I have fond memories of prostitutes and I write about them for sentimental reasons … Brothels cost money, and so they are places for older men. Sexual initiation actually starts with servants at home. And with cousins. And with aunts. But the prostitutes were friends to me when I was a young man … With prostitutes—including some I did not go to bed with—I always had some good friendships. I could sleep with them because it was horrible to sleep alone. Or I could not. I have always said, as a joke, that I married not to eat lunch alone. Of course, Mercedes says that I’m a son of a bitch.
He said that he envied his sons living in an age of equality between men and women: Chronicle showed how things were when he was a young man. He finally described himself as a man who desperately needed love: “I am the shyest man in the world. I am also the kindest. On this I accept no argument or debate … My greatest weakness? Umm. It’s my heart. In the emotional-sentimental sense. If I were a woman, I would always say yes. I need to be loved a great deal. My great problem is to be loved more, and that is why I write.” Playboy: “You make it sound like being a nymphomaniac.” García Márquez: “Well, yes—but a nymphomaniac of the heart … If I had not become a writer, I’d want to have been a piano player in a bar. That way, I could have made a contribution to making lovers feel even more loving toward each other. If I can achieve that much as a writer—to have people love one another more because of my books—I think that’s the meaning I’ve wanted for my life.” Of course now he would try to do that for people through his love stories and for countries through his mediations.
Just before this celebrity interview—which would not appear in print for almost a year—one of the best-known books about García Márquez had been published, one which would go on selling large numbers of copies down the years. The Fragrance of Guava was a favour to Plinio Mendoza, who had again fallen on hard times. It was an apparently frank but carefully calculated conversation—expertly staged—which surveyed the whole of García Márquez’s life and work and gave his opinions on everything from, again, politics to women.41 It is difficult not to imagine that the sometimes startling insinuations about sexual flirtations and possible extramarital affairs were not in some way the opening up of a new market for a writer for whom the literary expression of love seemed always previously to have been associated with violence and tragedy.
So García Márquez confirmed his decision to go back to writing and now would never forsake it again, as long as he was capable of practising it. Until quite recently it had been a vocation, a compulsion, an ambition, sometimes a torment. Now he started to truly enjoy it. Years before, during his literary “strike,” he had told an interviewer somewhat wistfully that he was coming to realize that he was never as happy as when he was writing.42 Now at last he had an idea for a new book: a book about love and reconciliation. As spring arrived in Europe he began to make notes.
That summer he and Mercedes travelled around the Old Continent with Colombian friends Alvaro Castaño, who owned Bogotá’s leading classical music radio station, HJCK, and his wife Gloria Valencia, Colombia’s best-known television presenter. They took in Paris, Amsterdam, Greece and Rome. Then Gabo and Mercedes returned to Mexico. By now he had fixed on the specifics of the new novel; it would be created around, of all things, the love affair between his parents, about which he had so long been in denial.
In late August García Márquez and Mercedes vacationed once more with Fidel Castro on the Cuban coastland. Rodrigo had just graduated from Harvard and accompanied them on the visit. He was now considering a career in the cinema. Their great friends the Feduchis and Carmen Balcells also spent time with them and the Comandante. Fidel not only honoured them with a cruise on his yacht Acuaramas but also gave them a dinner invitation to his apartment on 11th Street, where few foreigners had eaten since the death of Celia Sánchez. Castro is an enthusiastic chef and cooking is one of his favourite topics of conversation, especially at that time as he was engaged in a campaign to produce a Cuban Camembert and a Cuban Roquefort. The next night everyone ate at Antonio Núñez Jiménez’s house and on this occasion conversation turned from cooking to money43 Castro was considering making a visit to Colombia and said that “Gabriel,” as he has always insisted on calling him, should accompany him, “unless you’re afraid of being accused of being a Cuban agent.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” replied García Márquez.
“When I hear people saying Castro pays García Márquez,” said Mercedes, “I say it’s about time we saw some of the money.”
