Part 2 (1/2)

For ettable, suspended from our dream like a dove in the air

XII

It was the sea of our first love in those autumnal eyes

One day I wished to see that sea -that sea of childhood-I was too late15 It was a poem by a boy profoundly aware not only that he has lost his childhood but also that he has lost his other homeland, the Caribbean coast, the land of sea and sun

So for in that ghostly highland city and Kafka is what he eventually found One afternoon a costeno costeno friend lent him a copy of friend lent him a copy of The Metaentine writer called Jorge Luis Borges16 Garcia Marquez went back to the boarding house, up to his room, took off his shoes and lay on his bed He read the first line: ”As Gregor Sa from uneasy dreaantic insect” Mes to hirand house, up to his room, took off his shoes and lay on his bed He read the first line: ”As Gregor Sa from uneasy dreaantic insect” Mes to hirandination (including his ability to i term that even the most fantastic episodes can be narrated in a matter-of-fact way But what Garcia Marquez first took fro rather different from what he has said in retrospect First, evidently, Kafka addressed the alienation of urban existence; but beneath the surface, suffusing everything he wrote, was his terror of another authority, his father: his sienitor

Garcia Marquez had read Dostoyevsky's The Double The Double, set in an even , four years before, on his arrival in Bogota Kafka's vision is a direct descendant of that novel and its i writer is not in doubt Garcia Marquez had discovered Europeanmerely coed froe, from the structure of reality as currently perceived, and could be directly relevant to him-even in his reonists of both The Double The Double and and The Metamorphosis The Metamorphosis are victims of a split personality, characters who are hypersensitive and terrified of authority, and who, by internalizing the distortions of the outside world, conclude that it is they themselves, finally, who are sick, defor people are beset by conflicting iressive perceptions of their abilities and their relations with others; but the gap between Garcia Marquez's self-confidence, bordering on unusual and sorandson and clever with it), and his simultaneous sense of insecurity and inferiority (he was the quack doctor's son and had been abandoned by him but maybe took after him), is undoubtedly unusual and it created a dynamic that allowed him to develop a hidden ambition which would burn within him like a fierce, sustained flame are victims of a split personality, characters who are hypersensitive and terrified of authority, and who, by internalizing the distortions of the outside world, conclude that it is they themselves, finally, who are sick, defor people are beset by conflicting iressive perceptions of their abilities and their relations with others; but the gap between Garcia Marquez's self-confidence, bordering on unusual and sorandson and clever with it), and his simultaneous sense of insecurity and inferiority (he was the quack doctor's son and had been abandoned by him but maybe took after him), is undoubtedly unusual and it created a dynamic that allowed him to develop a hidden ambition which would burn within him like a fierce, sustained fla The Metamorphosis The Metamorphosis Garcia Marquez sat down to write a story, which he would entitle ”The Third Resignation” It was his first work as a person prepared to think of hi serious to offer It already sounds soly ambitious, profoundly subjective, suffused with absurdity, solitude and death It initiates ill be a constant in Garcia Marquez: building a story around the initial motif of an unburied corpse Garcia Marquez sat down to write a story, which he would entitle ”The Third Resignation” It was his first work as a person prepared to think of hi serious to offer It already sounds soly ambitious, profoundly subjective, suffused with absurdity, solitude and death It initiates ill be a constant in Garcia Marquez: building a story around the initial motif of an unburied corpse18 Eventually his readers would discover that Garcia Marquez has lived with three interconnected but also impossibly contradictory pri buried oneself (or, worse, being buried alive); the terror of having to bury others; and the terror of any person re unburied ”A dead person can live happily with his irremediable situation,” declares the narrator of this first story, a person who is unsure whether he is living, or dead, or both at the san hi buried alive Yet his limbs would not respond to his call He could not express hireatest terror of his life and of his death That they would bury him alive” Eventually his readers would discover that Garcia Marquez has lived with three interconnected but also impossibly contradictory pri buried oneself (or, worse, being buried alive); the terror of having to bury others; and the terror of any person re unburied ”A dead person can live happily with his irremediable situation,” declares the narrator of this first story, a person who is unsure whether he is living, or dead, or both at the san hi buried alive Yet his limbs would not respond to his call He could not express hireatest terror of his life and of his death That they would bury him alive”19 By way of compensation Garcia Marquez's story appears to propose soy founded on the conception of a family tree: He had been felled like some twenty-five-year-old treePerhaps later he would feel a slight nostalgia; the nostalgia of not being a forinary, abstract corpse, living only in the hazy memory of his relativesThen he would know that he would rise up through the blood vessels of an apple and find hi He would know then-and this thought really did make him sad-that he had lost his unity20 Evidently the horror of being trapped in a house, between life and death, as in a coffin (as in ated by the idea of one's lost individuality fusing into a tree as syenerational faical i man separated soon after birth from his natural mother and father and the brothers and sisters ould follow him requires no elaboration And there is no need to have a qualification in psychoanalysis to question whether this young writer did not unconsciously feel, as he looked back on his early life, that his parents had buried him alive in the house at Aracataca; and that his real self was buried inside a second self, the new identity that he had had to build, Has about his s about the usurper, Gabriel Eligio, who belatedly claimed to be his father-when he, Gabito, knew perfectly well that his real father was Colonel Nicolas Marquez, the man who, adnly over his early years And then disappeared There follohat may either be a piece of literary bluster (a forenuine sense that the writer has achieved wisdoive him any anxiety Quite the opposite, he was happy there, alone in his solitude”

