Leaf Storm

Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

• In the room where they’ve laid out the corpse there’s a smell of trunks, but I can’t see any anywhere.

• I thought that a dead man would look like somebody quiet and asleep and now I can see that it’s just the opposite. I can see that he looks like someone awake and in a rage after a fight.

• My grandfather seems calm, but his calmness is imperfect and desperate. It’s not the calmness of the corpse in the coffin, it’s the calmness of an impatient man making an effort not to show how he feels.

• Meme recalled the details without repentance, and spoke about the most extravagant things with an irrepressible desire to live them again or with the pain that came from the fact that she would never live them again.

• Meme smiled. Her laugh was sad and taciturn, seeming detached from any feeling of the moment, like something she kept in the cupboard and took out only when she had to, using it with no feeling of ownership, as if the infrequency of her smiles had made her forget the normal way to use them.

• The rural band was playing sentimental pieces until a boy came running, panting to the point of bursting, saying that the priest’s mule was at the last bend in the road. Then the musicians changed their position and began to play a march. The person assigned to give the welcoming speech climbed up on an improvised platform and waited for the priest to appear so that he could begin his greeting.

• They noticed how his face looked like the skull of a cow, with closely cropped gray hair, and he didn’t have any lips, but a horizontal opening that seemed not to have been in the place of his mouth since birth but made later on by a quick and unique knife.

• I didn’t say good afternoon to him again, but I smiled when he looked at me because I saw that he had huge eyes, with yellow pupils, and they look at a person’s whole body all at the same time. When I smiled at him he remained serious, but he nodded his head very formally and said: “The colonel. It’s the colonel I have to see.” He has a deep voice, as if he could speak with his mouth closed. As if he were a ventriloquist.’

• His laugh is foolish and simple and it makes a sound like that of a thread of water from a spigot.

• that of a thread of water from a spigot.

• Adelaida had more refined customs than we did, a certain social experience which, since our marriage, had begun to influence the ways of my house. She had put on the family medallion, the one that she displayed at moments of exceptional importance, and all of her, just like the table, the furniture, the air that was breathed in the dining room, brought on a severe feeling of composure and cleanliness.

• The newcomer clicked his heels like a military man, touched his forehead with the tips of his extended fingers, and then walked over to where she was. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. But he didn’t pronounce any name. Only when I saw him clumsily shake Adelaida’s hand did I become aware that his manners were vulgar and common.