Love & Obsession

Share/Save/Bookmark

Love & Obsession
by Jahanshah Javid
14-Jun-2012
 

One of the best passages from Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez. A good read although not his best. Three stars out of five.

She wrote a weekly letter for over half a lifetime. ‘Sometimes I couldn’t think of what to say,’ she told me dying with laughter, ‘but it was enough for me to know he was getting them’. At first they were a fiancee’s notes, then they were little messages from a secret lover, perfumed cards from a furtive sweetheart, business papers, love documents, and lastly they were the indignant letters of an abandoned wife who invented cruel illnesses to make him return. One night, in a good mood, she spilled the inkwell over the finished letter and instead of tearing it up she added a postscript: ‘As proof of my love I send you my tears.’ On occasion, tired of weeping, she would make fun of her own madness. The only think that didn’t occur to her was to give up. Nevertheless, he seemed insensible to her delirium; it was like writing to nobody.

…In the tenth year, she was awakened by the certainty that he was naked in her bed. Then she wrote him a feverish letter, twenty pages long, in which without shame she let out the bitter truths that she carried rotting in her heart ever since that ill-fated night. On Friday, she gave it to her postmistress who came Friday afternoons to embroider with her and pick up the letters, and she was convinced that that final alleviation would be the end of her agony. But there was no reply. From the on she was no longer conscious of what she wrote nor to whom she was really writing, but she kept on without quarter for seventeen years.

Halfway through one August day, while she was embroidering with her friends, she head someone coming to the door. She didn’t have to look to see who it was. ‘He was fat and was beginning to lose his hair, and he already needed glasses to see things close by’, she told me. ‘But it was him, God damn it, it was him!’ She was frightened because she knew he was seeing her just as diminished as she saw him, and she didn’t think he had as much love inside as she to bear up under it. His shirt was soaked in sweat, as she had seen him the first time at the fair, and he was wearing the same belt, and carrying the same unstitched saddlebags with silver decorations. Bayardo San Róman took a step forward, unconcerned about the other astonished embroiderers, and laid his saddlebags on the sewing machine

‘Well’, he said, ‘here I am’.

He was carrying a suitcase with clothing in order to stay and another just like it with almost two thousand letters that she had written him. They were arranged by date in bundles tied with colored ribbons, and they were all unopened.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Recently by Jahanshah JavidCommentsDate
Hooman Samani: The Kissinger
4
Aug 31, 2012
Eric Bakhtiari: San Francisco 49er
6
Aug 26, 2012
You can help
16
Aug 23, 2012
more from Jahanshah Javid
 
CallmeRed

awesome read

by CallmeRed on

I read the Farsi translation of this book years ago, and I loved it! the translation was really good too....

I give it 4/5 stars!


All-Iranians

Jenab-e JJ

by All-Iranians on

Thank you for this great blog. You may also like to view this

Book Description: "A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister.
Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion, an entire society--not just a pair of murderers—is put on trial." //www.amazon.com/Chronicle-Foretold-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/140003471X

Soosan Khanoom

Thanks for the beautiful introduction to the book ..

by Soosan Khanoom on

I did not read this one but i read " love in the time of Cholera ".  His writings are very sensual and poetic. The book later, was made into a movie but the movie did not do the book any justice. Although, I should say that the soundtrack was amazing.    


Love in the Time of Cholera - Shakira Trailer

 


Souri

Interesting story

by Souri on

I haven't read this book yet, I am now very interested. Jahanshah jon, thanks for sharing this wonderful story with us. There was some minor spelling errors in there, that even me, have noticed! LOL.

But I wish people would come here to discuss the story. This is a very good occasion for a good discussion.

Thanks again.


Red Wine

...

by Red Wine on

فراموش نفرمائید که اصلِ داستان از روی یک حادثهٔ واقعی‌ برداشت شده است و ایشان تنها اسامی و چند صحنه را عوض و بدل کرده است.به هر حال تشابهاتِ فراوانی بینِ این نوشته و آن چیزی که در جامعه [ایرانی‌] ما بدان برخورد می‌کنیم،وجود دارد.این روابطِ سنّتی همواره کار دستِ آدمیانِ احساساتی داده است.

بیچاره گارسیا مارکز که حالا حتی دوستانش را نمیشناسد و از آلزایمر رنج می‌‌بَرد... چه سخت است که به خود بینی‌ پایانِ یک عمرِ پر ماجرا را...یا آنجور که خود چند سالِ قبل گفت:

در ۷۵ سالگی دانستم که انسان تا وقتی فکر می کند نارس است، به رشد و کمال خود ادامه می دهد و به محض آنکه گمان کرد رسیده شده است، دچار آفت می شود. در ۸۰ سالگی پی بردم که دوست داشتن و مورد محبت قرار گرفتن بزرگترین لذت دنیا است. در ۸۵ سالگی دریافتم که همانا زندگی زیباست.

با سپاس .