CHAPTER SIX

FERMINA DAZA could not have imagined that her letter, inspired by blind

rage, would

have been interpreted by Florentino Ariza as a love letter. She had put into

it all the fury

of which she was capable, her crudest words, the most wounding, most

unjust vilifica-

tions, which still seemed minuscule to her in light of the enormity of the

offense. It was

the final act in a bitter exorcism through which she was attempting to

come to terms with

her new situation. She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she

had been obliged

to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy

but which,

once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her

identity.

CHAPTER FIVE

ON THE OCCASION of the celebration of the new century, there was an

innovative

program of public ceremonies, the most memorable of which was the first

journey in a

balloon, the fruit of the boundless initiative of Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Half the

city gathered

on the Arsenal Beach to express their wonderment at the ascent of the

enormous balloon

made of taffeta in the colors of the flag, which carried the first airmail to

San Juan de la

Ciénaga, some thirty leagues to the northeast as the crow flies. Dr. Juvenal

Urbino and

his wife, who had experienced the excitement of flight at the World’s Fair

in Paris, were

the first to climb into the wicker basket, followed by the pilot and six

distinguished

guests.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DAY THAT Florentino Ariza saw Fermina Daza in the atrium of the

Cathedral, in

the sixth month of her pregnancy and in full command of her new

condition as a woman

of the world, he made a fierce decision to win fame and fortune in order to

deserve her.

He did not even stop to think about the obstacle of her being married,

because at the same

time he decided, as if it depended on himself alone, that Dr. Juvenal Urbino

had to die.

He did not know when or how, but he considered it an ineluctable event

that he was

resolved to wait for without impatience or violence, even till the end of

time.

CHAPTER THREE

AT THE AGE of twenty-eight, Dr. Juvenal Urbino had been the most

desirable of

bachelors. He had returned from a long stay in Paris, where he had

completed advanced

studies in medicine and surgery, and from the time he set foot on solid

ground he gave

overwhelming indications that he had not wasted a minute of his time. He

returned more

fastidious than when he left, more in control of his nature, and none of his

contemporaries seemed as rigorous and as learned as he in his science,

and none could

dance better to the music of the day or improvise as well on the piano.

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.

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS INEVITABLE: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of

the fate of

unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the

still darkened

house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him

had lost all

urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-

Amour, disabled

war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent

in chess, had

escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.