252+ Gabriel Garcés Marquee i eee Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez (.150%) Gabriel Garcia Marques isthe author of a briliant serio-comic historical ‘novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). 8 one of the landmarks of contemporary ftion, and rapidly became an international bessell “Magic realism is the term that is often used 0 describe the author's ‘unique blend of folklore historical fact, naturalism, and fantasy much of ‘it occurring inthe tional village of Macondo, A native of Colombia, Garcia Marques, the eldest of twelve children, was born in Aracataca small town that is the model for the isolated, decaying settlements found ibis fiction. Garcia Marquez was trained asa journalist, first coming t Public attention in 1955 with his investigative reporting about the govern iment coverup that followed the sinking ofa Colombian navy vessel ft residence in Paris during the late 1950s, he worked for atime as a corre spondent for Fidel Castro's oficial news agency. He has also lived in Mey ‘co and Spain, Other works include te short story collections No One Writes tothe Colone! (1968), Leaf Storm and Other Stores (1972), and Innocent Eréndlita and Other Stories (1978). His novel Love in the Time ol Cholera was a major success in 1988. He was awarded the Nobel Prise in 1982. In recent years Garcia Marquez has focused on nonfiction. New ol a Kidnapping (1997) tells she true story of how Colombian drag kingpin took ten citizens hostage to extort favors from their government A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Translated by Gregory Rabassa (On the third day of rain they had killed 0 many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench, The world had been sad since Tues Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become 4 stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon «hil when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away thi crabs, itwas hard for him to see what it was that was moving and grouit ing in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it wy an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite ol his tremendous efforts, coulda’t get up, impeded by his enormous win A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings © 253 ightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, ‘was putting compresses on the sick child, and he took her to the ‘of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with muce i: He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his piti- midition of a drenched great-grandfather had taken away any of grandeur he might have had. His buge buzzard wings, dirty half plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon over- their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared ik to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a sailor's voice. That was how they skipped over the inconve- € of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm, And they called in a ncighbor woman who knew everything about life death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them mistake. “He's an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the , but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down,” the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel held captive in Pelayo’s house. Axaiust che judgment of the wise bor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive sue- 8 of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him ath. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, ad with his bailif’s club, and before going to bed he dragged him ‘of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken Wp. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and nda were scill killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke ithout a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnani- and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and pro- ms for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas. But they went out into the courtyard with the firs light of dawn, they the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat ugh the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural crea- but a circus animal. Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o'clock, alarmed at the strange By thar time onlookers less frivolous than those at dawn had al- ly arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning, ceaptive's future. The simplest among them thought that he should be ed mayor of the world. Others of sterner mind fele that he should be254 + Gabriel Garcia Marquee promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud in order to implant oi earth a race of winged wise men who could take charge of the universe, But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust wood cutter. Standing by the wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door so that he could take a close look at chat pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the fas nated chickens. He was lying in a comer drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers hhad thrown him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin, The parish priest had his first suspicion of an impostor when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how (0 greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his ‘wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mis treated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels, Then he came out of the chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of car nival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if wings were not the essential clement in determining the difference between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels. Nev: ertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the latter would write to his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict from the highest courts, His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity thae after a few hours the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayo nets to disperse the mob that was about to knock the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel. The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one Paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal! bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood had ideal coming rom the sas A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings + 255 fen counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers, a Por- guese man who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed ‘a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done ile awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst tha shipwreck disorder that made the earth tremble, Pelayo and isenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week they had smmed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their to enter still reached beyond the horizon. ‘The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He inthis time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had en placed along the wire, At frst they tried to make him eat some ihballs, which according to the wisdom of the wise neighbor foman, were the food prescribed for angels, But he turned them down, just as he turned down the papal lunches that the penitents brought jm, and they never found out whether it was because he was an