Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite authors of all time. I was thinking about why that is, and I realized that nostalgia bleeds from his words. People who know me well, know me as essentially nostalgic - there's a sweet sadness I regularly tap into through reminiscences of the various journeys of my life. I see this same spirit in Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author who always insists on referring to his characters by their full names.
Take for instance, the short story of Maria dos Prazeres. The main character, dreaming that she will die within the year, goes to the trouble of training her dog to cry at her grave. Her dog "Noi" makes a distinguished appearance in the story when Maria dos Prazeres, a retired whore, lets a gravesite salesman into her house:
"(Noi) jumped on the table, barking in a crazed way and almost ruining the map of the cemetery with his muddy paws. A single glance from his owner was enough to restrain his impetuosity. 'Noi!' she said without raising her voice. 'Baixa d'aci!'
"The animal shrank back, looking at her in consternation, and two bright tears rolled down his muzzle. Then Maria dos Prazeres turned her attention again to the salesman, and found him mystified.
"'Collons!' he exclaimed. 'He cried!'
"'It's just that he's upset at finding someone here at this hour,' Maria dos Prazeres apologized in a low voice. 'In general, when he comes into the house he shows more care than men do. Except for you, as I've already seen.'
"'But he cried, damn it!' the salesman repeated, then realized his breach of good manners and begged her pardon with a blush. 'Excuse me, but I've never seen anything like that, even in the movies.'
"'All dogs can do it if you train them,' she said. 'But instead the owners spend their whole lives teaching them habits that make them miserable, like eating from plates or doing their business on schedule and in the same place. And yet they don't teach them the natural things they enjoy, like laughing and crying.'" (101-102).
This is a typical scene in a Marquez story: the laws of nature are bent, and all in the name of nostalgia. Read this, regarding the training of Noi to cry over Maria dos Prazeres' grave upon her death:
"After many frustrated attempts, Maria dos Prazeres succeeded in having Noi pick out her grave on the massive hill of identical graves. Then she devoted herself to teaching him to cry over the empty tomb so that he would be in the habit of doing so after her death. She walked with him several times from her house to the cemetery, pointing out landmarks to help him memorize the Ramblas bus route, until she felt that he was skilled enough to be sent on his own.
"On the Sunday of the final test, at three o'clock in the afternoon, she took off his spring vest, in part because summer was in the air and in part to make him less conspicuous, and turned him loose. She saw him go down the shady side of the street at a quick trot, his little rump tight and sad beneath his jubilant tail, and it was all she could do not to cry - for herself, for him, for so many and such bitter years of shared illusions - until she saw him turn the corner at the Calle Mayor and head for the sea. Fifteen minutes later she took the Ramblas bus at the nearby Plaza de Lesseps, trying to see him through the window without being seen, and in fact she did see him, distant and serious among the Sunday flocks of children, waiting for the traffic light to change at the Paseo de Gracia.
"'My God,' she sighed. 'He looks so alone.'" (105-106)
I write this blog looking out my window during the first real snow-fall of the year in Portland and everything seems perfect. If you like these excerpts, check out Strange Pilgrims. I've only read masterful work from Marquez, and this is no exception. In the introduction, he quotes: "Good writers are appreciated more for what they tear up than for what they publish." That attitude gives an indication of why I've only been astounded by his work.
Strange Pilgrims is a collection of twelve short stories, all of them about Latin Americans living abroad. Bon Voyage, Mr. President is about the coming death of an ousted President exiled to Switzerland. Mr. President claims in the story: "Have no doubt, my dear friend: It would be the worst thing that could happen to our poor country if I were president." I Came Only To Use The Phone is the poetic version of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest - not so much suspenseful as it is sad and beautiful. Light Is Like Water tells the tale of how a group of schoolboys, with a rowboat in the house, drowned in a house miles and miles away from any source of water because they all turned the lights on at once. There are many gems here, and I highly recommend the collection of stories, as well as anything this man has put on paper and not discarded.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Strange Pilgrims. Trans Edith Grossman. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
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