The Town That Was an Open WoundAuthor(s): Mary E. DavisSource: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 24-43Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40246607 .Accessed: 22/03/2011 15:59

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The Town that Was an Open Wound

MARY E. DAVIS

One is no longer at home anywhere, so in the end one belongs to where one

can somehow be at home because it is the only place where one would wish to

be at home: and that is the world of Greece.

Nietzsche, The Will to Power

In his most recent novel, Cronica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold), Gabriel Garcia Marquez presents a sensational plot in which he recounts the events of an incredible murder. The twin brothers of a bride returned to her parents be- cause she is not a virgin kill the young man accused by the sister of being her lover. The Cronica begins just as Cien afios de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) did, with the prediction of a death, but in this case, the prediction comes true, and by the time the novel has been read the reader understands both the obvious and the secret motivations for the crime. In the confrontation of the town and its victim, Garcia Marquez returns to his favorite subject, the affirmation which can only result from tragedy, and he reveals the importance of the narrated events by using once again the patterning, the characters, and the vocabulary of Greek tragic drama.

On the day on which Santiago Nasar was fated to die at the hands of his most reluctant murderers, he confronted the image of his death in the rabbit being bled in the kitchen of his house. That the image was presented in the heart of the house, that the rabbit was killed by a woman formerly despoiled and later scorned by his father, that the witness of the gory act was the daughter of the same bitter woman - all are narrative signs quite familiar to the readers of Garcia Marquez. Family tragedies which result in individual sacrifice are as characteristic of the Colombian's uni- verse as they were of the uneasy atmosphere of brooding fatality in the drama of Aeschylus.

Comparative Literature Studies ©1986 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

DAVIS 25

The Tragic Pattern

In his earlier novels Garcia Marquez concentrated the primary narrative focus on a single family as it is bombarded by the society surrounding it. Within each of these families, one member will stub- bornly attempt to understand the events of the plot. In the Crônica, he goes beyond the history of one family and weaves together the fatal histories of three interlocked families who must dance the pat- terns of a choreography already old when Aeschylus activated it in the confrontation of Agamemnon, returned from the demolished Troy, and the vengeance-seeking Clytemnestra. Santiago Nasar's family, that of his double Bayardo San Roman, and the family of the scorned bride Angela Vicario are all implicated in this uni- verse of shared guilt.

Garcia Marquez appeared in Cien anos de soledad as a friend of the last Aureliano Buendîa, and in the Crônica he finds another role, that of the reporter who returns to the town twenty-three years after the murder of his friend Santiago Nasar. The family of the reporter is a part of the grisly affair, and he must assume the darker responsibilities of Cassandra if the full meaning of the bi- zarre murder is to be understood. The fictional Garcia Marquez, then, becomes the conscience of the town and of the families whose lethal dance forms the plot. In that role he joins the illus- trious company of the old colonel in La hojarasca and El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, of Ursula Buendîa and the last Aureliano in Cien anos de soledad, and of the anonymous citizens in El otono del patriarca. The reporter's fate is to understand, and in that act Garcia Marquez combines the tragic fate of Oedipus with the clair- voyance of Tiresias. In order to assume his vital role, the reporter must descend into the nether region of the collective psyche. He indicates the importance of his investigation of the town's role in the murder as he interviews Santiago's mother:

Lo viô desde la misma hamaca y en la misma posicion en que la encontre postrada por las ultimas luces de la vejez, cuando volvf a este pueblo olvidado tratando de recom- poner con tantas astillas dispersas el espejo roto de la memoria.1

Since the past records of the murder are incomplete, the reporter must rely on the communal memory to arrive at the significance of Santiago's death. The image of Santiago lives still in the minds of the other characters, and the reporter constantly adjusts his focus to their impressions. As he says of Santiago's mother: "Yo lo vi en su memoria" (p. 14).

26 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Santiago's fate becomes more than a private death. The mur- derous deeds of the plot form a net as insidious and omnipresent as that which Aeschylus wove around Agamemnon. In its deepest sense, Agamemnon's death is understood only by the audience watching the play. In the Crônica, the reporter assembles the memories of the town, and the reader must experience the anag- norisis which reveals the significance of the interaction between the town, the three families, and the reporter's vision.

Concentration upon family tragedies is not the only aspect of the Crônica that reminds the reader of Garcia Marquez 's earlier fiction. The atmosphere of urgent expectation, so propitious as a backdrop for the surreal events that characterize this fictional uni- verse, is as notable in this work as it was in La hojarasca and La mala hora. We are once again plunged into an environment of seething, spectacular violence functioning as a sign that must be deciphered. Within this highly-charged atmosphere are constella- tions of enigmatic characters, families whose fates both determine and are compromised by that of the town surrounding them. Al- though Garcia Marquez 's most significant characters assume mythic proportions, they all carry out the mysterious decrees of destiny within a densely populated and terrifyingly lonely human situa- tion. The trio of extraordinary characters in the drama of the Crônica - Angela Vicario, Santiago Nasar, and Bayardo San Roman - is subjected to mythic exaggeration and catastrophic démythifica- tion, a process to be expected in a universe of circular time. Like Ursula Buendia and Colonel Aureliano, like the Patriarch who en- dures an interminable decline of power, these fabulous beings must rise so that the gods can undo their good fortune. Not all the char- acters, of course, are extraordinary. This town is also the home of ordinary mortals who function as the chorus, and its often mun- dane reactions enable the reader to follow the flow of narrated events.

