17. See Gilard, ed., De Europa y América 1, pp. 5–8.
18. See GGM, “Me alquilo para soñar,” El Espectador, 4 September 1983. Frida’s story is similar to that of Rafael Ribero Silva in Rome (mentioned in this chapter)—she went to Europe to be a classical singer.
19. Cf. GGM, “El mar de mis cuentos perdidos,” El Espectador, 22 August 1982, which relates GM’s sudden superstition, many years later, about leaving Cadaqués and never returning for fear of dying.
20. But see “Polonia: verdades que duelen,” El Espectador, 27 December 1981, in which, now that it was safe to do so, he stated categorically that his first and only journey to Poland was for two weeks in the autumn of 1955.
21. “90 días en la Cortina de Hierro. VI. Con los ojos abiertos sobre Polonia en ebullición,” Cromos, 2,203, 31 August 1959.
22. Ibid.
23. “La batalla de las medidas. III. La batalla la decidirá el público,” El Espectador, 28 December 1955.
24. GGM, “Triunfo lírico en Ginebra,” El Espectador, 11 December 1955.
25. GGM, “Roma en verano,” El Espectador, 6 June 1982. GGM characterizes the girl as one of the “sad whores” of the villa Borghese: “sad whores” would appear in the title of his last novel over fifty years later.
26. See “La penumbra del escritor de cine,” El Espectador, 14 November 1982, in which he gives a detailed appreciation of the role of script-writers, almost all of whom are anonymous, except for Zavattini.
27. Quoted by Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, pp. 408–9.
28. Ibid., p. 432. García Márquez would remark, many years later, and not of Fellini but of Zavattini: “In Latin America art has to have ‘vision,’ because our reality is often hallucinatory and hallucinated. Has no one suspected that the most likely source for the Latin American novel’s ‘magical realism’ is Miracle in Milan?”
29. Guillermo Angulo, interview, 1991. See also Guillermo Angulo, “En busca del Gabo perdido,” in Mera, ed., Aracataca-Estocolmo, p.85.
30. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, p. 408.
31. Claude Couffon, “A Bogotá chez García Márquez,” L’Express, 17–23 January 1977, p. 75. GGM tells Couffon he went straight to the Hôtel de Flandre the first night.
10 / Hungry in Paris: La Bohàme (1956–1957)
1. This chapter draws on interviews with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza (Bogotá, 1991), Hernán Vieco (Bogotá, 1991), Germán Vargas (Barranquilla, 1991), Guillermo Angulo (Bogotá, 1991, 2007), Tachia Quintana Rosoff (Paris, 1993, 1996, 2004), Ramón Chao (París, 1993), Claude Couffon (Paris, 1993), Luis Villar Borda (Bogotá, 1998), Jacques Gilard (Toulouse, 1999, 2004) and many other informants.
2. Paris being Paris, both hotels are still standing, though the H°tel de Flandre is now called the H°tel des Trois Coll°ges. GGM’s stay there was recorded by a plaque in 2007. His son Gonzalo and Tachia Quintana were in attendance when the plaque was unveiled.
3. Plinio Mendoza, “Retrato de GM (fragmento),” in Angel Rama, Novísimos narradores hispanoamericanos en “Marcha” 1964-1980 (México, Marcha Editores, 1981), pp. 128–39.
4. Ibid., p. 137. See also “GM 18 años atrás,” El Espectador, 27 February 1974.
5. Plinio Mendoza, La llamay el hielo; Plinio Mendoza, “GM 18 años atrás,” op. cit.
6. Incredibly, four years later, another great Latin American writer, GGM’s future friend Mario Vargas Llosa, would end up in an attic let by Madame Lacroix, and for the same reason.
7. On Otero Silva, see GGM, “Un cuento de horror para el día de los Inocentes,” El Espectador, 28 December 1980.
8. Mendoza, La llama y el hielo, pp. 49–51. (La llama y el hielo would cause a rift between Mendoza and GGM, and especially between Mendoza and Mercedes, who considered some of its revelations a betrayal of confidence and of their friendship.)
9. See Antonio Núñez Jiménez, “García Márquez y la perla de las Antillas (o Qué conversan Gabo y Fidel)” (Havana, 1984, unpublished manuscript). Núñez Jiménez gave me privileged access to this manuscript when I visited Havana in 1997. The story about Guillén is also told in GGM, “Desde París con amor,” El Espectador, 26 December 1982. In fact Perón—not in any case a dictator—had fallen in September 1955 and so it seems likely that the shout was for Peru’s Odría, who left power reluctantly on 28 July, or Nicaragua’s Somoza, who was assassinated on 21 September.
10. GGM, “El proceso de los secretos de Francia. XII. El ministro Mitterrand hace estremecer la sala,” El Independiente (Bogotá), 31 March 1956. These articles can be found in Gilard, ed., De Europa y América 1.
