Death Constant Beyond Love

“Before he lay down he put in a glass of drinking water the rose he had kept alive all across the desert, lunched on the diet cereals that he took with him so as to avoid the repeated portions of fried goat that were waiting for him during the rest of the day, and he took several analgesic pills before the time prescribed so that he would have the remedy ahead of the pain. Then he put the electric fan close to the hammock and stretched out naked for fifteen minutes in the shadow of the rose, making a great effort at mental distraction so as not to think about death while he dozed.”

Sanchez’s repose involves mechanisms for taking care of himself and the rose. Both are vulnerable to and damaged by the outside elements. The fan serves a practical use here, though it is also part of visual illusions at other parts of the text: García Márquez sets up multiple roles and functions for the same objects throughout the text. The rose, which starts the passage as a thing to be cared for, becomes a shadow that reaches over Sanchez.

“Nevertheless, the erosion of death was much more pernicious than he had supposed, for as he went up onto the platform he felt a strange disdain for those who were fighting for the good luck to shake his hand.”

Death changes Sanchez’s consciousness throughout the text. It contributes to his sense of distance from those around him and, in this moment, suggests that he resents the idea (or the illusion) of closeness to which others aspire and toward which his life has, previously, been geared.

“There was a pattern to his circus. As he spoke his aides threw clusters of paper birds into the air and the artificial creatures took on life, flew about the platform of planks, and went out to sea.”

In calling the campaign a circus, the narrator allows readers to see Sanchez’s sense for the scene around him. From this perspective, the artificial creatures shift on unpredictable air to create illusions for the people who watch. Nature takes over, and works for or against, people here and throughout the chapter.

“Only the senator himself noticed that since it had been set up and taken down and carried form one place to another the superimposed cardboard town had been eaten away by the terrible climate and that it was almost as poor and dusty as Rosal del Virrey.” 

When Sanchez starts to really look at the spectacle of his campaign, he feels and emphasizes its artifice. This moment is important because it shows that (maybe only in Sanchez’s mind) he is the only person who really notices that the fake, imagined town is pathetic and rotten, as eroded as he or the rose is.

“When he heard the final applause, he lifted his head, and looking over the boards of the fence, he saw the back side of the farce: the props for the buildings, the framework of the trees, the hidden illusionists who were pushing the ocean liner along. He spat without rancor.”

Nelson Farina’s vision, which the narrator partially enters, shows that someone else has derision for the farce of Sanchez’s election scene. His dislike for Sanchez himself becomes a dislike for Sanchez’s falsehood. This scene displays García Márquez’s technique in using Nelson’s actions to belie his emotions.

“His daughter came out into the yard when she heard the greeting. She was wearing a cheap, faded Guajiro Indian robe, her head was decorated with colored bows, and her face was painted as protection against the sun, but even in that state of disrepair it was possible to imagine that there had never been another so beautiful in the whole world. The senator was left breathless.” 

This evocative description of Laura gives no reason for her exit: it is presented merely as a fact or a circumstance. This is an example of the many moments obscured by the narrator, in which motivations and thoughts are difficult to know. At the same time, the narrator becomes like the men who watch her, expressing what might be a universal sense of her beauty or what might just be Sanchez’s perspective.

“While he was speaking, the senator had torn a sheet off the calendar and fashioned a paper butterfly out of it with his hands. He tossed it with no particular aim into the air current coming from the fan and the butterfly flew about the room and then went out through the half-open door. The senator went on speaking with a control aided by the complicity of death.” 

The paper butterfly’s beginning is literally aimless, a thoughtless action from Sanchez. Death is part of his actions, complicit in his words and his ability. The butterfly, which is the thing that connects Sanchez to Laura, seems also to be an operative of death, which is a complicit force in fate.

“After a few turns, the large lithographed butterfly unfolded completely, flattened against the wall, and remained stuck there. Laura Farina tried to pull it off with her nails.”

Laura’s actions express a kind of confusion or a desire to return the paper butterfly to a comprehensible state of normalcy. In a short series of actions, it becomes clear that this butterfly cannot be removed, that some kind of supernatural force has caused it to blend into that space. The narrator creates this scene using only Laura’s (and the butterfly’s) actions.

“Laura Farina was struck dumb standing in the doorway to the room: thousands of bank notes were floating in the air, flapping like the butterfly. But the senator turned off the fan and the bills were left without air and alighted on objects in the room.” 

Sanchez shows Laura the artifice of wind when he turns off the fan. The fan is charged, for the reader, with power, and for Laura, the scene of money in the air is a marvel. Like the butterfly, they settle onto objects and blend in again, waiting for animating forces. The text begins to suggest, in this moment, that there may not be a difference between natural forces (the wind) and machine ones (the fan)—or, that there is a significant difference.

“The senator followed the thread of her look and finally found the rose, which had been tarnished by the saltpeter.”

Laura’s gaze is important because it is also inherited (in the color and quality of her eyes) from her father. Sanchez, like the narrator, notices that she sets her eyes upon the rose. Perhaps she, like the narrator or Sanchez, notices the ways in which it has been damaged and the way it must be taken care of.

“Laura Farina tried to say something, but there was only enough air for her to breathe. He laid her down beside him to help her, he put out the light and the room was in the shadow of the rose. She abandoned herself to mercies of her fate. The senator caressed her slowly, seeking her with his hand, barely touching her, but where he expected to find her, he came across something iron that was in the way.”

The shadow of the rose, again, overtakes both characters, now under its metaphorical power. The discovery of “something iron” could suggest a number of things: a chain, blood, or another more typical object. But this is the scene when Sanchez discovers that Laura is also, albeit differently, imprisoned inside of a padlock.

“Remember, he remembered, that whether it’s you or someone else, it won’t be long before you’ll be dead and it won’t be long before your name won’t even be left.”

It is unclear whether this recollection is Sanchez’s or if it is the memory of words told to him. This idea of being forgotten and left behind emerges as his fear, as he recognizes his solitude; it lingers until the last sentence of the story and is, perhaps, his major unsolved anxiety.

“‘Well,’ Laura Farina ventured, ‘they say you’re worse than the rest because you are different.’” 

Laura does not even express an opinion here, nor is she asked to—she merely repeats what she hears. There is no affirmation of whether or not these words are true. What they do is break the sense of repetition that otherwise dominates Sanchez’s perspective at the time. They allow him to be alone and apart from others, rather than part of the repeated and unnerving scene of campaigning life.