In the Crônica, Garcia Marquez continues his customary ridicule of the professions. The vacuous boss of the town, Colonel Aponte, demands that Father Amador perform the autopsy on Santiago's body. The ferociousness of the priest's ineptitude strains even Garcia Marquez 's talent for hyperbole:

Fue una masacre, consumada en el local de la escuela publica con la ayuda del boticario que tomô las notas, y un estudiante del primer ano de medicina que estaba aqui de vacaciones. Solo dispusieron de algunos instrumentas de cirugfa menor, y el resto fueron hierros de artesanos. Pero al margen del los destrozos en el cuerpo, el informe del padre Amador parecia correcte, y el instructor lo incorporé al sumario como una pieza util. (p. 98)

DAVIS 27

Garcia Manquez particularly enjoys making fun of the investigating magistrate, a nameless recent graduate of law school, who writes the official version of the murder of Santiago Nasar. The judge's reading of Nietzsche should have prepared him for the tragedy which he in- vestigates, but instead he is continually amazed:

Es tab a tan perplejo con el enigma que le habia tocado en suerte, que muchas veces incurriô en distracciones liricas contrarias al rigor de su oficio. Sobre todo, nunca le pareciô legitimo que la vida se sirviera de tantas casualidades pro- hibidas a la literatura, para que se cumpliera sin tropiezos una muerte tan anunciada. (p. 130)

Although the glosses with which the magistrate illuminates his re- port are some of the most humorous commentaries on Santiago's death, the reader quickly senses that the judge has lost his bearings. In the end, the reader can trust only the reporter who meditates continually on the meaning of Santiago's death. On the morning of the funeral, he tells us: "Pensaba en la ferocidad del destino de Santiago Nasar, que le habia cobrado 20 anos de dicha no solo con la muerte, sino ademâs con el descuartizimiento del cuerpo, y con su dispersion y exterminio" (p. 102). Ultimately, the magistrate, Col. Aponte, and the priest who carves up Santiago's body - all of the professional characters are unable to prevent or even to under- stand the strange fate of Santiago Nasar.

The peculiar combination of reality and fantasy, which Garcia

Marquez has manipulated with ease since the publication of his earliest prose, disguises the tragic pattern underlying the provin- cial murder. Dreams predict coming dire events. Heraldic animals forecast the symbolic roles of the primary characters in the tragedy. Extraordinary events - the celebration of Angela Vicario's mar-

riage to Bayardo San Roman and the arrival of the bishop the next

morning - form the backdrop of the sensational plot. Santiago Nasar has a talent for assuming disguises, but his most important role in this drama, that of the sacrificial scapegoat, is hidden even from his own understanding.

The abiding presence of tragic structure provides the necessary stability for a text which constantly threatens to spiral into infin- ity, an aspect of Garcia Marquez 's style that creates a sensation of vertigo on the part of the reader. The identity of the person re-

sponsible for the lampoons that provoke the several disasters of La mala hora, the mysterious identity of the strange doctor in La hojarasca, the inevitable reappearance of Melquiades in Cien anos de soledad - all insert that fundamental ambiguity neces-

28 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

sary in texts whose mission it is to question the very laws of the universe. When Cien afios de soledad turns out to be a Sanscrit text written by Melquîades himself, not even the last Aureliano is surprised. Similarly in the Crônica, the text written by the magistrate and the "text" of memories which the reporter and the town compose both help the reader navigate through a universe of shifting boundaries, a world in which the images of dreams or the turn of a card or the sudden, capricious return to an old habit may be important signposts.

Crônica de una muerte anunciada is a return to the more concise style of Garcia Marquez 's earlier novels. This is not the dense nar- rative field of Cien afios de soledad. The family histories do not project vertiginously into the past or future. Whereas the earlier novels are much like Aeschylus 's working out of the fate of the house of Atreus, the Crônica concentrates upon one round of ad- ventures, and those deeds are given the weight necessary to com- promise the entire history of the town. We are once again in a nar- rative web much like that of the short story "El ahogado mas her- moso del mundo," in which supernatural events in the present occur against the backdrop of tragedy. Garcia Marquez tells the reader of the crime and of its victim at the outset of the Crônica, and the narration can then explore the motivation for the murder and the powerlessness of the town to prevent a death insidiously foretold.

Rather than building up generations of characters and delving into the deep history of the town as he did in Cien afios de soledad, Garcia Marquez gives the reader obvious clues both in vocabulary and in the structure of events that will indicate the tragic drama at hand. Early on in the novel, he complains that his mother is un- aware of "el palpito de la tragedia" (p. 31) underlying the events. The vocabulary peculiar to tragedy informs all those significant opinions, usually presented by the reporter, of the several actors in the tragic drama:

Para la inmensa mayona solo hubo una vîctima: Bayardo San Roman. Suponfan que los otros protagonistas de la tragedia habîan cumplido con dignidad, y hasta con cierta grandeza, la parte de favor que la vida les tenïa sefialada. Santiago Nasar habîa expiado la injuria, los hermanos Vi- cario habîan probado su condiciôn de hombres, y la her- mana burlada estaba otra vez en posesiôn de su honor, (pp. 109-110)

DAVIS 29

As he had in Cien afios de soledad, Garcia Marquez underscores the tragic irony of the events narrated by turning those classical expec- tations against themselves. As he reveals the reactions to Santiago's murder, the reporter is acutely aware of the bad conscience pla- guing the inhabitants of the town, and he implies that even the mem- bers of the chorus try to use the aspects of tragedy to exonerate their guilt: "Pero la mayorîa de quienes pudieron hacer algo por impedir el crimen y sin embargo no lo hicieron, se consolaron con el pretexto de que los asuntos de honor son estancos sagrados a los cuales solo tienen acceso los duenos del drama" (p. 127).