Cluh the story is, it has a curiously hypnotic effect and is narrated with an unmistakable confidence that isin a novice writer The ending is pure Garcia Marquez: Resigned, he will hear the last prayers, the last phrases mumbled in Latin and clumsily responded by the altar boys The cold of the cemetery's earth and bones will penetrate to his own bones and may dissipate somewhat that ”smell” Perhaps-who knows!-the iy When he feels hi in his oeat, in a thick, viscous liquid, as he swam before he was born in his mother's womb Perhaps at that ned to dying that he nation21 Readers of One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch and The General in His Labyrinth The General in His Labyrinth, written twenty, twenty-five and forty years later, will recognize the tone, the themes and the literary devices It is, palpably, and contradictorily (given the morbid nature of the narrative voice), a bid for authority

On 22 August, a week or two after he had written this story, he read in Eduardo Zalamea Borda's daily column, ”The City and the World,” in El Espectador El Espectador, that Zalamea Borda was ”anxious to hear fronored due to the lack of an adequate and just publication of their works”22 Zalamea Borda, a leftist sympathizer, was one of the most respected of newspaper columnists Garcia Marquez sent his story in Teeks later, to his joy and stupefaction, he was sitting in the Molino cafe when he saw the title of his piece covering a whole page of the ”Weekend” supplement Flushed with excitement, he rushed out to buy a copy-to discover as usual that he was ”short of the last five centavos” So he went back to the boarding house, appealed to a friend, and out they went to buy the paper- Zalamea Borda, a leftist sympathizer, was one of the most respected of newspaper columnists Garcia Marquez sent his story in Teeks later, to his joy and stupefaction, he was sitting in the Molino cafe when he saw the title of his piece covering a whole page of the ”Weekend” supplement Flushed with excitement, he rushed out to buy a copy-to discover as usual that he was ”short of the last five centavos” So he went back to the boarding house, appealed to a friend, and out they went to buy the paper-El Espectador, Saturday 13 Septenation” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with an illustration by the artist Hernan Merino

He was euphoric, inspired Six weeks later, on 25 October, El Espectador El Espectador published another of his stories, ”Eva Is Inside Her Cat” (”Eva esta dentro de su gato”), again on the theme of death and subsequent reincarnations, about a woman, Eva, who, obsessed with the desire to eat not an apple but an orange, decides to transh the body of her pet cat, only to find herself, three thousand years later, trapped-buried-in a new and confusing world She is a beautiful woman, desperate to escape the attentions of un to pain her like a cancer tu with tiny insects: published another of his stories, ”Eva Is Inside Her Cat” (”Eva esta dentro de su gato”), again on the theme of death and subsequent reincarnations, about a woman, Eva, who, obsessed with the desire to eat not an apple but an orange, decides to transh the body of her pet cat, only to find herself, three thousand years later, trapped-buried-in a new and confusing world She is a beautiful woman, desperate to escape the attentions of un to pain her like a cancer tu with tiny insects: She knew that they came from back there, that all who bore her surname had to bear them, had to suffer them as she did when insomnia held unconquerable sway until dawn It was those very insects who painted that bitter expression, that unconsolable sadness on the faces of her forebears She had seen theuished existence, out of their ancient portraits, victiically obsessive One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude and its primitive version, ”The House” (”La casa”), soon to be conceived (perhaps already conceived), can be divined in this ree and its primitive version, ”The House” (”La casa”), soon to be conceived (perhaps already conceived), can be divined in this ree

