Love In The Time Of Cholera

Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: humor, comic
Published: 1985-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

understand that Dr. J uvenal Urbino, in the midst of so many absorbing commitments, still had more than enough time to adore his wife almost as much as he did, and that truth stunned him. But he could not respond as he would have liked, because then his heart played one of those whorish tricks that only hearts can play: it revealed to him that he and this man, whom he had always considered his personal enemy, were victims of the same fate and shared the hazards of a common passion; they were two animals yoked together. For the first time in the interminable twenty-seven years that he had been waiting, Florentino Ariza could not endure the pangs of grief at the thought that this admirable man would have to die in order for him to be happy. The cyclone passed by at last, but in fifteen minutes its gusting northwest winds had devastated the neighborhoods by the swamps and caused severe damage in half the city. Dr. Juvenal Urbino, gratified once again by the generosity of Uncle Leo XII, did not wait for the weather to clear, and without thinking he accepted the umbrella that Florentino Ariza lent him for walking to his carriage. But he did not mind. On the contrary: he was happy thinking about what Fermina Daza would think when she learned who the owner of the umbrella was. He was still troubled by the unsettling interview when Leona Cassiani came into his office, and this seemed to him a unique opportunity to stop beating about the bush and to reveal his secret, as if he were squeezing a boil that would not leave him in peace: it was now or never. He began by asking her what she thought of Dr. Juvenal Urbino. She answered almost without thinking: "He is a man who does many things, too many perhaps, but I believe that no one knows what he thinks." Then she reflected, shredding the eraser on a pencil with her long, sharp, black woman's teeth, and at last she shrugged her

shoulders to put an end to a matter that did not concern her.

"That may be the reason he does so many things," she said, "so that

he will not have to think."

Florentino Ariza tried to keep her with him. "What hurts me is that he has to die," he said. "Everybody has to die," she said. "Yes," he said, "but he more than anyone else."

She understood none of it: she shrugged her shoulders again without

speaking and left. Then Florentino Ariza knew that some night,

sometime in the future, in a joyous bed with Fermina Daza, he was

going to tell her that he had not revealed the secret of his love, not

even to the one person who had earned the right to know it. No: he

would never reveal it, not even to Leona Cassiani, not because he did

not want to open the chest where he had kept it so carefully hidden for

half his life, but because he realized only then that he had lost the

key.

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