On the third day he came across the domestic mailman and the latter told him what direction to follow. When Ulises returned to the house with the pruning tools, his mother asked him for her four o'clock medicine, which was on a nearby table. Damned fags!". Surprised and even a little proud of his son's resolution, the Dutchman followed him through the orange grove with a look that slowly began to smile. Several men who were riding concealed in the rear raised the canvas and aimed at the small vehicle with machine guns and army rifles. She shook her little bell and Erendira arrived almost immediately with the steaming tureen. As soon as he touched them, the glass and the bottle changed color. The tent lighted up inside with a radiant glow, burst in silence, and disappeared in a whirlwind of wet powder. A team of Indians took care of the cargo and a band of musicians announced their triumphal arrival in the villages. The boy felt intimidated by the candle and it was hard for him to close his mouth because of his donkey teeth. The Dutchman asked in his language: "What the devil can they be selling there? In a trunk with two crosses painted in broad strokes they carried the bones of the Amadises. She had seen a nun chase a pig through the courtyard, slide along holding the runaway animal by the ears, and roll in a mud puddle without letting go until two novices in leather aprons helped her get it under control and one of them cut its throat with a butcher knife as they all became covered with blood and mire. She threw it on the ground, tried again and pulled out a larger lock. "I felt I was going to die, soaked in the sweat of fear, begging inside for the door to open without opening, for him to enter without entering, for him never to go away but never to come back either so I wouldn't have to kill him!". "It can't be! They were sitting on the ground, drinking out of the same bottle, which passed from mouth to mouth, and they had almond branches on their heads as if camouflaged for combat. Alvaro Cepeda Samudio, who was also traveling in the region, selling beer-cooling equipment, took me through the desert towns in his truck with the intention of talking to me about something and we talked so much about nothing and drank so much beer that without knowing when or where we crossed the entire desert and reached the border. She was sleeping with her eyes open. The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother – Wikipedia He had seen him put the oranges on top of the safe when he worked out the combination. She fought him off with a scratch on the face and shouted in silence again, but he replied with a solemn slap which lifted her off the ground and suspended her in the air for an instant with her long Medusa hair floating in space. Suddenly the water in the tube stopped. Erendira was beside her, dressed in gaudy fabrics and with trinkets hanging, but with the dog chain still on her ankle. Economics and Administration, Tourism and Tourism Management, History, Culture, Religion, Psychology, Sociology, Fine Arts, Engineering, Architecture, Language, Literature, Educational … She felt naked in front of Ulises, let out a squeak, and covered herself with the sheet up to her neck. the commandant shouted. Directed by Ruy Guerra. Five minutes later they were all in a military truck flying toward the border against a contrary wind that had erased all trace of the fugitives. Gabriel Garcia Marquez Innocent Eréndira and Other Stories is a collection of short stories from the Nobel Prize winner and author of One. They had traveled with no sleep and were done in from fatigue and thirst. It was Wednesday, but the grandmother wanted to put on a Sunday dress, decided that Erendira would receive no customers before eleven o'-clock, and asked her to paint her nails garnet and give her a pontifical coiffure. We have to begin all over again.". "Son of an evil mother," she muttered. His mother observed him while she was taking her medicine and when she was sure that it was not a delirium of her pain, she asked him in the Guajiro Indian language: "How long has that been happening to you?". the grandmother asked. Erendira knew then that she wouldn't wake up, because she had begun to rave. "What's that one got that we don't have?". "It'll be better than sitting here warming our chairs for free.". Still hazy with sleep, she picked up the tureen, and tried to clean the stain on the rug. "She's my grandmother.". Ships' captains will send you postcards from every port in the world.". She put whole pieces into her mouth and swallowed them without chewing, moaning with delight and looking at Ulises from the limbo of her pleasure. While the grandmother floated through the swamps of the past, Erendira busied herself sweeping the house, which was dark and motley, with bizarre furniture and statues of invented Caesars, chandeliers of teardrops and alabaster angels, a gilded piano, and numerous clocks of unthinkable sizes and shapes. The commandant saw the sooty barrels of the machine guns pass close to his eyes and he raised his arms and smiled. She closed the chest with the money and hid it under the bed, but the grandmother recognized the fear in her hand when she gave her the key. Erendira began to comb her grandmother's hair, but as she drew the comb through the tangles a clump of hair remained