Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez Page B

through it herself, pondered it without haste, and at last she smiled.
    “Do whatever you want, but don’t lose that child,” she said. “There’s no greater misfortune than dying alone.”
    We went to Puerto Columbia in the little toy train as slow as a horse. We had lunch across from the worm-eaten wooden dock where everyone had entered the country before the Bocas de Ceniza was dredged. We sat under a roof of palm where large black matrons served fried red snapper with coconut rice and slices of green plantain. We dozed in the dense torpor of two o’clock and continued talking until the immense fiery sun sank into the ocean. Reality seemed fantastic to me. Look where our honeymoon has ended up, she mocked. But then she was serious: Today I look back, I see the line of thousands of men who passed through my beds, and I’d give my soul to have stayed with even the worst of them. Thank God I found my Chinaman in time. It’s like being married to your little finger, but he’s all mine.
    She looked into my eyes, gauged my reaction to what she had just told me, and said: So you go and find that poor creature right now even if what your jealousy tells you is true, no matter what, nobody can take away the dances you’ve already had. But one thing, no grandfather’s romanticism. Wkae her, fuck her brains out with that burro’s cock the devil gave you as a reward for cowardice and stinginess. I’m serious, she concluded, speaking from the heart: Don’t let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love.
    My hand trembled the next day when I dialed the number, as much because of the tension of my reunion with Delgadina as my uncertainty as to how Rosa Cabarcas would respond. We’d had a serious dispute over her abusive billing for the damage I’d done to her room. I had to sell one of the paintings most loved by my mother, estimated to be worth a fortune but at the moment of truth not amounting to a tenth of what I had hoped for. I increased that amount with the rest of my savings and took the money to Rosa Cabarcas with an unappealable ultimatum: Take it or leave it. It was a suicidal act, because if she had sold just one of my secrets she could have destroyed my good name. she did not dig in her heels, but she kept the paintings she had taken as security on the night of our argument. I was the absolute loser in a single play: I was left without Delgadina, without Rosa Cabarcas, and without the last of my savings. However, I listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times, and at last she said: Yes? My voice failed me. I hung up. I lay down in the hammock, trying to restore my serenity with the ascetic lyricism of Satie, and I perspired so much the canvas was soaked through. I did not have the courage to call again until the next day.
    “All right, woman,” I said in a firm voice. “Today’s the day.”
    Rosa Cabarcas, of course, was above everything. Ah, my sad scholar, and she sighed with her invincible spirit, you disappear for two months and only come back to ask for illusions. She told me she hadn’t seen Delgadina for more than a month, that the girl seemed to have recovered so well from her fright at my destructiveness that she didn’t even mention it or ask for me, and was very happy in a new job, more comfortable and better-paid than sewing on buttons. A weave of living fire burned me inside. She can only be working as a whore, I said. Rosa replied without batting an eye: Don’t be stupid, if that were true she’d be here. Where would she be better off? The rapidity of her logic made my doubts worse: And how do I know she isn’t there? If she is, she replied, it’s better for you not to know. Isn’t that right? Once again I hated her. She was impervious and promised to track her down. Without much hope, because the neighbor’s telephone where she used to call her had been turned off and she had no idea where the girl lived. But that was no reason to die, what the hell, she said,