FERMINA DAZA could not have imagined that her letter, inspired by blind rage, would havebeen interpreted by Florentino Ariza as a love letter. She had put into it all the fury of which shewas capable, her crudest words, the most wounding, most unjust vilifications, which still seemedminuscule to her in light of the enormity of the offence. It was the final act in a bitter exorcismthrough which she was attempting to come to terms with her new situation. She wanted to beherself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude thathad doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even thevestiges of her identity. She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immenseand solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which ofthem was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.
She could not avoid a profound feeling of rancour toward her husband for having left heralone in the middle of the ocean. Everything of his made her cry: his pyjamas under the pillow, hisslippers that had always looked to her like an invalid's, the memory of his image in the back of themirror as he undressed while she combed her hair before bed, the odour of his skin, which was tolinger on hers for a long time after his death. She would stop in the middle of whatever she wasdoing and slap herself on the forehead because she suddenly remembered something she hadforgotten to tell him. At every moment countless ordinary questions would come to mind that healone could answer for her. Once he had told her something that she could not imagine: thatamputees suffer pains, cramps, itches, in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she feltwithout him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.
When she awoke on her first morning as a widow, she turned over in bed without opening hereyes, searching for a more comfortable position so that she could continue sleeping, and that wasthe moment when he died for her. For only then did it become clear that he had spent the nightaway from home for the first time in years. The other place where this struck her was at the table,not because she felt alone, which in fact she was, but because of her strange belief that she waseating with someone who no longer existed. It was not until her daughter Ofelia came from NewOrleans with her husband and the three girls that she sat at a table again to eat, but instead of theusual one, she ordered a smaller, improvised table set up in the corridor. Until then she did nottake a regular meal. She would walk through the kitchen at any hour, whenever she was hungry,and put her fork in the pots and eat a little of everything without placing anything on a plate,standing in front of the stove, talking to the serving women, who were the only ones with whomshe felt comfortable, the ones she got along with best. Still, no matter how hard she tried, shecould not elude the presence of her dead husband: wherever she went, wherever she turned, nomatter what she was doing, she would come across something of his that would remind her ofhim. For even though it seemed only decent and right to grieve for him, she also wanted to doeverything possible not to wallow in her grief. And so she made the drastic decision to empty thehouse of everything that would remind her of her dead husband, which was the only way shecould think of to go on living without him.
It was a ritual of eradication. Her son agreed to take his library so that she could replace hisoffice with the sewing room she had never had when she was married. And her daughter wouldtake some furniture and countless objects that she thought were just right for the antique auctionsin New Orleans. All of this was a relief for Fermina Daza, although she was not at all amused tolearn that the things she had bought on her honeymoon were now relics for antiquarians. To thesilent stupefaction of the servants, the neighbours, the women friends who came to visit her duringthat time, she had a bonfire built in a vacant lot behind the house, and there she burned everythingthat reminded her of her husband: the most expensive and elegant clothes seen in the city since thelast century, the finest shoes, the hats that resembled him more than his portraits, the siesta rockingchair from which he had arisen for the last time to die, innumerable objects so tied to her life thatby now they formed part of her identity. She did it without the shadow of a doubt, in the fullcertainty that her husband would have approved, and not only for reasons of hygiene. For he hadoften expressed his desire to be cremated and not shut away in the seamless dark of a cedar box.
His religion would not permit it, of course: he had dared to broach the subject with theArchbishop, just in case, and his answer had been a categorical no. It was pure illusion, becausethe Church did not permit the existence of crematoriums in our cemeteries, not even for the use ofreligions other than Catholic, and the advantage of building them would not have occurred toanyone but Juvenal Urbino. Fermina Daza did not forget her husband's terror, and even in theconfusion of the first hours she remembered to order the carpenter to leave a chink where lightcould come into the coffin as a consolation to him.
In any event, the holocaust was in vain. In a very short while Fermina Daza realised that thememory of her dead husband was as resistant to the fire as it seemed to be to the passage of time.
Even worse: after the incineration of his clothing, she continued to miss not only the many thingsshe had loved in him but also what had most annoyed her: the noises he made on arising. Thatmemory helped her to escape the mangrove swamps of grief. Above all else, she made the firmdecision to go on with her life, remembering her husband as if he had not died. She knew thatwaking each morning would continue to be difficult, but it would become less and less so.
