Free Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Page A

he would come back and marry her, and he had intended to fulfill the commitment until his life changed course because of his love for Luisa Santiaga. He hadrecognized his older child beforea notary and later would do the same with his daughter, but these were no more than byzantine formalities without consequence in the eyes of the law. It is surprising that his irregular conduct could cause moral uneasiness in Colonel Márquez, who had fathered, in addition to his three official children, nine more with different mothers, both before and after his marriage, all of them welcomed byhis wife as if they were her own.
    It is not possible for me to establish when I first heard about these events, but in any case the transgressions of my forebears did not interest me in the slightest. On the other hand, the names in the family attracted my notice because they seemed unique. First those on my mother’s side: Tranquilina, Wenefrida, Francisca Simodosea. Then that of my paternalgrandmother: Argemira, and those of her parents: Lozana and Aminadab. Perhaps this is the origin of my firm belief that the characters in my novels cannot walk on their own feet until they have a name that can be identified with their natures.
    The arguments against Gabriel Eligio were made worse because he was an active member of the Conservative Party, against which Colonel Nicolás Márquez hadfought his wars. The peace declared by the signing of the Neerlandia and Wisconsin accords was only tenuous, for a fledgling centralism was still in power and a good deal of time would have to pass before the Goths and the Liberals stopped baring their teeth at one another. Perhaps the suitor’s Conservatism was more a matter of familial contagion than ideological conviction, but for her familyit outweighed other attributes of his good character, such as his always keen intelligence and proven integrity.
    Papá was a difficult man to see into or to please. He was always very much poorer than he seemed and considered poverty a hateful enemy he could never accept and never defeat. With the same courage and dignity he endured the opposition to his love for Luisa Santiaga, in the back roomof the telegraph office in Aracataca, where he hung a hammock for sleeping alone. But next to it he also had a bachelor’s cot with well-oiled springs for whatever the night might offer him. At one time I was somewhattempted by his furtive hunter’s ways, but life taught me that it is the most arid form of solitude, and I felt great compassion for him.
    Until a short while before his death I wouldhear him say that on one of those difficult days he had to go with several friends to the colonel’s house, and everyone was invited to sit down except him. Her family always denied the story and attributed it to the embers of my father’s resentment, or at least to a false memory, but once my grandmother let it slip in the confessional ravings of her almost one hundred years, which did not seemevoked so much as relived.
    “There’s that poor man standing in the doorway of the living room, and Nicolasito hasn’t asked him to sit down,” she said with true regret.
    Always attentive to her dazzling revelations, I asked who the man was, and her simple reply was:
    “García, the one with the violin.”
    Amid so many absurdities, the one most uncharacteristic of my father was his buying a revolverbecause of what might happen with a warrior at rest like Colonel Márquez. It was a venerable long-barreled Smith & Wesson .38, with who knows how many previous owners or how many deaths it was accountable for. The only certainty is that he never fired it, not even as a warning or out of curiosity. Years later his oldest children found it with its original five bullets in a cupboard full of uselesstrash, next to the violin of his serenades.
    Gabriel Eligio and Luisa Santiaga were not intimidated by the harshness of her family. At first they met on the sly, in the houses of friends, but when the