... the only thing that gave us security on earth was the
certainty that he was there, invulnerable to plague and hurricane
. . . invulnerable to time, dedicated to the messianic happiness
of thinking for us, knowing that we knew that he would not take
any decision for us that did not have our measure, for he had
not survived everything because of his inconceivable courage
or his infinite prudence but because he was the only one among
us who knew the real size of our destiny.
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... a hundred years already, God damn it, a hundred years
already, the way time passes.
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... more alone than ever under the fierce vigilance of an
escort whose mission didn't seem to be to protect him but to
watch over him ...
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... the regime wasn't being sustained by hope or conformity
or even by terror, but by the pure inertia of an ancient and
irreparable disillusion, go out into the street and look truth
in the face, your excellency, we're on the final curve ...
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... he saw more infamy and more ingratitude than had ever
been seen and wept over by my eyes since the day I was born,
mother ...
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... it was twelve o'clock but General Rodrigo de Aguilar was
not arriving, someone started to get up, please, he said, he
turned him to stone with the fatal look of nobody move, nobody
breathe, nobody live without my permission until twelve o'clock
finished chiming, and then the curtains parted and the distinguished
Major General Rodrigo de Aguilar entered on a silver tray stretched
out full length on a garnish of cauliflower and laurel leaves,
steeped with spices, oven brown, embellished with the uniform
of five golden almonds for solemn occasions and the limitless
loops for valor on the sleeve of his right arm, fourteen pounds
of medals on his chest and a sprig of parsley in his mouth,
ready to be served at a banquet of comrades by the official
carvers to the petrified horror of the guests as without breathing
we witness the exquisite ceremony of carving and serving, and
when every plate held an equal portion of minister of defense
stuffed with pine nuts and aromatic herbs, he gave the order
to begin, eat hearty gentlemen.
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... the only livable life was one of show, the one we saw
from this side which wasn't his ... this poor people's side
...
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... the perfidy within the presidential palace itself ...
the greed within the adulation and the wily servility among
those who flourished under the umbrella of power ...
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... he had tried to compensate for that infamous fate [of
being unable to love] with the burning cultivation of the solitary
vice of power, he had made himself victim of his own sect to
be immolated on the flames of that infinite holocaust, he had
fed on fallacy and crime, he had flourished in impiety and dishonor
and he had put himself above his feverish avarice and his congenital
fear only to keep until the end of time the little glass ball
[his personal symbol of the nation] in his hand without knowing
that it was an endless vice the satiety of which generated its
own appetite until the end of all times general sir ...
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
... as he discovered in the course of his uncountable years
that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than
love, more lasting than truth, he had arrived without surprise
at the ignominious fiction of commanding without power, of being
exalted without glory and of being obeyed without authority
when he became convinced in the trail of yellow leaves of his
autumn that he had never been master of all his power, that
he was condemned not to know life except in reverse, condemned
to decipher the seams and straighten the threads of the woof
and the warp of the tapestry of illusions of reality without
suspecting even too late that the only livable life was one
of show ...
The Autumn of the Patriarch |
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