he admitted defeat, but with a certain haughtiness.

"Love is the only thing that interests me," he said.

"The trouble," his uncle said to him, "is that without river navigation there is no love."He kept his threat to have him pick up trash on the dock, but he gave him his word that hewould promote him, step by step, up the ladder of faithful service until he found his place. And hedid. No work could defeat him, no matter how hard or humiliating it was, no salary, no matter howmiserable, could demoralise him, and he never lost his essential fearlessness when faced with theinsolence of his superiors. But he was not an innocent, either: everyone who crossed his pathsuffered the consequences of the overwhelming determination, capable of anything, that laybehind his helpless appearance. Just as Uncle Leo XII had foreseen, and according to his desirethat his nephew not be ignorant of any secret in the business, Florentino Ariza moved throughevery post during thirty years of dedication and tenacity in the face of every trial. He fulfilled allhis duties with admirable skill, studying every thread in that mysterious warp that had so much todo with the offices of poetry, but he never won the honour he most desired, which was to writeone, just one, acceptable business letter. Without intending to, without even knowing it, hedemonstrated with his life that his father had been right when he repeated until his dying day thatthere was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucidor dangerous, than a poet. That, at least, is what he was told by Uncle Leo XII, who talked to himabout his father during moments of sentimental leisure and created an image that resembled adreamer more than it did a businessman.

He told him that Pius V Loayza used the offices for matters more pleasant than work, and thathe always arranged to leave the house on Sundays, with the excuse that he had to meet or dispatcha boat. What is more, he had an old boiler installed in the warehouse patio, with a steam whistlethat someone would sound with navigation signals in the event his wife became suspicious.

According to his calculations, Uncle Leo XII was certain that Florentino Ariza had been conceivedon a desk in some unlocked office on a hot Sunday afternoon, while from her house his father'swife heard the farewells of a boat that never sailed. By the time she learned the truth it was toolate to accuse him of infamy because her husband was already dead. She survived him by manyyears, destroyed by the bitterness of not having a child and asking God in her prayers for theeternal damnation of his bastard son.

The image of his father disturbed Florentino Ariza. His mother had spoken of him as a greatman with no commercial vocation, who had at last gone into the river business because his olderbrother had been a very close collaborator of the German commodore Johann B. Elbers, the fatherof river navigation. They were the illegitimate sons of the same mother, a cook by trade, who hadthem by different men, and all bore her surname and the name of a pope chosen at random fromthe calendar of saints' days, except for Uncle Leo XII, named after the Pope in office when he wasborn. The man called Florentino was their maternal grandfather, so that the name had come downto the son of Tr醤sito Ariza after skipping over an entire generation of pontiffs.

Florentino always kept the notebook in which his father wrote love poems, some of theminspired by Tr醤 sito Ariza, its pages decorated with drawings of broken hearts. Two thingssurprised him. One was the character of his father's handwriting, identical to his own although hehad chosen his because it was the one he liked best of the many he saw in a manual. The other wasfinding a sentence that he thought he had composed but that his father had written in the notebooklong before he was born: The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.

He had also seen the only two pictures of his father. One had been taken in Santa Fe, when hewas very young, the same age as Florentino Ariza when he saw the photograph for the first time,and in it he was wearing an overcoat that made him look as if he were stuffed inside a bear, and hewas leaning against a pedestal that supported the decapitated gaiters of a statue. The little boybeside him was Uncle Leo XII, wearing a ship captain's hat. In the other photograph, his fatherwas with a group of soldiers in God knows which of so many wars, and he held the longest rifle,and his moustache had a gunpowder smell that wafted out of the picture. He was a Liberal and aMason, just like his brothers, and yet he wanted his son to go to the seminary. Florentino Ariza didnot see the resemblance that people observed, but according to his Uncle Leo XII, Pius V was alsoreprimanded for the lyricism of his documents. In any case, he did not resemble him in thepictures, or in his memories of him, or in the image transfigured by love that his mother painted,or in the one unpainted by his Uncle Leo XII with his cruel wit. Nevertheless, Florentino Arizadiscovered the resemblance many years later, as he was combing his hair in front of the mirror,and only then did he understand that a man knows when he is growing old because he begins tolook like his father.

He had no memory of him on the Street of Windows. He thought he knew that at one time hisfather slept there, very early in his love affair with Tr醤 sito Ariza, but that he did not visit heragain after the birth of Florentino. For many years the baptismal certificate was our only validmeans of identification, and Florentino Ariza's, recorded in the parish church of St. Tiburtius, saidonly that he was the natural son of an unwed natural daughter called Tr醤sito Ariza. The name ofhis father did not appear on it, although Pius V took care of his son's needs in secret until the dayhe died. This social condition closed the doors of the seminary to Florentino Ariza, but he alsoescaped military service during the bloodiest period of our wars because he was the only son of anunmarried woman.

Every Friday after school he sat across from the offices of the River Company of theCaribbean, looking at pictures of animals in a book that was falling apart because he had looked atit so often. His father would walk into the building without looking at him, wearing the frock coatsthat Tr醤 sito Ariza later had to alter for him, and with a face identical to that of St. John theEvangelist on the altars. When he came out, many hours later, he would make certain that no onesaw him, not even his coachman, and he would give him money for the week's expenses. They didnot speak, not only because his father made no effort to, but because he was terrified of him. Oneday, after he waited much longer than usual, his father gave him the coins and said: "Take themand do not come back again."It was the last time he saw him. But in time he was to learn that Uncle Leo XII, who wassome ten years younger, continued to bring money to Tr醤 sito Ariza, and was the one who tookcare of her after Pius V died of an untreated colic without leaving anything in writing and withoutthe time to make any provisions for his only child: a child of the streets.