Of course, the reader knows that each character has a share in the "sacred monopoly," and, although each actor will not under- stand the drama, the reporter reveals how desperate is the attempt made by the town to sort out its communal guilt.

Durante anos no pudimos hablar de otra cosa. Nuestra con- ducta diaria, dominada hasta entonces por tantos hâbitos lineales, habia empezado a girar de golpe en torno de una misma ansiedad comûn. Nos sorprendîan los gall os del amanecer tratando de ordenar las numerosas casualidades encadenadas que habîan hecho posible el absurdo, y era évidente que no lo hacîamos por un anhelo de esclarecer misterios, sino porque ninguno de nosotros podia seguir viviendo sin saber con exactitud cual era el sitio y la misiôn que le habîa asignado la fatalidad. (p. 126)

In addition to being more concise than his recent novels have been, the Crônica is a more ironic text than its predecessors. Sev- eral characters in Cien afios de soledad had escaped the destiny which the cards held for them. These misdirections of fate were often the result of an erroneous reading of the cards. In the Cronica, all the primary characters except Santiago Nasar outwit (or out- live) their fate. At times Garcia Marquez uses his former strategy of implying that the original supposition, the first reading of the cards, was in error. More often, the action shows that there is a more profound force at work in the obscure lives of the town's inhabitants than even the reporter understands. As always, the tragic patterns in his fiction indicate that the ordinary events being narrated are to be judged against a larger frame. The Crônica ex- tends the ironic mode of narration with the spiraling nature of fate itself: in this village, it is man's fate to live out his fate and to cir- cumvent that same destiny, to live a fate within a fate. These des- tinies constantly mirror each other, and the most fortunate char- acters find that what appeared to be a death sentence was in reality

30 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

only the antechamber of another, sometimes opposite, sometimes more appropriate, fate. In his essay on Garcia Marquez, V. S. Pritch- ett maintains that in this narrative universe, "life is ephemeral but dignified by fatality. . . ."2

The Presence of William Faulkner

The tragic field from which the plot develops, the enigmatic, larger-than-life characters, the circular time which surrounds the action, and the impression that the town contains all the potential for good and evil indicate Garcia Marquez 's fondness for the fiction of William Faulkner. More than all the other literary descendents of the Mississippian who enliven the novel and short story in Latin America, Garcia Marquez has assimilated the atmosphere of Greek tragedy as it was reactivated by Faulkner. It has been customary for the Colombian to leave hints of his reading of Faulkner liberally sprinkled throughout his earlier texts, and in the Crontca, there are similar clues. The role of the reporter, the character who simul- taneously participates in the action and judges it, is much like that of the reporter in Faulkner's early novel Pylon. The name of the suitor Bayardo San Roman recalls Bayard Sartoris, who appears in Sartoris and "An Odor of Verbena," from the collection The Un- vanquished. In each case, Garcia Marquez reiterates the function as well as the name of these Faulknerian analogs. In Pylon and the Crônica, the reporter directly influences those episodes which he narrates. Bayard is in both instances a young man undergoing ini- tiation into adult life. The chorus of minor characters whose opin- ions are ironically placed in apposition is as common in the Colom- bian town as it was in Jefferson. The delight of Garcia Marquez in lampooning the professions can be traced to those subtle configura- tions of judges, lawyers, and doctors in Yoknapatawpha County. At times, certain members of the professions are such intriguing personalities that they escape the stereotypes which they represent. Garcia Marquez made significant use of both the mayor and the dentist in La mala hora. The strange doctor who eventually refuses to practice in La hojarasca actually provokes the action of the novel, even though he is dead from the first page.

The inevitably tragic nature of the lives of the characters is the most notable trait that Garcia Marquez has assimilated from Faulk- ner. Carlos Fuentes, in an admirable essay on the importance of Faulkner for the contemporary novel, compares Faulkner's char- acters with those of the great nineteenth-century masters Balzac and Melville:

DAVIS 31

Pero Faulkner ya no los situa en el tiempo linear y el espacio ilustrativo de la novela clâsica: sus obras ocupan el tiempo circular y el espacio vacîo de la tragedia. De este modo, Faulk- ner lleva a su conclusion radical la bûsqueda simbôlica de Mel- ville: si el sîmbolo es la brûjula de lo desconocido, lo descono- cido en si es la terra ignota del mundo moderno. En esa tierra, devastada, despoblada, abandonada por las exigencias comunes de la revelaciôn cristiana y la razôn filosôfica, desembarca Faulkner. Llega a ella amarrado, como Odiseo, como el pro- tagonista de El Viejo a los troncos de las balsas en las tumultuo- sas crecidas del Mississippi: escucharâ el canto de las sirenas, y las sirenas cantarân con la voz del coro de Agamemnon: 'La raza esta soldada a la desgracia.'3

It is the exploration of the unknown that characterizes the medi- tations of the reporter in the Cronica, and with his help, the reader arrives at the same understanding of fate that is the reward of reading the complex fiction of William Faulkner.

