Don Pius V Loayza died when his son was ten years old. Although he always took care of hisexpenses in secret, he never recognised him as his son before the law, nor did he leave him withhis future secure, so that Florentino Ariza used only his mother's name even though his trueparentage was always common knowledge. Florentino Ariza had to leave school after his father'sdeath, and he went to work as an apprentice in the Postal Agency, where he was in charge ofopening sacks, sorting the letters, and notifying the public that mail had arrived by flying the flagof its country of origin over the office door.
He had seen her for the first time one afternoon when Lotario Thugut told him to deliver atelegram to someone named Lorenzo Daza, with no known place of residence. He found him inone of the oldest houses on the Park of the Evangels; it was half in ruins, and its interior patio,with weeds in the flowerpots and a stone fountain with no water, resembled an abbey cloister.
Florentino Ariza heard no human sound as he followed the barefoot maid under the arches of thepassageway, where unopened moving cartons and bricklayer's tools lay among leftover lime andstacks of cement bags, for the house was undergoing drastic renovation. At the far end of the patio was a temporary office where a very fat man, whose curly sideburns grew into his moustache, satbehind a desk, taking his siesta. In fact his name was Lorenzo Daza, and he was not very wellknown in the city because he had arrived less than two years before and was not a man with manyfriends.
He received the telegram as if it were the continuation of an ominous dream. Florentino Arizaobserved his livid eyes with a kind of official compassion, he observed his uncertain fingers tryingto break the seal, the heartfelt fear that he had seen so many times in so many addressees who stillcould not think about telegrams without connecting them with death. After reading it he regainedhis composure. He sighed: "Good news." And he handed Florentino Ariza the obligatory fivereales, letting him know with a relieved smile that he would not have given them to him if thenews had been bad. Then he said goodbye with a handshake, which was not the usual thing to dowith a telegraph messenger, and the maid accompanied him to the street door, more to keep an eyeon him than to lead the way. They retraced their steps along the arcaded passageway, but this timeFlorentino Ariza knew that there was someone else in the house, because the brightness in thepatio was filled with the voice of a woman repeating a reading lesson. As he passed the sewingroom, he saw through the window an older woman and a young girl sitting very close together ontwo chairs and following the reading in the book that the woman held open on her lap. It seemed astrange sight: the daughter teaching the mother to read. His interpretation was incorrect only inpart, because the woman was the aunt, not the mother of the child, although she had raised her asif she were her own. The lesson was not interrupted, but the girl raised her eyes to see who waspassing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that stillhad not ended half a century later.
Fermina.
It was supposed that Lorenzo Daza was a man of means, because he lived well with noknown employment and had paid hard cash for the Park of the Evangels house, whose restorationmust have cost him at least twice the purchase price of two hundred gold pesos. His daughter wasstudying at the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, where for two centuries youngladies of society had learned the art and technique of being diligent and submissive wives. Duringthe colonial period and the early years of the Republic, the school had accepted only thosestudents with great family names. But the old families, ruined by Independence, had to submit tothe realities of a new time, and the Academy opened its doors to all applicants who could pay thetuition, regardless of the colour of their blood, on the essential condition that they were legitimatedaughters of Catholic marriages. In any event, it was an expensive school, and the fact thatFermina Daza studied there was sufficient indication of her family's economic situation, if not ofits social position. This news encouraged Florentino Ariza, since it indicated to him that thebeautiful adolescent with the almond-shaped eyes was within reach of his dreams. But her father's strict regime soon provided an irremediable difficulty. Unlike the other students, who walked toschool in groups or accompanied by an older servant, Fermina Daza always walked with herspinster aunt, and her behaviour indicated that she was permitted no distraction.
It was in this innocent way that Florentino Ariza began his secret life as a solitary hunter.
