Gabriel García Márquez: The Last Interview

by Gabriel García Márquez

  MENDOZA: You claim not to have an ounce of machismo in your body. Could you give us an example to prove this to any doubting feminist?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Not all so-called feminists have the same notion of what machismo is, nor do their ideas necessarily coincide with mine. There are, for instance, feminists who really want to be men and this defines them straight off as frustrated macho females. Others affirm their feminity by acting in more aggressively male ways than any man. So it’s difficult to prove anything at all in this area. You can’t prove it in theoretical terms, you can only show it in practice. Chronicle of a Death Foretold, to cite just one of my books, is certainly both an exposé and a condemnation of the basic machismo within our society—a society which is actually matriarchal.

  MENDOZA: How would you define machismo, then?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I would say that machismo in men and in women is merely the usurpation of other people’s rights. It’s as simple as that.

  MENDOZA: The patriarch is a sexually primitive man. His double reminds us of this as he’s dying of poison. Do you think the fact affected his personality or his destiny?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I think it was Kissinger who said that power is an aphrodisiac. History demonstrates that powerful people are often afflicted by a kind of sexual frenzy, but I’d say my idea in The Autumn of the Patriarch is more complex than this. Power is a substitute for love.

  MENDOZA: Yes, in your books, those who pursue and achieve power seem incapable of loving. I’m thinking not only of the Patriarch but also of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Is this inability to love the cause or the effect of their lust for power?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The way I see it is that the inability to love is what drives them to seek consolation in power; but I’m not very good at these theorizings, which in my case are always a posteriori. I prefer to leave it to others who do it better and get a thrill out of it.

  MENDOZA: The lieutenant in In Evil Hour seems to have sexual problems. Is he impotent or is he, perhaps, homosexual?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I never thought the lieutenant was homosexual, but I must admit that his behavior does arouse some suspicions. In fact, in one rough draft there was a rumor to that effect going around the town, but I took it out because it seemed too obvious. I preferred to let the reader decide for himself. There’s no doubt about his inability to love, however, although I wasn’t conscious of it when creating the character. I only realized it afterward when I was working on the personality of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. In any case these two characters and the Patriarch are linked through power, not through their sexual behavior. The lieutenant of In Evil Hour was my first real attempt to explore the mystery of power (at the very modest level of a small town mayor) and the Patriarch was the most complex effort. The relationship between them is clear. Colonel Buendía could very well have been the lieutenant of In Evil Hour at one level and at another he could have been the Patriarch. I mean that his behavior would have been the same in both instances.

  MENDOZA: Do you really think the inability to love is very serious?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I don’t think there’s any human misery greater than that. Not only for the person afflicted but for all those whose misfortune it is to come within his orbit.

  MENDOZA: Do you think there should be any limits on sexual freedom? What should they be?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: We are all hostage to our own prejudices. As a liberal-minded man, I believe that theoretically there should be no limit to sexual freedom. In practice, however, I can’t escape the prejudices of my Catholic background and bourgeois society, and like most of us I fall prey to double standards.

  MENDOZA: You’re the father of boys. Have you ever asked yourself how you would have been with daughters? Strict? Tolerant? Jealous, perhaps?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I’ve only got sons and you’ve only got daughters. I can only say that I feel as jealous about my boys as you do about your girls.

  MENDOZA: You said once that all men are impotent but there is always a woman to solve their problem. Do you think our masculine inhibitions are as strong as that?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I think it was a Frenchman who said, “There are no impotent men, only unfeeling women.” In fact, although not many admit it, every normal man finds any new sexual experience terrifying. I think the explanation for this anxiety is cultural. He’s afraid of making a fool of himself, and in fact he does so, because his anxiety prevents him from performing as well as his machismo expects. In this sense we’re all impotent and we can only come out of it with our self-respect intact thanks to a woman’s understanding. This is not a bad thing. It gives love a special magic because every time is like the first time and each couple has to start from the beginning again as if it were their first attempt. The absence of this emotion and mystery is what makes pornography so boring and unacceptable.

  MENDOZA: You sometimes missed out having a woman around when you were very young, very poor and totally unknown. Now that you’re famous there are opportunities galore, but the need to keep your private life intact has turned you into that rare species—the man who’s hard to get. Don’t you ever feel resentful deep down that fate has treated you so cruelly?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: It’s not so much a concern for my private life that stops me being a public ladykiller, so to speak, as the fact that I don’t see love as a quick lunge with no consequences. I see it as a reciprocal relationship which simmers and grows, and it’s impossible in my present circumstances to have more than one of these at a time. Of course I’m not talking about passing temptations which arise from vanity, curiosity, or even boredom and leave no trace at all, not even from the waist down. In any case, I’ve been pretty sure for some time now that there is no cosmic force capable of upsetting what you call the order of my private life; and we both understand well enough what that means.