Although Garcia Marquez has mastered the tragic world view of the Greeks and of Faulkner, he has simultaneously combined that atmosphere with the humor and hyperbole that are the hallmarks of some of Faulkner's short stories and are the basis for the pre- sentation of certain of his characters. It is not unusual for Garcia Marquez 's characters to entertain the reader with Faulknerian tall tales while they are immersed in otherwise tragic circumstances. Garcia Marquez learned from his grandparents the art of oral nar- ration, and his characters deliver both their own personalities and their opinions about other characters in inimitable turns of phrase. Both he and Faulkner frequently distinguish their characters' sta- tion in life by their idiosyncratic speech. No matter how dire are the events narrated, the characters (and their creators) relish nar- rating them. The events of the plot of the Crbnica are reminiscent of one of the plots of Faulkner's masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom! An affair of honor in which most of the participants are unaware of their roles in the ritual forms the basis for a narration as baroque in the hands of Garcia Marquez as it was in Faulkner's. In the Crôn- ica, humor characterizes the situation of the town as it tries by any method to prevent the murder which almost everyone knows will occur. Early in the narration, the reader, with the help of the re- porter, understands the events better than most of the characters, and the resulting dramatic irony gives Garcia Marquez additional freedom to emphasize the entertaining moments of the crime which cannot be avoided. Even aspects of the murder itself are treated humorously; Santiago Nasar ultimately is killed because his mother locks the front door of the house. Even though the protagonists in

32 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

the drama cannot avoid their fate, they endure it with the grace that was the element in human life that most attracted the admiration of Faulkner.

Garcia Marquez has, in the Crônica, created a Faulknerian detec- tive story, a narration of a crime which is described almost immedi- ately, so that the entire focus of the novel can fall upon the partici- pants and their motives. As these develop, the reader immediately understands that the archetypal models for the protagonists are old and many times used, and that the motivations for the crime are as ancient as Greek drama. The originality of the work lies in the com- bination of traditional elements, the Faulknerian atmosphere of making fun of and using these same elements to their hyperbolic extension, and Garcia Marquez 's highly idiosyncratic sense of humor. In order to appreciate his synthesis of these elements, we will con- sider the town which provides the setting for the novel, the houses of the families of primary importance, and the role of the major characters.

The Setting for Tragedy

The setting of the crime is the small town which pervades the fiction of Garcia Marquez. The citizens of the town all know each other, and they react to each other as members of an extended family. On the day of the murder, the town, barely recovered from the orgy of celebration which had accompanied the marriage of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman the day before, is in a state of feverish excitement over the expected visit of the bishop. Garcia Marquez incorporates his customary field of symbolic elements in the descriptions of the setting which are scattered through the opening chapter. When the bishop's boat appears, it does not stop, but its arrival creates the atmosphere for the special day: "Aparecio en la vuelta del rib, rezongando como un dragon, y entonces la banda de mûsicos empezô a tocar el himno del obispo, y los gallos se pu- sieron a cantar en los huacales y alborotaron a los otros gallos del pueblo" (p. 26) Santiago Nasar, the unwitting knight, must con- front the dragon of his own death, and he must do so because of a strange act of treachery predicted by the crowing of many cocks. In the early novel La mala hora, anonymous pasquinades had cre- ated havoc in a town suffering from a guilty conscience, and in the town of the Crbnica, several anonymous messages are delivered, warnings which should have saved Santiago's life:

DAVIS 33

Alguien que nunca fue identificado habia metido por debajo de la puerta un papel dentro de un sobre, en el cual le avisaban a Santiago Nasar que lo estaban esperando para matarlo, y le revelaban ademas el lugar y los motivos, y otros detalles muy precisos de la intriga. El mensaje estaba en el suelo cuando Santiago Nasar saliô de su casa, pero el no lo vio, ni lo vio Divina Flor ni lo vio nadie hasta mucho después de que el crimen fue consumado. (p. 23)

The atmosphere of the day of the murder complements that of the night before. The revelry connected with the celebration of the wedding is relieved by lyrical moments of vibrant intensity. Santiago Nasar and his friends (one of whom will later return as the reporter) serenade the newlyweds at the house which the couple has precipi- tously abandoned. The night is a magical one:

la luna estaba en el centro del cielo, y el aire era diâfano, y en el fondo del precipicio se veia el reguero de luz de los fuegos fatuos en el cementerio. Del otro lado se divisaban los sembrados de plâtanos azules bajo la luna, las ciénagas tristes y la lînea fos- forescente del Caribe en el horizonte. Santiago Nasar senalô una lumbre intermitente en el mar, y nos dijo que era el anima en pena de un barco negrero que se habîa hundido con un cargamento de esclavos del Senegal frente a la boca grande de Cartagena de Indias. (p. 89)

Garcia Marquez has included descriptions such as this one in each stage of his fiction. The sparkling Caribbean is capable of producing wonders no less spectacular than those which originated in the Ae- gean. The elements which should promise good fortune - the several kinds of light, the moon, the ship on the sea - ironically foreshadow Santiago's death. The moon is the goddess Diana seeking another sac- rificial victim. Saint Elmo's fire indicates the presence of restless spirits in the cemetery, souls as unquiet as that of the slave ship which Santiago imagines from the light on the sea. The bad con- science which the reporter is unable to attribute to Santiago comes to be the prime characteristic of the town after Santiago's death. "Doce dîas después del crimen, el instructor del sumario se encontro con un pueblo en carne viva" (p. 128). When the reporter arrives twenty years later to recapture the event, the wound has not healed, and Santiago's death has not been understood.