between the teeth. He took his leave with a blessing for all. To learn more, view our, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, UBICANDO A LA ERÉNDIRA DE GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ EN EL ENTORNO AMERINDIO, Common Roots Memory, Myth, and Legend in 20th-Century Chinese and Latin American Literature. The grandmother recognized them at once because they were just like the trucks of the Amadises. "What happened to your wings? She waits on her grandmother, Cinderella-style, hand and foot, day and night. "If things go on like this," she told Erendira, "you will have paid me the debt inside of eight years, seven months, and eleven days. He was only twenty years old, but his work had aged him, and he was wearing a khaki uniform, leggings, a pith helmet, and had a military pistol on his cartridge belt. The loader realized that Erendira had pulled out the necklace and hastened to take it away from her and stick it back into the sack of rice. "Put them on and come back tomorrow." When she had finished bathing her grandmother, she took her to her bedroom. The man put his hand to his pistol out of pure instinct. Only then did she abandon her fatigue, tricked by the illusion that Erendira had got up and was looking for a way to escape and come back to her. “The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother” is the story of a child who accidentally knocks over a candle and burns down her grandmother’s home. Ulises and Erendira remained silent for a long time, rocked in the shadows by the sleeping old woman's great breathing. "You have to get up early," she said then, "so you can boil the infusion for my bath before the people get here. Erendira calmed him. The girl didn't see the hand. ", "Don't be a tightwad," the grandmother said. The youngest missionary, who was in charge of the group, pointed to a natural crack in the glazed clay ground. Erendira was asleep chained to the slat and in the same position of a drowned person on the beach from which she had called him. Still she didn't seem so convinced when she saw the photographer go out with the camera on his back. With quick and precise movements she grabbed the gold vest and left the tent. They went in without any announcement, used pillows to chase away the man they found spending himself as best he could for his money, and they picked up Erendira's bed and carried it out into the street like a litter. Besides, she wasn't the only one worn out at night, because that mission was dedicated to fighting not against the devil but against the desert. "Don't you like it?". The driver then went back to the cab, where a woman in mourning was riding, in her arms a baby who was crying from the heat. "I went crazy, my God, I went crazy!" "It's because you're love-sick and people who are lovesick can't eat bread." "Then you're not of this world," he said, tense. she asked him. And then, turning to the men in line: "And you, you sissies, where do you keep your balls, letting this attack against a poor defenseless child go on? Her arms, her legs, even her hairless skull were green with blood. In the isolation ward of the infirmary she had seen tubercular nuns in their nightgown shrouds, waiting for God's last command as they embroidered bridal sheets on the terraces while the men preached in the desert. There's no such thing as smugglers. At twelve o'clock she was wiping the last champagne glasses when she caught the smell of broth and had to perform the miracle of running to the kitchen without leaving a disaster of Venetian glass in her wake. 6 … She ran to where Ulises was, hid next to him among the bushes, and with tight hearts they both watched the little blue flame that crept along the wick, crossed the dark space, and went into the tent. she shouted. When they asked her what her free, true, and definitive will was, she didn't even give a sigh of hesitation. The grandmother traveled on a litter with paper wreaths, chomping on the grains in her pouch, in the shadow of a church canopy. "You've got no love for anybody.". "All right, if that's how it is." Erendira, sitting between the two graves of the Amadises, had stopped weeping. "With three like these we can take a trip around the world," Ulises said. "I discovered too late that you have the face of a traitor angel.". "In any case, love is just as important as eating," the grandmother said. "We have to cool more water.". Erendira needed six hours just to set and wind the clocks. Then she began to pull her hair with both hands, dying with laughter, throwing the handfuls into the air with an incomprehensible jubilation until her head looked like a peeled coconut. The last item was the trunk with the remains of the Amadises. When there was no other man left in the village who could pay anything for Erendira's love, her grandmother put her on a truck to go where the smugglers were. "My mother says that people who die in the desert don't go to heaven but to the sea," Ulises said. Erendira didn't pay any attention to him because at that instant dawn began to break. "I can't," Erendira said. Then the grandmother opened her eyes and looked at her with a placid smile. Ulises smiled. Overcome by an irresistible temptation, the grandmother called to the man. "Everybody talks about them, but no one's ever seen one.". Lying on her new canopied bed, Erendira