The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa Page A

stumbled onto the truth that he was not at his mother’s house but in the shadowy parlor of Manuela Sanchez’s secret cove under the implacable vigilance of the mother who knitted without stopping to take a breath, because it was for her that he bought the ingenious machines that so saddened BendiciónAlvarado, he tried to seduce her with the mystery of magnetic needles, the January snowstorms captive in quartz paperweights, apparatuses of astronomers and pharmacists, pyrographs, manometers, metronomes and gyroscopes which he kept on buying from anyone who would sell them against the advice of his mother, and in opposition to his own steely avarice, and only for the pleasure of enjoying-themwith Manuela Sánchez,he would put to her ear the patriotic shell that did not have the sound of the sea inside but the military marches that exalted his regime, he would bring the flame of a match close to the thermometers so you can see the oppressive mercury of what I think inside go up and down, he looked at Manuela Sanchez without asking her for anything, without expressing his intentionsto her, but he would overwhelm her in silence with those demented presents to try to tell her with them what he was capable of saying, for he only knew how to show his most intimate urges with the visible symbols of his uncommon power as on Manuela Sanchez’s birthday when he had asked her to open the window and she opened it and I was petrified with fright to see what they had done to my poor dogfightdistrict, I saw the white wooden houses with canvas awnings and terraces with flowers, the blue lawns with their spinning sprinklers, the peacocks, the glacial insecticide wind, a vile replica of the former residences of the occupation officials which had been minutely reproduced at night and in silence, they had slit the throats of the dogs, they had removed the former inhabitants from theirhomes for they had no right to be the neighbors of a queen and sent them off to rot in some other dungheap, and in that way in a few furtive nights they had built the new district of Manuela Sanchez so you could see it from your window on your name day, there it is, queen, so that you may have many happy years to come, so see whether or not these displays of power were able to soften your courteousbut unconquerable behavior, my mama is there with the fetters of my honor, and he drowned in his urges, swallowed his rage, drank with slow grandfather sips the cool soursop water of pity which she had prepared to give drink to the thirsty one, he bore up under the icy jabs in his temples so that the imperfections of age would not be revealed, so that you will not love me out of pity after hehad exhausted all the resources for her to have loved him out of love, she left him in such a state of only when I’m with you I don’t have the spirit even to be there, agonizing to stroke her if only with his breath before the human-size archangel should fly inside the house ringing the bellof my fateful hour, and he got in one last sip of the visit while she put the toys away in their originalcases so the sea rot would not turn them to dust, just one minute, queen, he got up from now until tomorrow, a lifetime, what a mess, he barely had an instant to take a last look at the untouchable maiden who with the step of the archangel had remained motionless with the dead rose in her lap while he took leave, he slipped into the first shadows trying to hide a shame which was in the public domainand which everyone commented upon on the street, it gave birth to an anonymous song which the whole country knew except him, even the parrots sang it in courtyards make way women there comes the general crying green with his hand on his chest, see how he goes he can’t handle his power, he rules in his sleep, he’s got a wound that won’t close, wild parrots learned it from having heard it sungby tame parrots, budgies and mockingbirds learned it from them and they carried it off in flocks