CHAPTER TWO

FLORENTINO ARIZA, on the other hand, had not stopped thinking of her

for a single

moment since Fermina Daza had rejected him out of hand after a long and

troubled love

affair fifty-one years, nine months, and four days ago. He did not have to

keep a running

tally, drawing a line for each day on the walls of a cell, because not a day

had passed that

something did not happen to remind him of her. At the time of their

separation he lived

with his mother, Tránsito Ariza, in one half of a rented house on the Street

of Windows,

where she had kept a notions shop ever since she was a young woman, and

where she

also unraveled shirts and old rags to sell as bandages for the men wounded

in the war.