“That would be bad, if you sent me the bill,” said Castro. “But I have an unbeatable argument. ‘Señores, we can’t pay García Márquez because he is too expensive.’ Not long ago, so as not to come out with the boast that we can’t be bought, I said to some Yankees: ‘It’s not that we won’t sell ourselves, you understand, the fact is that the USA hasn’t got enough money to buy us.’ More modest, right? And it’s the same with García Márquez. We can’t make him our agent. You know why? We haven’t got enough money to buy him, he’s too expensive.”
Rodrigo, silent until then, said: “When I arrived at a North American university, they asked me how my father reconciled his political ideas with his money and his lifestyle. I answered as best I could but there’s no satisfactory answer to the question.”
“Look, you just say to them, ‘That’s a problem for my mother, not my father,’” said Castro. “You should say, ‘Look, my father hasn’t got a sou, my mother’s the one who spends the money’”
“And she only gives me money for gasoline,” said García Márquez without a shadow of a smile.
Castro replied, “I’m working out a policy here for when they talk to you about your bank accounts. You must tell them that the socialist formula is from each according to his ability and to each according to his work and as Gabriel is a socialist—he’s not yet a communist—he gives according to his ability and he receives according to his work. Besides, the communist formula isn’t applied anywhere.”
Rodrigo warmed to the topic: “Once, out of nowhere, a boy turned to me and said, ‘Your father’s a communist.’ I asked him, ‘What does that mean, that he has a party card, he lives in a communist country?’”
Castro replied, “You should tell him, ‘My father is a communist only when he travels to Cuba and they pay him nothing; he gives according to his ability, they’ve printed about a million of his books, and he receives according to his needs.’”
“They pay me nothing. They never pay me a centavo in royalties here,” said Gabo.
During this visit García Márquez and Castro also talked about the implications of Betancur’s election in Colombia, which, at first sight, was a considerable setback for both García Márquez and the Cuban Revolution. Betancur had been inaugurated on 7 August. Although a Conservative and an ex-editor of the reactionary newspaper El Siglo, his reputation had always been that of a “civilized” politician who was not sectarian and he was an amateur poet who counted many other poets among his personal friends. García Márquez had begun flirting with the new regime in press interviews soon after the election, in addition to repeating how “homesick” he was feeling.
Despite refusing to attend Betancur’s inauguration García Márquez spoke well of the new President to Castro, declaring that he was “a good friend of mine.” He was the son of a muleteer; they had known one another since 1954 when “Gabo” was at El Espectador and “Belisario” at El Colombiano. They had always been in contact since then. García Márquez explained to Castro, “In Colombia you are either Conservative or Liberal from birth, it doesn’t matter what you think.” Betancur, he said, was not a true ideological Conservative, and his government was full of independent people. “He’s a great rhetorical speaker, he gets through to people, really gets through to them. And,” and here came the payoff, “he asks my advice all the time.”44
THE NOBEL SEASON was approaching once more and, as in previous years, García Márquez’s name was being mentioned ag
ain, only this time even more insistently. All the more surprising, then, that he chose, less than a month before the award was announced, to launch a withering attack on Israeli leader Menachem Begin—and, by direct implication, the Nobel Foundation which had awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. In early June Begin had ordered the invasion of neighbouring Lebanon and his military commander General Ariel Sharon had neglected to protect Palestinian refugees from attack, thereby enabling the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut on 18 September. García Márquez suggested that Sharon and Begin should be awarded a Nobel Death Prize.45
But there is every sign he had been working on his own candidacy, too. When his friend Alfonso Fuenmayor asked him later in the year whether he had been to Stockholm before, he replied with a grin: “Yes, I was here three years ago when I came to fix myself up with the Nobel Prize.”46 Naturally this could just be one of his boutades but the truth is that he had made several visits to Stockholm in the 1970s and had gone out of his way to make contact with Artur Lundkvist, the left-wing Swedish academician and distinguished writer who had already had a strong influence on the prize going to Latin Americans Miguel Angel Asturias and Pablo Neruda. And García Márquez had vacationed in Cuba with the Swedish ambassador in the summer of 1981.
