Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel García Márquez

blind chickens up and down the aisles by the matrons. In the confusion she tried to protect herself from wild blows, and she somehow found herself alone in an empty office, where the incessant ring of a telephone had a pleading tone. María answered without thinking and heard a distant, smiling voice that took great pleasure in imitating the telephone company’s time service:
    “The time is forty-five hours, ninety-two minutes, and one hundred seven seconds.”
    “Asshole,” said María.
    She hung up, amused. She was about to leave when she realized she was allowing a unique opportunity to slip away. She dialed six digits, with so much tension and somuch haste she was not sure it was her home number. She waited, her heart racing, she heard the avid, sad sound of the familiar ring, once, twice, three times, and at last she heard the voice of the man she loved, in the house without her.
    “Hello?”
    She had to wait for the knot of tears that formed in her throat to dissolve.
    “Baby, sweetheart,” she sighed.
    Her tears overcame her. On the other end of the line there was a brief, horrified silence, and a voice burning with jealousy spit out the word:
    “Whore!”
    And he slammed down the receiver.
    That night, in an attack of rage, María pulled down the lithograph of the Generalissimo in the refectory, crashed it with all her strength into the stained-glass window that led to the garden, and threw herself to the floor, covered in blood. She still had enough fury left to resist the blows of the matrons who tried, with no success, to restrain her, until she saw Herculina standing in the doorway with her arms folded, staring at her. María gave up. Nevertheless, they dragged her to the ward for violent patients, subdued her with a hose spurting icy water, and injected turpentine into her legs. The swelling that resulted prevented her from walking, and María realized there was nothing in the world she would not do to escape that hell. The following week, when she was back in the dormitory, she tiptoed to the night matron’s room and knocked at the door.
    María’s price, which she demanded in advance, was that the matron send a message to her husband. The matron agreed, on the condition that their dealings be kept an absolute secret. And she pointed an inexorable forefinger at her.
    “If they ever find out, you die.”
    And so, on the following Saturday, Saturno the Magician drove to the asylum for women in the circus van, which he had prepared to celebrate María’s return. The director himself received him in his office, which was as clean and well ordered as a battleship, and made an affectionate report on his wife’s condition. No one had known where she came from, or how or when, since the first information regarding her arrival was the official admittance form he had dictated after interviewing her. An investigation begun that same day had proved inconclusive. In any event, what most intrigued the director was how Saturno had learned his wife’s whereabouts. Saturno protected the matron.
    “The insurance company told me,” he said.
    The director nodded, satisfied. “I don’t know how insurance companies manage to find out everything,” he said. He looked over the file lying on his ascetic’s desk, and concluded:
    “The only certainty is the seriousness of her condition.”
    He was prepared to authorize a visit with all the necessary precautions if Saturno the Magician would promise, for the good of his wife, to adhere without question to the rules of behavior that he would indicate. Above allwith reference to how he treated her, in order to avoid a recurrence of the fits of rage that were becoming more and more frequent and dangerous.
    “How strange,” said Saturno. “She always was quicktempered, but had a lot of self-control.”
    The doctor made a learned man’s gesture. “There are behaviors that remain latent for many years, and then one day they erupt,” he said. “All in all, it is