angel because he was an old man that in the end he ate nothing but egg- plant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Espe- tially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the Tmwst urerciful Uuew stuucs at hin, uying to get him to rise so they ld see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him ‘was when they bucned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he hhad been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought ‘ona whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that ddid not seem to be of this world. Although many thought that his reac tion had been one not of rage but of pain, from then on they were care- fal not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity ‘was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose. Father Gonzaga held back the crowd's frivolity with formulas of ‘maidservant inspiration while awaiting the arrival of a final judgment (on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out ifthe prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn't just a Norwegian with wings. Those meager letters might have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not put an end to the priest's tribulations.286 + Gabriel Garcia Marquee A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings «257 {eso happened that during those days, attractions, there arrived in town the trav hhad been changed into a spider for havi admission to see her was not only less th tel, but people were permitted to ask her her absurd state and to examine het up ever doubt the truth of her honor. She of a ram and with the head of a sad tending, however, was not her outlandis with which she recounted the details of teal a child she had sneaked out of her parents hema es g0 t0.a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods wie: having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two nd through the crack came the lightning bol among so many other carnival ling show of the woman wh ing disobeyed her parents, ‘The an the admission to see the ai + all manner of questions abou, and down so that no one woul ‘was a frightful tarantula the size maiden. What was most heart h shape but the sincere affition her misfortune, While still prac close ro the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their fears andl {ist to the smell, and before che child gor his second teeth he gone ie the chicken coop to play, where the wis were falling apast The ‘was no less standoffish with him than with other mortals, but he ed the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who # Ihe doctor who took care of the child couldn't resist the temper to listen tothe angels heart, and he found so much whistling in the and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for fo be alive. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of lg BS. hey seemed so natural on that completely human organism that Heouldn'c understand why other men didn’t have them toe jWhen che child began school it had been some time since the sun Zain had caused the collapse of the chicken coop. The angel went ig himself about here and there like a stray dying man, They ld drive him out of the bedroom wit A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a feartal lesson, was found to de ei Without even trying that of a haughty angel whe, scarcely deigned to {ook at mortals. Besides, the few miracles attsbuet the angel showed th a broom and a moment later x that they grew to think that he'd been duplicated, that he was re, id Pelayo’s courtyard ty as during the time it had rained for three days and crabs walked through the bedroome The owners of the house had no reason to lam, And yet he not only survived his worst winter, bt seemed improved pith the first sunny days. He remained motionless for several days inthe farthest corner ofthe courtyard, where no one would see hin. ed ne the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers hegan to grew cu His wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which looked more like snedig: Iisfortune of decrepitude. But he most have known the reason lor shea Peculiar pees by which thrashed body.258 + Ursula K, Le Guin the kitchen. Then she went to the window and caughe the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened « furrow in the vegetable patch and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light and he ccouldn’e get @ grip on the aic But he did manage to gain altitude Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she saw him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watehing until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an an: noyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea. 1968 Uraula K. Le Guin (o. 1928) Ursula K. Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, the only child of at anthropologist and a folklorist. While completing graduate work at Coli bia University, she wrote her frst short story, and in the early 1960s she be _gan publishing in both science fiction magazines and literary journals. Her first novel, Rocannon’s World (1966), began a eyele of novels about citi izations in other galaxies. She bas won both Hugo and Nebula awards for ber science fiction and has also won a National Book Award. Like earlier sorters such as Poe and contemporaries such as J. G, Ballard, Le Guin bas managed the difficult task of finding a wide popular audience with genre fection that has also garnered critical acclains. On “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Le Guis has said, quoting Wiliam James, that the story's origin began with James's notion of a utopia in which the masses are ‘rept bappy “on the simple condition that a certain lost soul om the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment...” The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city. Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rig- ‘ging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gar- dens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas + 259 rocessions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes f mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carry- ‘ng their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and our, their thigh calls rising like the swallows’ crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and gitls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and Jong, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nos- itils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our cererronies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encir- cling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-golé fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of:the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, @ cheerful faint sweemess of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells. Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas? ‘They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more, All smiles have be- come archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make ces~ tain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. ‘They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their so- ciety, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland rutopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of consid- ‘ering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual,