Gabriel Garcia Marquez

NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL

The colonel opened the can and found that there was no more than a teaspoon of coffee left. He took the pot off the heat, splashed half the water onto the dirt floor and began scraping the can, shaking out the last grains of coffee mixed with flakes of rust into the pot.

While the coffee was brewing, the colonel sat near the stove, listening intently to himself. It seemed to him that his insides were sprouting poisonous mushrooms and algae. It was an October morning. One of those that is difficult to survive even for a person like the colonel, accustomed to the tedious passage of time. But how many Octobers he survived! For fifty-six years now—so much has passed since the Civil War—the colonel has done nothing but wait. And this October was one of the few things he looked forward to.

The colonel's wife, seeing him enter the bedroom with coffee, raised the mosquito net. That night she had been tormented by an asthma attack, and now she was in a sleepy stupor. And yet she stood up to take the cup.

“I already drank,” the colonel lied. “There was still a whole tablespoon left.”

At that moment the bell rang. The colonel remembered the funeral. While his wife was drinking coffee, he unhooked the hammock in which he slept, rolled it up and hid it behind the door.

“He was born in 1922,” the woman said, thinking about the dead man. – Exactly a month after our son. April sixth.

She was breathing heavily, intermittently, taking small sips of coffee in the pauses between deep breaths. Her body with thin, fragile bones has long lost its flexibility. Difficulty breathing did not allow her to raise her voice, and therefore all questions sounded like statements. She finished her coffee. Thoughts about the dead man did not leave her.

“It’s terrible when you’re buried in October, isn’t it?” - she said.

But her husband did not pay attention to her words. He opened the window. October was already in charge in the yard. Looking at the lush, dense greenery, the traces of earthworms on the wet ground, the colonel again felt its wet destructiveness with all his insides.

“Even my bones are damp,” he said.

“Winter,” answered the wife. “Ever since the rains started, I’ve been telling you to sleep in socks.”

A fine, annoying rain was falling. The Colonel would not mind wrapping himself in a woolen blanket and lying down in the hammock again. But the cracked bronze of the bells persistently reminded of a funeral.

“Yes, October,” he whispered, moving away from the window. And only then did I remember the rooster tied to the foot of the bed. It was a fighting cock.

The colonel took the cup to the kitchen and wound up the wall clock in a carved wooden case in the hall. Unlike the bedroom, which was too small for an asthmatic, the living room was wide, with four wicker rockers around a table covered with a tablecloth, on which was a plaster cat. On the wall, opposite the clock, hung a picture of a woman in white tulle sitting in a boat, surrounded by roses and cupids.

When he finished winding the watch, it was twenty minutes past seven. He carried the rooster to the kitchen, tied it by the fire, changed the water in the bowl, and poured in a handful of maize. Several children crawled through a hole in the fence - they sat down around the rooster and silently stared at it.

“Stop looking,” said the colonel. – Roosters spoil if you look at them for too long.

The children didn't move. One of them played a fashionable song on the harmonica.

“You can’t play today,” said the colonel. - There is a dead man in the city.

The boy hid the accordion in his pocket, and the colonel went into the room to change clothes for the funeral.

Due to an asthma attack, his wife did not iron his white suit, and the colonel had no choice but to wear a black cloth one, which after his marriage he wore only on exceptional occasions. He had difficulty finding the suit, wrapped in newspapers and sprinkled with mothballs, at the bottom of the chest. The wife, stretched out on the bed, continued to think about the dead man.

“He’s probably already met Agustin by now,” she said. “If only I wouldn’t tell Agustin how difficult it was for us after his death.”

“They must be arguing about roosters there too,” suggested the colonel.

He found a huge old umbrella in the chest. His wife won him in a lottery held in favor of the party to which the colonel belonged. That evening they were at a performance; the performance took place outdoors and was not interrupted even because of the rain. The colonel, his wife and Agustin - he was eight years old at the time - took refuge under an umbrella and sat out until the very end. Now Agustin is no longer alive, and the white satin lining of the umbrella has been eaten by moths.

“Look at this clown umbrella,” the colonel joked habitually and opened a complex structure of metal knitting needles over his head. “Now it’s only good for counting stars.”

He smiled. But the woman didn’t even look at the umbrella.