was naked and placid, irradiating a childlike glow under the light that filtered through the tent. "Everybody says you're very pretty and they're right.". He flipped into the air and fell dead on top of his bicycle, his head blown apart by a rifle bullet, and he never knew where it came from. "Pianos don't explode just like that.". Then he put some thickened cream on top, smoothing it with a spoon until there was no trace of his sinister maneuver, and he completed the trick with seventy-two little pink candles. The storm threatened to knock the house down, and there were so many leaks in the roof that it was raining almost as much inside as out. With Irene Papas, Claudia Ohana, Michael Lonsdale, Oliver Wehe. "But sooner or later I'll pass, you'll see.". "She can dream things.". That night she lay thinking until quite late while her grandmother sang in her sleep, wearing the golden vest. The grandmother offered Erendira a piece of cake. To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser. There were no means left untried by the grandmother in an attempt to rescue her granddaughter from the protection of the missionaries. By labeling it a “spell” the story suggests that Erendira can not help but be subject to this fact of nature. "That's what I'm for.". As she watched over her business, the grandmother counted the bank notes in her lap, dividing them into equal piles and arranging them in a basket. Among the throng of men without a country and sharpers was Blacaman the Good, up on a table and asking for a real serpent in order to test an antidote of his invention on his own flesh. ", "Me too," another said. The grandmother had been fooling around on the piano all afternoon, singing the songs of her times to herself in a falsetto, and she had stains of musk and tears on her eyelids. The grandmother was pleased with the boy's decision. ", "She'll find out in any case," Erendira said. With every fold Ulises drew closer to Erendira. "But it makes people want to have their pictures taken," the grandmother answered. His wife asked him in Spanish: "Nobody," her husband answered, a little in the clouds. It was hard to breathe because of the heat and dust inside the closed-in truck. She kept on shouting as far as her voice would carry, distributing whacks with her crosier against all who came within reach, but her rage was inaudible amongst the shouts and mocking whistles of the crowd. The loader, quite sure of himself, told the grandmother: "Erendira is coming with me, if it's all right by you. That night, a little after seven o'clock, Erendira was combing her grandmother's hair when the wind of her misfortune blew again. "But you'd better go now, because if we figure out accounts again you'll end up owing me ten pesos.". Ulises gave it to her. Erendira looked at him with a smile that was naughty and even a little affectionate and took the soiled sheet off the mattress. But the voice was as alive as ever when she began to rave. Then he made a last effort to chase her, calling her with painful shouts that were no longer those of a lover but of a son, yet he was overcome by the terrible drain of having killed a woman without anybody's help. In that world, the dead people will convert back into their youth time, floating around the world with all the flowers and sea grass. Down there the row of Erendira's suitors was passing. She set up her tent across from the mission and sat down to think, like a solitary warrior besieging a fortified city. she asked him. Attracted by the shouts and the laughter, other women came out onto the balcony. Erendira then put the plate on a table and leaned over her grandmother, scrutinizing her without touching her. "On the contrary," said the photographer. In the back, on an army cot, Erendira was unable to repress the trembling in her body, and she was in sorry shape, all dirty with soldier sweat. ", "What makes them close their eyes isn't the music," he said. Ulises' mother didn't know any Dutch. You shitty bums!". "I've got ground glass in my bones," she said. The heartless grandmother forces young Erendira into prostitution as a way of paying back the debt the young girl incurred as a result of accidentally setting fire to their home. Her enormous bellows-breathing, upset by the first rattles of death, filled the whole area. Only then did Ulises become interested in the grandmother's nostalgia. As Erendira was serving the soup, her grandmother noticed the somnambulist look and passed her hand in front of her eyes as if wiping an invisible pane of glass. "Twenty pesos for the week, less eight for meals, less three for water, less fifty cents on account for the new shirts, that's eight fifty. Only when he saw Erendira go out with the gold vest did he become aware of his state. "My body has that habit," Erendira said by way of an excuse. The mother waited until she was alone with Ulises and then repeated: He answered without paying attention because he was hanging on his father's movements in the office. The grandmother not only blocked his way but avoided contact with his money. The oldest Indian counted the money and they all withdrew with a bow. Erendira was bathing her grandmother when the wind of her misfortune began to blow. Agh, queen!' A band of brass-blowers was captivating Erendira's clientele with a taciturn waltz. Then he had her get