At the end of the third week, in fact, she began to see the first light. But as it grew larger andbrighter, she became aware that there was an evil phantom in her life who did not give her amoment's peace. He was not the pitiable phantom who had haunted her in the Park of the Evangelsand whom she had evoked with a certain tenderness after she had grown old, but the hatefulphantom with his executioner's frock coat and his hat held against his chest, whose thoughtlessimpertinence had disturbed her so much that she found it impossible not to think about him. Eversince her rejection of him at the age of eighteen, she had been convinced that she had left behind aseed of hatred in him that could only grow larger with time. She had always counted on thathatred, she had felt it in the air when the phantom was near, and the mere sight of him had upsetand frightened her so that she never found a natural way to behave with him. On the night when hereiterated his love for her, while the flowers for her dead husband were still perfuming the house,she could not believe that his insolence was not the first step in God knows what sinister plan forrevenge.
Her persistent memory of him increased her rage. When she awoke thinking about him on theday after the funeral, she succeeded in removing him from her thoughts by a simple act of will.
But the rage always returned, and she realised very soon that the desire to forget him was thestrongest inducement for remembering him. Then, overcome by nostalgia, she dared to recall forthe first time the illusory days of that unreal love. She tried to remember just how the little parkwas then, and the shabby almond trees, and the bench where he had loved her, because none of itstill existed as it had been then. They had changed everything, they had removed the trees withtheir carpet of yellow leaves and replaced the statue of the decapitated hero with that of another,who wore his dress uniform but had no name or dates or reasons to justify him, and who stood onan ostentatious pedestal in which they had installed the electrical controls for the district. Herhouse, sold many years before, had fallen into total ruin at the hands of the ProvincialGovernment. It was not easy for her to imagine Florentino Ariza as he had been then, much less tobelieve that the taciturn boy, so vulnerable in the rain, was the moth-eaten old wreck who hadstood in front of her with no consideration for her situation, or the slightest respect for her grief,and had seared her soul with a flaming insult that still made it difficult for her to breathe.
Cousin Hildebranda S醤 chez had come to visit a short while after Fermina Daza returnedfrom the ranch in Flores de Mar韆, where she had gone to recuperate from the misfortune of MissLynch. Old, fat, and contented, she had arrived in the company of her oldest son who, like hisfather, had been a colonel in the army but had been repudiated by him because of his contemptiblebehaviour during the massacre of the banana workers in San Juan de la Ci閚aga. The two cousinssaw each other often and spent endless hours feeling nostalgia for the time when they first met. Onher last visit, Hildebranda was more nostalgic than ever, and very affected by the burden of oldage. In order to add even greater poignancy to their memories, she had brought her copy of theportrait of them dressed as old-fashioned ladies, taken by the Belgian photographer on theafternoon that a young Juvenal Urbino had delivered the coup de grace to a willful Fermina Daza.
Her copy of the photograph had been lost, and Hildebranda's was almost invisible, but they couldboth recognise themselves through the mists of disenchantment: young and beautiful as theywould never be again.
For Hildebranda it was impossible not to speak of Florentino Ariza, because she alwaysidentified his fate with her own. She evoked him as she evoked the day she had sent her firsttelegram, and she could never erase from her heart the memory of the sad little bird condemned tooblivion. For her part, Fermina had often seen him without speaking to him, of course, and shecould not imagine that he had been her first love. She always heard news about him, as sooner orlater she heard news about anyone of any significance in the city. It was said that he had notmarried because of his unusual habits, but she paid no attention to this, in part because she neverpaid attention to rumours, and in part because such things were said in any event about men whowere above suspicion. On the other hand, it seemed strange to her that Florentino Ariza wouldpersist in his mystic attire and his rare lotions, and that he would continue to be so enigmatic aftermaking his way in life in so spectacular and honourable a manner. It was impossible for her tobelieve he was the same person, and she was always surprised when Hildebranda would sigh:
"Poor man, how he must have suffered!" For she had seen him without grief for a long time: ashadow that had been obliterated.