“And that’s it,” she whispered. “We are rotting alive.” “She closed her eyes so that nothing would stop her from thinking about the dead man.

Having shaved somehow - there was no mirror for a long time - the colonel silently got dressed. The trousers, tightly fitting the legs like long johns, were fastened at the ankles and tied at the waist with two tabs, which were threaded through gilded buckles. The colonel did not wear a belt. The shirt, the color of old cardboard and hard as cardboard, was fastened with a copper cufflink, which also held the collar. But the collar was torn, so the colonel decided not to wear it, and at the same time do without a tie. He dressed as if he was performing some kind of solemn ritual. His bony arms were tightly covered with transparent skin, dotted with red spots - the same spots were on his neck. Before putting on his patent leather boots, he scraped off the dirt that had stuck to the welts. Looking at him, his wife saw that the colonel was dressed as on his wedding day. And then she noticed how much her husband had aged.

“Why are you dressed up like that,” she said. “As if something unusual had happened.”

“Of course, it’s unusual,” said the colonel. – In so many years, the first person died a natural death.

By nine o'clock the rain had stopped. The colonel was about to leave, but his wife held him by the sleeve.

- Comb your hair.

He tried to smooth his coarse steel-colored hair with a horn comb. But nothing came of it.

“I must look like a parrot,” he said.

The woman examined her husband carefully. I thought, no, he doesn’t look like a parrot. He was a tightly wound, dry man. But he didn’t look like those old people who seem to be stuck in alcohol - his eyes were full of life.

“It’s okay,” she said. And when her husband left the room, she added: “Ask the doctor, was he scalded with boiling water in our house?”

They lived on the edge of a small town in a house with peeling walls, covered with palm leaves. It was still damp, although it was no longer raining. The colonel went down to the square along the alley, where the houses were stuck to one another. Walking out onto the main street, he suddenly felt a chill. The entire town, as far as the eye could see, was covered with flowers, like a carpet. Women in black, sitting at the door, waited for the procession.

As the colonel crossed the square, it began to drizzle again. The owner of the billiard room looked out the open doors of his establishment and shouted, waving his hands:

- Colonel, wait, I’ll lend you an umbrella.

The colonel answered without turning his head:

– Don’t worry, it’ll do just fine.

The dead man had not yet been carried out. Men in white suits and black ties stood under umbrellas at the entrance. One of them noticed the colonel jumping over puddles in the square.

“Come here, godfather,” he shouted, offering the colonel a place under the umbrella.

“Thank you, godfather,” answered the colonel.

But he didn’t take advantage of the invitation. He immediately entered the house to express his condolences to the mother of the deceased. And immediately I smelled the scent of many flowers. He felt stuffy. He began to push through the crowd that filled the bedroom. Someone put a hand on his back and pushed him into the depths of the room, past a line of confused faces, to where the deep and widely cut nostrils of the dead man were black.

The Colonel opened the can and found that the coffee
no more than a teaspoon left. He took the pot off the fire,
splashed half the water onto the dirt floor and began scraping
jar, shaking the last grains of coffee into the pot, mixed
with flakes of rust.
While the coffee was brewing, the colonel sat near the stove, tensely
listening to yourself. It seemed to him that his insides
sprout poisonous mushrooms and algae. It was October
morning. One of those that is difficult to survive even for such a person,
like a colonel accustomed to the tedious passage of time. A
after all, how many Octobers he survived! For fifty-six years now
- so much has passed since the civil war - the colonel only
I did what I waited. And this October was one of those few
what was he waiting for?
The colonel's wife, seeing him enter the bedroom with coffee,
picked up the mosquito net. That night she suffered from an asthma attack, and
she was now in a sleepy daze. And yet she stood up
to take a cup.
-- And you?
“I already drank,” the colonel lied. - There was still some
a whole tablespoon.
At that moment the bell rang. The Colonel remembered
about the funeral. While his wife was drinking coffee, he unhooked the hammock, in which
slept, rolled it up and hid it behind the door.
“He was born in the twenty-second year,” said the woman,
thinking about the dead man. - Exactly a month after our son.
April sixth.
She was breathing heavily, intermittently, taking small sips of coffee.
sips in the pauses between deep breaths. Her body with thin,
fragile bones have long lost flexibility. Labored breathing
did not allow her to raise her voice, and therefore all the questions sounded
as a statement. She finished her coffee. Thoughts about the dead man
left her.
“It’s terrible when you’re buried in October, isn’t it?” --
she said.
But her husband did not pay attention to her words. He opened the window. In
October was already ruling the yard. Looking at the lush, dense greenery,
traces of earthworms on the wet ground, the colonel again with everyone
I felt its wet destructiveness in my guts.
“Even my bones are damp,” he said.
“Winter,” answered the wife. - Since we started
rain, I tell you to sleep in socks.
A fine, annoying rain was falling. The Colonel wouldn't mind
wrap yourself in a woolen blanket and lie back in the hammock. But
the cracked bronze of the bells persistently reminded
funeral.
“Yes, October,” he whispered, moving away from the window. But only
Then I remembered the rooster tied to the foot of the bed. It was
fighting cock.
The colonel took the cup to the kitchen and wound up the wall clock in the hall.
in a carved wood case.