on a scale to prove his decision with figures. She made a subterranean movement and sat up in bed. The grandmother's bed had recovered its viceregal splendor, the statue of the angel was in its place beside the funerary trunk of the Amadises, and in addition, there was a pewter bathtub with lion's feet. "It's the lightning you make taking pictures at night.". The best known version in the language of the Indians was that Amadis the father had rescued his beautiful wife from a house of prostitution in the Antilles, where he had killed a man in a knife fight, and that he had transplanted her forever in the impunity of the desert. April 29, 2021. "He was their accomplice, the lowlife.". "It doesn't look bad to someone who's been on a diet," he said, smiling. This page was last changed on 11 August 2014, at 01:04. How videos can drive stronger virtual sales; April 9, 2021. "I had good reason to be turning over in my sleep," she said as Erendira put egg whites on the burns. The warm water perfumed with oregano was pouring into the bathtub through a tube fed from outside. Ulises, terrified at the grandmother's fearful evocation, grabbed Erendira's hand. Her grandmother was asleep. "You can go," she told him. They both did, without any need, for there was no explosion. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. "You can wash it this afternoon.". Next came the leader of the band. Ulises' eyes clouded over with anxiety. the photographer said. The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Souless Grandmother (Spanish: La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada) is a 1972 novella by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. Fourteen-year-old Eréndira is living with her grandmother when she accidentally sets fire to their home. The driver started up before he answered. His father, who couldn't understand the Guajiro language, was passing by the porch at that moment with a cluster of oranges. In order to demonstrate, one after the other he touched the glasses that were on the table and they all turned different colors. "Then don't waste your time, ma'am," he said. In the bedroom, which had been furnished with an excessive and somewhat demented taste, like the whole house, Erendira needed two more hours to get her grandmother ready. "You're an inconsiderate bunch of slobs!" "The prestige of your house will fly from mouth to mouth from the string of the Antilles to the realm of Holland," the grandmother was saying. The only thing new was a rocklike scratch in her breathing. She saw the anxious and diaphanous eyes, but before saying anything she rubbed her head with the towel in order to prove that it wasn't an illusion. Download. The policeman jumped off the running board and shouted twice for the photographer to halt. One night a convoy of slow covered trucks passed very close to her and the only lights they carried were wreaths of colored bulbs which gave them the ghostly size of sleep-walking altars. The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother is considered to be one of the most emotional stories by Gabriel García Márquez. "I don't know anything," the photographer said, "I haven't seen anything, and I won't pay for the music.". But when she lay down on her bed in her muslin nightgown, the bitterness of fond memories returned. "A man who knows how to get himself forgiven has earned half of heaven," she said. The wandering photographer, who knew her quite well, loaded his gear onto the carrier of his bicycle and was ready to leave all alone when he saw her in the full sun with her eyes fixed on the mission. She had seen them sweat like tanned stevedores hauling water from the cistern, watering by hand a bold garden that other novices cultivated with hoes in order to plant vegetables in the flintstone of the desert. "When she starts to dream that you're leaving we'll already be across the border. "I already told you there wasn't anyone," he said. When the truck went on, the grandmother made an enigmatic gesture to him, but he confused it with a greeting, smiled, and waved. "After all, an artist is what I am.". MAGICAL AND FANTASTICAL ELEMENTS IN " THE INCREDIBLE AND SAD TALE OF INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND HER HEARTLESS GRANDMOTHER " BY MARQUEZ. "You couldn't go in for all the gold in the world. Ulises reappeared. Erendira didn't answer her any more because she knew that the grandmother was getting lost in her delirium, but she didn't miss a single order. "Someone who can swear to your moral standing and your good behavior in a signed letter. On that occasion Ulises didn't have to ask anyone where Erendira was. This collection of. They made the trip on the back of the truck in the open, among sacks of rice and buckets of lard and what had been left by the fire: the headboard of the viceregal bed, a warrior angel, the scorched throne, and other pieces of useless junk. The mailman dismounted, took some chewed-up bills from his pocket, and showed them to the grandmother. She was awake until dawn, threading suppositions together and calculating the loss. Only then did the grandmother notice the loaded bicycle. The driver shouted to the grandmother: The grandmother observed with disbelief the miserable and solitary streets of a town somewhat larger but just as sad as the one they had abandoned. There