Nevertheless, on the night she met him in the movie theatre just after her return from Floresde Mar韆, something strange occurred in her heart. She was not surprised that he was with awoman, and a black woman at that. What did surprise her was that he was so well preserved, thathe behaved with the greatest self-assurance, and it did not occur to her that perhaps it was she, nothe, who had changed after the troubling explosion of Miss Lynch in her private life. From then on,and for more than twenty years, she saw him with more compassionate eyes. On the night of thevigil for her husband, it not only seemed reasonable for him to be there, but she even understood itas the natural end of rancour: an act of forgiving and forgetting. That was why she was so takenaback by his dramatic reiteration of a love that for her had never existed, at an age whenFlorentino Ariza and she could expect nothing more from life.
The mortal rage of the first shock remained intact after the symbolic cremation of herhusband, and it grew and spread as she felt herself less capable of controlling it. Even worse: thespaces in her mind where she managed to appease her memories of the dead man were slowly butinexorably being taken over by the field of poppies where she had buried her memories ofFlorentino Ariza. And so she thought about him without wanting to, and the more she thoughtabout him the angrier she became, and the angrier she became the more she thought about him,until it was something so unbearable that her mind could no longer contain it. Then she sat downat her dead husband's desk and wrote Florentino Ariza a letter consisting of three irrational pagesso full of insults and base provocations that it brought her the consolation of consciouslycommitting the vilest act of her long life.
Those weeks had been agonising for Florentino Ariza as well. The night he reiterated his loveto Fermina Daza he had wandered aimlessly through streets that had been devastated by theafternoon flood, asking himself in terror what he was going to do with the skin of the tiger he hadjust killed after having resisted its attacks for more than half a century. The city was in a state ofemergency because of the violent rains. In some houses, half-naked men and women were tryingto salvage whatever God willed from the flood, and Florentino Ariza had the impression thateveryone's calamity had something to do with his own. But the wind was calm and the stars of theCaribbean were quiet in their places. In the sudden silence of other voices, Florentino Arizarecognised the voice of the man whom Leona Cassiani and he had heard singing many yearsbefore, at the same hour and on the same corner: I came back from the bridge bathed in tears. Asong that in some way, on that night, for him alone, had something to do with death.
He needed Tr醤 sito Ariza then as he never had before, he needed her wise words, her headof a mock queen adorned with paper flowers. He could not avoid it: whenever he found himself onthe edge of catastrophe, he needed the help of a woman. So that he passed by the Normal School,seeking out those who were within reach, and he saw a light in the long row of windows in Am閞ica Vicu帽 a's dormitory. He had to make a great effort not to fall into the grandfather's madnessof carrying her off at two o'clock in the morning, warm with sleep in her swaddling clothes andstill smelling of the cradle's tantrums.
At the other end of the city was Leona Cassiani, alone and free and doubtless ready toprovide him with the compassion he needed at two o'clock in the morning, at three o'clock, at anyhour and under any circumstances. It would not be the first time he had knocked at her door in thewasteland of his sleepless nights, but he knew that she was too intelligent, and that they lovedeach other too much, for him to come crying to her lap and not tell her the reason. After a gooddeal of thought as he sleepwalked through the deserted city, it occurred to him that he could do nobetter than Prudencia Pitre, the Widow of Two, who was younger than he. They had first met inthe last century, and if they stopped meeting it was because she refused to allow anyone to see heras she was, half blind and verging on decrepitude. As soon as he thought of her, Florentino Arizareturned to the Street of the Windows, put two bottles of port and a jar of pickles in a shoppingbag, and went to visit her, not even knowing if she was still in her old house, if she was alone, or ifshe was alive.
Prudencia Pitre had not forgotten his scratching signal at the door, the one he had used toidentify himself when they thought they were still young although they no longer were, and sheopened the door without any questions. The street was dark, he was barely visible in his black suit,his stiff hat, and his bat's umbrella hanging over his arm, and her eyes were too weak to see himexcept in full light, but she recognised him by the gleam of the streetlamp on the metal frame ofhis eyeglasses. He looked like a murderer with blood still on his hands.
"Sanctuary for a poor orphan," he said.