Good day, Tatyana!

Now we will talk about the famous work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez “Nobody Writes to the Colonel,” which was published in 1961.

The main character of the story is a seventy-five-year-old colonel, who after the war lost his son, who died for the spread of revolutionary ideas, became completely impoverished, and completely lost his health. The only thing he has left is a rooster, which throughout the story he feeds and prepares for fights, hoping to get enough money for him to live on.

In order to survive, the colonel and his wife do not hope for a pension, although every Friday the hero goes out to meet a ship with mail at the port in the hope of seeing a letter promising him a military pension.

An elderly couple sells their things over and over again: a sewing machine, a watch. They are not trying to show a luxurious life and just be content with little, they are making ends meet: “Now it was his turn to do housework - to make ends meet. Often he had to grit his teeth and beg for a loan in neighboring shops.” Farming is turning from “economy” in its direct meaning into “economy”, and at the country level. From time to time, the wife insists on selling the rooster, although she herself does not want it, because the rooster is the only thing left of their son and the only breadwinner in the family. The wife constantly accuses the colonel of his clumsiness and inability to prove and get his way: her constant asthma attacks do not prevent her from looking after the household and trying to provide the family with a minimum of lunch, which often consists of maize (which they feed the rooster).

The image of poverty is not only the image of an individual family suffering deprivation, it is also the image of the whole of Colombia, tormented by coups, instability in politics and the economy. The absolute composure on the part of the ruling elite in relation to the social issue plunges the entire country into hunger and persecution, and the “heroes” are left to live in hope. By analogy with other Latin American countries, Colombia was not spared by the dictatorial regime, and Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953 - 1957) became dictator: in the context of La Violencia - the armed conflict in Colombia - he carried out a military coup and became president. He pursued his policy under the influence of the actions taking place at the same time in Brazil and Argentina. He began to persecute the liberal and conservative parties, banned the communist party, carried out punitive operations against pro-communist oriented peasant areas, and introduced strict censorship of the media.

The story not only reflects the hungry and miserable life of Colombia, there is also another side: the powerful, powerful and rich. For example, such as the godfather of the colonel, who during a time of distress wanted to buy that same rooster from the colonel and his wife for nine hundred pesos, but the memory of his son is so strong that even for such a large sum they refuse to say goodbye to the rooster. Although Kum tries to help the colonel, he does it reluctantly, constantly avoiding him, although he takes care of him, for example, when they both come to the funeral of their friend Augustine. This cohesion is also characteristic of the people of Latin America: by nature, people tend to protect themselves from external influences, be it a threat from another country or a dictatorial power.

The way of life of the ruling elite, separated from the poor people, is summed up in one scene: when the funeral of Augustine’s friend takes place, his body is carried over the police station, which was absolutely prohibited by law: “the alcalde stood. He was in shorts and a flannel shirt, unshaven, with with a swollen face. The musicians interrupted the funeral march - He says you can’t carry a dead man past the police barracks - But this is not a riot - We’re just burying a poor musician.” People who meant something in this system assigned people like the colonel the role of the dregs of society, who should not even carry the corpse of a “poor musician” past the police barracks. And the alcalde, unshaven, in shorts and a flannel shirt, which in itself already expresses his contemptuous attitude towards the poor, came out not to look at the procession, but to show his indignation at the “entertainment for the poor.” The “type” of people was determined by their position in the power structure, which is precisely what a dictatorship provides. And this statement cannot be attributed to a specific city or street - it is general both for the country and for the world as a whole.