34 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

The Interior Stage

Within the environment of the town, Garcia Marquez describes at length the houses which are the backdrops for the most impor- tant characters. The most unassuming house is that of Angela Vi- cario, but the description of it contains disquieting clues:

La familia Vicario vivîa en una casa modesta, con paredes de ladrillos y un techo de palm a rematado por dos buhardas donde se metîan a empollar las golondrinas en enero. Tenîa en el frente una terraza ocupada casi por completo con macetas de flores, y un patio grande con gallinas sueltas y ârboles frutales. En el fondo del patio, los gemelos tenîan un criadero de cerdos, con su piedra de sacrificios y su mesa de dcstazar, que fue una buena fuente de recursos domésticos desde que a Poncio Vicario se le acabô la vista. El negocio lo habia empezado Pedro Vicario, pero cuando este se fue al servicio militar, su hermano gemelo aprendiô también el oficio de matarife. (p. 55)

The brothers who will avenge Angela's honor are accustomed to wielding large knives, and they have no fear of the sacrificial stone that they must confront as a part of their daily life. In contrast to the houses of the other characters, only public rooms offer shelter to Bayardo San Roman, and after his betrothal he decides to buy the house of the widower Xius, which Angela Vicario had chosen because it was "the prettiest house in town." "Estaba en una co- lina barrida por los vientos, y desde la terraza se veîa el paraiso sin limite de las ciénagas cubiertas de anémonas moradas. . ." (p. 49). The beauty of the house takes on the same sinister connotations that are present in the description of the night before the murder. Bayardo San Roman forces the widower Xius to sell him the house, even though it contains all the older man's memories of the past. The widower dies soon after giving up his house, and the marriage is planned under the bad auspices of his death. After the failure of the marriage, the house continues to be associated with the ill for- tunes of its owner:

La quinta empezô a desmigajarse. El coche de bodas se fue desbaratando en la puerta, y al final no quedô sino la carcacha podrida por la intempérie. Durante muchos anos no se volviô a saber nada de su dueno. Hay una declaracion suya en el sumario, pero es tan breve y convencional, que parece remendada a ultima hora para cumplir con una formula ineludible. (p. 1 14)

DAVIS 35

Santiago Nasar's house is presented most elaborately, and Garcia Marquez uses its history to reveal that of the Nasar family, a history constantly intertwined with commerce.

La casa era un antiguo depôsito de dos pisos, con paredes de tablones bastos y un techo de cine de dos aguas, sobre el eu al velaban los gallinazos por los desperdicios del puerto. Habia sido construido en los tiempos en que el rïo era tan servicial que muchas barcazas de mar, e inclusive aigu no s barcos de altura, se aventuraban hasta aquî a través de las ciénagas del estuario. Cuanao vino Ibrahim Nasar con los ûltimos arabes, al término de las guerras civiles, ya no llegaban los barcos de mar debido a las mudanzas del rîo, y el depôsito estaba en desuso. Ibrahim Nasar lo comprô a cualquier precio para poner una tienda de importaciôn que nunca puso, y solo cuando se iba a casar lo convirtiô en una casa para vivir. (pp. 18-19)

One of the ironies of Santiago's fate is emphasized in the descrip- tion of the doors of the house; the rear door being

la puerta de mas uso, no solo porque fuera el acceso natural a las pesebres y la cocina, sino porque daba a la calle del puerto nuevo sin pasar por la plaza. La puerta de frente, salvo en ocasiones festivas, permanecia cerrada y con tranca. Sin embargo, fue por allî, y no por la puerta posterior, por donde esperaban a Santiago Nasar los hombres que lo iban a matar. ... (p. 20)

The most important room in the Nasar house is the kitchen, the room to which Santiago returns to die. On the morning of his mur- der, Santiago drinks coffee in the kitchen and observes the disem- boweling of the rabbits. At this precise instant, Garcia Marquez brings the kitchen alive through personification: "La cocina énorme, con el cuchicheo de la lumbre y las gallinas dormidas en las perchas, tenia una respiracion sigilosa" (p. 16). The brooding watchfulness of the kitchen recalls Aeschylus's description of Agamemnon's wait- ing home: "The house itself, if it could find a tongue, would speak the truth." Although he is attacked at the front door, Santiago man- ages, in spite of his many stab wounds, to walk around the house. "Después entro en su casa por la puerta trasera, que estaba abierta desde las seis, y se derrumbo de bruces en la cocina" (p. 156).

36 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Family Tragedies

Santiago must return to his house to die, and he comes back to the precise point at which his fateful day began. He was forced to return to the kitchen because his mother locked the front door. So it is that the characters in Garcia Marquez 's fiction are usually ex- tensions of complex families. In the Crônica, three families are ex- plored in detail, and the family of the reporter has an active role in the action, even though the narrator does not give the history of his family in the depth accorded to the others. The family of Santiago Nasar is much like that established by Thomas Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom! Garcia Marquez weaves the family's state into his first description of Santiago:

Habîa cumplido 21 anos la ultima semana de enero, y era esbelto y pâlido, y tenîa los pârpados arabes y los cabellos rizados de su padre. Era el hijo ûnico de un matrimonio de conveniencia que no tuvo un solo instante de felicidad, pero él parecîa feliz con su padre hasta que este muriô de repente, très anos antes, y siguiô pareciéndolo con la madré solitaria hasta el lunes de su muerte. De ella heredô el instinto. De su padre aprendiô desde muy nino el dominio de las armas de fuego, el amor por los caballos y la maestranza de las aves de presas al tas, pero de él aprendiô también las buenas artes del valor y la prudencia. (p. 14)

Santiago both extends and improves his genetic inheritance, but his death is as much a result of the negative characteristics of his parents as it is of any of his own deeds.