The drama of Florentino Ariza while he was a clerk for the River Company of the Caribbeanwas that he could not avoid lyricism because he was always thinking about Fermina Daza, and hehad never learned to write without thinking about her. Later, when he was moved to other posts,he had so much love left over inside that he did not know what to do with it, and he offered it tounlettered lovers free of charge, writing their love missives for them in the Arcade of the Scribes.

That is where he went after work. He would take off his frock coat with his circumspect gesturesand hang it over the back of the chair, he would put on the cuffs so he would not dirty his shirtsleeves, he would unbutton his vest so he could think better, and sometimes until very late at nighthe would encourage the hopeless with letters of mad adoration. From time to time he would be approachedby a poor woman who had a problem with one of her children, a war veteran whopersisted in demanding payment of his pension, someone who had been robbed and wanted to filea complaint with the government, but no matter how he tried, he could not satisfy them, becausethe only convincing document he could write was a love letter. He did not even ask his new clientsany questions, because all he had to do was look at the whites of their eyes to know what theirproblem was, and he would write page after page of uncontrolled love, following the infallibleformula of writing as he thought about Fermina Daza and nothing but Fermina Daza. After thefirst month he had to establish a system of appointments made in advance so that he would not beswamped by yearning lovers.

His most pleasant memory of that time was of a very timid young girl, almost a child, whotrembled as she asked him to write an answer to an irresistible letter that she had just received, andthat Florentino Ariza recognised as one he had written on the previous afternoon. He answered itin a different style, one that was in tune with the emotions and the age of the girl, and in a handthat also seemed to be hers, for he knew how to create a handwriting for every occasion, accordingto the character of each person. He wrote, imagining to himself what Fermina Daza would havesaid to him if she had loved him as much as that helpless child loved her suitor. Two days later, ofcourse, he had to write the boy's reply with the same hand, style, and kind of love that he hadattributed to him in the first letter, and so it was that he became involved in a feverishcorrespondence with himself. Before a month had passed, each came to him separately to thankhim for what he himself had proposed in the boy's letter and accepted with devotion in the girl'sresponse: they were going to marry.

Only when they had their first child did they realise, after a casual conversation, that theirletters had been written by the same scribe, and for the first time they went together to the Arcadeto ask him to be the child's godfather. Florentino Ariza was so enraptured by the practical evidenceof his dreams that he used time he did not have to write a Lovers' Companion that was more poeticand extensive than the one sold in doorways for twenty centavos and that half the city knew byheart. He categorised all the imaginable situations in which he and Fermina Daza might findthemselves, and for all of them he wrote as many models and alternatives as he could think of.

When he finished, he had some thousand letters in three volumes as complete as the CovarrubiasDictionary, but no printer in the city would take the risk of publishing them, and they ended up inan attic along with other papers from the past, for Tr醤 sito Ariza flatly refused to dig out theearthenware jars and squander the savings of a lifetime on a mad publishing venture. Years later,when Florentino Ariza had the resources to publish the book himself, it was difficult for him toaccept the reality that love letters had gone out of fashion.

As he was starting out in the River Company of the Caribbean and writing letters free ofcharge in the Arcade of the Scribes, the friends of Florentino Ariza's youth were certain that theywere slowly losing him beyond recall. And they were right. When he returned from his voyagealong the river, he still saw some of them in the hope of dimming the memory of Fermina Daza,he played billiards with them, he went to their dances, he allowed himself to be raffled off amongthe girls, he allowed himself to do everything he thought would help him to become the man hehad once been. Later, when Uncle Leo XII took him on as an employee, he played dominoes withhis officemates in the Commercial Club, and they began to accept him as one of their own whenhe spoke to them of nothing but the navigation company, which he did not call by its completename but by its initials: the R C. C. He even changed the way he ate. As indifferent and irregularas he had been until then regarding food, that was how habitual and austere he became until theend of his days: a large cup of black coffee for breakfast, a slice of poached fish with white ricefor lunch, a cup of caf?con leche and a piece of cheese before going to bed. He drank black coffeeat any hour, anywhere, under any circumstances, as many as thirty little cups a day: a brew likecrude oil which he preferred to prepare himself and which he always kept near at hand in athermos. He was another person, despite his firm decision and anguished efforts to continue to bethe same man he had been before his mortal encounter with love.

The truth is that he was never the same again. Winning back Fermina Daza was the solepurpose of his life, and he was so certain of achieving it sooner or later that he convinced Tr醤sito Ariza to continue with the restoration of the house so that it would be ready to receive herwhenever the miracle took place. In contrast to her reaction to the proposed publication of theLovers' Companion, Tr醤 sito Ariza went much further: she bought the house at once andundertook a complete renovation. They made a reception room where the bedroom had been, onthe upper floor they built two spacious, bright bedrooms, one for the married couple and anotherfor the children they were going to have, and in the space where the old tobacco factory had beenthey put in an extensive garden with all kinds of roses, which Florentino Ariza himself tendedduring his free time at dawn. The only thing they left intact, as a kind of testimony of gratitude tothe past, was the notions shop. The back room where Florentino Ariza had slept they left as it hadalways been, with the hammock hanging and the writing table covered with untidy piles of books,but he moved to the room planned as the conjugal bedroom on the upper floor. This was thelargest and airiest in the house, and it had an interior terrace where it was pleasant to sit at nightbecause of the sea breeze and the scent of the rosebushes, but it was also the room that bestreflected Florentino Ariza's Trappist severity. The plain whitewashed walls were rough andunadorned, and the only furniture was a prison cot, a night table with a candle in a bottle, an oldwardrobe, and a washstand with its basin and bowl.

