Chronicle of a Death Foretold Read Online Free PDF

shorter because Pura Vicario demanded that they wait until the family mourning was over. But thetime passed without anxiety because of the irresistible way in which Bayardo San Román arranged things. “One night he asked me what house I liked best,” Angela Vicario told me. “And I answered, without knowing why, that the prettiest house in town was the farmhouse belonging to the widower Xius.” I would have said the same. It was on a windswept hill, and fromthe terrace you could see the limitlessparadise of the marshes covered with purple anemones, and on clear summer days you could make out the neat horizon of the Caribbean and the tourist ships from Cartagena de Indias. That very night Bayardo San Román went to the social club and sat down at the widower Xius’s table to play a game of dominoes.
    “Widower,” he told him, “I’ll buy your house.”
    “It’s not for sale,” the widower said.
    “I’ll buy it along with everything inside.”
    The widower Xius explained to him with the good breeding of olden days that the objects in the house had been bought by his wife over a whole lifetime of sacrifice and that for him they were still a part of her. “He was speaking with his heart in his hand,” I was told by Dr. Dionisio Iguarán, who was playing with them. “I was sure he would have diedbefore he’d sell a house where he’d been happy for over thirty years.” Bayardo San Román also understood his reasons.
    “Agreed,” he said. “So sell me the house empty.”
    But the widower defended himself until the end of the game. Three nights later, better prepared, Bayardo San Román returned to the domino table.
    “Widower,” he began again, “what’s the price of the house?”
    “It hasn’t got a price.”
    “Name any one you want.”
    “I’m sorry, Bayardo,” the widower said, “but you young people don’t understand the motives of the heart.”
    Bayardo San Román didn’t pause to think.
    “Let’s say five thousand pesos,” he said.
    “You don’t beat around the bush,” the widower answered him, his dignity aroused. “The house isn’t worth all that.”
    “Ten thousand,” said Bayardo San Román. “Right now and with onebill on top of another.”
    The widower looked at him, his eyes full of tears. “He was weeping with rage,” I was told by Dr. Dionisio Iguarán, who, in addition to being a physician, was a man of letters. “Just imagine: an amount like that within reach and having to say no because of a simple weakness of the spirit.” The widower Xius’s voice didn’t come out, but without hesitation he said no withhis head.
    “Then do me one last favor,” said Bayardo San Román. “Wait for me here for five minutes.”
    Five minutes later, indeed, he returned to the social club with his silver-trimmed saddlebags, and on the table he laid ten bundles of thousand-peso notes with the printed bands of the State Bank still on them. The widower Xius died two months later. “He died because of that,” Dr. Dionisio Iguaránsaid. “He was healthier than the rest of us, but when you listenedwith the stethoscope you could hear the tears bubbling inside his heart.” But not only had he sold the house with everything it had inside; he asked Bayardo San Román to pay him little by little because he didn’t even have a leftover trunk where he could keep so much consolation money.
    No one would have thought nor did anyonesay that Angela Vicario wasn’t a virgin. She hadn’t known any previous fiancé and she’d grown up along with her sisters under the rigor of a mother of iron. Even when it was less than two months before she would be married, Pura Vicario wouldn’t let her go out alone with Bayardo San Román to see the house where they were going to live, but she and the blind father accompanied her to watch over herhonor. “The only thing I prayed to God for was to give me the courage to kill myself,” Angela Vicario told me. “But he didn’t give it to me.” She was