Published in Time Out Istanbul

May 2006

Vanessa Able looks at love in the nineties, and at what could be Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s last novel.

How many lives are granted in a lifetime, and how many has Gabriel Garcia Marquez already used? Diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999, the author was reported dead in the year 2000, somewhat prematurely, by the Peruvian ‘La Republica’ newspaper.

At first Marquez showed no signs of discouragement, claiming that his life-threatening diagnosis was “an enormous stroke of luck.” He immediately threw himself into seclusion and intensive work on his own three-part biography, the first part of which was published as ‘Living to Tell the Tale’ in 2002.

His enthusiasm, however, has since waned: the release of the 115-page novella ‘Memories of my Melancholy Whores’ in 2004, may well be his last, following his statement at the beginning of this year that he has stopped working, and that “the year 2005 was the first time in my life when I did not write a single line.”

If we can infer from this that the second and third parts of his life story will never be told, it is inevitable that ‘Memories of my Melancholy Whores’, apparently his final work, will be scrutinized for all the signs of a swansong.

In the light of Marquez’s withdrawal from the literary world, it’s possible to see mounting parallels with the protagonist of his final novel, who awakes on the morning of his ninetieth birthday to discover a desire “so urgent it seemed like a message from God.” His life swings through a U-turn from this point on.

The perspective of our nonagenarian hero is not one of the condemned man horrified in the face of impending annihilation: the existential crises that hounded his life are a distant memory from the relatively youthful sixth decade of his life: “I was shaken for the first time and almost knocked to the ground by the roar of death. It was like a brutal oracle in my ear: no matter what you do, this year or in the next hundred, you will be dead forever.”

At ninety, however, he is almost surprised to find himself still alive, and is astonished to learn from his doctor that none of his current minor ailments are bringing him any closer to death’s door. His world is unreal, his time suspended, borrowed and ongoing, as he continues to live out his existence as a bachelor journalist with a burning asshole and a weekly column in the local newspaper.

We learn that the old man is no stranger to the services of professional women: he confirms that he has never slept with a woman he didn’t pay, and that he has known literally hundreds of whores. On a whim, and possibly in a lurching subconscious bid to weigh down his drifting life, he calls a brothel on the day of his birthday to request a “night of love” with a virgin. He is granted the company of a young 14-year-old girl, whom the mistress sedates in order to appease her fears of bleeding to death in the act.

The ensuing romance takes on Quixotic dimensions in the extent to which the old man’s idealisation of the girl avoids the trauma of confrontation with reality: his visits to her room become more frequent; he never sees the girl awake, and even begins to fear accidentally meeting her in the street. When apart from her, he is sharply affected by the sensation that he is no longer alone, and he even sees the girl one night in his house during a storm, a vision we can never be certain might have been imagined. He names her, Delgadina, and brings all manner of gifts to her sleeping side, while never actually consummating his desire.

The tale, apparently, exposes a love and yearning unfettered by sexual feeling that fills the old man with “a sense of liberation I hadn’t known before in my life, and free at last of a servitude that had kept me enslaved since the age of thirteen.”

In the same spirit of breaking free of shackles, the old man decides quite suddenly to quit his column at the newspaper, a job he has held for more than fifty years. This retreat from professional life and the acknowledgement that he is finally released from the dominance of his libido echoes through into Marquez’s own decision to put down, or rather, concede to the dying of a lifelong passion.

Death is close, far, at hand, and renders time almost dreamlike: it’s a very peaceful process. Delgadina, “naked and helpless as the day she was born,” is a sleeping beauty the old man refuses to awaken. When he first sees her she has been made up to receive him, and he sits down to contemplate her in coroner’s detail: “She had been subjected to a regimen of hygiene and beautification that did not overlook even the incipient down on her pubis.” Convinced that death is finally coming for him and warned “there is no greater shame than dying alone,” the old man returns to the sleeping Delgadina at the end of the book and lies down next to her, intertwines his fingers with hers, “so I could lead her by the hand,” and prepares to take his last breath.

But here Marquez adds his final legacy, his signature magic floated across reality, as he rebirths his protagonist into another life, and launched onto the road towards the horizon of his first century, again suspended in the happy uncertain no-man’s land at death’s door.

Is this really the last word from Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edna Ferber once said that growing old was like death by drowning: “a really delightful sensation after you have ceased struggling.” Perhaps this notion is applicable to one of the world’s favourite living authors, who himself said, “I could write a new novel without any problems. But people would realise that my heart isn’t in it.”