was the tent of wandering love under hanging canvas signs: ERENDIRA IS BEST; LEAVE AND COME BACK -- ERENDIRA WAITS FOR YOU; THERE'S NO LIFE WITHOUT ERENDIRA. "She's going to wake up now. ", "Quite the contrary," the grandmother said with a very sweet voice. "No, sir, that shows a great lack of respect for virtue on your part.". Erendira uncovered her eyes and saw that indeed the oranges did have her color. From there he waved good-bye to Erendira, but she was still so surprised that she didn't answer him. Every street was a public gambling den, every house a saloon, every doorway a refuge for fugitives. She left the tent when Erendira was calmer and she gave the soldier waiting his money back. "You've got no reason to complain," her grandmother had said to her when they left the border town. Erendira put the dirty sheet aside and covered the mattress with another, which was clean and ironed. It's eight hundred seventy-two thousand three hundred fifteen pesos, less the four hundred and twenty which she's already paid me, making it eight hundred seventy-one thousand eight hundred ninety-five. The commandant ordered one of the policemen on the running board to take charge of the photographer. The drunken recruits were dancing by themselves so as not to waste the free music, and the photographer was taking nighttime pictures with magnesium papers. "And besides, I had a strange dream." For an instant he studied the face worn out by vigil, the eyes dim from fatigue, the withered hair of the woman who, even at her age, in her sorry state, and with that crude light on her face, could have said that she had been the most beautiful woman in the world. "Go!" But while he was keeping an eye on his father, his mother was keeping an eye on him. I was traveling about selling encyclopedias and medical books in the province of Riohacha. "I put two bars on the bedroom door so he couldn't get in; I put the dresser and table against the door and the chairs on the table, and all he had to do was give a little knock with his ring for the defenses to fall apart, the chairs to fall off the table by themselves, the table and dresser to separate by themselves, the bars to move out of their slots by themselves.". She remained that way until the mission bell rang and the first lights went on in the windows and the desert became saturated with the smell of the hot bread of matins. Ulises didn't answer. The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother. At midnight Ulises was still thinking with such intensity that he couldn't sleep. She hadn't taken five steps outside the tent when she came across the photographer, who was lashing his equipment to the carrier of his bicycle. She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath of scorching air, and went on walking in her sleep. "Take advantage of tomorrow to wash the living room rug too," she told Erendira. He crossed the desert hiding in passing trucks, stealing to eat and sleep and stealing many times for the pure pleasure of the risk until he found the tent in another seaside town which the glass buildings gave the look of an illuminated city and where resounded the nocturnal farewells of ships weighing anchor for the island of Aruba. "Well, now you have to wait until tomorrow," Erendira said. I remember as if it had been yesterday that I was singing the song that everyone was singing those days. "Around those times, at the beginning of March, they brought you home," she said. They had cut her hair with pruning shears until her head was like a brush, they put a hermit's rough cassock on her and gave her a bucket of whitewash and a broom so that she could whitewash the stairs every time someone went up or down. Erendira went to the stove, where there was another large pot with aromatic herbs boiling. The grandmother followed her with her look and when Erendira turned to go back to the kitchen, she shouted at her: Having been awakened all of a sudden, the girl dropped the tureen onto the rug. "I feel as if someone had been beating me on the kidneys.". So when they reached the first town after a deadly journey, Erendira and the loader were relaxing from good love behind the parapet of cargo. Erendira and Ulises looked at her with growing surprise as the delirium became more profound and dramatic and the voice more intimate. "The airmail man travels in a pickup truck.". In the shelter of the tent were the Indian bearers and the leader of the brass band, waiting to be paid. Without making a sound they cloaked Erendira in a mosquito netting, picked her up without waking her, and carried her off wrapper-like a large, fragile fish caught in a lunar net. Erendira left the tent to find out what was going on and saw the Indian in charge of pouring water into the tube chopping wood by the kitchen. Among the last in the procession a boy passed, innocent of heart, with gourd-cut Indian hair and dressed in rags, carrying an Easter candle with a silk bow in his hand. The one restful backwater was the red-light district, reached only by the embers of the urban din. "Help me change the sheet.". Erendira lay down on the bed but he remained trembling where he was: at the decisive moment his determination had weakened. ", "I'm the domestic mail," the man said. He sat down at the end of the hall and sucked on his pipe until the tobacco was used up.