11. Mendoza, La llama y el hielo, pp. 19–20.
12. See Consuelo Mendoza de Riaño, “La Gaba,” Revista Diners (Bogotá), no. 80, November 1980, which records that GGM wrote to Mercedes three times a week but “was said to have had a Spanish girlfriend in Paris.”
13. Peter Stone, “García Márquez” (Paris Review, 1981), in Gourevitch, ed., The “Paris Review”Interviews, p. 188.
14. See Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava, p. 56.
15. Quoted by Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melqutades, p. 403.
16. See Juan Goytisolo, Coto vedado (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1985), pp. 209–12, on the Mabillon and other cafés and their connections.
17. This narrative is based on a long interview in Paris in March 1993.
18. Possibly the most complete version of GGM’s sufferings in Paris is given in Jean Michel Fossey, “Entrevista a Gabriel García Márquez,” Imagen (Caracas), 27 April 1969. But see also Germán Castro Caycedo, “‘Gabo’ cuenta la novela de su vida. 5,” El Espectador, 23 March 1977, for important details.
19. Agustín’s three friends, all tailors, are called Alfonso, Alvaro and Germán, the names of GGM’s best friends from Barranquilla.
20. Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava, p. 26.
21. His uncle José María Valdeblánquez spent decades in the government bureaucracy in Bogotá; in 1993 I drank several large whiskies in Riohacha with García Márquez’s sardonic cousin, Ricardo Márquez Iguarán, who worked for years with Valdeblánquez in the pensions department in the late 1940s—“years and years, and we never paid out a single pension!”
22. The narrative of No One Writes to the Colonel takes place from early October to early December 1956—we know this because of the references to Suez. This means that it was written at the same time as the Colombian and Middle Eastern events it describes were taking place, not to mention during the period when GGM and Tachia Quintana were together—21 March to mid-December 1956.
23. My translation.
24. Sorela, Elotro GM, p. 133.
25. The story is framed in the same way that Chronicle of a Death Foretold, its contemporary, would be: a narrator who sounds like GGM talks to Billy in Cartagena many years later and then, in Paris, he investigates the hospital records to see when Nena checked in and talks to a functionary Billy consulted in the Colombian embassy.
26. See GGM, “El argentino que se hizo querer de todos,” El Espectador, 22 February 1984.
27. Gustavo GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 206.
28. Fuenmayor discusses this episode in Crónicas sobre el grupo de Barranquilla. GGM’s first novel Leaf Storm had been dedicated to Germán Vargas; the friends in No One Writes to the Colonel are called Alfonso, Alvaro and Germán: all three men will appear in OHYS, together with Ramón Vinyes (and Mercedes …). No wonder GM would repeatedly tell journalists that he wrote “so that my friends will love me more.” And who could be surprised that a man with his experience of family life in childhood would cling to the friends who had first made him feel that he belonged.
29. Quoted in Silvana Paternostro, “La mirada de los otros,” Página 12 (Buenos Aires), 5 May 2004.
30. GGM, “Georges Brassens,” El Espectador, 8 November 1981.
31. GGM, “Desde París, con amor,” El Espectador, 26 December 1982, in which he recalls working for the Algerian National Liberation Front. (Twenty-five
years later, at the independence celebrations, he would say that it was the only struggle he’d ever been imprisoned for.)
32. GGM, “Desde París con amor,” El Espectador, 26 December 1982.
33. Couffon, “A Bogotá chez García Márquez,” L’Express, 17–23 January 1977, p. 76.
34. Plinio Mendoza, in Mera, ed., Aracataca-Estocolmo, pp. 100–1.
35. GGM, “Mi Hemingway personal,” El Espectador, 26July 1981.
11 / Beyond the Iron Curtain: Eastern Europe During the Cold War (1957)
1. Mendoza, La llama y el hielo, p. 21. This chapter draws on interviews with Plinio Mendoza (Bogotá, 1991), Luis Villar Borda (Bogotá, 1998), Guillermo Angulo (Bogotá, 1991, 2007), Hernán Vieco (Bogotá, 1991), Tachia Quintana (Paris, 1993), Manuel Zapata Olivella (Bogotá, 1991), Jacques Gilard (Toulouse, 1999, 2004) and others.
2. Even in the published articles about this journey, which he revised in 1959, García Márquez would still disguise Soledad as “Jacqueline,” a French graphic artist originally from Indochina, and Plinio as “Franco,” a nomadic Italian journalist. In the 1950s it was impossible for a Colombian even to travel beyond the Iron Curtain without risking the gravest political and personal consequences. See Gilard, ed., De Europa y América 1, p. 7.
3. GGM, “90 diás en la Cortina de Hierro. I. La ‘Cortina de Hierro’ es un palo pintado de rojo y blanco.” Cromos, 2,198, 27 July 1959. All these articles are collected in Gilard, ed., GGM, Obra periodistica vol. Vand vol. VI: De Europa y América 1 and 2.