From seven o'clock in the morning, he sat on the most hidden bench in the little park, pretendingto read a book of verse in the shade of the almond trees, until he saw the impossible maiden walkby in her blue-striped uniform, stockings that reached to her knees, masculine laced oxfords, and asingle thick braid with a bow at the end, which hung down her back to her waist. She walked withnatural haughtiness, her head high, her eyes unmoving, her step rapid, her nose pointing straightahead, her bag of books held against her chest with crossed arms, her doe's gait making her seemimmune to gravity. At her side, struggling to keep up with her, the aunt with the brown habit andrope of St. Francis did not allow him the slightest opportunity to approach. Florentino Ariza sawthem pass back and forth four times a day and once on Sundays when they came out of HighMass, and just seeing the girl was enough for him. Little by little he idealised her, endowing herwith improbable virtues and imaginary sentiments, and after two weeks he thought of nothing elsebut her. So he decided to send Fermina Daza a simple note written on both sides of the paper in hisexquisite notary's hand. But he kept it in his pocket for several days, thinking about how to hand itto her, and while he thought he wrote several more pages before going to bed, so that the originalletter was turning into a dictionary of compliments, inspired by books he had learned by heartbecause he read them so often during his vigils in the park.
"But above all," she said, "the first person you have to win over is not the girl but her aunt."Both pieces of advice were wise, no doubt, but they came too late. In reality, on the day whenFermina Daza let her mind wander for an instant from the reading lesson she was giving her auntand raised her eyes to see who was walking along the passageway, Florentino Ariza had impressedher because of his air of vulnerability. That night, during supper, her father had mentioned thetelegram, which was how she found out why Florentino Ariza had come to the house and what hedid for a living. This information increased her interest, because for her, as for so many otherpeople at that time, the invention of the telegraph had something magical about it. So that sherecognised Florentino Ariza the first time she saw him reading under the trees in the little park,although it in no way disquieted her until her aunt told her he had been there for several weeks.
"Poor thing," her aunt had said. "He does not dare approach you because I am with you, butone day he will if his intentions are serious, and then he will give you a letter."Foreseeing all kinds of adversities, she taught her to communicate in sign language, anindispensable strategy in forbidden love. These unexpected, almost childish antics caused anunfamiliar curiosity in Fermina Daza, but for several months it did not occur to her that it could goany further. She never knew when the diversion became a preoccupation and her blood frothedwith the need to see him, and one night she awoke in terror because she saw him looking at herfrom the darkness at the foot of her bed. Then she longed with all her soul for her aunt'spredictions to come true, and in her prayers she begged God to give him the courage to hand herthe letter just so she could know what it said.
But her prayers were not answered. On the contrary. This occurred at the time that FlorentinoAriza made his confession to his mother, who dissuaded him from handing Fermina Daza hisseventy pages of compliments, so that she continued to wait for the rest of the year. Herpreoccupation turned into despair as the December vacation approached, and she asked herselfover and over again how she would see him and let him see her during the three months when shewould not be walking to school. Her doubts were still unresolved on Christmas Eve, when she wasshaken by the presentiment that he was in the crowd at Midnight Mass, looking at her, and thisuneasiness flooded her heart. She did not dare to turn her head, because she was sitting betweenher father and her aunt, and she had to control herself so that they would not notice her agitation.
His delirium increased the following week, when he passed Fermina Daza's house in despairat the siesta hour and saw that she and her aunt were sitting under the almond trees at the doorway.
It was an open-air repetition of the scene he had witnessed the first afternoon in the sewing room:
the girl giving a reading lesson to her aunt. But Fermina Daza seemed different without the schooluniform, for she wore a narrow tunic with many folds that fell from her shoulders in the Greekstyle, and on her head she wore a garland of fresh gardenias that made her look like a crownedgoddess. Florentino Ariza sat in the park where he was sure he would be seen, and then he did nothave recourse to his feigned reading but sat with the book open and his eyes fixed on the illusorymaiden, who did not even respond with a charitable glance.
At first he thought that the lesson under the almond trees was a casual innovation due,perhaps, to the interminable repairs on the house, but in the days that followed he came tounderstand that Fermina Daza would be there, within view, every afternoon at the same timeduring the three months of vacation, and that certainty filled him with new hope. He did not havethe impression that he was seen, he could not detect any sign of interest or rejection, but in herindifference there was a distinct radiance that encouraged him to persevere. Then, one afternoontoward the end of January, the aunt put her work on the chair and left her niece alone in thedoorway under the shower of yellow leaves falling from the almond trees. Encouraged by theimpetuous thought that this was an arranged opportunity, Florentino Ariza crossed the street andstopped in front of Fermina Daza, so close to her that he could detect the catches in her breathingand the floral scent that he would identify with her for the rest of his life. He spoke with his headhigh and with a determination that would be his again only half a century later, and for the samereason.
