Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman

was an arranged opportunity, Florentino Ariza crossed the street and stopped in front of Fermina Daza, so close to her that he could detect the catches in her breathing and the floral scent that he would identify with her forthe rest of his life. He spoke with his head high and with a determination that would be his again only half a century later, and for the same reason.
    “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 a control that had nothing to do with his languid manner. Without lifting her eyes from her embroidery,she replied: “I cannot accept it without my father’s permission.” Florentino Ariza shuddered at the warmth of that voice, whose hushed tones he was not to forget for the rest of his life. But he held himself steady and replied without hesitation: “Get it.” Then he sweetened the command with a plea: “It is a matter of life and death.” Fermina Daza did not look at him, she did not interrupther embroidering, but her decision opened the door a crack, wide enough for the entire world to pass through.
    “Come back every afternoon,” she said to him, “and wait until I change my seat.”
    Florentino Ariza did not understand what she meant until the following Monday when, from the bench in the little park, he saw the same scene with one variation: when Aunt Escolástica went intothe house,Fermina Daza stood up and then sat in the other chair. Florentino Ariza, with a white camellia in his lapel, crossed the street and stood in front of her. He said: “This is the greatest moment of my life.” Fermina Daza did not raise her eyes to him, but she looked all around her and saw the deserted streets in the heat of the dry season and a swirl of dead leaves pulled along by the wind.
    “Giveit to me,” she said.
    Florentino Ariza had intended to give her the seventy sheets he could recite from memory after reading them so often, but then he decided on a sober and explicit half page in which he promised only what was essential: his perfect fidelity and his everlasting love. He took the letter out of his inside jacket pocket and held it before the eyes of the troubled embroiderer, whohad still 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 that she had noticed the trembling of his fingers. Then it happened: a bird shook himself among the leaves of the almond trees, and his droppings fell right on the embroidery. Fermina Daza moved theframe 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 the letter in his hand and said: “It’s good luck.” She thanked him with her first smile and almost snatched the letter away from him, folded it, and hid it in her bodice. Then he offered her the camellia he worein his lapel. She refused: “It is a flower of promises.” Then, conscious that their time was almost over, she again took refuge in her composure.
    “Now go,” she said, “and don’t come back until I tell you to.”
    After Florentino Ariza saw her for the first time, his mother knew before he told her because he lost his voice and his appetite and spent the entire night tossing and turning in his bed.But when he began to wait for the answer to his first letter, his anguish was complicated by diarrhea and green vomit, he became disoriented and suffered from sudden fainting spells, and his mother was terrified because his condition did not resemble the turmoil of love so much as the devastation of cholera. Florentino Ariza’s godfather, an old homeopathic practitioner who had been Tránsito Ariza’sconfidant ever since her days as a secret mistress, was also alarmed at first by the patient’s condition,because he had the weak