It was the only thing he could think of to say, just to say something. He was surprised at howmuch she had aged since the last time he saw her, and he was aware that she saw him the sameway. But he consoled himself by thinking that in a moment, when they had both recovered fromthe initial shock, they would notice fewer and fewer of the blows that life had dealt the other, andthey would again seem as young as they had been when they first met.
"You look as if you are going to a funeral," she said.
It was true. She, along with almost the entire city, had been at the window since eleveno'clock, watching the largest and most sumptuous funeral procession that had been seen here sincethe death of Archbishop De Luna. She had been awakened from her siesta by the thunderingartillery that made the earth tremble, by the dissonances of the marching bands, the confusion offuneral hymns over the clamouring bells in all the churches, which had been ringing without pausesince the previous day. From her balcony she had seen the cavalry in dress uniform, the religiouscommunities, the schools, the long black limousines of an invisible officialdom, the carriagedrawn by horses in feathered headdresses and gold trappings, the flag-draped yellow coffin on thegun carriage of a historic cannon, and at the very end a line of old open Victorias that keptthemselves alive in order to carry funeral wreaths. As soon as they had passed by Prudencia Pitre'sbalcony, a little after midday, the deluge came and the funeral procession dispersed in a wildstampede.
"What an absurd way to die," she said.
"Death has no sense of the ridiculous," he said, and added in sorrow: "above all at our age."They were seated on the terrace, facing the open sea, looking at the ringed moon that took uphalf the sky, looking at the coloured lights of the boats along the horizon, enjoying the mild,perfumed breeze after the storm. They drank port and ate pickles on slices of country bread thatPrudencia Pitre cut from a loaf in the kitchen. They had spent many nights like this after she hadbeen left a widow without children. Florentino Ariza had met her at a time when she would havereceived any man who wanted to be with her, even if he were hired by the hour, and they hadestablished a relationship that was more serious and longer-lived than would have seemedpossible.
Although she never even hinted at it, she would have sold her soul to the devil to marry him.
She knew that it would not be easy to submit to his miserliness, or the foolishness of his prematureappearance of age, or his maniacal sense of order, or his eagerness to ask for everything and givenothing at all in return, but despite all this, no man was better company because no other man inthe world was so in need of love. But no other man was as elusive either, so that their love neverwent beyond the point it always reached for him: the point where it would not interfere with hisdetermination to remain free for Fermina Daza. Nevertheless, it lasted many years, even after hehad arranged for Prudencia Pitre to marry a salesman who was home for three months andtravelled for the next three and with whom she had a daughter and four sons, one of whom, sheswore, was Florentino Ariza's.
They talked, not concerned about the hour, because both were accustomed to sharing thesleepless nights of their youth, and they had much less to lose in the sleeplessness of old age.
Although he almost never had more than two glasses of wine, Florentino Ariza still had not caughthis breath after the third. He was dripping with perspiration, and the Widow of Two told him totake off his jacket, his vest, his trousers, to take off everything if he liked, what the hell: after all,they knew each other better naked than dressed. He said he would if she did the same, but sherefused: some time ago she had looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and suddenly realised thatshe would no longer have the courage to allow anyone--not him, not anyone--to see her undressed.
Florentino Ariza, in a state of agitation that he could not calm with four glasses of port, talkedat length about the same subject: the past, the good memories from the past, for he was desperateto find the hidden road in the past that would bring him relief. For that was what he needed: to lethis soul escape through his mouth. When he saw the first light of dawn on the horizon, heattempted an indirect approach. He asked, in a way that seemed casual: "What would you do ifsomeone proposed marriage to you, just as you are, a widow of your age?" She laughed with awrinkled old woman's laugh, and asked in turn: "Are you speaking of the Widow Urbino?"Florentino Ariza always forgot when he should not have that women, and Prudencia Pitremore than any other, always think about the hidden meanings of questions more than about thequestions themselves. Filled with sudden terror because of her chilling marksmanship, he slippedthrough the back door: "I am speaking of you." She laughed again: "Go make fun of your bitch ofa mother, may she rest in peace." Then she urged him to say what he meant to say, because sheknew that he, or any other man, would not have awakened her at three o'clock in the morning afterso many years of not seeing her just to drink port and eat country bread with pickles. She said:
"You do that only "when you are looking for someone to cry with." Florentino Ariza withdrew indefeat.