The inability to change the situation and fatigue from all the unsuccessful attempts to change something leads to the fact that in the finale the colonel no longer tries to be as optimistic as throughout the story: he comprehended the whole truth about the reality that surrounds him: his son died, his wife is serious is sick, his country doesn’t need him. This is not a story about personality. This is a story about a country that is boiling and roaring in a cauldron that it brewed within itself.

Best wishes, Julia.

The colonel opened the can and found that there was no more than a teaspoon of coffee left. He took the pot off the heat, splashed half the water onto the dirt floor and began scraping the can, shaking out the last grains of coffee mixed with flakes of rust into the pot.

While the coffee was brewing, the colonel sat near the stove with an air of trusting expectation and listened to himself. It seemed to him that his insides were sprouting poisonous mushrooms and algae. It was an October morning. One of those that is difficult for even such a person as the colonel to survive, but how many of them he survived! For fifty-six years now—so much has passed since the Civil War—the colonel has done nothing but wait. And October was one of the few things he waited for.

The colonel's wife, seeing him enter the bedroom with coffee, raised the mosquito net. That night she had been tormented by an asthma attack, and now she was in a sleepy stupor. And yet she stood up to take the cup.

“I already drank,” the colonel lied. “There was still a whole tablespoon left.”

At that moment the bell rang. The colonel remembered the funeral. While his wife was drinking coffee, he unhooked the hammock in which he slept, rolled it up and hid it behind the door.

“He was born in 1922,” the woman said, thinking about the dead man. – Exactly a month after our son. April sixth.

She was breathing heavily, intermittently, taking small sips of coffee in the pauses between deep breaths. Her body with thin, fragile bones has long lost its flexibility. Difficulty breathing did not allow her to raise her voice, and therefore all questions sounded like statements. Having finished her coffee, she was still thinking about the dead man.

“It’s terrible when you’re buried in October, isn’t it?” - she said.

But her husband did not pay attention to her words. He opened the window. October was already in charge in the yard. Looking at the lush, dense greenery, the traces of earthworms on the wet ground, the colonel again felt its wet destructiveness with all his insides.

“Even my bones are damp,” he said.

“Winter,” answered the wife. “Ever since the rains started, I’ve been telling you to sleep in socks.”

“I’ve been sleeping in socks for a whole week now.”

A fine, annoying rain was falling. The Colonel would not mind wrapping himself in a woolen blanket and lying down in the hammock again. But the cracked bronze of the bells persistently reminded of a funeral.

“Yes, October,” he whispered, moving away from the window. And only then did I remember the rooster tied to the foot of the bed. It was a fighting cock.

The colonel took the cup to the kitchen and wound up the wall clock in a carved wooden case in the hall. Unlike the bedroom, which was too small for an asthmatic, the living room was wide, with four wicker rockers around a table covered with a tablecloth, on which was a plaster cat. On the wall, opposite the clock, hung a picture of a woman in white tulle sitting in a boat, surrounded by cupids and roses.

When he finished winding the watch, it was twenty minutes past seven. He carried the rooster to the kitchen, tied it by the fire, changed the water in the bowl, and poured in a handful of maize. Several children crawled through a hole in the fence - they sat down around the rooster and began to silently examine it.

“Stop looking,” said the colonel. – Roosters spoil if you look at them for too long.

The children didn't move. One of them played a fashionable song on the harmonica.

“You can’t play today,” said the colonel. - There is a dead man in the city.

The boy hid the harmonica in his pocket, and the colonel went into the room to change clothes for the funeral.

Due to an asthma attack, his wife did not iron his white suit, and the colonel had no choice but to wear a black cloth one, which after his marriage he wore only on exceptional occasions. He found the suit with difficulty at the bottom of the chest, where it lay wrapped in newspapers and sprinkled with mothballs. The wife, stretched out on the bed, continued to think about the dead man.

“He’s probably already met Agustin by now,” she said. – Just don’t tell Agustin what we had to do after his death.

“They must be arguing about roosters,” the colonel suggested.