Bayardo San Roman reveals his family only when it is necessary to do so in order to marry Angela Vicario. He himself had a mythic past about which the town speculated endlessly. In order to put an end to these conjectures, he introduces a spectacular family: his mother is the most beautiful of the 200 most beautiful women of the Antilles; there are two sisters who resembled young fillies, and, most impressive of all, his father is "una de las glorias mayores del regimen conservador" (p. 47). As the family arrives in the town, the father captures all eyes:

Fue el primero que se bajô del automôvil, cubierto por com- pleto por el polvo ardiente de nuestros malos caminos, y no tuvo mas que aparecer en el pescante para que todo el mundo se diera cuenta de que Bayardo San Roman se iba a casar con quién quisiera. (p. 47)

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Bayardo assumes more independence from his family than does Santiago Nasar, but he is doomed to repeat the dominant character- istics that he has inherited.

Angela Vicario comes from a poor family, and the family itself is seduced by the fabulous wealth of Bayardo San Roman. She and her four sisters had been strictly brought up by a self-sacrificing mother, whose mode of up-bringing was curiously old-fashioned: "A difer- encia de las muchachas de la época, que habîan descuidado el culto de la muerte, las cuatro eran maestras en la ciencia antigua de velar a los enfermos, confortar a los moribundos y amortajar a los muer- tos" (p. 44). Although the family is excited by the prospect of the marriage, Angela has certain character flaws that will doom the mar- riage even before it is arranged.

Angela Vicario era la mas bella de las cuatro, y mi madré decîa que habîa nacido como las grandes reinas de la historia con el cordon umbilical enrollado en el cuello. Pero tenfa un aire desamparado y una pobreza de espîritu que le auguraban un porvenir incierto. [. . .] De pronto, poco antes del luto de la hermana, la encontre en la calle por primera vez, vestida de mujer y con el cabello rizado, y apenas si pude créer que fuera la misma. Pero fue una vision momentanea: su penuria de espîritu se agravaba con los anos. Tanto, que cuando se supo que Bayardo San Roman querîa casarse con ella, muchos pen- saron que era una perfidia de forastero. (pp. 44-45)

Although Angela resists her family's scheme, she is trapped, just as the daughter of the old colonel had been in La hojarasca. "Adernas, Bayardo San Roman no habia intentado siquiera seducirla a ella, sino que hechizô a la familia con sus encantos. Angela Vicario no olvido nunca el horror de la noche en que sus padres y sus hermanas mayores con sus maridos, reunidos en la sala de la casa, le impusieron la obligacion de casarse con un hombre que apenas habia visto" (p. 48). Her stoic acquiescence sets the stage for the murder of Santiago Nasar and the doom of all her family's hopes.

A Universe of Guilt

Garcia Marquez presents his characters as citizens of a closely- knit town, as inhabitants of a particular house, and as members of a singular family. As the reader attempts to determine who is re- sponsible for the guilt in the crime narrated in the Crônica, he is confronted with an endless series of Chinese boxes: Angela Vicario is to blame for accusing Santiago Nasar of being the cause of her re- turn to her parents; her family is to blame for forcing her to marry

38 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Bayardo San Roman; Bayardo San Roman is to blame for buying his way into an acceptable marriage; his parents are to blame for esteeming appearances above reality; and, most of all, the town is to blame for failing to prevent the murder about which so much was known in advance. In his discussion of the differences between tragedy and melodrama, Fuentes maintains that this universe of guilt is one of the distinguishing features of tragedy:

Los premios y castigos de la historia no son los de la tragedia: 'Las fuerzas que se confrontan en la tragedia - explica Albert Camus - son igualmente légitimas . . .' En el melodrama o el drama, por el contrario, solo una es légitima. Dicho de otra manera, la tragedia es ambigu a, el drama simplista ... En sum a, la formula del melodrama serîa: solo uno es justo y justificable, en tanto que la formula trâgica por excelencia séria: todos son justificables, pero nadie es justo (p. 57).

The most intense focus in the drama falls upon the three pri- mary characters in the tragedy, and the doubles, Santiago Nasar and Bayardo San Roman, initially assume more importance in the narration. Ostensibly murdered because Angela Vicario accuses him of being responsible for her deflowering before her marriage, Santiago is presented as an almost medieval lord, one who lives by a rigorous code, is good company to his friends, and spends the last few hours of his life speculating as to the cost of the wedding of Angela and Bayardo.