  2. SUPERSTITIONS, MANIAS, AND TASTES

  MENDOZA: You said once, “If you don’t believe in God, at least be superstitious.” This is a serious subject for you.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Very serious.

  MENDOZA: Why?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I believe that superstitions, or what are commonly called such, correspond to natural forces which rational thinking, like that of the West, has rejected.

  MENDOZA: Let’s begin with the most common examples. The number thirteen. Do you really think it brings bad luck?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I think it’s just the opposite, actually. People in the know make out that it has a jinx (the Americans have been taken in, hotels there go from the twelfth to the fourteenth floor) so that nobody else will use it and they’ll be the sole beneficiaries. It is really a lucky number. The same is true of black cats and walking under ladders.

  MENDOZA: You always have yellow flowers in your house. What significance do they have?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Nothing awful can happen to me if there are yellow flowers around. To be absolutely safe, I need yellow flowers (preferably yellow roses) and to be surrounded by women.

  MENDOZA: Mercedes always puts a rose on your desk.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Always. What’s happened quite a few times is that I’m trying to work and not getting anywhere, nothing’s going right, I’m throwing away page after page. Then I look at the flower vase and find the reason … no rose. I shout for a flower, they bring it, and everything starts coming out right.

  MENDOZA: Is yellow your lucky color?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yellow is lucky but gold isn’t, nor the color gold. I identify gold with shit. I’ve been rejecting shit since I was a child, so a psychoanalyst told me.

  MENDOZA: One of the characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude compares gold to dog shit.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, when José Arcadio Buendía discovers the formula for turning metals into gold and shows his son the result of his experiment, he says, “It looks like dog shit.”

  MENDOZA: So you never wear gold.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Never. I don’t wear a watch, or a chain, or a gold ring or a br
acelet. You won’t see anything made of gold in my house either.

  MENDOZA: You and I learne something in Venezuela which has been a great help in life, namely, the link between bad taste and bad luck. The Venezuelans have a special word for this jinx attaching to pretentious people, objects, and attitudes. They call it pava.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, it’s an extraordinary defence mechanism that ordinary people’s common sense has erected in Venezuela against the explosion of bad taste among the nouveaux riches.

  MENDOZA: You’ve made a complete list of objects and things with pava, haven’t you? Can you remember any of them?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Well, there are the most obvious, the most common ones. Big conch shells behind the door …

  MENDOZA: Aquariums inside the house …

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Plastic flowers, peacocks, those embroidered Manila shawls … It’s a very long list.

  MENDOZA: You also mentioned those young men in long black cloaks who entertain in restaurants in Spain.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The student musical groups. There are very few things with more pava than those.

  MENDOZA: And formal dress?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, but there are differing degrees. Tails have more pava than a dinner jacket but less than a frock coat. A tropical dinner jacket is the only item of this kind of dress which escapes.

  MENDOZA: Have you ever worn tails?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Never.

  MENDOZA: Would you never wear them? You would have to if you won the Nobel Prize.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I’ve already had to put not wearing tails as a condition of my attending a function or ceremony on other occasions. What else can I do—tails have a jinx on them.

  MENDOZA: We also found other more subtle forms of pava. You once decided, for instance, that smoking in the nude did not mean bad luck, but smoking in the nude while walking about did.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: And going around with nothing but your shoes on.

  MENDOZA: Of course.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Or making love with your socks on. That’s fatal. It can never work.

  MENDOZA: What other things?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Disabled people who use their disabilities to play musical instruments. People without arms playing the drums with their feet or the flute with their ears, for instance. Or blind musicians.

  MENDOZA: I suppose certain words have a curse on them too. I mean words you never use when you’re writing.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, all sociological jargon—words like “level,” “parameter,” “context.” “Symbiosis” is a word with pava.

  MENDOZA: “Approach” is another.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, “approach.” And what about “handicapped”? I never use “and/or” or “in order to” or “over and above.”

  MENDOZA: And do people have the same effect?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, but it’s better not to talk about them.

  MENDOZA: I think so too. There’s one writer who carries pava with him wherever he goes. I’m not going to mention him by name because if I do this book will be doomed. What do you do when you meet people like that?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I avoid them. Above all I refuse to sleep in the same place as they do. A few years ago Mercedes and I rented a flat in a town on the Costa Brava. We soon found out that a neighbor—a lady who’d come over to say hello—had pava. I refused to sleep there. I spent the day there but not the night. I went to sleep at a friend’s house at night. Mercedes got really fed up about it, but there was nothing I could do.

  MENDOZA: What about places? Do they have this effect on you too?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, not because they bring bad luck in themselves, but because at some time I’ve had a premonition there. This happened to me in Cadaqués. I know if I ever go back there I’ll die.