The work took almost three years, and it coincided with a brief civic revival owing to theboom in river navigation and trade, the same factors that had maintained the city's greatnessduring colonial times and for more than two centuries had made her the gateway to America. Butthat was also the period when Tr醤 sito Ariza manifested the first symptoms of her incurabledisease. Her regular clients were older, paler, and more faded each time they came to the notionsshop, and she did not recognise them after dealing with them for half a lifetime, or she confusedthe affairs of one with those of another, which was a very grave matter in a business like hers, inwhich no papers were signed to protect her honour or theirs, and one's word of honour was givenand accepted as sufficient guarantee. At first it seemed she was growing deaf, but it soon becameevident that her memory was trickling away. And so she liquidated her pawn business, the treasurein the jars paid for completing and furnishing the house, and still left over were many of the mostvaluable old jewels in the city, whose owners did not have funds to redeem them.

During this period Florentino Ariza had to attend to too many responsibilities at the sametime, but his spirits never flagged as he sought to expand his work as a furtive hunter. After hiserratic experience with the Widow Nazaret, which opened the door to street love, he continued tohunt the abandoned little birds of the night for several years, still hoping to find a cure for the painof Fermina Daza. But by then he could no longer tell if his habit of fornicating without hope was amental necessity or a simple vice of the body. His visits to the transient hotel became lessfrequent, not only because his interests lay elsewhere but because he did not like them to see himthere under circumstances that were different from the chaste domesticity of the past.

Nevertheless, in three emergency situations he had recourse to the simple strategy of an era beforehis time: he disguised his friends, who were afraid of being recognised, as men, and they walkedinto the hotel together as if they were two gentlemen out on the town. Yet on two of theseoccasions someone realised that he and his presumptive male companion did not go to the bar butto a room, and the already tarnished reputation of Florentino Ariza received the coup de grace. Atlast he stopped going there, except for the very few times he did so not to catch up on what he hadmissed but for just the opposite reason: to find a refuge where he could recuperate from hisexcesses.

And it was just as well. No sooner did he leave his office at five in the afternoon than hebegan to hunt like a chicken hawk. At first he was content with what the night provided. He pickedup serving girls in the parks, black women in the market, sophisticated young ladies from theinterior on the beaches, gringas on the boats from New Orleans. He took them to the jetties wherehalf the city also went after nightfall, he took them wherever he could, and sometimes even wherehe could not, and not infrequently he had to hurry into a dark entryway and do what he could,however he could do it, behind the gate.

The lighthouse was always a blessed refuge in a storm, which he evoked with nostalgia in thedawn of his old age when he had everything settled, because it was a good place to be happy,above all at night, and he thought that something of his loves from that time flashed out to thesailors with every turn of the light. So that he continued to go there more than to any other spot,while his friend the lighthouse keeper was delighted to receive him with a simplemindedexpression on his face that was the best guarantee of discretion for the frightened little birds.

There was a house at the foot of the tower, close to the thunder of the waves breaking against thecliffs, where love was more intense because it seemed like a shipwreck. But Florentino Arizapreferred the light tower itself, late at night, because one could see the entire city and the trail oflights on the fishing boats at sea, and even in the distant swamps.

It was in those days that he devised his rather simplistic theories concerning the relationshipbetween a woman's appearance and her aptitude for love. He distrusted the sensual type, the oneswho looked as if they could eat an alligator raw and tended to be the most passive in bed. The typehe preferred was just the opposite: those skinny little tadpoles that no one bothered to turn aroundand look at in the street, who seemed to disappear when they took off their clothes, who made youfeel sorry for them when their bones cracked at the first impact, and yet who could leave the manwho bragged the most about his virility ready for the trashcan. He had made notes of thesepremature observations, intending to write a practical supplement to the Lovers' Companion, butthe project met the same fate as the previous one after Ausencia Santander sent him tumbling withher old dog's wisdom, stood him on his head, tossed him up and threw him down, made him asgood as new, shattered all his virtuous theories, and taught him the only thing he had to learnabout love: that nobody teaches life anything.

Ausencia Santander had had a conventional marriage for twenty years, which left her withthree children who had married and had children in turn, so that she boasted of being thegrandmother with the best bed in the city. It was never clear if she had abandoned her husband, orif he had abandoned her, or if they had abandoned each other at the same time, but he went to livewith his regular mistress, and then she felt free, in the middle of the day and at the front door, toreceive Rosendo de la Rosa, a riverboat captain whom she had often received in the middle of thenight at the back door. Without giving the matter a second thought, he brought Florentino Ariza tomeet her.

He brought him for lunch. He also brought a demijohn of homemade aguardiente andingredients of the highest quality for an epic sancocho, the kind that was possible only withchickens from the patio, meat with tender bones, rubbish-heap pork, and greens and vegetablesfrom the towns along the river. Nevertheless, from the very first, Florentino Ariza was not asenthusiastic about the excellence of the cuisine or the exuberance of the lady of the house as hewas about the beauty of the house itself. He liked her because of her house, bright and cool, withfour large windows facing the sea and beyond that a complete view of the old city. He liked thequantity and the splendour of the things that gave the living room a confused and at the same timerigorous appearance, with all kinds of handcrafted objects that Captain Rosendo de la Rosabrought back from each trip until there was no room left for another piece. On the sea terrace,sitting on his private ring, was a cockatoo from Malaya, with unbelievable white plumage and apensive tranquillity that gave one much to think about: it was the most beautiful animal thatFlorentino Ariza had ever seen.

