CHAPTER FIVE
ON THE OCCASION of the celebration of the new century, there was an
innovative
program of public ceremonies, the most memorable of which was the first
journey in a
balloon, the fruit of the boundless initiative of Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Half the
city gathered
on the Arsenal Beach to express their wonderment at the ascent of the
enormous balloon
made of taffeta in the colors of the flag, which carried the first airmail to
San Juan de la
Ciénaga, some thirty leagues to the northeast as the crow flies. Dr. Juvenal
Urbino and
his wife, who had experienced the excitement of flight at the World’s Fair
in Paris, were
the first to climb into the wicker basket, followed by the pilot and six
distinguished
guests.
CHAPTER TWO
FLORENTINO ARIZA, on the other hand, had not stopped thinking of her
for a single
moment since Fermina Daza had rejected him out of hand after a long and
troubled love
affair fifty-one years, nine months, and four days ago. He did not have to
keep a running
tally, drawing a line for each day on the walls of a cell, because not a day
had passed that
something did not happen to remind him of her. At the time of their
separation he lived
with his mother, Tránsito Ariza, in one half of a rented house on the Street
of Windows,
where she had kept a notions shop ever since she was a young woman, and
where she
also unraveled shirts and old rags to sell as bandages for the men wounded
in the war.
CHAPTER THREE
AT THE AGE of twenty-eight, Dr. Juvenal Urbino had been the most
desirable of
bachelors. He had returned from a long stay in Paris, where he had
completed advanced
studies in medicine and surgery, and from the time he set foot on solid
ground he gave
overwhelming indications that he had not wasted a minute of his time. He
returned more
fastidious than when he left, more in control of his nature, and none of his
contemporaries seemed as rigorous and as learned as he in his science,
and none could
dance better to the music of the day or improvise as well on the piano.
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS INEVITABLE: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of
the fate of
unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the
still darkened
house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him
had lost all
urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-
Amour, disabled
war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent
in chess, had
escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DAY THAT Florentino Ariza saw Fermina Daza in the atrium of the
Cathedral, in
the sixth month of her pregnancy and in full command of her new
condition as a woman
of the world, he made a fierce decision to win fame and fortune in order to
deserve her.
He did not even stop to think about the obstacle of her being married,
because at the same
time he decided, as if it depended on himself alone, that Dr. Juvenal Urbino
had to die.
He did not know when or how, but he considered it an ineluctable event
that he was
resolved to wait for without impatience or violence, even till the end of
time.
CHAPTER SIX
FERMINA DAZA could not have imagined that her letter, inspired by blind
rage, would
have been interpreted by Florentino Ariza as a love letter. She had put into
it all the fury
of which she was capable, her crudest words, the most wounding, most
unjust vilifica-
tions, which still seemed minuscule to her in light of the enormity of the
offense. It was
the final act in a bitter exorcism through which she was attempting to
come to terms with
her new situation. She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she
had been obliged
to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy
but which,
once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her
identity.