No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel García Márquez, J. S. Bernstein Page A

took some effort to find it in the bottom of the trunk,wrapped in newspapers and protected against moths with little balls of naphthalene. Stretched out in bed, the woman was still thinking about the dead man.
    ‘He must have met Agustín already,’ she said. ‘Maybe he won’t tell him about the situation we’ve been left in since his death.’
    ‘At this moment they’re probably talking roosters,’ said the colonel.
    He found an enormous old umbrella in thetrunk. His wife had won it in a raffle held to collect funds for thecolonel’s party. That same night they had attended an outdoor show which was not interrupted despite the rain. The colonel, his wife, and their son, Agustín – who was then eight – watched the show until the end, seated under the umbrella. Now Agustín was dead, and the bright satin material had been eaten away by the moths.
    ‘Look what’s left of our circus clown’s umbrella,’ said the colonel with one of his old phrases. Above his head a mysterious system of little metal rods opened. ‘The only thing it’s good for now is to count the stars.’
    He smiled. But the woman didn’t take the trouble to look at the umbrella. ‘Everything’s that way,’ she whispered. ‘We’re rotting alive.’ And she closed her eyes so she could concentrateon the dead man.
    After shaving himself by touch – since he’d lacked a mirror for a long time – the colonel dressed silently. His trousers, almost as tight on his legs as long underwear, closed at the ankles with slip-knotted drawstrings, were held up at the waist by two straps of the same material which passed through two gilt buckles sewn on at kidney height. He didn’t use a belt. His shirt,the color of old Manila paper, and as stiff, fastened with a copper stud which served at the same time to hold the detachable collar. But the detachable collar was torn, so the colonel gave up on the idea of a tie.
    He did each thing as if it were a transcendent act. The bones in his hands were covered by taut, translucent skin, with light spots like the skin on his neck. Before he put on hispatent-leather shoes, he scraped the dried mud from the stitching. His wife saw him at that moment, dressed as he was on their wedding day. Only then did she notice how much her husband had aged.
    ‘Youlook as if you’re dressed for some special event,’ she said.
    ‘This burial is a special event,’ the colonel said. ‘It’s the first death from natural causes which we’ve had in many years.’
    The weathercleared up after nine. The colonel was getting ready to go out when his wife seized him by the sleeve of his coat.
    ‘Comb your hair,’ she said.
    He tried to subdue his steel-colored, bristly hair with a bone comb. But it was a useless attempt.
    ‘I must look like a parrot,’ he said.
    The woman examined him. She thought he didn’t. The colonel didn’t look like a parrot. He was a dry man, with solidbones articulated as if with nuts and bolts. Because of the vitality in his eyes, it didn’t seem as if he were preserved in formalin.
    ‘You’re fine that way,’ she admitted, and added, when her husband was leaving the room: ‘Ask the doctor if we poured boiling water on him in this house.’
    They lived at the edge of town, in a house with a palm-thatched roof and walls whose whitewash was flakingoff. The humidity kept up but the rain had stopped. The colonel went down toward the plaza along an alley with houses crowded in on each other. As he came out into the main street, he shivered. As far as the eye could see, the town was carpeted with flowers. Seated in their doorways, the women in black were waiting for the funeral.
    In the plaza it began to drizzle again. The proprietor of thepool hall saw the colonel from the door of hisplace and shouted to him with open arms: ‘Colonel, wait, and I’ll lend you an umbrella!’
    The colonel replied without turning around. ‘Thank you. I’m all right this way.’
    The funeral procession hadn’t