If he was looking for omens he couldn’t have had a better one than the return to power of Olof Palme’s Social Democrats in the Swedish elections of 19 September 1982. Palme had been a friend of García Márquez for years and had always emphasized his personal debt to Lundkvist’s literary works for opening his eyes to the wider world. Meanwhile brother Eligio, the family’s literary expert, was always absolutely certain that Gabito was going to win the prize in 1982 and was sure that Gabito himself thought so too. Alvaro Mutis had said his friend’s behaviour was “suspicious” at the time. And on Saturday 16 October, when Eligio talked to him by phone and mentioned the prize, Gabito, roaring with laughter, said he was sure that if someone was going to win it, the Swedish ambassador would have talked to that person a month beforehand …47
On Wednesday 20 October the Mexican newspapers were announcing that García Márquez’s new novel was to be about love. As he and Mercedes sat down for lunch in the early afternoon, a friend called from Stockholm to say that all indications suggested that the prize really was in the bag but that he must keep it to himself or the academicians might change their minds. After he hung up Gabo and Mercedes looked at one another in stupefaction, unable to say a word. Finally she said, “My God, what are we in for now!” They got straight up from the table and fled to Alvaro Mutis’s house for comfort, only returning to their own home in the early hours to wait for confirmation of this accolade which he at least had wanted but which was also a life sentence for them both.
Neither of them slept. At 5.59 the next morning, Mexico City time, Pierre Shori, Vice Foreign Minister of Sweden, called the house in Mexico City and confirmed the news. García Márquez put down the telephone, turned to Mercedes and said: “I’m fucked.”48 They had no time to discuss it or to prepare themselves for the inevitable onslaught before the phone began to ring. The first caller, just two minutes later, was President Betancur, from Bogotá. Betancur had heard the news from François Mitterrand who had heard it from Olof Palme, but the official version said Betancur had heard it from an RCN journalist at 7.03 a.m. Bogotá time.49 García Márquez and Mercedes got dressed as they fielded the first calls and picked at the improvised breakfast brought up by their maid Nati when she heard them moving about upstairs.
With the exception of the writing of One Hundred Years of Solitude, nothing in the great García Márquez mythology has been discussed as much as the announcement of the Nobel Prize, the ensuing pandemonium, and García Márquez’s journey to Stockholm to receive it. If an American or an English man or woman wins the honour, it barely makes the news. (What do writers matter; and who do the Swedes think they are, anyway…) But this was not only an award to a man from Colombia, a country quite unused to international congratulations; it was—it transpired—an award to a man admired and adored throughout a vast, isolated continent, a man who millions in that continent considered their own representative and, indeed, their champion. Congratulations rained down on the house in Mexico City from around the world by telephone and telegram: Betancur, first, but also Mitterrand, Cortázar, Borges, Gregory Rabassa, Juan Carlos Onetti, the Colombian Senate. Castro could not get through so sent a telegram the next day: “Justice has been done at last. Jubilation here since yesterday. Impossible to get through by phone. I congratulate both you and Mercedes with all my heart.” Graham Greene also sent a telegram, “Warmest congratulations. Pity we couldn’t celebrate it with Omar.” Norman Mailer too: “Couldn’t have gone to a better man.” Above all, though, it was an opportunity for Latin America to say at last what it felt about García Márquez—Colombia, Cuba and Mexico all claimed him as their own—and a vast amount of eulogistic copy was logged with newspapers there and all over the world. It was as if One Hundred Years of Solitude had just been published and a billion people had read it simultaneously, five seconds after its appearance, in some strange and magical time, and wanted to celebrate together.