Images Which Reveal Character

Garcia Marquez makes Santiago the scapegoat for the action, but he is not a totally innocent victim. The hidden aspects of his persona are revealed in a group of images which combine classical, medieval, and modern figures in a Gestalt which would have pleased T. S. Eliot. Just before he awoke on the day of his death, Santiago was dreaming one version of a customary dream: "Habia son ado que atravesaba un bosque de higuerones donde caia una llovizna tierna, y por un instante fue feliz en el sueno, pero al despertar se sintio por completo salpicado de cagada de pàjaros" (p. 9). His mother later tells the reporter of another dream of Santiago's: "iba solo en un avion de papel de estano que volaba sin tropezar por entre los almendros" (p. 9). Garcia Marquez stresses this "ominous augury," and as is customary when deciphering one of his texts, the reader has to interpret the images. Groves of trees have traditionally been associated with religious rites, particularly those concerned with fer- tility cults and seasonal sacrifices.4

DAVIS 39

Although almond trees may be associated with fertility, they also have more ominous connotations with the need for vigilance, with prophecies concerning the hour of death, and with death itself: "cya- nide is supposed to taste like 'bitter almonds'" (De Vries, p. 10). In Cien anos de soledad, José Arcadio Buendîa had discovered a way to make the almond trees of Macondo immortal, but their very immor- tality contrasts ironically with the destruction of the Buendia family. The use of the modern phallic symbol of the airplane is reminiscent of Faulkner's constant association of death, love, and the tiny air- planes used in the Battle of Britain in his early short stories and in Sartoris.

The foreboding of Santiago's dreams is reiterated in the epigraph for the novel: Gil Vicente's "la caza de amor es de altaneria." Im- ages from falconry thread the entire narration, and each of them refers to Santiago. As he leaves the house on the day of his death, Santiago grabs Divina Flor, the daughter of his father's former mis- tress, with his "mano de gavilân carnicero" (p. 22). Later on, the reporter recounts Santiago's spectacular romance with the town's most elegant prostitute, Maria Alejandra Cervantes, and he warns Santiago: "Halcon que se atreve con garza guerrera, peligros espéra" (p. 87). He was too haughty to have been interested in a person of Angela's humble origin, and his friends characterized this very as- pect of his personality: "como decfamos entonces, el era un gavilân pollero. Andaba solo, igual que su padre, cortândole el cogollo a cuanta doncella sin rumbo empezaba a despuntar por esos montes" (p. 117-18). Although the hawk has heraldic connotations with the soul and with the solar gods, it is also a sign of vengeance, of feroc- ity and brute violence, and of voracious lust (De Vries, pp. 240- 241). Santiago is eventually hunted and killed just as the rapacious hawks which he trains hunt and destroy their prey.

As he passes the milk shop on his way to see the bishop, Santi- ago's image reverberates in the light of the new day: "Clotilde Armenta, la duena del negocio, fue la primera que lo vio en el res- plandor del alba, y tuvo la impresion de que estaba vestido de aluminio. 'Ya parecîa un fantasma,' me dijo" (p. 24). Like the Tin Man from The Wizard ofOz, Santiago suffers the absence of a heart. The form of hubris which provokes Santiago's doom attracts an almost accidental retribution. As Angela's brothers demand the name of her seducer,

Ella se demorô apenas el tiempo necesario para decir el nombre. Lo busco en las tinieblas, lo encontrô a primera vista entre los tantos y tantos nombres confundibles de este mundo y del otro,

40 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

y lo dejô clavado en la pared con su dardo certero, como a una mariposa sin albedrfo cuya sentencia estaba escrita desde siempre.

- Santiago Nasar- dijo. (p. 65)

In the image of the butterfly, Garcia Marquez reactivates one of Ovid's symbols for death and an equally ancient image for frivo- lous love. De Vries shows that the butterfly can indicate a forth- coming marriage or it can predict an ability for "the art of flying crooked and still reaching one's goal" (p. 72). No matter how many turns Santiago will take through the streets of the town, he will have to face Angela's brothers at the door of his house.

Bayardo San Roman is in many ways Santiago's opposite. He is the mysterious stranger who arrives trailing rumors of a fabulous past and of equally fabulous wealth. The appearance of his family does nothing to dispell his mythic image. Several women in the town are determined to snare Bayardo, but he is immune to their efforts. The reporter's mother describes him to her son in long let- ters. Her opinions are conflicting, but she finally decides that his golden eyes remind her of the devil. The reporter himself realizes that Bayardo is a complex individual:

Lo conocî poco después que ella, cuando vine a las vacaciones de Navidad, y no lo encontre tan raro como decfan. Me parecio atractivo, en efecto, pero muy lejos de la vision idîlica de Magda- lena Oliver. Me pareciô mas serio de lo que hacian créer sus tra- vesuras, y de una tension recondita apenas disimulada por sus gracias excesivas. Pero sobre todo, me pareciô un hombre muy triste, (pp. 39-40)

Bayardo 's will seems to be strong enough to carry everything before it. He woos the family of Angela Vicario; he convinces the widower Xius to sell him his house; and he intimidates Angela so much that she marries him without love. Garcia Marquez succinctly presents the illusions with which Bayardo marries: "Bayardo San Roman, por su parte, debio casarse con la ilusiôn de comprar la felicidad con el peso descomunal de su poder y su fortuna, pues cuanto mas aumentaban los planes de la fiesta mas ideas de delirio se le ocurrian para hacerla mas grande" (p. 53).

Garcia Marquez constantly uses the motif of a card game to de- scribe the strange wedding, and he holds a few cards which not even the bride and groom understand. The reporter's mother says that Angela "hubiera jugado sus cartas marcadas hasta las ultimas consecuencias" (p. 57). About the other players, the reporter specu- lates: "nadie ha sabido todavîa con que cartas jugô Bayardo San

DAVIS 41

Roman. Desde que aparecio por fin de levita y chistera, hasta que se fugo del baile con la criatura de sus tormentos, fue la imagen per- fecta del novio feliz. Tampoco se supo nunca con que cartas jugo Santiago Nasar" (p. 57).

