“…If anyone wants to find us it’ll be very easy”, she said with her natural charm. “All they have to do is follow the trail of my blood in the snow”. Then she thought more about what she had said, and her face blossomed in the first light of dawn.
-“Imagine”,she said. “A trail of blood in the snow all the way from Madrid to Paris. Wouldn’t that make a good song?”
“The Trail of Blood in the Snow”
“…A group of English tourists wearing shorts and beach sandals were dozing in a long row of easy chairs. There were seventeen of them, seated symmetrically, as if they were one man repeated over and over again in a hall of mirrors. Mrs. Prudencia Linero took them in at a single glance without distinguishing one from the other, and all that struck her was the long row of pink knees that looked like slabs of pork hanging from hooks in a butcher’s shop…”
“17 Poisoned Englishmen”
“…They did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they would never be. But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban’s memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare whisper the big boob finally died, too bad, the handsome fool has finally died, because they were going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make Esteban’s memory eternal and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs so that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas, and the captain would have to come down from the bridge in his dress uniform, with his astrolabe, his pole star, and his row of war medals and, pointing to the promontory of roses on the horizon, he would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the wind is so peaceful now that it’s gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun’s so bright that the sunflowers don’t know which way to turn, yes, over there, that’s Esteban’s village.”
“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”
“…At three o’clock we left her to accompany Neruda to his sacred siesta, which he took in our house after solemn preparations that in some way recalled the Japanese tea ceremony. Some windows had to be opened and others closed to achieve the perfect degree of warmth, and there had to be a certain kind of light from a certain direction, and absolute silence…”
“I sell my dreams”
“He sat on a wooden bench under the yellow leaves in the deserted park, contemplating the dusty swans…”
“Bon Voyage, Mr. President”
Illustrations of Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s short stories by Josie Portillo
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