Only three days after the publication of this second story his unexpected literary patron announced in his daily column the arrival of a new literary talent upon the national scene, one as in his first year as a student and not yet twenty-one Zalamea declared unequivocally: ”In Gabriel Garcia Marquez we are seeing the birth of a re placed in hilect of his studies and in his obsessive love of reading and writing More than half a century later the world-famous writer would comment that his first stories were ”inconsequential and abstract, sos” One side effect of the confidence being placed in hilect of his studies and in his obsessive love of reading and writing More than half a century later the world-famous writer would comment that his first stories were ”inconsequential and abstract, soain a reverse interpretation suggests itself: that he hated his poems and early stories precisely because they were ”based on real feelings” and that later he learned to cover up-but not entirely suppress-the callow romanticism and emotionalisht later give hiive Bogota the credit for his having becoests itself: that he hated his poems and early stories precisely because they were ”based on real feelings” and that later he learned to cover up-but not entirely suppress-the callow romanticism and emotionalisht later give hiive Bogota the credit for his having becoota for the Christmas 1947 vacation It was expensive to remain in the pension pension but it was more expensive to find the fare to return to Sucre Mercedes rerandmother was dead and his mother was just about to have yet another baby Above all, though, despite having scraped through the exaraphy, he knew by now that he was not going to dedicate hiio on this ested that there h life for him and he preferred to make the most of his perhaps temporary independence but it was more expensive to find the fare to return to Sucre Mercedes rerandmother was dead and his mother was just about to have yet another baby Above all, though, despite having scraped through the exaraphy, he knew by now that he was not going to dedicate hiio on this ested that there h life for him and he preferred to make the most of his perhaps te this vacation that he began his next story, ”The Other Side of Death” (”La otra costilla de la muerte”) If the first story was a meditation on one's own death, this was more a reflection on the death of others (or perhaps on the death of one's own other, one's double, in this case a brother) Appropriately, therefore, the narrative voice alternates ain we are implicitly in a city but now the the that internal mirror, the consciousness) predominate This brother, who had died of cancer, and of whom the narrator has a mortal terror, is nowfroht of the h the branches of an ancient genealogy; that ith hirandparents and that ca with its weight, with its mysterious presence, the whole universal balancehis other brother who had been born and shackled to his heel and who caht, froh arteries and testicles until he arrived, as on a night voyage, at the woical, dynastic obsession and the parallel exploration of the entire universe (time, space, matter, spirit, idea; life, death, burial, corruption,which, once explicitly explored and elaborated, will apparently disappear from Garcia Marquez's work but will in fact becoically, for maximum effect This first Garcia Marquez, qua literary persona, is anguished, hypersensitive, hypochondriac-Kafkaesque: far from his later, carefully constructed narrative identity, which will be closer to that of, say, Cervantes Apparently with very little help from Colombian or other Latin American writers-the best-known of whom he appears hardly to have read-the early Garcia Marquez attacks the essential Latin Ay (estar, existence, history) and identity (ser, essence, myth) They make up, without doubt, the essential Latin Ay is inevitably a crucial in, where everything is up for grabs This Garcia Marquez has not yet got on to the question of legiti him and is certainly implicit here) Nevertheless, this narrator is also, clearly, a proble him and is certainly implicit here) Nevertheless, this narrator is also, clearly, a proble vacation eventually cas finally looked up At the start of the new university year in 1948 Luis Enrique arrived in Bogota, in theory to continue his secondary education; in practice he took up a job with Colgate-Palmolive that Gabito had secured for hi in his spare ti the death of his ota to work for the national bureaucracy Luis Enrique brought with him a secret present which he was supposed to have saved for Gabito's twenty-first birthday on 6 March, but when his brother and his friends told him at the airport that they had no money hich to celebrate, Luis Enrique slyly revealed that the surprise inside his package was a new typewriter: ”The next step was a visit to the pawnshop in the centre of Bogota, and the guy opening the case, turning the handle and pulling out a piece of paper I remember he looked at it and said, 'This must be for one of you' One of our friends took it and read it out loud: 'Congratulations We're proud of you The future is yours Gabriel and Luisa, Sucre, 6 March 1948' Then the pawnshop assistant asked, 'How much do you need?' and the owner of the typewriter replied, 'As ive me'”28 With Luis Enrique's new inco by providing newspaper illustrations through a friend, the standard of living i wine, woabonds' alliance with the madcap Jose Palencia Meanwhile, Gabito, by now the ious of the university'seven more classes as he devoted hi literature, including reading another modernist masterwork, James Joyce's Ulysses Ulysses