Since neither of the participants entered into the marriage with honor, each of them must suffer the consequences. Bayardo's re- action is more extreme than Angela's: he barricades himself in the new house and attempts to obliterate the present through alcohol. His fate is constantly connected both with Santiago's and with his family. Just as Santiago must live out the character faults of his parents, Bayardo must expiate the driving concern for social ap- pearances that characterizes his family. Their reaction to the dis- aster of the marriage is as extreme and stylized as that of the Greek families to the death of classical heroes:

Vinieron en un buque de carga, cerradas de luto hasta el cuello por la desgracia de Bayardo San Roman, y con los cabellos sueltos de dolor. Antes de pisar tierra firme se quitaron los zapatos y atravesaron las calles hasta la colina caminando descalzas en el polvo ardiente del medio dîa, arrancândose mechones de raîz y llorando con gritos tan desgarradores que parecîan de jûbilo. (pp. 111-12)

Bayardo is carried away in a hammock, and the reporter describes the traces of the stranger in the consciousness of the town: "Eso fue lo ultimo que nos quedô de él: un recuerdo de vîctima" (pp. 112-13). He exists only for Angela Vicario, as a source of endless nostalgia for the brief encounter of the wedding night. Bayardo's expiation is a long one. He is not heard from again until he appears on Angela's doorstep, shorn of his illusions, of his physical beauty, and of half his life.

The Victims

Garcia Marquez uses the term "victim" for both Santiago and Bayardo. The town and the reporter speculate as to the guilt or innocence of Santiago, and their opinion as to Bayardo's inno- cence seems to be a foregone conclusion. Both men accept their fates with grace, a process described in detail in Santiago's case:

La manana de su muerte, en efecto, Santiago Nasar no habia tenido un instante de duda, a pesar de que sabia muy bien cual hubiera sido el precio de la injuria que le imputaban. Conocîa la îhdole mojigata de su mundo, y debîa saber que la naturaleza

42 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

simple de los gemelos no era capaz de resistir al escarnio. Nadie conocfa muy bien a Bayardo San Roman, pero Santiago Nasar lo conocia bastante para saber que debajo de sus mfulas mundanas estaba tan subordinado como cualquier otro a sus prejuicios de origen. De manera que su despreocupaciôn consciente hubiera sido suicida, (pp. 131-32)

The innocence of both victims is never clearly resolved. The third member of the triangle, Angela Vicario, is never presented as inno- cent, yet it is she who comes to understand at least her role in the tragedy. She spends the twenty years after the murder buried alive in a small village in the interior. She narrates the changes in her per- sonality to the reporter when he interviews her as part of his investi- gation. She has realized that it is her fate to love her lost husband: "Le bastaba cerrar los ojos para verlo, lo oîa respirar en el mar, la despertaba a media noche el fogaje de su cuerpo en la cama. A fines de esa semana, sin haber conseguido un minuto de sosiego, le es- cribio la primera carta" (p. 121). Her letters become an instrument through which Angela gradually understands herself. She is as fear- less in her solitary love as she was earlier in assuming the conse- quences of not loving Bayardo. Her courage is so great that she does not falter when Bayardo appears again: "Se asusto, porque sabîa que él la estaba viendo tan disminuida como ella lo estaba viendo a él y no creîa que tuviera dentro tanto amor como ella para sopor- tarlo" (p. 124). Bayardo has, however, outgrown his obsession with appearances. "Llevaba la maleta de la ropa para quedarse, y otra maleta igual con casi dos mil cartas que ella le habîa escrito. Estaban ordenadas por sus fechas, en paquetes cosidos con cintas de colores, y todas sin abrir" (p. 125).

Affirmations

Just as the last Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula in Cien anos de soledad learn that the family plot was staged so that they could fall in love, so Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman must suffer the painful events of the Crônica before they can understand each other. Their reunion is a part of the affirmation that results from the cathar- sis of tragedy. Fuentes explains: "Para Nietzsche la tragedia es propo- sicion de afirmaciones multiples. [. . .] La tragedia expresa la contra- diccion entre el principio individual y el principio totalizante, entre el sufrimiento y la vida, pero lo tragico no reside en la incompati- bilidad del conflicto, sino en la paradojica alegria de la afirmacion multiple" (p. 71). For the town and for the reporter, the attempt to understand the events surrounding the murder of Santiago has

DAVIS 43

created a new consciousness. For Angela and Bayardo, love develops at last from a painful disaster.

Garcia Marquez insures that the reader will undergo the catharsis by the method of prolonged suspense which postpones the narration of Santiago's murder until the last pages of the novel. Since the re- porter's investigation has revealed the hidden motivations both for the ruined wedding and for the murder which it provokes, the read- er understands the deed and its results better than any of the char- acters. Garcia Marquez reaffirms that peculiar joy which comes from a story well told. Once again, character is fate, and for the town that was an open wound, that fate had to be discovered through fiction.

MARY E. DAVIS • University of Oklahoma

NOTES

1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cronica de una muerte anunciada (Bogota: Editorial La Oveja Negra, 1981), p. 13. Published in English as Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983). Subsequent citations appear within the text.

2. V. S. Pritchett, The Mythmakers (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), p. 169. 3. Carlos Fuentes, "La novela como tragedia: William Faulkner," in Casa con dos

puertas (Mexico: Joaquin Mortiz, 1970), p. 61. 4. Ad de Vries, Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery (Amsterdam & London: North-

Holland, 1974), p. 229.