"For once you are wrong," he said. "My reasons tonight have more to do with singing.""Let's sing, then," she said.
And she began to sing, in a very good voice, the song that was popular then: Ramona, Icannot live without you. The night was over, for he did not dare to play forbidden games with awoman who had proven too many times that she knew the dark side of the moon. He walked outinto a different city, one that was perfumed by the last dahlias of June, and onto a street out of hisyouth, where the shadowy widows from five o'clock Mass were filing by. But now it was he, notthey, who crossed the street, so they would not see the tears he could no longer hold back, not hismidnight tears, as he thought, but other tears: the ones he had been swallowing for fifty-one years,nine months and four days.
He had lost all track of time, and did not know where he was when he awoke facing a large,dazzling window. The voice of Am閞 ica Vicu帽 a playing ball in the garden with the servantgirls brought him back to reality: he was in his mother's bed. He had kept her bedroom intact, andhe would sleep there to feel less alone on the few occasions when he was troubled by his solitude.
Across from the bed hung the large mirror from Don Sancho's Inn, and he had only to see it whenhe awoke to see Fermina Daza reflected in its depths. He knew that it was Saturday, because thatwas the day the chauffeur picked up Am閞 ica Vicu帽 a at her boarding school and brought herback to his house. He realised that he had slept without knowing it, dreaming that he could notsleep, in a dream that had been disturbed by the wrathful face of Fermina Daza. He bathed,wondering what his next step should be, he dressed very slowly in his best clothing, he dabbed oncologne and waxed the ends of his white moustache, he left the bedroom, and from the second-floor hallway he saw the beautiful child in her uniform catching the ball with the grace that hadmade him tremble on so many Saturdays but this morning did not disquiet him in the least. Heindicated that she should come with him, and before he climbed into the automobile he said,although it was not necessary: "Today we are not going to do our things." He took her to theAmerican Ice Cream Shop, filled at this hour with parents eating ice cream with their childrenunder the long blades of the fans that hung from the smooth ceiling. Am閞 ica Vicu帽 a orderedan enormous glass filled with layers of ice cream, each a different colour, her favourite dish andthe one that was the most popular because it gave off an aura of magic. Florentino Ariza drankblack coffee and looked at the girl without speaking, while she ate the ice cream with a spoon thathad a very long handle so that one could reach the bottom of the glass. Still looking at her, he saidwithout warning: "I am going to marry."She looked into his eyes with a flash of uncertainty, her spoon suspended in midair, but thenshe recovered and smiled.
"That's a lie," she said. "Old men don't marry."That afternoon he left her at her school under a steady downpour just as the Angelus wasringing, after the two of them had watched the puppet show in the park, had lunch at the fried-fishstands on the jetties, seen the caged animals in the circus that had just come to town, bought allkinds of candies at the outdoor stalls to take back to school, and driven around the city severaltimes with the top down, so that she could become accustomed to the idea that he was herguardian and no longer her lover. On Sunday he sent the automobile for her in the event shewanted to take a drive with her friends, but he did not want to see her, because since the previousweek he had come to full consciousness of both their ages. That night he decided to write a letterof apology to Fermina Daza, its only purpose to show that he had not given up, but he put it offuntil the next day. On Monday, after exactly three weeks of agony, he walked into his house,soaked by the rain, and found her letter.
It was eight o'clock at night. The two servant girls were in bed, and they had left on the lightin the hallway that lit Florentino Ariza's way to his bedroom. He knew that his Spartan, blandsupper was on the table in the dining room, but the slight hunger he felt after so many days ofhaphazard eating vanished with the emotional upheaval of the letter. His hands were shaking somuch that it was difficult for him to turn on the overhead light in the bedroom. He put the rain-soaked letter on the bed, lit the lamp on the night table, and with the feigned tranquillity that washis customary way of calming himself, he took off his wet jacket and hung it on the back of thechair, he took off his vest, folded it with care, and placed it on top of the jacket, he took off hisblack silk string tie and the celluloid collar that was no longer fashionable in the world, heunbuttoned his shirt down to his waist and loosened his belt so that he could breathe with greaterease, and at last he took off his hat and put it by the window to dry. Then he began to tremblebecause he did not know where the letter was, and his nervous excitement was so great that he wassurprised when he found it, for he did not remember placing it on the bed. Before opening it, hedried the envelope with his handkerchief, taking care not to smear the ink in which his name waswritten, and as he did so it occurred to him that the secret was no longer shared by two people butby three, at least, for whoever had delivered it must have noticed that only three weeks after thedeath of her husband, the Widow Urbino was writing to someone who did not belong to her world,and with so much urgency that she did not use the regular mails and so much secretiveness thatshe had ordered that it not be handed to anyone but slipped under the door instead, as if it were ananonymous letter. He did not have to tear open the envelope, for the water had dissolved the glue,but the letter was dry: three closely written pages with no salutation, and signed with the initials ofher married name.