At that veryrapidly over Coloe Eliecer Gaitan, an outstanding laho had imbibed a potent political cocktail offered by the Mexican Revolution, Marxism and Mussolini, was the most charismatic politician in twentieth-century Colombian history and one of the most successful political leaders in Latin America in an era of populist politics He was the hero of the rising proletarian classes and ofcities Garcia Marquez knew that he had first come to national attention in 1929 when he took up the case of the banana workers a in Dece his key inforarita, the man who had baptized him in Aracataca, and possibly also Colonel Nicolas Marquez Gaitan had grown ever stronger despite the electoral setback caused by his own division of the Liberal Party, had soon captured the leadershi+p and began to conduct a style of politics never before seen in one of the most conservative republics in Latin Aue,” others ”The Throat,” such was the power of his oratory and of the voice that delivered it Garcia Marquez has almost never spoken of Gaitan in public interviews until very recently, most likely because his own politics have always been well to the left of any Latin American populism since the early 1950s and also in part, no doubt, because in April 1948, although instinctively attached to the Liberals, his political consciousness was still largely undeveloped

In April 1948 the ninth Pan-Aota and the Organization of A set up at the behest of the United States On Friday the 9th, just after 1 p down to lunch in his boarding house in Florian Street with Luis Enrique and soe Eliecer Gaitan was at thathis law office to walk down Seventh Avenue to lunch with his Liberal Party colleague Plinio Mendoza Neira and other associates As he reached number 1455, between Avenida Jimenez and 14th Street, an unemployed worker called Juan Roa Sierra walked across from the Black Cat cafe and fired at hie Gaitan fell to the pavement, just a few yards from ”the best street corner in the world” It was five past one Before they lifted hiround, sixteen-year-old Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, who had coazed with horror into the dying leader's face Gaitan was rushed to the Central Clinic in a private car and pronounced dead soon after arrival, to the inconsolable disathered outside the clinic friends Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was at thathis law office to walk down Seventh Avenue to lunch with his Liberal Party colleague Plinio Mendoza Neira and other associates As he reached number 1455, between Avenida Jimenez and 14th Street, an unemployed worker called Juan Roa Sierra walked across from the Black Cat cafe and fired at hie Gaitan fell to the pavement, just a few yards from ”the best street corner in the world” It was five past one Before they lifted hiround, sixteen-year-old Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, who had coazed with horror into the dying leader's face Gaitan was rushed to the Central Clinic in a private car and pronounced dead soon after arrival, to the inconsolable disathered outside the clinic

That was the otazo29 A wave of fury and hysteria swept through the city iota was in uproar An afternoon of riots, lootings and killings ensued The Liberal ranted that the Conservatives were behind the assassination: within ed naked through the streets towards the governota, all of it the very syan to burn A wave of fury and hysteria swept through the city iota was in uproar An afternoon of riots, lootings and killings ensued The Liberal ranted that the Conservatives were behind the assassination: within ed naked through the streets towards the governota, all of it the very syan to burn30 Garcia Marquez ran out i body had already been rushed to the hospital-weepingtheir handkerchiefs in the fallen leader's blood-and Roa's corpse had already been dragged away Luis Villar Borda re Garcia Marquez between two and three o'clock in the afternoon just a few steps from where Gaitan had fallen: ”I was very surprised to see him 'You've never been a fan of Gaitan,' I said 'No,' he said, 'but they've burned down my pension pension and I've lost all my stories'” and I've lost all ainthis same excursion Garcia Marquez encountered an uncle, the law professor Carlos H Pareja, in 12th Street as he hastened back to finish his lunch in the-still intact- (This ainthis same excursion Garcia Marquez encountered an uncle, the law professor Carlos H Pareja, in 12th Street as he hastened back to finish his lunch in the-still intact-pension Pareja stopped his young nephew in the street and urged hianize the students on behalf of the Liberal uprising Garcia Marquez reluctantly set off but changed his ht and ota was now anephew in the street and urged hianize the students on behalf of the Liberal uprising Garcia Marquez reluctantly set off but changed his ht and ota was now a erous place-to the pension pension on Florian on Florian

Luis Enrique and the other costenos costenos were having a kind of apocalyptic celebration Behind their din, on the radio, Uncle Carlos could already be heard, together with the writer Jorge Zalamea (destined to beconificant figure in Garcia Marquez's life), both urging the Coloainst the dastardly Conservatives who had assassinated the country's greatest political leader and only hope for its future Pareja, whose own radical bookstore was a victim of the flames, thundered that ”the Conservatives will pay for Gaitan's life witha kind of apocalyptic celebration Behind their din, on the radio, Uncle Carlos could already be heard, together with the writer Jorge Zalamea (destined to beconificant figure in Garcia Marquez's life), both urging the Coloainst the dastardly Conservatives who had assassinated the country's greatest political leader and only hope for its future Pareja, whose own radical bookstore was a victim of the flames, thundered that ”the Conservatives will pay for Gaitan's life with many other lives”32 Gabito, Luis Enrique and their friends heard his call to arms on the Gabito, Luis Enrique and their friends heard his call to arms on the pension pension radio but they did not answer the appeal radio but they did not answer the appeal