"All I ask is that you accept a letter from me," he said.
It was not the voice that Fermina Daza had expected from him: it was sharp and clear, with acontrol that had nothing to do with his languid manner. Without lifting her eyes from herembroidery, she replied: "I cannot accept it without my father's permission." Florentino Arizashuddered at the warmth of that voice, whose hushed tones he was not to forget for the rest of hislife. But he held himself steady and replied without hesitation: "Get it." Then he sweetened thecommand with a plea: "It is a matter of life and death." Fermina Daza did not look at him, she didnot interrupt her embroidering, but her decision opened the door a crack, wide enough for theentire world to pass through.
"Give it to me," she said.
Florentino Ariza had intended to give her the seventy sheets he could recite from memoryafter reading them so often, but then he decided on a sober and explicit half page in which hepromised only what was essential: his perfect fidelity and his everlasting love. He took the letterout of his inside jacket pocket and held it before the eyes of the troubled embroiderer, who hadstill not dared to look at him. She saw the blue envelope trembling in a hand petrified with terror,and she raised the embroidery frame so he could put the letter on it, for she could not admit thatshe had noticed the trembling of his fingers. Then it happened: a bird shook himself among theleaves of the almond trees, and his droppings fell right on the embroidery. Fermina Daza movedthe frame out of the way, hid it behind the chair so that he would not notice what had happened,and looked at him for the first time, her face aflame. Florentino Ariza was impassive as he held theletter in his hand and said: "It's good luck." She thanked him with her first smile and almostsnatched the letter away from him, folded it, and hid it in her bodice. Then he offered her thecamellia he wore in his lapel. She refused: "It is a flower of promises." Then, conscious that theirtime was almost over, she again took refuge in her composure.
These confusions of love caused such chaos in the distribution of the mail and provoked so manyprotests from the public that if Florentino Ariza did not lose his job it was because Lotario Thugutkept him at the telegraph and took him to play the violin in the Cathedral choir. They had afriendship difficult to understand because of the difference in their ages, for they might have beengrandfather and grandson, but they got along at work as well as they did in the taverns around theport, which were frequented by everyone out for the evening regardless of social class, fromdrunken beggars to young gentlemen in tuxedos who fled the gala parties at the Social Club to eatfried mullet and coconut rice. Lotario Thugut was in the habit of going there after the last shift atthe telegraph office, and dawn often found him drinking Jamaican punch and playing theaccordion with the crews of madmen from the Antillean schooners. He was corpulent and bull-necked, with a golden beard and a liberty cap that he wore when he went out at night, and all heneeded was a string of bells to look like St. Nicholas. At least once a week he ended the eveningwith a little night bird, as he called them, one of the many who sold emergency love in a transienthotel for sailors. When he met Florentino Ariza, the first thing he did, with a certain magisterialdelight, was to initiate him into the secrets of his paradise. He chose for him the little birds hethought best, he discussed their price and style with them and offered to pay in advance with hisown money for their services. But Florentino Ariza did not accept: he was a virgin, and he haddecided not to lose his virginity unless it was for love.
The hotel was a colonial palace that had seen better days, and its great marble salons androoms were divided into plasterboard cubicles with peepholes, which were rented out as much forwatching as for doing. There was talk of busybodies who had their eyes poked out with knittingneedles, of a man who recognised his own wife as the woman he was spying on, of well-bredgentlemen who came disguised as tarts to forget who they were with the boatswains on shoreleave, and of so many other misadventures of observers and observed that the mere idea of goinginto the next room terrified Florentino Ariza. And so Lotario Thugut could never persuade himthat watching and letting himself be watched were the refinements of European princes.
As opposed to what his corpulence might suggest, Lotario Thugut had the rosebud genitals ofa cherub, but this must have been a fortunate defect, because the most tarnished birds argued overwho would have the chance to go to bed with him, and then they shrieked as if their throats werebeing cut, shaking the buttresses of the palace and making its ghosts tremble in fear. They said heused an ointment made of snake venom that inflamed women's loins, but he swore he had noresources other than those that God had given him. He would say with uproarious laughter: "It'spure love." Many years had to pass before Florentino Ariza would understand that perhaps he wasright. He was convinced at last, at a more advanced stage of his sentimental education, when hemet a man who lived like a king by exploiting three women at the same time. The three of themrendered their accounts at dawn, prostrate at his feet to beg forgiveness for their meagre profits,and the only gratification they sought was that he go to bed with the one who brought him themost money. Florentino Ariza thought that terror alone could induce such indignities, but one ofthe three girls surprised him with the contradictory truth.