Captain Rosendo de la Rosa was enthusiastic about his guest's enthusiasm, and he told him indetail the history of each object. As he spoke he sipped aguardiente without pause. He seemed tobe made of reinforced concrete: he was enormous, with hair all over his body except on his head, amoustache like a housepainter's brush, a voice like a capstan, which would have been his alone,and an exquisite courtesy. But not even his body could resist the way he drank. Before they satdown to the table he had finished half of the demijohn, and he fell forward onto the tray of glassesand bottles with a slow sound of demolition. Ausencia Santander had to ask Florentino Ariza tohelp her drag the inert body of the beached whale to bed and undress him as he slept. Then, in aflash of inspiration that they attributed to a conjunction of their stars, the two of them undressed inthe next room without agreeing to, without even suggesting it or proposing it to each other, and formore than seven years they continued undressing wherever they could while the Captain was on atrip. There was no danger of his surprising them, because he had the good sailor's habit of advisingthe port of his arrival by sounding the ship's horn, even at dawn, first with three long howls for hiswife and nine children, and then with two short, melancholy ones for his mistress.

Ausencia Santander was almost fifty years old and looked it, but she had such a personalinstinct for love that no homegrown or scientific theories could interfere with it. Florentino Arizaknew from the ship's itineraries when he could visit her, and he always went unannounced,whenever he wanted to, at any hour of the day or night, and never once was she not waiting forhim. She would open the door as her mother had raised her until she was seven years old: starknaked, with an organdy ribbon in her hair. She would not let him take another step until she hadundressed him, because she thought it was bad luck to have a clothed man in the house. This wasthe cause of constant discord with Captain Rosendo de la Rosa, because he had the superstitiousbelief that smoking naked brought bad luck, and at times he preferred to put off love rather thanput out his inevitable Cuban cigar. On the other hand, Florentino Ariza was very taken with thecharms of nudity, and she removed his clothes with sure delight as soon as she closed the door, noteven giving him time to greet her, or to take off his hat or his glasses, kissing him and letting himkiss her with sharp-toothed kisses, unfastening his clothes from bottom to top, first the buttons ofhis fly, one by one after each kiss, then his belt buckle, and at the last his vest and shirt, until hewas like a live fish that had been slit open from head to tail. Then she sat him in the living roomand took off his boots, pulled on his trouser cuffs so that she could take off his pants while sheremoved his long underwear, and at last she undid the garters around his calves and took off hissocks. Then Florentino Ariza stopped kissing her and letting her kiss him so that he could do theonly thing he was responsible for in that precise ceremony: he took his watch and chain out of thebuttonhole in his vest and took off his glasses and put them in his boots so he would be sure not toforget them. He always took that precaution, always without fail, whenever he undressed insomeone else's house.

As soon as he had done that, she attacked him without giving him time for anything else,there on the same sofa where she had just undressed him, and only on rare occasions in the bed.

She mounted him and took control of all of him for all of her, absorbed in herself, her eyes closed,gauging the situation in her absolute inner darkness, advancing here, retreating there, correctingher invisible route, trying another, more intense path, another means of proceeding withoutdrowning in the slimy marsh that flowed from her womb, droning like a horsefly as she askedherself questions and answered in her native jargon; where was that something in the shadows thatonly she knew about and that she longed for just for herself, until she succumbed without waitingfor anybody, she fell alone into her abyss with a jubilant explosion of total victory that made theworld tremble. Florentino Ariza was left exhausted, incomplete, floating in a puddle of theirperspiration, but with the impression of being no more than an instrument of pleasure. He wouldsay: "You treat me as if I were just anybody." She would roar with the laughter of a free femaleand say: "Not at all: as if you were nobody." He was left with the impression that she took awayeverything with mean-spirited greed, and his pride would rebel and he would leave the housedetermined never to return. But then he would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, andthe memory of the self-absorbed love of Ausencia Santander was revealed to him for what it was:

a pitfall of happiness that he despised and desired at the same time, but from which it wasimpossible to escape.

One Sunday, two years after they met, the first thing she did when he arrived was to take offhis glasses instead of undressing him, so that she could kiss him with greater ease, and this washow Florentino Ariza learned that she had begun to love him. Despite the fact that from the firstday he had felt very comfortable in the house that he now loved as if it were his own, he had neverstayed longer than two hours, and he had never slept there, and he had eaten there only oncebecause she had given him a formal invitation. He went there, in fact, only for what he had comefor, always bringing his only gift, a single rose, and then he would disappear until the nextunforeseeable time. But on the Sunday when she took off his glasses to kiss him, in part becauseof that and in part because they fell asleep after gentle love-making, they spent the afternoonnaked in the Captain's enormous bed. When he awoke from his nap, Florentino Ariza stillremembered the shrieking of the cockatoo, whose strident calls belied his beauty. But the silencewas diaphanous in the four o'clock heat, and through the bedroom window one could see theoutline of the old city with the afternoon sun at its back, its golden domes, its sea in flames all theway to Jamaica. Ausencia Santander stretched out an adventurous hand, seeking the sleepingbeast, but Florentino Ariza moved it away. He said: "Not now. I feel something strange, as ifsomeone were watching us." She aroused the cockatoo again with her joyous laughter. She said:

"Not even Jonah's wife would swallow that story." Neither did she, of course, but she admitted itwas a good one, and the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without makinglove again. At five o'clock, with the sun still high, she jumped out of bed, naked as always andwith the organdy ribbon in her hair, and went to find something to drink in the kitchen. But shehad not taken a single step out of the bedroom when she screamed in horror.

She could not believe it. The only objects left in the house were the lamps attached to thewalls. All the rest, the signed furniture, the Indian rugs, the statues and the hand-woven tapestries,the countless trinkets made of precious stones and metals, everything that had made hers one ofthe most pleasant and best decorated houses in the city, everything, even the sacred cockatoo,everything had vanished. It had been carried out through the sea terrace without disturbing theirlove. All that was left were empty rooms with the four open windows, and a message painted onthe rear wall: This is what you get for fucking around. Captain Rosendo de la Rosa could neverunderstand why Ausencia Santander did not report the robbery, or try to get in touch with thedealers in stolen goods, or permit her misfortune to be mentioned again.

