With the arrival of this 2014 and after I finished writing The Strategist , El Estratega, radio serial that chronicles the personal and warlike of Calixto García , general of the three wars for our independence in the nineteenth century and now broadcasts at 1:30 pm , Monday through Friday , Radio Progreso in its listened program Asi se forjo la patria, so I took the necessary days to organize, for infinite time, my library and general stationery .
Those were days of memories and at the same time anxious moments when having to decide the course of dozens of books that do not let me walk in the house. For now, there are people who benefited from novels, short stories , poems , essays core of world literature . It was a battle against moths and the age of the skirmishes that remain to be defined.
And then came the twist of life. The recent physical departure from this world ( this world? ) , Gabriel García Márquez, coincides for me with the arrangement he had made weeks ago of almost all his novels, short stories and journalistic world most visited site on my bookshelf mahogany with such dignity that has stood the test of time.
The re-read a couple of his novels, in recent months, I became convinced of the overwhelming strength of this powerful literature where boundless imagination makes us discover what we often without being fully aware of their own reality.
Read memorable passages accurately Hundred Years of Solitude and The Colonel has no one writes . It was like going back to first read these two novels , impressive and deep , with excellent dramaturgical domain exposure and develop their arguments. Ignored these days , reading and open combat against moths , the nearest afternoon of April 17 where loneliness had another MRI . It was the time when a yellow butterfly landed on my heart to make you immortal .
And look at you, Gabo , the twists and turns of life, a very vivid memory led me to another evening . It was July 2005 and I walked down the Gran Via in Madrid of Sighs , when a mysterious force led my steps to the first European library that would know . Dazzled by the thousands of books and colors that blinded me at first , since those awesome shelves , I went to stop at the title that impressed me were your memories . It would be the bitterest of my first day in Spain now. Not one euro in my wallet and had thirty costing your memories . I left the bookshop with the anguish of what is played and you do not.
It’s been nine years and I have not read your memory does not mean that I will not. Right now I cram Love in the Time of Cholera and some unexpected story or maybe one of those chronicles that appeared Sunday in Juventud Rebelde newspaper to delight readers .
When now, I write these arguments you will be paying posthumous tribute , in Mexico and Aracataca , thousands of people know I live among the ashes will fly to the wind for the most unexpected ways Caribbean who chose you in this life and forever .
That will be fruitful and the way that I can , in the other life around , read me your memoirs. After all : Many years later, facing the firing squad , Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Perhaps I started to read your memoirs, Gabo .
Translated by: Daysi Olano