"These are things," she said, "you do only for love."It was not so much for his talents as a fornicator as for his personal charm that LotarioThugut had become one of the most esteemed clients of the hotel. Florentino Ariza, because hewas so quiet and elusive, also earned the esteem of the owner, and during the most arduous periodof his grief he would lock himself in the suffocating little rooms to read verses and tearfulserialised love stories, and his reveries left nests of dark swallows on the balconies and the soundof kisses and the beating of wings in the stillness of siesta. At dusk, when it was cooler, it wasimpossible not to listen to the conversations of men who came to console themselves at the end oftheir day with hurried love. So that Florentino Ariza heard about many acts of disloyalty, and evensome state secrets, which important clients and even local officials confided to their ephemerallovers, not caring if they could be overheard in the adjoining rooms. This was also how he learnedthat four nautical leagues to the north of the Sotavento Archipelago, a Spanish galleon had beenlying under water since the eighteenth century with its cargo of more than five hundred billionpesos in pure gold and precious stones. The story astounded him, but he did not think of it againuntil a few months later, when his love awakened in him an overwhelming desire to salvage thesunken treasure so that Fermina Daza could bathe in showers of gold.
Years later, when he tried to remember what the maiden idealised by the alchemy of poetryreally was like, he could not distinguish her from the heartrending twilights of those times. Evenwhen he observed her, unseen, during those days of longing when he waited for a reply to his firstletter, he saw her transfigured in the afternoon shimmer of two o'clock in a shower of blossomsfrom the almond trees where it was always April regardless of the season of the year. The onlyreason he was interested in accompanying Lotario Thugut on his violin from the privilegedvantage point in the choir was to see how her tunic fluttered in the breeze raised by the canticles.
He had given Fermina Daza the letter a month before, and since then he had often broken hispromise not to return to the little park, but he had been very careful not to be seen. Nothing hadchanged. The reading lesson under the trees ended at about two o'clock, when the city was wakingfrom its siesta, and Fermina Daza embroidered with her aunt until the day began to cool.
Florentino Ariza did not wait for the aunt to go into the house, and he crossed the street with amartial stride that allowed him to overcome the weakness in his knees, but he spoke to her aunt,not to Fermina Daza.
In reality, Fermina Daza knew very little about this taciturn suitor who had appeared in herlife like a winter swallow and whose name she would not even have known if it had not been forhis signature on the letter. She had learned that he was the fatherless son of an unmarried womanwho was hardworking and serious but forever marked by the fiery stigma of her single youthfulmistake. She had learned that he was not a messenger, as she had supposed, but a well-qualifiedassistant with a promising future, and she thought that he had delivered the telegram to her fatheronly as a pretext for seeing her. This idea moved her. She also knew that he was one of themusicians in the choir, and although she never dared raise her eyes to look at him during Mass,she had the revelation one Sunday that while the other instruments played for everyone, the violinplayed for her alone. He was not the kind of man she would have chosen. His foundling'seyeglasses, his clerical garb, his mysterious resources had awakened in her a curiosity that wasdifficult to resist, but she had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love.
At first she had not even thought seriously that she was obliged to respond, but the letter wasso explicit that there was no way to avoid it. Meanwhile, in the torment of her doubts, she wassurprised to find herself thinking about Florentino Ariza with more frequency and interest than shecared to allow, and she even asked herself in great distress why he was not in the little park at theusual hour, forgetting that it was she who had asked him not to return while she was preparing herreply. And so she thought about him as she never could have imagined thinking about anyone,having premonitions that he would be where he was not, wanting him to be where he could not be,awaking with a start, with the physical sensation that he was looking at her in the darkness whileshe slept, so that on the afternoon when she heard his resolute steps on the yellow leaves in thelittle park it was difficult for her not to think this was yet another trick of her imagination. Butwhen he demanded her answer with an authority that was so different from his languor, shemanaged to overcome her fear and tried to dodge the issue with the truth: she did not know how toanswer him. But Florentino Ariza had not leapt across an abyss only to be shooed away with suchexcuses.
