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

come out of church yet. The men – dressed in white with black ties – were talking in the low doorway under their umbrellas. One of them saw the coloneljumping between the puddles in the plaza.
    ‘Get under here, friend!’ he shouted.
    He made room under the umbrella.
    ‘Thanks, friend,’ said the colonel.
    But he didn’t accept the invitation. He entered the house directly to give his condolences to the mother of the dead man. The first thing he perceived was the odor of many different flowers. Then the heat rose. The colonel tried to make his waythrough the crowd which was jammed into the bedroom. But someone put a hand on his back, pushed him toward the back of the room through a gallery of perplexed faces to the spot where – deep and wide open – the nostrils of the dead man were found.
    There was the dead man’s mother, shooing the flies away from the coffin with a plaited palm fan. Other women, dressed in black, contemplated the bodywith the same expression with which one watches the current of a river. All at once a voice started up at the back of the room. The colonel put one woman aside, faced the profile of the dead man’s mother, and put a hand on her shoulder.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
    She didn’t turn her head. She opened her mouth andlet out a howl. The colonel started. He felt himself being pushed against the corpseby a shapeless crowd which broke out in a quavering outcry. He looked for a firm support for his hands but couldn’t find the wall. There were other bodies in its place. Someone said in his ear, slowly, with a very gentle voice, ‘Careful, colonel.’ He spun his head around and was face to face with the dead man. But he didn’t recognize him because he was stiff and dynamic and seemed as disconcertedas he, wrapped in white cloths and with his trumpet in his hands. When the colonel raised his head over the shouts, in search of air, he saw the closed box bouncing toward the door down a slope of flowers which disintegrated against the walls. He perspired. His joints ached. A moment later he knew he was in the street because the drizzle hurt his eyelids, and someone seized him by the arm andsaid:
    ‘Hurry up, friend, I was waiting for you.’
    It was Sabas, the godfather of his dead son, the only leader of his party who had escaped political persecution and had continued to live in town. ‘Thanks, friend,’ said the colonel, and walked in silence under the umbrella. The band struck up the funeral march. The colonel noticed the lack of a trumpet, and for the first time was certain thatthe dead man was dead.
    ‘Poor man,’ he murmured.
    Sabas cleared his throat. He held the umbrella in his left hand, the handle almost at the level of his head, since he was shorter than the colonel. They began to talk when the cortege left the plaza. Sabas turned toward the colonel then, his face disconsolate, and said: ‘Friend, what’s new with the rooster?’
    ‘He’sstill there,’ the colonel replied.
    At that moment a shout was heard: ‘Where are they going with that dead man?’
    The colonel raised his eyes. He saw the mayor on the balcony of the barracks in an expansive pose. He was dressed in his flannel underwear; his unshaven cheek was swollen. The musicians stopped the march. A moment later the colonel recognized Father Ángel’s voice shouting at the mayor. He made out their dialogue throughthe drumming of the rain on the umbrella.
    ‘Well?’ asked Sabas.
    ‘Well nothing,’ the colonel replied. ‘The burial may not pass in front of the police barracks.’
    ‘I had forgotten,’ exclaimed Sabas. ‘I always forget that we are under martial law.’
    ‘But this isn’t a rebellion,’ the colonel said. ‘It’s a poor dead musician.’
    The cortege changed direction. In the poor neighborhoods the women watchedit pass, biting their nails in silence. But then they came out into the middle of the street and sent up shouts of praise, gratitude, and farewell, as if they