Strange Pilgrims

The story’s Prologue establishes The Latin American Experience of Europe as a central theme of the connection, explaining that the stories arose out of García Márquez’s experiences in Spain. Indeed, the theme is so central that García Márquez describes the stories as “strange pilgrims,” an instance of personification that conflates the stories with the travelers themselves. The descriptor is significant as well, as it implies that Latin American travelers to Europe are in some sense out of place and thus paves the way for exploration of alienation, dislocation, and marginalization. The first two stories bear out the idea that these constitute key focuses of the collection. Both “Bon Voyage, Mr. President” and “The Saint” feature Latin American protagonists traveling or living in Europe—but the reasons for their time in Europe could not be more opposite. The juxtaposition of these two stories helps to illuminate their meaning and the broader theme.

Both stories begin with reunions between countrymen dislocated from their country of origin, but these reunions take place within the context of exile and pilgrimage, respectively. In “Bon Voyage, Mr. President,” the meeting of Mr. President and Homero Rey brings together two morally compromised individuals. Their interaction is tainted by Homero’s stalking of the former president, his misuse of confidential medical information, his hidden motive for approaching the elderly man, and his exaggeration of his own history as a supporter of the deposed president. Mr. President is a disgraced politician who has come to Geneva seeking medical care for himself and, until he meets Homero, has shown no interest in connecting with the wider expatriate community. In an ironic development in which the hopeful conman—Homero—ends up getting conned, Mr. President exploits his charm and social status to lean on Homero’s meagre resources without regard for Homero’s poverty. The story treats his physical pain as a symbol of this moral corruption. That his pain is no better when he returns to Martinique signifies that his moral corruption is unhealed—an interpretation figuratively supported by his return to “vices” like drinking, smoking, and eating the rich foods his doctors have forbidden. In this context of failed personal reform, this proposed return to his country as the leader of a new “reform” movement is deeply ironic.

By contrast, the reunion between the narrator and Margarito Duarte in “The Saint” involves two honorable men, and the narrator’s admiration for Duarte is genuine. The men initially met as part of a larger expatriate community supporting one another through a cultural transition, and the narrator is sincerely interested in how Duarte has fared in the two decades since they last met. Unlike Mr. President, Duarte has selfless—even holy—motives for coming to Europe. His mission to get his daughter canonized has the support of his entire Andean community. The child’s incorruptible, weightless body represents Duarte’s own purity of soul. When juxtaposed against the apathy and indifference he encounters in Rome, it also suggests that the residents of the Andean community are better, more devout Christians than the representatives of the Church itself.

Although the two stories’ plots and characterizations take sharply different directions away from their similar starting points, they share an elegiac, quasi-mythical tone that adds layers of nuance to their meaning. Both stories center on archetypal male figures. Mr. President is unnamed, and his country of origin is not specified; he is the manifestation of a type more than he is a fully fleshed-out human personality. He is larger than life, a charismatic, self-interested, and privileged figure who demonstrates the damage such people can cause. Although Duarte is named and given a clear point of origin, the story offers few details about his life in the Andes or in Rome. His actions are recounted, but his feelings, his preferences, and his individual idiosyncrasies remain a mystery. He is thus a representation of faith more than he is a human man.

Another theme that emerges in these opening stories is The Bittersweet Nature of Impermanence. Both stories emphasize the drabness of the present, contrasting it unfavorably with the vividness of the past. The opening sentence of “Bon Voyage, Mr. President” describes Mr. President in the present, sitting in a deserted park under the autumn leaves, thinking about death. On the other hand, his memories of his earlier life focus on pleasurable details like his seaside home, the scent of “molasses-and-rum breeze” from Martinique’s sugar mills (21), and the chirping of crickets in the evenings. In “The Saint,” the decades-past day on which Duarte first came to Rome is described as “that radiant spring” (37), conveying a sense of possibility, new beginnings, and beauty that the present lacks. The narrator reminisces about the sex workers with whom he and his friends spent time drinking coffee in those bygone days, recalling with pleasure how “they dressed in blue organdy, pink poplin, [and] green linen” (43). In the narrative present, however, he is depressed by gray weather and a constant drizzle of rain.

The magical-realist element of the second story—the incorruptible, weightless body of the child—further reinforces both the collection’s mythical tone and its nostalgia for the past. Duarte’s beloved and much-missed daughter is perfectly preserved, like the characters’ memories of the past. She has blossoms in her hair and smells of the miraculously still-living roses clutched in her hands. The novelist-narrator’s and Duarte’s devotion to her is like their devotion to the past, to the sacrosanct memories of their own youths.

The main characters in these two stories are thus travelers in both time and space, alienated from their own identities and memories by their experiences in foreign lands and the passage of time. Each character comes to Europe filled with the hope of finding something unavailable in his own country but finds that this dislocation comes at a cost—and that the promises of freedom from pain, recognition of faith, economic security, and the pleasures of European culture constantly recede just out of reach.