Strange Pilgrims
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Strange Pilgrims (original Spanish-language title: Doce cuentos peregrinos) is a collection of twelve loosely-related short stories by the Nobel Prize winning Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.
Not published until 1992, the stories that make up this collection were originally written during the seventies and eighties. Each of the stories touches on the theme of dislocation, and the strangeness of life in a foreign land, although quite what "foreign" means is one of Mr Garcia Marquez's central questions in this book. Mr Garcia Marquez himself spent some years as a virtual exile from his native Colombia.
The twelve stories are:
- Bon Voyage, Mr President (Buen Viaje, Señor Presidente)
- The Saint (La Santa)
- Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane (El Avión de la Bella Durmiente)
- I Sell My Dreams (Me Alquilo para Soñar)
- "I Only Came to Use the Phone" (Solo Vine a Hablar por Teléfono)
- The Ghosts of August (Espantos de Agosto)
- María dos Prazeres
- Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen (Diecisiete Ingleses Envenenados)
- Tramontana
- Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness (El Verano Feliz de la Señora Forbes)
- Light is Like Water (La Luz es como el Agua)
- The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow (El Rastro de tu Sangre en la Nieve)
Contents |
[edit] Story summaries
[edit] The Saint
The story is centered around a character named Margarito Duarte and takes place in Rome. Margarito is originally from the small Andean village of Tolima, Colombia but travels to Rome in order to begin the process of having his deceased daughter recognized as a saint. Margarito lost his wife shortly after the birth of their only daughter and she died soon after at the age of seven from an essential fever. Eleven years after her death the villagers are forced to move their loved ones from the cemetery to another location as the space is needed for a new dam. When his daughter is unearthed she is found to be still intact and completely weightless. The villagers decide that she is a saint and pool funds to send Margarito with his daughter's body to Rome. There he meets the narrator at the pensione where they are both staying. Nothing seems to come from his inexhaustible attempts to canonize his daughter and he eventually loses contact with the narrator and other characters of the story. However, twenty-two years later, and after the death of four popes, Margarito and the narrator meet again by chance and the narrator finds that Margarito is still waiting for his daughter's recognition as a saint. It is then that the narrator realizes that the true saint of the story is really Margarito. The narrator states, "Without realizing it, by means of his daughter's incorruptible body and while he was still alive, he had spent twenty-two years fighting for the legitimate cause of his own canonization."
[edit] Sleeping Beauty And The Airplane
Gabriel Marquez takes sees the most beautiful woman he has ever seen in an airport and falls in love at first sight. By coincidence, she happens to be his neighbor on the plane. As soon as she takes her seat, she adopts a mannerism that is not welcoming of outside attention and quickly goes to sleep. The author never speaks a word to her. The story expresses a voyeuristic adoration.
[edit] Light is Like Water
Two young boys ask for a boat in return for their good grades. When their parents finally buy them the toy sail boat, they break the light bulbs in their home and the light comes flowing out like water. They use the light to sail around their home every night, and invite their friends to go sailing with them as well. The boys and their friends end up drowning in the light.
[edit] I Only Came To Use The Phone
A woman's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. She hitches a ride on a bus on its way to a mental institute. Before she knows what's happening, she has been admitted as a patient. Her husband, referring to their trouble-ridden history, believes she has run off with another man. When she finally finds an opportunity to call him, he curses her and hangs up. She is forced to sleep with a guard to pass along the full message to her husband. When he arrives, he takes the doctor's account to heart and leaves the woman at the hospital, where she eventually adopts the role of insanity imposed upon her by the medical staff.
