Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

He is ugly and sad, she said to Fermina Daza, but he is all love.

They continued to put his soap in the bathroom, his monogrammed pillowcase on the bed; his place was always set at the table, in case he returned from the dead without warning, as he tended to do in life. But in those solitary Masses they began to be aware that once again they were mistresses of their fate, after having renounced not only their family name but their own identity in exchange for a security that was no more than another of a bride's many illusions. They alone knew how tiresome was the man they loved to distraction, who perhaps loved them but whom they had to continue nurturing until his last breath as if he were a child, suckling him, changing his soiled diapers, distracting him with a mother's tricks to ease his terror at going out each morning to face reality.

He was aware that he did not love her. He had married her because he liked her haughtiness, her seriousness, her strength, and also because of some vanity on his part, but as she kissed him for the first time he was sure there would be no obstacle to their inventing true love. They did not speak of it that first night, when they spoke of everything until dawn, nor would they ever speak of it. But in the long run, neither of them had made a mistake.

But it was a useful lesson, and not for him alone. Over the years they both reached the same wise conclusion by different paths: it was not possible to live together in any other way, or love in any other way, and nothing in this world was more difficult than love.

No, not rich, he said. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.

I think I am going to die.
She did not even blink when she replied.
That would be best, she said. Then we could both have some peace.
Years before, during the crisis of a dangerous illness, he had spoken of the possibility of dying, and she had made the same brutal reply. Dr. Urbino attributed it to the natural hardheartedness of women, which allows the earth to continue revolving around the sun, because at that time he did not know that she always erected a barrier of wrath to hide her fear. And in this case it was the most terrible one of all, the fear of losing him.

With surprising skill, she rolled a cigarette from the little box of tobacco that he had brought her. She smoked it slowly, with the lit end inside her mouth, not speaking, and then she rolled another two and smoked them one right after the other. Sip by sip, Florentino Ariza drank two thermoses of mountain coffee.

There are many profound lines in Love in the Time of Cholera but there are also many uncomfortable itches that do not get scratched. First and most annoying, the mystery of the first chapter is dropped from the story. What Garcia Marquez spends almost fifty pages developing, he drops in the next 300. Really the story could begin at chapter two. We forgive him this though for the sake of the rest of the story.
For Love in the Time of Cholera is an exciting story. Garcia Marquez takes that imagining of the heart and turns it into reality. What if love is a lingering disease, one of those that cripples and maims but does not kill? Most stories, in order to bow to plot and drama give you love the lightning cancer cut it out or it will eat your brain and heart and spine version, but Garcia Marquez delivers love the disease that is slower than old age.