Florentino Ariza wrote every night. Letter by letter, he had no mercy as he poisoned himselfwith the smoke from the palm oil lamps in the back room of the notions shop, and his lettersbecame more discursive and more lunatic the more he tried to imitate his favourite poets from thePopular Library, which even at that time was approaching eighty volumes. His mother, who hadurged him with so much fervour to enjoy his torment, became concerned for his health. "You aregoing to wear out your brains," she shouted at him from the bedroom when she heard the firstroosters crow. "No woman is worth all that." She could not remember ever having known anyonein such a state of unbridled passion. But he paid no attention to her. Sometimes he went to theoffice without having slept, his hair in an uproar of love after leaving the letter in the prearrangedhiding place so that Fermina Daza would find it on her way to school. She, on the other hand,under the watchful eye of her father and the vicious spying of the nuns, could barely manage to fillhalf a page from her notebook when she locked herself in the bathroom or pretended to take notesin class. But this was not only due to her limited time and the danger of being taken by surprise, itwas also her nature that caused her letters to avoid emotional pitfalls and confine themselves torelating the events of her daily life in the utilitarian style of a ship's log. In reality they weredistracted letters, intended to keep the coals alive without putting her hand in the fire, whileFlorentino Ariza burned himself alive in every line. Desperate to infect her with his own madness,he sent her miniaturist's verses inscribed with the point of a pin on camellia petals. It was he, notshe, who had the audacity to enclose a lock of his hair in one letter, but he never received theresponse he longed for, which was an entire strand of Fermina Daza's braid. He did move her atlast to take one step further, and from that time on she began to send him the veins of leaves driedin dictionaries, the wings of butterflies, the feathers of magic birds, and for his birthday she gavehim a square centimetre of St. Peter Clavier's habit, which in those days was being sold in secret ata price far beyond the reach of a schoolgirl her age. One night, without any warning, FerminaDaza awoke with a start: a solo violin was serenading her, playing the same waltz over and overagain. She shuddered when she realised that each note was an act of thanksgiving for the petalsfrom her herbarium, for the moments stolen from arithmetic to write her letters, for her fear ofexaminations when she was thinking more about him than about the natural sciences, but she didnot dare believe that Florentino Ariza was capable of such imprudence.
In August of that year a new civil war, one of the many that had been devastating the countryfor over half a century, threatened to spread, and the government imposed martial law and a sixo'clock curfew in the provinces along the Caribbean coast. Although some disturbances hadalready occurred, and the troops had committed all kinds of retaliatory abuses, Florentino Arizawas so befuddled that he was unaware of the state of the world, and a military patrol surprised himone dawn as he disturbed the chastity of the dead with his amorous provocations. By some miraclehe escaped summary execution after he was accused of being a spy who sent messages in the keyof G to the Liberal ships marauding in nearby waters.
"What the hell do you mean, a spy?" said Florentino Ariza. "I'm nothing but a poor lover."For three nights he slept with irons around his ankles in the cells of the local garrison. Butwhen he was released he felt defrauded by the brevity of his captivity, and even in the days of hisold age, when so many other wars were confused in his memory, he still thought he was the onlyman in the city, and perhaps the country, who had dragged five-pound leg irons for the sake oflove.
"Tell him yes," she said. "Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, becausewhatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no."Fermina Daza, however, was so confused that she asked for some time to think it over. Firstshe asked for a month, then two, then three, and when the fourth month had ended and she hadstill not replied, she received a white camellia again, not alone in the envelope as on otheroccasions but with the peremptory notification that this was the last one: it was now or never.
Then that same afternoon it was Florentino Ariza who saw the face of death when he received anenvelope containing a strip of paper, torn from the margin of a school notebook, on which a one-line answer was written in pencil: Very well, I will marry you if you promise not to make me eateggplant.
Florentino Ariza agreed to absolute secrecy, not only for his mother's reasons but because of thehermeticism of his own character. He also agreed to the delay, but its terms seemed unrealistic tohim, since in over half a century of independent life the nation had not had a single day of civilpeace.
"We'll grow old waiting," he said.
