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

getting set to leave when Sabas entered the office followed by a group of workers. He passed back and forth in front of the colonel without looking at him.
    ‘Are you waiting for me, friend?’
    ‘Yes, friend,’ the colonel said. ‘But if you’re very busy, I can come back later.’
    Sabasdidn’t hearhim from the other side of the door.
    ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said.
    Noon was stifling. The office shone with the shimmering of the street. Dulled by the heat, the colonel involuntarily closed his eyes and at once began to dream of his wife. Sabas’s wife came in on tiptoe.
    ‘Don’t wake up, friend,’ she said. ‘I’m going to draw the blinds because this office is an inferno.’
    The colonel followedher with a blank look. She spoke in the shadow when she closed the window.
    ‘Do you dream often?’
    ‘Sometimes,’ replied the colonel, ashamed of having fallen asleep. ‘Almost always I dream that I’m getting tangled up in spider webs.’
    ‘I have nightmares every night,’ the woman said. ‘Now I’ve got it in my head to find out who those unknown people are whom one meets in one’s dreams.’
    She pluggedin the fan. ‘Last week a woman appeared at the head of my bed,’ she said. ‘I managed to ask her who she was and she replied, “I am the woman who died in this room twelve years ago.” ’
    ‘But the house was built barely two years ago,’ the colonel said.
    ‘That’s right,’ the woman said. ‘That means that even the dead make mistakes.’
    The hum of the fan solidified the shadow. The colonel felt impatient,tormented by sleepiness and by the rambling woman who went directly from dreams to the mystery of the reincarnation. He was waiting for a pause to say goodbye when Sabas entered the office with his foreman.
    ‘I’vewarmed up your soup four times,’ the woman said.
    ‘Warm it up ten times if you like,’ said Sabas. ‘But stop nagging me now.’
    He opened the safe and gave his foreman a roll of billstogether with a list of instructions. The foreman opened the blinds to count the money. Sabas saw the colonel at the back of the office but didn’t show any reaction. He kept talking with the foreman. The colonel straightened up at the point when the two men were getting ready to leave the office again. Sabas stopped before opening the door.
    ‘What can I do for you, friend?’
    The colonel saw thatthe foreman was looking at him.
    ‘Nothing, friend,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to talk to you.’
    ‘Make it fast, whatever it is,’ said Sabas. ‘I don’t have a minute to spare.’
    He hesitated with his hand resting on the doorknob. The colonel felt the five longest seconds of his life passing. He clenched his teeth.
    ‘It’s about the rooster,’ he murmured.
    Then Sabas finished opening the door. ‘The questionof the rooster,’ he repeated, smiling, and pushed the foreman toward the hall. ‘The sky is falling in and my friend is worrying about that rooster.’ And then, addressing the colonel:
    ‘Very well, friend. I’ll be right back.’
    The colonel stood motionless in the middle of the office until he could no longer hear the footsteps of the two men at the end of the hall. Then he went out towalk aroundthe town which was paralyzed in its Sunday siesta. There was no one at the tailor’s. The doctor’s office was closed. No one was watching the goods set out at the Syrians’ stalls. The river was a sheet of steel. A man at the waterfront was sleeping across four oil drums, his face protected from the sun by a hat. The colonel went home, certain that he was the only thing moving in town.
    His wifewas waiting for him with a complete lunch.
    ‘I bought it on credit; promised to pay first thing tomorrow,’ she explained.
    During lunch, the colonel told her the events of the last three hours. She listened to him impatiently.
    ‘The trouble is you lack character,’ she said finally. ‘You present yourself as if you were begging alms when you ought to go there