Storytelling: A very old man with enormous wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It had been raining for more than three days. The sands of the beach had become a stew of mud and rotten

shellfish, and Pelayo and Elizendas courtyard was full of dead crabs. Their newborn child had a temperature all night

and they thought it was due to the stench. Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the dead crabs,

when he discovered a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn't get

up, impeded by his enormous wings.

Pelayo called his wife: Elizenda, come to the courtyard, can you? There is an old very strange man or something

like that. He is moving, groaning and that sort of things

They both looked at the fallen body with amazement:

There are very few in his mouth, those teeth. Pelayo said.

They are enormous, those wings Elizenda said.

havent you ever seen such strange things, have you?

Never. Elizenda affirmed.

After some minutes, they dared speak to him: Excuse me, sir. Can you speak?

Kan du hjelpe meg? he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice.

Just a beggar, isnt he? Pelayo asked, but they were not sure, so, they called in a neighbor woman who knew

everything about life and death.

"He's an angel," she told them. "He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain

knocked him down. What you have to do, is club him to death"

Pelayo and Elizenda did not have the heart to beat him, but, just in case, they keep him locked in their chicken

coop. A few days later the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and

decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days. Surprisingly, they found the whole

neighborhood in front of the chicken coop. They were having fun with the angel; tossing him things to eat through

the openings in the wire as if weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal.
 Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o'clock, alarmed at the strange news. Then he came in the chicken coop and

in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous.

Everyone, I believe this angel is an imposter. He is just a human being, a huge human being. He did not

understand the language of God. He has an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings is strewn with

parasites and his main feathers has been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measures up to the

proud dignity of angels. Take care. The devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the

unwary.

No matter, though. The news of the captive angel spread and people lined up to see the "angel." Elisenda got the

bright idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel. People kept coming and Pelayo

and Elizenda made a killing. But, of course, it was not so great for the angel. People threw things, hens pecked him,

and once the crowd even put a red-hot branding iron on him to see whether or not he was alive.

Luckily for the winged old man, another carnival came to town with a woman who had been changed into a spider

for having disobeyed her parents. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden.

People were permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down.

She's much more exciting than the boring old angel who doesn't even fly, the crowd commented among them

and started to leave Elisenda and Pelayo's courtyard for freakier freak shows.

The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a mansion with balconies

and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn't get in during the winter and with iron bars on the windows so

that angels wouldn't get in. Years passed and the winged man got older and older, while the family treated him like

an irritating but beloved pet. Stiff feathers began to grow on his wings and he started belting out old sea songs.

One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that seemed to come from the

high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and tried to catch the angel in his attempt at flight. But

he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, because then he was no longer

an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.