Read Online No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel García Márquez, J. S. Bernstein - Free Book Online

get rid of the evil-omened bird.’
    The colonel regarded his wife’s mood over the rooster. Nothingabout the rooster deserved resentment. He was ready for training. His neck and his feathered purple thighs, his saw-toothed crest: the animal had taken on a slender figure, a defenseless air.
    ‘Lean out the window and forget the rooster,’ the colonel said when the children left. ‘On mornings like this, one feels like having a picture taken.’
    She leaned out the window but her face betrayed noemotion. ‘I would like to plant the roses,’ she said, returning to the stove. The colonel hung the mirror on the hook to shave.
    ‘If you want to plant the roses, go ahead,’ he said.
    He tried to make his movements match those in the mirror.
    ‘The pigs eat them up,’ she said.
    ‘All the better,’ the colonel said. ‘Pigs fattened on roses ought to taste very good.’
    He looked for his wife in the mirrorand noticed that she still had the same expression. By the light of the fire her face seemed to be formed of the same material as the stove. Without noticing, his eyes fixed on her, the colonel continued shaving himself by touch as he haddone for many years. The woman thought, in a long silence.
    ‘But I don’t want to plant them,’ she said.
    ‘Fine,’ said the colonel. ‘Then don’t plant them.’
    He felt well. December had shriveled the flora in his gut. He suffered a disappointment that morning trying to put on his new shoes. But after trying several times he realized that it was a wasted effort, and put on his patent-leather ones. His wife noticed the change.
    ‘If you don’t put on the new ones you’ll never break them in,’ she said.
    ‘They’re shoes for a cripple,’ the colonel protested.‘They ought to sell shoes that have already been worn for a month.’
    He went into the street stimulated by the presentiment that the letter would arrive that afternoon. Since it still was not time for the launches, he waited for Sabas in his office. But they informed him that he wouldn’t be back until Monday. He didn’t lose his patience despite not having foreseen this setback. ‘Sooner or laterhe has to come back,’ he told himself, and he headed for the harbor; it was a marvelous moment, a moment of still-unblemished clarity.
    ‘The whole year ought to be December,’ he murmured, seated in the store of Moses the Syrian. ‘One feels as if he were made of glass.’
    Moses the Syrian had to make an effort to translate the idea into his almost forgotten Arabic. He was a placid Oriental, encasedup to his ears in smooth, stretched skin, and he had the clumsy movements of a drowned man. In fact, he seemed as if he had just been rescued from the water.
    ‘That’sthe way it was before,’ he said. ‘If it were the same now, I would be eight hundred and ninety-seven years old. And you?’
    ‘Seventy-five,’ said the colonel, his eyes pursuing the postmaster. Only then did he discover the circus.He recognized the patched tent on the roof of the mail boat amid a pile of colored objects. For a second he lost the postmaster while he looked for the wild animals among the crates piled up on the other launches. He didn’t find them.
    ‘It’s a circus,’ he said. ‘It’s the first one that’s come in ten years.’
    Moses the Syrian verified his report. He spoke to his wife in a pidgin of Arabic and Spanish.She replied from the back of the store. He made a comment to himself, and then translated his worry for the colonel.
    ‘Hide your cat, colonel. The boys will steal it to sell it to the circus.’
    The colonel was getting ready to follow the postmaster.
    ‘It’s not a wild-animal show,’ he said.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the Syrian replied. ‘The tightrope walkers eat cats so they won’t break their bones.’
    He followed the postmaster through the stalls at the waterfront to the plaza. There the loud clamor from the cockfight took him by surprise. A passer-by said something to him about his