  MENDOZA: You used to go every summer. What happened?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: We were staying in a hotel when that north wind which really sets your nerves on edge started blowing. Mercedes and I spent three days in our room unable to go out. I had the sudden feeling, with absolute certainty, that I was in mortal danger. I knew that if I got out of Cadaqués alive I could never go back. When the wind stopped, we left immediately by that narrow, winding road. You known the one. I only breathed normally again when I got to Gerona. I’d had a miraculous escape, but I knew that if I went back I wouldn’t be so lucky next time.

  MENDOZA: How do you explain your famous premonitions?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I think they respond to bits of information or clues I pick up in my subconscious.

  MENDOZA: I remember that first of January 1958, in Caracas, when you instinctively felt something serious was about to happen any second and, in fact, it did. There was a totally unexpected air raid on the Presidential Palace right in front of our noses. To this day I ask myself how or why you had that premonition.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: It was almost certainly because when I woke up that morning in the hostel where I was living I heard the engine of a fighter plane. It must have stuck in my subconscious that something unusual was happening because I’d just arrived from Europe, where fighter planes only fly over cities in wartime.

  MENDOZA: Are your premonitions very clear-cut?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: No, they are very vague, like a kind of misgiving, but they are always related to something definite. Look, the other day in Barcelona, while I was tying my shoelace, I had this hunch that something had just happened at home in Mexico. Not necessarily anything bad. Just something. I was worried all the same because my son Rodrigo was leaving by car for Acapulco that day. I asked Mercedes to phone home. In fact something had happened at the very moment I was tying my shoelace. Our maid had just had a baby. A boy. I breathed a sigh of relief that the premonition had nothing to do with Rodrigo at all.

  MENDOZA: Your premonitions and intuition have helped you a lot. You have based many important decisions in your life on them.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Not only the most important. All of them.

  MENDOZA: All of them. Is that true?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: All of them. Every day. Every time I decide something I do it intuitively.

  MENDOZA: Let’s talk about your manias. Which is your biggest mania?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: My oldest and most constant mania is punctuality. I was punctual even as a child.

  MENDOZA: You were saying that when you make a typing error you start the page again. Is that mania or superstition?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: That’s sheet mania. To me a typing error or a crossing out is an error of style. (It can also be simply fear of writing.)

  MENDOZA: Do you have manias about clothes? I mean, do you have certain clothes which you don’t wear because they bring bad luck?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Hardly ever. If it has pava I know before I buy it. Once, however, I stopped wearing a jacket because of Mercedes. She was coming back from school with the children and thought she saw me at one of the windows in the house with a checked jacket on. I was actually in another part of the house. When she told me this I never put that jacket on again. And I really like it, by the way.

  MENDOZA: Let’s talk about the things you like, as they do in women’s magazines. It’s amusing asking you the things we always ask beauty queens at home in Colombia. What is your favorite book?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Oedipus Rex.

  MENDOZA: Your favorite composer?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Béla Bártok.

  MENDOZA: And painter?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Goya.

  MENDOZA: The film director you most admire?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Orson Welles, especially for The Immortal Story, and Kurosawa for Red Beard.

  MENDOZA: The film you most enjoyed?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Il Generale de la Rovere, by Rossellini.

  MENDOZA: Any other?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Jules et Jim by Truffaut.

  MENDOZA: Which film character would you most liked to have created?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: General de la Rovere
.

  MENDOZA: Which historical figure interests you most?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Julius Caesar, but only from a literary point of view.

  MENDOZA: And the one you dislike most?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Christopher Columbus. He’s really got pava. One of the characters in The Autumn of the Patriarch says so.

  MENDOZA: Your favorite literary heroes?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Gargantua, Edmund Dantes, and Count Dracula.

  MENDOZA: Which day do you dislike?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Sunday.

  MENDOZA: We know your favorite colour is yellow. But what shade of yellow?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I described it once as the yellow of the Caribbean seen from Jamaica at three in the afternoon.

  MENDOZA: And your favorite bird?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I’ve said that too. It’s canard à l’orange.

  3. WORK

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: In general, I think a writer writes only one book, although that same book may appear in several volumes under different titles. You see it with Balzac, Conrad, Melville, Kafka, and of course with Faulkner. One of these books sometimes stands out far above the rest so that the author seems to be the author of a single, primordial work. Who remembers Cervantes’s short stories? Who remembers The Graduate Who Thought He Was Made of Glass, for instance? But that can still be read with as much pleasure as any of his major works. In Latin America, the Venezuelan writer Rómulo Gallegos is famous for Doña Barbara, which is not his best work, and the Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias is known for The President, a terrible novel, not nearly as good as Legends of Guatemala.