He sat on the bed and read it through once as quickly as he could, more intrigued by the tonethan by the content, and before he reached the second page he knew that it was in fact the insultingletter he had expected to receive. He laid it, unfolded, in the light shed by the bed-lamp, he tookoff his shoes and his wet socks, he turned out the overhead light, using the switch next to the door,and at last he put on his chamois moustache cover and lay down without removing his trousersand shirt, his head supported by two large pillows that he used as a backrest for reading. Now heread it again, this time syllable by syllable, scrutinising each so that none of the letter's secretintentions would be hidden from him, and then he read it four more times, until he was so full ofthe written words that they began to lose all meaning. At last he placed it, without the envelope, inthe drawer of the night table, lay on his back with his hands behind his head, and for four hours hedid not blink, he hardly breathed, he was more dead than a dead man, as he stared into the space inthe mirror where she had been. Precisely at midnight he went to the kitchen and prepared athermos of coffee as thick as crude oil, then he took it to his room, put his false teeth into the glassof boric acid solution that he always found ready for him on the night table, and resumed theposture of a recumbent marble statue, with momentary shifts in position when he took a sip ofcoffee, until the maid came in at six o'clock with a fresh thermos.
Florentino Ariza knew by then what one of his next steps was going to be. In truth, the insultscaused him no pain, and he was not concerned with rectifying the unjust accusations that couldhave been worse, considering Fermina Daza's character and the gravity of the cause. All thatinterested him was that the letter, in and of itself, gave him the opportunity, and even recognisedhis right, to respond. Even more: it demanded that he respond. So that life was now at the pointwhere he had wanted it to be. Everything else depended on him, and he was convinced that hisprivate hell of over half a century's duration would still present him with many mortal challenges,which he was prepared to confront with more ardour and more sorrow and more love than he hadbrought to any of them before now, because these would be the last.
When he went to his office five days after receiving the letter from Fermina Daza, he felt as ifhe were floating in an abrupt and unusual absence of the noise of the typewriters, whose sound,like rain, had become less noticeable than silence. It was a moment of calm. When the soundbegan again, Florentino Ariza went to Leona Cas-siani's office and watched her as she sat in frontof her own personal typewriter, which responded to her fingertips as if it were human. She knewshe was being observed, and she looked toward the door with her awesome solar smile, but shedid not stop typing until the end of the paragraph.
"Tell me something, lionlady of my soul," asked Florentino Ariza. "How would you feel ifyou received a love letter written on that thing?"Her expression--she who was no longer surprised at anything--was one of genuine surprise.
"My God, man!" she exclaimed. "It never occurred to me."For that very reason she could make no other reply. Florentino Ariza had not thought of iteither until that moment, and he decided to risk it with no reservations. He took one of the officetypewriters home, his subordinates joking good-naturedly: "You can't teach an old dog newtricks." Leona Cassiani, enthusiastic about anything new, offered to give him typing lessons athome. But he had been opposed to methodical learning ever since Lotario Thugut had wanted toteach him to play the violin by reading notes and warned him that he would need at least a year tobegin, five more to qualify for a professional orchestra, and six hours a day for the rest of his lifein order to play well. And yet he had convinced his mother to buy him a blind man's violin, andwith the five basic rules given him by Lotario Thugut, in less than a year he had dared to play inthe choir of the Cathedral and to serenade Fermina Daza from the paupers' cemetery according tothe direction of the winds. If that had been the case at the age of twenty, with something asdiffic............