Florentino Ariza continued to visit her in the looted house, whose furnishings were reducedto three leather stools that the thieves forgot in the kitchen, and the contents of the bedroom wherethe two of them had been. But he did not visit her as often as before, not because of the desolationin the house, as she supposed and as she said to him, but because of the novelty of a mule-drawntrolley at the turn of the new century, which proved to be a prodigious and original nest of free-flying little birds. He rode it four times a day, twice to go to the office, twice to return home, andsometimes when his reading was real, and most of the time when it was pretence, he would takethe first steps, at least, toward a future tryst. Later, when Uncle Leo XII put at his disposal acarriage drawn by two little grey mules with golden trappings, just like the one that belonged toPresident Rafael N煤帽 ez, he would long for those times on the trolley as the most fruitful of allhis adventures in falconry. He was right: there is no worse enemy of secret love than a carriagewaiting at the door. In fact, he almost always left it hidden at his house and made his hawkishrounds On foot so that he would not leave wheel marks in the dust. That is why he evoked withsuch great nostalgia the old trolley with its emaciated mules covered with sores, in which asideways glance was all one needed to know where love was. However, in the midst of so manytender memories, he could not elude his recollection of a helpless little bird whose name he neverknew and with whom he spent no more than half a frenetic night, but that had been enough to ruinthe innocent rowdiness of Carnival for him for the rest of his life.

She had attracted his attention on the trolley for the fearlessness with which she travelledthrough the riotous public celebration. She could not have been more than twenty years old, andshe did not seem to share the spirit of Carnival, unless she was disguised as an invalid: her hairwas very light, long, and straight, hanging loose over her shoulders, and she wore a tunic of plain,unadorned linen. She was completely removed from the confusion of music in the streets, thehandfuls of rice powder, the showers of aniline thrown at the passengers on the trolley, whosemules were whitened with cornstarch and wore flowered hats during those three days of madness.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Florentino Ariza invited her to have an ice with him, becausehe did not think he could ask for anything more. She looked at him without surprise. She said: "Iam happy to accept, but I warn you that I am crazy." He laughed at her witticism, and took her tosee the parade of floats from the balcony of the ice cream shop. Then he put on a rented cape, andthe two of them joined the dancing in the Plaza of the Customhouse, and enjoyed themselves likenewborn sweethearts, for her indifference went to the opposite extreme in the uproar of the night:

she danced like a professional, she was imaginative and daring in her revelry, and she haddevastating charm.

"You don't know the trouble you've got into with me," she shouted, laughing in the fever ofCarnival. "I'm a crazy woman from the insane asylum."For Florentino Ariza, that night was a return to the innocent unruliness of adolescence, whenhe had not yet been wounded by love. But he knew, more from hearsay than from personalexperience, that such easy happiness could not last very long. And so before the night began todegenerate, as it always did after prizes were distributed for the best costumes, he suggested to thegirl that they go to the lighthouse to watch the sunrise. She accepted with pleasure, but she wantedto wait until after they had given out the prizes.

Florentino Ariza was certain that the delay saved his life. In fact, the girl had indicated to himthat they should leave for the lighthouse, when she was seized by two guards and a nurse fromDivine Shepherdess Asylum. They had been looking for her since her escape at three o'clock thatafternoon--they and the entire police force. She had decapitated a guard and seriously woundedtwo others with a machete that she had snatched away from the gardener because she wanted to godancing at Carnival. It had not occurred to anyone that she might be dancing in the streets; theythought she would be hiding in one of the many houses where they had searched even the cisterns.

It was not easy to take her away. She defended herself with a pair of gardening shears thatshe had hidden in her bodice, and six men were needed to put her in the strait jacket while thecrowd jammed into the Plaza of the Customhouse applauded and whistled with glee in the beliefthat the bloody capture was one of many Carnival farces. Florentino Ariza was heartbroken, andbeginning on Ash Wednesday he would walk down Divine Shepherdess Street with a box ofEnglish chocolates for her. He would stand and look at the inmates, who shouted all kinds ofprofanities and compliments at him through the windows, and he would show them the box ofchocolates in case luck would have it that she, too, might look out at him through the iron bars.

But he never saw her. Months later, as he was getting off the mule-drawn trolley, a little girlwalking with her father asked him for a piece of chocolate from the box he was carrying in hishand. Her father reprimanded her and begged Florentino Ariza's pardon. But he gave the wholebox to the child, thinking that the action would redeem him from all bitterness, and he soothed thefather with a pat on the back.

"They were for a love that has gone all to hell," he said.

As a kind of compensation from fate, it was also in the mule-drawn trolley that FlorentinoAriza met Leona Cassiani, who was the true woman in his life although neither of them ever knewit and they never made love. He had sensed her before he saw her as he was going home on thetrolley at five o'clock; it was a tangible look that touched him as if it were a finger. He raised hiseyes and saw her, at the far end of the trolley, but standing out with great clarity from the otherpassengers. She did not look away. On the contrary: she continued to look at him with suchboldness that he could not help thinking what he thought: black, young, pretty, but a whorebeyond the shadow of a doubt. He rejected her from his life, because he could not conceive ofanything more contemptible than paying for love: he had never done it.

