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

becoming uncomplicated, without compromises with either time or space: with no need, when he reached it, for the chemical adventure that made up his body to suffer the slightestimpairment. On the contrary, like that, with his eyes closed, there was a total economy of vital resources, an absolute absence of organic wear. His body, sunk in the water of dreams, could move, live, evolve toward other forms of existence where his real world would have, as its intimate necessity, an identical – if not greater – density of motion with which the necessity of living wouldremain completely satisfied without any detriment to his physical integrity. Much easier – then – would be the chore of living with beings, things, acting, nevertheless, in exactly the same way as in the real world. The chores of shaving, taking the bus, solving equations at the office would be simple and uncomplicated in his dream and would produce in him the same inner satisfaction in the end.
    Yes. It was better doing it in that artificial way, as he was already doing; looking in the lighted room for the direction of the mirror. As he would have kept on doing if at that instant a heavy machine, brutal and absurd, had not ruptured the lukewarm substance of his incipient dream. Returning now to the conventional world, the problem certainly took on greater characteristics of seriousness.Nonetheless, the curious theory that had just inspired softness in him had turned him toward a region of understanding, and from within his man-body he felt the displacement of the mouth to the side in an expressionwhich must have been an involuntary smile. ‘Having to shave when I have to be over the books in twenty minutes. Bath eight minutes, five if I hurry, breakfast seven. Unpleasant oldsausages. Mabel’s shop: provisions, hardware, drugs, liquors; it’s like somebody’s box; I’ve forgotten the name. (The bus breaks down on Tuesdays, seven minutes late.) Pendora. No: Peldora. That’s not it. A half hour in all. There’s no time. I forgot the name, a word with everything in it. Pedora. It begins with
P
.’
    With his bathrobe on, in front of the wash basin now, a sleepy face, hair uncombedand no shave, he receives a bored look from the mirror. A quick shudder catches him with a cold thread as he discovers his own dead brother, newly arisen, in that image. The same tired face, the same look that was still not fully awake.
    A new movement sent the mirror a quantity of light destined to bring out a pleasant expression, but the simultaneous return of that light brought back to him– going against his plans – a grotesque grimace. Water. The hot flow has opened up torrential, exuberant, and the wave of white, thick steam is interposed between him and the glass. In that way – taking advantage of the interruption with a quick movement – he manages to make an adjustment with his own time and with the time inside the quicksilver.
    He rose above the leather strop, filling themirror with pointed ears, cold metal; and the cloud – breaking up now – shows him the other face again, hazy with physical complications, mathematical laws with which geometry was attempting volume in a new way, a concrete formula for light. There, opposite him, was the face, with a pulse, with throbs of its own presence, transfigured into an expression which was simultaneously a smile and mockingseriousness, appearing in the damp glass which the condensation of vapor had left clean.
    He smiled. (It smiled.) He showed – to himself – his tongue. (It showed – to the real one – its tongue.) The one in the mirror had a pasty, yellow tongue: ‘Your stomach is upset,’ hediagnosed (a wordless expression) with a grimace. He smiled again. (It smiled again.) But now he could see that there was somethingstupid, artificial, and false in the smile that was returned to him. He smoothed his hair (it smoothed its hair) with his right hand (left hand), returning the bashful smile at once (and