Read Online Collected Stories by Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa, J.S. Bernstein - Free Book Online Page B

‘Don’t open that door,’ she said. ‘The hallway isfull of difficult dreams.’ And I asked her: ‘How do you know?’ And she told me: ‘Because I was there a moment ago and I had to come back when I discovered I was sleeping on my heart.’ I had the door half opened. I moved it a little and a cold, thin breeze brought me the fresh smell of vegetableearth, damp fields. She spoke again. I gave the turn, still moving the door, mounted on silent hinges,and I told her: ‘I don’t think there’s any hallway outside here. I’m getting the smell of country.’ And she, a little distant, told me: ‘I know that better than you. What’s happening is that there’s a woman outside dreaming about the country.’ She crossed her arms over the flame. She continued speaking: ‘It’s that woman who always wanted to have a house in the country and was never able to leavethe city.’ I remembered having seen the woman in some previous dream, but I knew, with the door ajar now, that within half an hour I would have to go down for breakfast. And I said: ‘In any case, I have to leave here in order to wake up.’
    Outside the wind fluttered for an instant, then remained quiet, and the breathing of someone sleeping who had just turned over in bed could be heard. The windfrom the fields had ceased. There were no more smells. ‘Tomorrow I’ll recognize you from that,’ I said. ‘I’ll recognize you when on the street I see a woman writing “Eyes of a blue dog” on the walls.’ And she, with a sad smile – which was already a smile of surrender to the impossible, the unreachable – said: ‘Yet you won’t remember anything during the day.’ And she put her hands back over thelamp, her features darkened by a bitter cloud. ‘You’re the only man who doesn’t remember anything of what he’s dreamed after he wakes up.’

The Woman Who Came at Six O’Clock
    The swinging door opened. At that hour there was nobody in José’s restaurant. It had just struck six and the man knew that the regular customers wouldn’t begin to arrive until six-thirty. His clientele was so conservative and regular that the clock hadn’t finished striking six when a woman entered, as on every day at that hour, and sat down on the stool withoutsaying anything. She had an unlighted cigarette tight between her lips.
    ‘Hello, queen,’ José said when he saw her sit down. Then he went to the other end of the counter, wiping the streaked surface with a dry rag. Whenever anyone came into the restaurant José did the same thing. Even with the woman, with whom he’d almost come to acquire a degree of intimacy, the fat and ruddy restaurant ownerput on his daily comedy of a hard-working man. He spoke from the other end of the counter.
    ‘What do you want today?’ he said.
    ‘First of all I want to teach you how to be a gentleman,’ the woman said. She was sitting at the end of the stools, her elbows on the counter, the extinguished cigarette between her lips. When she spoke, she tightened her mouth so that José would notice the unlightedcigarette.
    ‘I didn’t notice,’ José said.
    ‘You still haven’t learned to notice anything,’ said the woman.
    The man left the cloth on the counter, walked to the dark cupboards which smelled of tar and dusty wood, and cameback immediately with the matches. The woman leaned over to get the light that was burning in the man’s rustic, hairy hands. José saw the woman’s lush hair, all greased withcheap, thick Vaseline. He saw her uncovered shoulder above the flowered brassiere. He saw the beginning of her twilight breast when the woman raised her head, the lighted butt between her lips now.
    ‘You’re beautiful tonight, queen,’ José said.
    ‘Stop your nonsense,’ the woman said. ‘Don’t think that’s going to help me pay you.’
    ‘That’s not what I meant, queen,’ José said. ‘I’ll bet your lunchdidn’t agree with you today.’
    The woman sucked in the first drag of thick smoke,