Florentino Ariza got off at the Plaza of the Carriages, which was the end of the line, hurriedthrough the labyrinth of commerce because his mother was expecting him at six, and when heemerged on the other side of the crowd, he heard the tapping heels of a loose woman on thepaving stones and turned around so that he would be certain of what he already knew: it was she,dressed like the slave girls in engravings, with a skirt of veils that was raised with the gesture of adancer when she stepped over the puddles in the streets, a low-cut top that left her shoulders bare,a handful of coloured necklaces, and a white turban. He knew them from the transient hotel. Itoften happened that at six in the afternoon they were still eating breakfast, and then all they coulddo was to use sex as if it were a bandit's knife and put it to the throat of the first man they passedon the street: your prick or your life. As a final test, Florentino Ariza changed direction and wentdown the deserted Oil Lamp Alley, and she followed, coming closer and closer to him. Then hestopped, turned around, blocked her way on the sidewalk, and leaned on his umbrella with bothhands. She stood facing him.

"You made a mistake, good-looking," he said. "I don't do that.""Of course you do," she said. "One can see it in your face."Florentino Ariza remembered a phrase from his childhood, something that the family doctor,his godfather, had said regarding his chronic constipation: "The world is divided into those whocan shit and those who cannot." On the basis of this dogma the Doctor had elaborated an entiretheory of character, which he considered more accurate than astrology. But with what he hadlearned over the years, Florentino Ariza stated it another way: "The world is divided into thosewho screw and those who do not." He distrusted those who did not: when they strayed from thestraight and narrow, it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if theyhad just invented it. Those who did it often, on the other hand, lived for that alone. They felt sogood that their lips were sealed as if they were tombs, because they knew that their lives dependedon their discretion. They never spoke of their exploits, they confided in no one, they feignedindifference to the point where they earned the reputation of being impotent, or frigid, or above alltimid fairies, as in the case of Florentino Ariza. But they took pleasure in the error because theerror protected them. They formed a secret society, whose members recognised each other all overthe world without need of a common language, which is why Florentino Ariza was not surprisedby the girl's reply: she was one of them, and therefore she knew that he knew that she knew.

It was the great mistake of his life, as his conscience was to remind him every hour of everyday until the final day of his life. What she wanted from him was not love, least of all love thatwas paid for, but a job, any kind of job, at any salary, in the River Company of the Caribbean.

Florentino Ariza felt so ashamed of his own conduct that he took her to the head of Personnel,who gave her the lowest-level job in the General Section, which she performed with seriousness,modesty, and dedication for three years.

Ever since its founding, the R. C. C. had had its offices across from the river dock, and it hadnothing in common with the port for ocean liners on the opposite side of the bay, or with themarket pier on Las羘 imas Bay. The building was of wood, with a sloping tin roof, a single longbalcony with columns at the front, and windows, covered with wire mesh, on all four sidesthrough which one had complete views of the boats at the dock as if they were paintings hangingon the wall. When the German founders built it, they painted the tin roof red and the wooden wallsa brilliant white, so that the building itself bore some resemblance to a riverboat. Later it waspainted all blue, and at the time that Florentino Ariza began to work for the company it was adusty shed of no definite colour, and on the rusting roof there were patches of new tin plates overthe original ones. Behind the building, in a gravel patio surrounded by chicken wire, stood twolarge warehouses of more recent construction, and at the back there was a closed sewer pipe, dirtyand foul-smelling, where the refuse of a half a century of river navigation lay rotting: the debris ofhistoric boats, from the early one with a single smokestack, christened by Sim贸 n Bol韛 ar, tosome so recent that they had electric fans in the cabins. Most of them had been dismantled formaterials to be used in building other boats, but many were in such good condition that it seemedpossible to give them a coat of paint and launch them without frightening away the iguanas ordisturbing the foliage of the large yellow flowers that made them even more nostalgic.

The Administrative Section was on the upper floor of the building, in small but comfortableand well-appointed offices similar to the cabins on the boats, for they had been built not by civilarchitects but by naval engineers. At the end of the corridor, like any employee, Uncle Leo XIIdispatched his business in an office similar to all the others, the one exception being that everymorning he found a glass vase filled with sweet-smelling flowers on his desk. On the ground floorwas the Passenger Section, with a waiting room that had rustic benches and a counter for sellingtickets and handling baggage. Last of all was the confusing General Section, its name alonesuggesting the vagueness of its functions, where problems that had not been solved elsewhere inthe company went to die an ignominious death. There sat Leona Cassiani, lost behind a student'sdesk surrounded by corn stacked for shipping and unresolved papers, on the day that Uncle LeoXII himself went to see what the devil he could think of to make the General Section good forsomething. After three hours of questions, theoretical assumptions, and concrete evidence, with allthe employees in the middle of the room, he returned to his office tormented by the certainty thatinstead of a solution to so many problems, he had found just the opposite: new and differentproblems with no solution.

The next day, when Florentino Ariza came into his office, he found a memorandum fromLeona Cassiani, with the request that he study it and then show it to his uncle if he thought itappropriate. She was the only one who had not said a word during the inspection the previousafternoon. She had remained silent in full awareness of the worth of her position as a charityemployee, but in the memorandum she noted that she had said nothing not because of negligencebut out of respect for the hierarchies in the section. It had an alarming simplicity. Uncle Leo XIIhad proposed a thorough reorganisation, but Leona Cassiani did not agree, for the simple reasonthat in reality the General Section did not exist: it was the dumping ground for annoying but minorproblems that the other sections wanted to get rid of. As a consequence, the solution was toeliminate the General Section and return the problems to the sections where they had originated, tobe solved there.

