Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Page A

physician. He continued to tremble but no longer perspired.
    Seen at close quarters, Sierva María was scratched and bruised, and her skin was chafed raw by the straps. But what affected him most was the wound on her ankle, inflamed and festering as a result of the healers’ ineptitude.
    As he examined her, Delaura explained that she had been brought there not to be martyrized but because ofthe suspicion that a demon had entered her body in order to steal her soul. He needed her help to establish the truth. But it was impossible to know whether she was listening and whether she understood that it was a plea from the heart.
    When he had completed the examination, Delaura requested a chest of medicines but did not permit the apothecary nun to enter the cell. He applied balsams to thegirl’s wounds and with gentle breaths relieved the burning on her raw skin, astounded at her tolerance of pain. Sierva María answered none of his questions, showed no interest in his preaching and complained about nothing.
    It was a discouraging start that pursued Delaura untilhe reached the calm waters of the library. The largest room in the Bishop’s house, it did not have a single window, andthe walls were lined with glass-doored mahogany cabinets containing numerous books arranged in careful order. In the center of the room stood a large table that held maritime charts, an astrolabe and other navigational instruments, and a globe of the earth with additions and emendations that successive cartographers had made by hand as the size of the world increased. In the rear was a rustic worktable with an inkwell, penknife, turkey quills for writing, sand to dry the ink and a withered carnation in a vase. The entire room was in shadow and had the odor of paper at rest and the coolness and peace of a forest glade.
    In a smaller enclosure at the back of the room was a locked cabinet with doors made of ordinary lumber. This was the prison of forbidden books, purged by the Holy Inquisitionbecause they dealt with ‘deceptive and profane matters, and false histories’. No one had access to it but Cayetano Delaura, who had pontifical permission to explore the abysses of written works gone astray.
    From the moment he first saw Sierva María, those calm waters of so many years became his inferno. He would not meet there again with his friends, the clergy and laymen who shared with himthe delight of pure ideas and organized scholastic tourneys, literary gatherings, musical evenings. His passion was reduced to understanding the wily deceptions of the demon, and for five days and nights he devoted all his reading and reflection to the subject before he returned to the convent. On Monday, when the Bishop saw him leave with a firm step, he asked him how he felt.
    ‘Asif I had thewings of the Holy Spirit,’ said Delaura.
    He had put on his cassock of ordinary cotton, which filled him with the courage of a woodcutter, and his soul wore armor against despair. They stood him in good stead. The warder responded to his greeting with a grunt, Sierva María received him with an ill-tempered frown, and it was difficult to breathe in the cell because excrement and the remains ofearlier meals were strewn over the floor. On the altar, next to the Sanctuary Lamp, the midday meal lay untouched. Delaura picked up the plate and offered the girl a spoonful of black beans in coagulated grease. She turned her head. He insisted several times, but her response was always the same. Then Delaura put the spoonful of beans in his mouth, tasted it, and swallowed without chewing, showingreal signs of repugnance.
    ‘You are right,’ he told her. ‘This is vile.’
    The girl did not pay the slightest attention to him. When he treated her inflamed ankle, the skin twitched and her eyes filled with tears. He thought she had surrendered, and he comforted her with the murmurings of a good shepherd, and at last dared loosen the straps to give her ravaged body some respite. The girl flexedher