He found a huge old umbrella in the chest. His wife won him in a lottery held in favor of the party to which the colonel belonged. That evening they were at a performance; the performance took place outdoors and was not interrupted even because of the rain. The colonel, his wife and Agustin - he was eight years old at the time - took refuge under an umbrella and sat out until the very end. Now Agustin is no longer alive, and the white satin lining of the umbrella has been eaten by moths.

“Look what’s left of our clown umbrella,” the colonel said his favorite phrase and opened a complex structure of metal spokes above his head. “Now it’s only good for counting stars.”

He smiled. But the woman didn’t even look at the umbrella.

“And that’s it,” she whispered. “We are rotting alive.” “She closed her eyes so that nothing would stop her from thinking about the dead man.

Having shaved somehow - there was no mirror for a long time - the colonel silently got dressed. The trousers, tightly fitting the legs like long johns, were fastened at the ankles and tied at the waist with two tabs, which were threaded through gilded buckles. The colonel did not wear a belt. The shirt, the color of old cardboard and as hard as cardboard, was fastened with a copper button, which held the collar in place. But the collar was torn, so the colonel decided not to wear a tie.

The colonel dressed as if he was performing some kind of solemn ritual. His bony arms were tightly covered with transparent skin, dotted with red spots - the same spots were on his neck. Before putting on his patent leather boots, he scraped off the dirt that had stuck to the welts. Looking at him, his wife saw that the colonel was dressed as on his wedding day. And then she noticed how much her husband had aged.

“How you dressed up,” she said. “As if something unusual had happened.”

“Of course, it’s unusual,” said the colonel. – In so many years, the first person died a natural death.

By nine o'clock the rain had stopped. The colonel was about to leave, but his wife held him by the sleeve.

- Comb your hair.

He tried to smooth his steel-colored stubble with a horn comb. But nothing came of it.

“I must look like a parrot,” he said.

The woman examined her husband carefully. I thought: no, he doesn’t look like a parrot. He was a tightly wound, dry man. But he didn’t look like those old people who seem to be stuck in alcohol - his eyes were full of life.

“It’s okay,” she said. And when her husband left the room, she added: “Ask the doctor, was he scalded with boiling water in our house?”

They lived on the edge of a small town in a house covered with palm leaves and with peeling walls. It was still damp, although it was no longer raining. The colonel went down to the square along the alley, where the houses were stuck to one another. On the main street he suddenly felt a chill. The entire town, as far as the eye could see, was covered with flowers, like a carpet. Women in black, sitting at the door, waited for the procession.

As the colonel crossed the square, it began to drizzle again. The owner of the billiard room looked out the open doors of his establishment and shouted, waving his hands:

- Colonel, wait, I’ll lend you an umbrella.

The colonel answered without turning his head:

- Thank you, I feel good as is.

The dead man had not yet been carried out. Men in white suits and black ties stood under umbrellas at the entrance. One of them noticed the colonel jumping over puddles in the square.

“Come here, godfather,” he shouted, offering the colonel a place under the umbrella.

“Thank you, godfather,” answered the colonel.

But he didn’t take advantage of the invitation. He immediately entered the house to express his condolences to the mother of the deceased. And immediately I smelled the scent of many flowers. He felt stuffy. He began to push through the crowd that filled the bedroom. Someone put a hand on his back and pushed him into the depths of the room, past a line of confused faces, to where the deep and widely cut nostrils of the dead man were black.

Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “Nobody Writes to the Colonel” was rewritten by him many times. The author tried to briefly and succinctly reflect the most important thing, and as a result, he succeeded. This is one of the writer’s early works, in which one can already see the theme of loneliness that worries him. This is a book about injustice, about honor and perseverance, about endless hope and the courage to accept suffering. It is largely about politics, about how some have everything, forgetting about others, even if they owe their position to others.

The language of the book seems dry and somewhat distant, but it is precisely this that makes you experience a range of different emotions. It is this detachment that causes a feeling of loneliness and hopelessness, which hurts to the core. Every dry and harsh word brings pain.

The scene is a small town in Colombia. A retired colonel, a war veteran who is already at retirement age, lives here. His son was killed for distributing political leaflets. Together with his wife, he lives on the outskirts of the city in an old house. They are practically begging, barely making ends meet, not knowing what they will eat tomorrow. And for many years now, the colonel has been going to the same place every week and hopefully asking the postman if he has received a letter about his pension. But no one writes to him...

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