His godfather, the homoeopathic practitioner, who happened to be taking part in theconversation, did not believe that the wars were an obstacle. He thought they were nothing morethan the struggles of the poor, driven like oxen by the landowners, against barefoot soldiers whowere driven in turn by the government.
Florentino Ariza's life had changed. Requited love had given him a confidence and strengthhe had never known before, and he was so efficient in his work that Lotario Thugut had no troublehaving him named his permanent assistant. By that time his plans for the School of Telegraphyand Magnetism had failed, and the German dedicated his free time to the only thing he reallyenjoyed: going to the port to play the accordion and drink beer with the sailors, finishing theevening at the transient hotel. It was a long time before Florentino Ariza, realised that LotarioThugut's influence in the palace of pleasure was due to the fact that he had become the owner ofthe establishment as well as impresario for the birds in the port. He had bought it gradually withhis savings of many years, but the person who ran it for him was a lean, one-eyed little man with apolished head and a heart so kind that no one understood how he could be such a good manager.
Reading had become his insatiable vice. Ever since she had taught him to read, his motherhad bought him illustrated books by Nordic authors which were sold as stories for children but inreality were the crudest and most perverse that one could read at any age. When he was five yearsold, Florentino Ariza would recite them from memory, both in his classes and at literary eveningsat school, but his familiarity with them did not alleviate the terror they caused. On the contrary, itbecame acute. So that when he began to read poetry, by comparison it was like finding an oasis.
But he made no distinctions: he read whatever came his way, as if it had been ordained by fate,and despite his many years of reading, he still could not judge what was good and what was not inall that he had read. The only thing clear to him was that he preferred verse to prose, and in versehe preferred love poems that he memorised without even intending to after the second reading,and the better rhymed and metered they were, and the more heartrending, the more easily helearned them.
In any event, his youthful adventures in the transient hotel were not limited to reading andcomposing feverish letters but also included his initiation into the secrets of loveless love. Life inthe house began after noon, when his friends the birds got up as bare as the day they were born, sothat when Florentino Ariza arrived after work he found a palace populated by naked nymphs whoshouted their commentaries on the secrets of the city, which they knew because of thefaithlessness of the protagonists. Many displayed in their nudity traces of their past: scars of knifethrusts in the belly, starbursts of gunshot wounds, ridges of the razor cuts of love, Caesareansections sewn up by butchers. Some of them had their young children with them during the day,those unfortunate fruits of youthful defiance or carelessness, and they took off their children'sclothes as soon as they were brought in so they would not feel different in that paradise of nudity.
Each one cooked her own food, and no one ate better than Florentino Ariza when they invited himfor a meal, because he chose the best from each. It was a daily fiesta that lasted until dusk, whenthe naked women marched, singing, toward the bathrooms, asked to borrow soap, toothbrushes,scissors, cut each other's hair, dressed in borrowed clothes, painted themselves like lugubriousclowns, and went out to hunt the first prey of the night. Then life in the house became impersonaland dehumanised, and it was impossible to share in it without paying.
Since he had known Fermina Daza, there was no place where Florentino Ariza felt more atease, because it was the only place where he felt that he was with her. Perhaps it was for similarreasons that an elegant older woman with beautiful silvery hair lived there but did not participatein the uninhibited life of the naked women, who professed sacramental respect for her. Apremature sweetheart had taken her there when she was young, and after enjoying her for a time,abandoned her to her fate. Nevertheless, despite the stigma, she had made a good marriage. Whenshe was quite old and alone, two sons and three daughters argued over who would have thepleasure of taking her to live with them, but she could not think of a better place to live than thathotel of her youthful debaucheries. Her permanent room was her only home, and this made forimmediate communion with Florentino Ariza, who, she said, would become a wise man knownthroughout the world because he could enrich his soul with reading in a paradise of salaciousness.
Florentino Ariza, for his part, developed so much affection for her that he helped her with hershopping and would spend the afternoons in conversation with her. He thought she was a womanwise in the ways of love, since she offered many insights into his affair without his having toreveal any secrets to her.