Uncle Leo XII did not have the slightest idea who Leona Cassiani was, and he could notremember having seen anyone who could be Leona Cassiani at the meeting on the previousafternoon, but when he read the memorandum he called her to his office and talked with herbehind closed doors for two hours. They spoke about everything, in accordance with the methodhe used to learn about people. The memorandum showed simple common sense, and hersuggestion, in fact, would produce the desired result. But Uncle Leo XII was not interested in that:

he was interested in her. What most attracted his attention was that her only education afterelementary school had been in the School of Millinery. Moreover, she was learning English athome, using an accelerated method with no teacher, and for the past three months she had beentaking evening classes in typing, a new kind of work with a wonderful future, as they used to sayabout the telegraph and before that the steam engine.

When she left the meeting, Uncle Leo XII had already begun to call her what he wouldalways call her: my namesake Leona. He had decided to eliminate with the stroke of a pen thetroublesome section and distribute the problems so that they could be solved by the people whohad created them, in accordance with Leona Cassiani's suggestion, and he had created a newposition for her, which had no title or specific duties but in effect was his Personal Assistant. Thatafternoon, after the inglorious burial of the General Section, Uncle Leo XII asked Florentino Arizawhere he had found Leona Cassiani, and he answered with the truth.

"Well, then, go back to the trolley and bring me every girl like her that you find," his unclesaid. "With two or three more, we'll salvage your galleon."Florentino Ariza took this as one of Uncle Leo XII's typical jokes, but the next day he foundhimself without the carriage that had been assigned to him six months earlier, and that was takenback now so that he could continue to look for hidden talent on the trolleys. Leona Cassiani, forher part, soon overcame her initial scruples, and she revealed what she had kept hidden with somuch astuteness during her first three years. In three more years she had taken control ofeverything, and in the next four she stood on the threshold of the General Secretaryship, but sherefused to cross it because it was only one step below Florentino Ariza. Until then she had takenorders from him, and she wanted to continue to do so, although the fact of the matter was thatFlorentino himself did not realise that he took orders from her. Indeed, he had done nothing moreon the Board of Directors than follow her suggestions, which helped him to move up despite thetraps set by his secret enemies.

Leona Cassiani had a diabolical talent for handling secrets, and she always knew how to bewhere she had to be at the right time. She was dynamic and quiet, with a wise sweetness. Butwhen it was indispensable she would, with sorrow in her heart, give free rein to a character ofsolid iron. However, she never did that for herself. Her only objective was to clear the ladder atany cost, with blood if necessary, so that Florentino Ariza could move up to the position he hadproposed for himself without calculating his own strength very well. She would have done this inany event, of course, because she had an indomitable will to power, but the truth was that she didit consciously, out of simple gratitude. Her determination was so great that Florentino Arizahimself lost his way in her schemes, and on one unfortunate occasion he attempted to block her,thinking that she was trying to do the same to him. Leona Cassiani put him in his place.

"Make no mistake," she said to him. "I will withdraw from all this whenever you wish, butthink it over carefully."Florentino Ariza, who in fact had never thought about it, thought about it then, as well as hecould, and he surrendered his weapons. The truth is that in the midst of that sordid internecinebattle in a company in perpetual crisis, in the midst of his disasters as a tireless falconer and themore and more uncertain dream of Fermina Daza, the impassive Florentino Ariza had not had amoment of inner peace as he confronted the fascinating spectacle of that fierce black womansmeared with shit and love in the fever of battle. Many times he regretted in secret that she had notbeen in fact what he thought she was on the afternoon he met her, so that he could wipe his asswith his principles and make love to her even if it cost nuggets of shining gold. For LeonaCassiani was still the woman she had been that afternoon on the trolley, with the same clothes,worthy of an impetuous runaway slave, her mad turbans, her earrings and bracelets made of bone,her necklaces, her rings with fake stones on every finger: a lioness in the streets. The years hadchanged her appearance very little, and that little became her very well. She moved in splendidmaturity, her feminine charms were even more exciting, and her ardent African body wasbecoming more compact. Florentino Ariza had made no propositions to her in ten years, a hardpenance for his original error, and she had helped him in everything except that.

One night when he had worked late, something he did often after his mother's death,Florentino Ariza was about to leave when he saw a light burning in Leona Cassiani's office. Heopened the door without knocking, and there she was: alone at her desk, absorbed, serious, withthe new eyeglasses that gave her an academic air. Florentino Ariza realised with joyful fear thatthe two of them were alone in the building, the piers were deserted, the city asleep, the nighteternal over the dark sea, and the horn mournful on the ship that would not dock for another hour.

Florentino Ariza leaned both hands on his umbrella, just as he had done in Oil Lamp Alley whenhe barred her way, only now he did it to hide the trembling in his knees.

"Tell me something, lionlady of my soul," he said. "When are we ever going to stop this?"She took off her glasses without surprise, with absolute self-control, and dazzled him withher solar laugh. It was the first time she used the familiar form of address with him.

"Ay, Florentino Ariza," she said, "I've been sitting here for ten years waiting for you to askme that."It was too late: the opportunity had been there with her in the mule-drawn trolley, it hadalways been with her there on the chair where she was sitting, but now it was gone forever. Thetruth was that after all the dirty tricks she had done for him, after so much sordidness endured forhim, she had moved on in life and was far beyond his twenty-year advantage in age: she hadgrown too old for him. She loved him so much that instead of deceiving him she preferred tocontinue loving him, although she had to let him know in a brutal manner.

"No," she said to him. "I would feel as if I were going to bed with the son I never had."Florentino Ariza was left with the nagging suspicion that this was not her last word. Hebelieved that when a woman says no, she is waiting to be urged before making her final decision,but with her he could not risk making the same mistake twice. He withdrew without protest, andeven with a certain grace, which was not easy for him. From that night on, any cloud there mighthave been between them was dissipated without bitterness, and Florentino Ariza understood at lastthat it is possible to be a woman's friend and not go to bed with her.