Within minutes the house in Mexico City was under siege from the media, and the police set up roadblocks at either end of Calle Fuego. The first journalists invited him out into the street for a glass of champagne—with photos, of course—and the neighbours came out to applaud. When Alejandro Obregón turned up that morning to stay with his old friend and saw the chaos he thought to himself, “Shit! Gabo’s died!” (Obregón was in Mexico to restore a painting he had given García Márquez, a self-portrait one of whose eyes had been shot out by the painter himself in a drunken fit.)50 Dozens of journalists thronged through the García Márquez house, fetishistically describing every last detail outside and in—they particularly noticed the yellow roses and guavas on every table—and each clamouring for an “exclusive” interview with the man of the moment.
García Márquez had not spoken to his mother for three weeks because her phone was down and an enterprising Bogotá journalist used the wonders of technology to link them up for a public conversation. So Luisa Santiaga told the whole of Colombia that she thought the best thing about the news was that “Maybe now I’ll get my phone fixed.” Which she very soon did. She also said that she’d always hoped Gabito would never win the prize because she was sure he would die soon afterwards. Her son, well used to these eccentricities, said that he would be taking yellow roses to Stockholm in order to protect himself.
García Márquez eventually organized an improvised press conference for the more than a hundred journalists by then swarming over his house. He announced that he would not wear evening dress at the ceremony in Stockholm but a guayabera shirt or even a liquiliqui—the white linen tunic and trousers worn by Latin American peasants in Hollywood movies—in honour of his grandfather. This topic became an obsession in cachaco Colombia, right up to the moment of the ceremony emblematic of the fear that García Márquez would cause some international scandal or behave with unbearable vulgarity and let the country down. He also announced that he would use the prize money to found a newspaper to be called El Otro (The Other), in Bogotá: in his opinion half of the prize had been awarded in recognition of his journalism. He would also build his dream house in Cartagena.
At one in the afternoon, García Márquez and Mercedes left the journalists to it and fled the Calle Fuego, took a room in the Hotel Chapultepec Presidente and began to ring their closest friends. They spent the afternoon in seclusion with just eight people while their house was still in uproar. Alvaro Mutis was designated as the García Barcha family chauffeur for the duration of the media furore.
Washington, meanwhile, confirmed on that same day that despite his new status García Márquez would still not be given a visa to visit the United States, from which he had been banned ever since working for Cuba in 1961. (On 7 November he would write in his column in El Espectador that he would rath
er “the door be closed than half open”—which was quite untrue because he was still profoundly irked by the prohibition—so on 1 December he would make another of his rash threats, vowing to ban the publication of his books in the United States since, if they were still refusing him a visa, why should they allow his books to enter?)51 This happened also to be the day the dissident poet Armando Valladares was released from prison in Cuba, largely thanks to García Márquez’s mediation between Castro and Mitterrand. Valla dares, supposedly paralysed, according to his supporters, was accompanied by Mitterrand’s adviser Régis Debray and astonished everyone by rising from his wheelchair and walking on arrival at the airport in Paris.
All around the world García Márquez’s friends celebrated. Plinio Mendoza wept in Paris. He was not the only one. By contrast the publisher José Vicente Kataraín, already on his way to Mexico, learned the news in the airport on arrival and began to dance; the girl at the news stand asked if he’d won the lottery. Indeed he had. Down in Cartagena, as the family celebrated, Gabriel Eligio said, to anyone who would listen, “I always knew it.” No one reminded him of the prediction that Gabito would “eat paper.” Luisa Santiaga said her father the Colonel must be celebrating somewhere; he had always predicted great things for Gabito. Most of the reports would present the family as eccentric inhabitants of their own little Macondo: Luisa Santiaga was Ursula and Gabriel Eligio was José Arcadio, though as usual he wondered aloud whether he might not be Melquíades. But little by little, despite his pride and undoubted euphoria, Gabriel Eligio began to misbehave: Gabito had got the prize through Mitterrand’s influence, he said (“those things count, you know”); Gabito was just one of the many writers in his family; he couldn’t think why this one got quite so much attention.
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