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

wife’s frantic voice.
    ‘They said they would take it over our dead bodies,’ she said. ‘They said the rooster didn’t belong to us but to the whole town.’
    Only when he finished with the rooster did the colonel turn to the contorted face ofhis wife. He discovered, without surprise, that it produced neither remorse nor compassion in him.
    ‘They did the right thing,’ he said quietly. And then looking through his pockets, he added with a sort of bottomless sweetness: ‘The rooster’s not for sale.’
    She followed him to the bedroom. She felt him to be completely human, but untouchable, as if she were seeing him on a movie screen. Thecolonel took a roll of bills out of the closet, added what he had in his pockets to it, counted the total, and put it back in the closet.
    ‘There are twenty-nine pesos to return to my friend Sabas,’ he said. ‘He’ll get the rest when the pension arrives.’
    ‘And if it doesn’t arrive?’ the woman asked.
    ‘Itwill.’
    ‘But if it doesn’t?’
    ‘Well, then, he won’t get paid.’
    He found his new shoes underthe bed. He went back to the closet for the box, cleaned the soles with a rag, and put the shoes in the box, just as his wife had brought them Sunday night. She didn’t move.
    ‘The shoes go back,’ the colonel said. ‘That’s thirteen pesos more for my friend.’
    ‘They won’t take them back,’ she said.
    ‘They have to take them back,’ the colonel replied. ‘I’ve only put them on twice.’
    ‘The Turks don’tunderstand such things,’ the woman said.
    ‘They have to understand.’
    ‘And if they don’t?’
    ‘Well, then, they don’t.’
    They went to bed without eating. The colonel waited for his wife to finish her rosary to turn out the lamp. But he couldn’t sleep. He heard the bells for the movie classifications, and almost at once – three hours later – the curfew. The gravelly breathing of his wife became anguishedwith the chilly night air. The colonel still had his eyes open when she spoke to him in a calm, conciliatory voice: ‘You’re awake.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Try to listen to reason,’ the woman said. ‘Talk to my friend Sabas tomorrow.’
    ‘He’s not coming back until Monday.’
    ‘Better,’ said the woman. ‘That way you’ll have three days to think about what you’re going to say.’
    ‘There’s nothing to think about,’ thecolonel said.
    Apleasant coolness had taken the place of the viscous air of October. The colonel recognized December again in the timetable of the plovers. When it struck two, he still hadn’t been able to fall asleep. But he knew that his wife was also awake. He tried to change his position in the hammock.
    ‘You can’t sleep,’ the woman said.
    ‘No.’
    She thought for a moment.
    ‘We’re in no conditionto do that,’ she said. ‘Just think how much four hundred pesos in one lump sum is.’
    ‘It won’t be long now till the pension comes,’ the colonel said.
    ‘You’ve been saying the same thing for fifteen years.’
    ‘That’s why,’ the colonel said. ‘It can’t be much longer now.’
    She was silent. But when she spoke again, it didn’t seem to the colonel as if any time had passed at all.
    ‘I have the impressionthe money will never arrive,’ the woman said.
    ‘It will.’
    ‘And if it doesn’t?’
    He couldn’t find his voice to answer. At the first crowing of the rooster he was struck by reality, but he sank back again into a dense, safe, remorseless sleep. When he awoke, the sun was already high in the sky. His wife was sleeping. The colonel methodically repeated his morning activities, two hours behind schedule,and waited for his wife to eat breakfast.
    She was uncommunicative when she awoke. They said good morning, and they sat down to eat in silence. The colonel sipped a cup of black coffee and had apiece of cheese and a sweet roll. He spent the whole morning in the tailor shop. At one o’clock he returned home and found his wife mending clothes among