Leona Cassiani was the only human being to whom Florentino Ariza was tempted to revealthe secret of Fermina Daza. The few people who had known were beginning to forget for reasonsover which they had no control. Three of them were, beyond the shadow of any doubt, in thegrave: his mother, whose memory had been erased long before she died; Gala Placidia, who haddied of old age in the service of one who had been like a daughter to her; and the unforgettableEscol醩 tica Daza, the woman who had brought him the first love letter he had ever received inhis life, hidden in her prayerbook, and who could not still be alive after so many years. LorenzoDaza (no one knew if he was alive or dead) might have revealed the secret to Sister Franca de laLuz when he was trying to stop Fermina Daza's expulsion, but it was unlikely that it had gone anyfurther. That left the eleven telegraph operators in Hildebranda Sanchez's province who hadhandled telegrams with their complete names and exact addresses, and Hildebranda S醤 chezherself, and her court of indomitable cousins.

What Florentino Ariza did not know was that Dr. Juvenal Urbino should have been includedon the list. Hildebranda S醤 chez had revealed the secret to him during one of her many visits inthe early years. But she did so in such a casual way and at such an inopportune moment that it didnot go in one of Dr. Urbino's ears and out the other, as she thought; it did not go in at all.

Hildebranda had mentioned Florentino Ariza as one of the secret poets who, in her opinion, mightwin the Poetic Festival. Dr. Urbino could not remember who he was, and she told him--she did notneed to, but there was no hint of malice in it--that he was Fermina Daza's only sweetheart beforeshe married. She told him, convinced that it had been something so innocent and ephemeral that infact it was rather touching. Dr. Urbino replied without looking at her: "I did not know that fellowwas a poet." And then he wiped him from his memory, because among other things, his professionhad accustomed him to the ethical management of forgetfulness.

Florentino Ariza observed that, with the exception of his mother, the keepers of the secretbelonged to Fermina Daza's world. In his, he was alone with the crushing weight of a burden thathe had often needed to share, but until then there had been no one worthy of so much trust. LeonaCassiani was the only one, and all he needed was the opportunity and the means. This was what hewas thinking on the hot summer afternoon when Dr. Juvenal Urbino climbed the steep stairs of theR. C. C., paused on each step in order to survive the three o'clock heat, appeared in FlorentinoAriza's office, panting and soaked with perspiration down to his trousers, and gasped with his lastbreath: "I believe a cyclone is coming." Florentino Ariza had seen him there many times, askingfor Uncle Leo XII, but never until now had it seemed so clear to him that this uninvited guest hadsomething to do with his life.

This was during the time that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had overcome the pitfalls of his profession,and was going from door to door, almost like a beggar with his hat in his hand, asking forcontributions to his artistic enterprises. Uncle Leo XII had always been one of his most faithfuland generous contributors, but just at that moment he had begun his daily ten-minute siesta, sittingin the swivel chair at his desk. Florentino Ariza asked Dr. Juvenal Urbino to please wait in hisoffice, which was next to Uncle Leo XII's and, in a certain sense, served as his waiting room.

They had seen each other on various occasions, but they had never before been face to face asthey were now, and once again Florentino Ariza experienced the nausea of feeling himself inferior.

The ten minutes were an eternity, during which he stood up three times in the hope that his unclehad awakened early, and he drank an entire thermos of black coffee. Dr. Urbino refused to drinkeven a single cup. He said: "Coffee is poison." And he continued to chat about one thing andanother and did not even care if anyone was listening to him. Florentino Ariza could not bear hisnatural distinction, the fluidity and precision of his words, his faint scent of camphor, his personalcharm, the easy and elegant manner in which he made his most frivolous sentences seem essentialonly because he had said them. Then, without warning, the Doctor changed the subject.

"Do you like music?"He was taken by surprise. In reality, Florentino Ariza attended every concert and operaperformed in the city, but he did not feel capable of engaging in a critical or well-informeddiscussion. He had a weakness for popular music, above all sentimental waltzes, whose similarityto the ones he had composed as an adolescent, or to his secret verses, could not be denied. He hadonly to hear them once, and then for nights on end there was no power in heaven or earth thatcould shake the melody out of his head. But that would not be a serious answer to a seriousquestion put to him by a specialist.

"I like Gardel," he said.

Dr. Urbino understood. "I see," he said. "He is popular." And he slipped into a recounting ofhis many new projects which, as always, had to be realised without official backing. He called tohis attention the disheartening inferiority of the performances that could be heard here now,compared with the splendid ones of the previous century. That was true: he had spent a yearselling subscriptions to bring the Cortot-Casals-Thibaud trio to the Dramatic Theatre, and therewas no one in the government who even knew who they were, while this very month there wereno seats left for the Ram贸 n Caralt company that performed detective dramas, for the Operettaand Zarzuela Company of Don Manolo de la Presa, for the Santanelas, ineffable mimics,illusionists, and artistes, who could change their clothes on stage in the wink of an eye, for DanyseD'Altaine, advertised as a former dancer with the Folies-Berg猫 re, and even for the abominableUrsus, a Basque madman who took on a fighting bull all by himself. There was no reason tocomplain, however, if the Europeans themselves were once again setting the bad example of abarbaric war when we had begun to live in peace after nine civil wars in half a century, which, ifthe truth were told, were all one war: always the same war. What most attracted Florentino Ariza'sattention in that intriguing speech was the possibility of reviving the Poetic Festival, the mostrenowned and long-lasting of the enterprises that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had conceived in the past. Hehad to bite his tongue to keep from telling him that he had been an assiduous participant in theannual competition that had eventually interested famous poets, not only in the rest of the countrybut in other nations of the Caribbean as well.

No sooner had the conversation begun than t