If he had not given in to the many temptations at hand before he experienced Fermina Daza'slove, he certainly would not succumb now that she was his official betrothed. So Florentino Arizalived with the girls and shared their pleasures and miseries, but it did not occur to him or them togo any further. An unforeseen event demonstrated the severity of his determination. One afternoonat six o'clock, when the girls were dressing to receive that evening's clients, the woman whocleaned the rooms on his floor in the hotel came into his cubicle. She was young, but haggard andold before her time, like a fully dressed penitent surrounded by glorious nakedness. He saw herevery day without feeling himself observed: she walked through the rooms with her brooms, abucket for the trash, and a special rag for picking up used condoms from the floor. She came intothe room where Florentino Ariza lay reading, and as always she cleaned with great care so as notto disturb him. Then she passed close to the bed, and he felt a warm and tender hand low on hisbelly, he felt it searching, he felt it finding, he felt it unbuttoning his trousers while her breathingfilled the room. He pretended to read until he could not bear it any longer and had to move hisbody out of the way.
She was dismayed, for the first thing they warned her about when they gave her the cleaningjob was that she should not try to sleep with the clients. They did not have to tell her that, becauseshe was one of those women who thought that prostitution did not mean going to bed for moneybut going to bed with a stranger. She had two children, each by a different father, not because theywere casual adventures but because she could never love any man who came back after the thirdvisit. Until that time she had been a woman without a sense of urgency, a woman whose natureprepared her to wait without despair, but life in that house proved stronger than her virtue. Shecame to work at six in the afternoon, and she spent the whole night going through the rooms,sweeping them out, picking up condoms, changing the sheets. It was difficult to imagine thenumber of things that men left after love. They left vomit and tears, which seemed understandableto her, but they also left many enigmas of intimacy: puddles of blood, patches of excrement, glasseyes, gold watches, false teeth, lockets with golden curls, love letters, business letters, condolenceletters--all kinds of letters. Some came back for the items they had lost, but most were unclaimed,and Lotario Thugut kept them under lock and key and thought that sooner or later the palace thathad seen better days, with its thousands of forgotten belongings, would become a museum of love.
The work was hard and the pay was low, but she did it well. What she could not endure werethe sobs, the laments, the creaking of the bedsprings, which filled her blood with so much ardourand so much sorrow that by dawn she could not bear the desire to go to bed with the first beggarshe met on the street, with any miserable drunk who would give her what she wanted with nopretensions and no questions. The appearance of a man like Florentino Ariza, young, clean, andwithout a woman, was for her a gift from heaven, because from the first moment she realised thathe was just like her: someone in need of love. But he was unaware of her compelling desire. Hehad kept his virginity for Fermina Daza, and there was no force or argument in this world thatcould turn him from his purpose.
That was his life, four months before the date set for formalising the engagement, whenLorenzo Daza showed up at the telegraph office one morning at seven o'clock and asked for him.
Since he had not yet arrived, Lorenzo Daza waited on the bench until ten minutes after eight,slipping a heavy gold ring with its noble opal stone from one finger to another, and as soon asFlorentino Ariza came in, he recognised him as the employee who had delivered the telegram, andhe took him by the arm.
"Come with me, my boy," he said. "You and I have to talk for five minutes, man to man."Florentino Ariza, as green as a corpse, let himself be led. He was not prepared for thismeeting, because Fermina Daza had not found either the occasion or the means to warn him. Thefact was that on the previous Saturday, Sister Franca de la Luz, Superior of the Academy of thePresentation of the Blessed Virgin, had come into the class on Ideas of Cosmogony with thestealth of a serpent, and spying on the students over their shoulders, she discovered that FerminaDaza was pretending to take notes in her notebook when in reality she was writing a love letter.
According to the rules of the Academy, that error was reason for expulsion. Lorenzo Dazareceived an urgent summons to the rectory, where he discovered the leak through which his ironregime was trickling. Fermina Daza, with her innate fortitude, confessed to the error of the letter,but refused to reveal the identity of her secret sweetheart and refused again before the Tribunal ofthe Order which, therefore, confirmed the verdict of expulsion. Her father, however, searched herroom, until then an inviolate sanctuary, and in the false bottom of her trunk he found the packetsof three years' worth of letters hidden away with as much love as had inspired their writing. Thesignature was unequivocal, but Lorenzo Daza could not believe--not then, not ever--that hisdaughter knew nothing about her secret lover except that he worked as a telegraph operator andthat he loved the violin.
Certain that such an intricate relationship was understandable only with the complicity of hissister, he did not grant her the grace of an excuse or the right of appeal, but shipped her on theschooner to San Juan de la C