4. GGM, “90 diás en la Cortina de Hierro. VI. Con los ojos abiertos sobre Polo-nia en ebullición,” Cromos, 2,199, 3 August 1959.
5. GGM, “90 diás en la Cortina de Hierro. II. Berlín es un disparate,” Cromos, 2,199, 3 August 1959.
6. GGM, “90 días en La Cortina de Hierro. III. Los expropiados se reúnen para contarse sus penas,” Cromos, 2,200, 10 August 1959.
7. Many years later Villar Borda would be the last Colombian ambassador to East Berlin.
8. In July 2004 Jacques Gilard told me, “On one occasion GGM said to me that he wasn’t sure whether he was a communist in Bogotá but he thinks he was. Certainly when he arrived in Vienna in 1955 and met up with Jorge Zalamea, who was attending a communist conference, he definitely considered himself a communist.” Which did not mean that he was a member of the party, of course.
9. GGM, “90 días en La Cortina de Hierro. III. Los expropiados se reúnen para contarse sus penas,” op. cit.
10. GGM, “90 días en la Cortina de Hierro. I. Berlín es un disparate,” Cromos, 2,199, 3 August 1959.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. García Márquez stated in his articles that only “Jacqueline” went back to Paris and that he and “Franco” stayed in Berlin and left the car there, travelling on by rail to Prague. This is to facilitate not only the incorporation of the May 1957 visit to Germany but also the 1955 visit to Czechoslovakia and Poland into the forthcoming July-August 1957 visit to the USSR and Hungary. Thus did three separate trips get folded, eventually, into one supposed trip of “Ninety days behind the Iron Curtain.”
14. Arango, Un ramo de nomeolvides, p. 88. The troupe was the Delia Zapata Folklore Group, about which García Márquez had written an article in Bogotá (“Danza cruda,” El Espectador, 4 August 1954), and, as fate would have it, the troupe was short of an accordionist and a saxophonist.
15. GGM, Paris to Tachia Quintana, Madrid, summer 1957.
16. The journey is described in GGM, “Allá por los tiempos de la Coca-Cola,” El Espectador, 11 October 1981.
17. GGM, “90 días en la Cortina de Hierro. VII. URSS: 22, 400,000 kilómetros cuadrados sin un solo aviso de Coca-Cola,” Cromos, 2:204, 7 September 1959. The four articles on the USSR, which would be published in Cromos, Bogotá, in 1959, were first published as two articles, “Yo visité Rusia” 1 and 2 in Momento, Caracas, 22 and 29 November 1957. Both sets are published in Gilard, ed., Gabriel García Márquez, Obra periodística vol. VI: De Europa y América 2 (Bogotá, Oveja Negra, 1984), but I quote here from the 1959 set because the articles are more complete and because they are integrated into an overall perspective.
18. Molotov would be ousted on 1 June 1957.
19. GGM, “90 días en la Cortina de Hierro. VIII. Moscú la aldea más grande del mundo,” Cromos, 2,205, 14 September 1959.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. GGM, “90 días en la Cortina de Hierro. IX. En el Mausoleo de la plaza Roja Stalin duerme sin remordimientos,” Cromos, 2,206, 21 September 1959.
23. Ibid. Cf. GGM, “El destino de los embalsamados,” El Espectador, 12 September 1982, in which the bodies of Lenin and Stalin are discussed, Evita Perón, Santa Anna and Obregón mentioned, and the delicate hands of Stalin, Fidel Castro and Che compared.
24. Mendoza, La llama y el hielo, p. 30.
25. Later GGM would meet another alleged dictator with exquisitely delicate hands, Comandante Castro, known to the world as “Fidel”—not even an uncle but everyone’s friend and comrade. By that time GGM himself would be everyone’s friend too: “Gabo.”
26. GGM, “90 días en la Cortina de Hierro. IX. En el Mausoleo de la plaza Roja Stalin duerme sin remordimientos,” Cromos, 2,206, 21 September 1959.
27. Ibid.
28. GGM, “90 días en la Cortina de Hierro. X. El hombre soviético empieza a cansarse de los contrastes,” Cromos, 2,207, 28 September 1959.
29. GGM, “Yo visité Hungría,” Momento (Caracas), 15 November 1957.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Mendoza, La llama y el hielo, p. 32.
34. GGM, London to Luisa Santiaga Márquez, Cartagena (via Mercedes in Barranquilla), 3 December 1957.
35. Claude Couffon, “A Bogotá chez García Márquez,” L’Express (Paris), 17–23 January 1977, p. 76.
36. See Gilard, ed., De Europa y América 1, pp. 33–8.
37. See Anthony Day and Marjorie Miller, “Gabo talks: GGM on the misfortunes of Latin America, his friendship with Fidel Castro and his terror of the blank page,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, 2 September 1990: “‘Between high school and my first trip to socialist countries I was somewhat a victim of propaganda,’ he says. ‘When I returned [from Eastern Europe in 1957], it was clear to me that, in theory, socialism was a much more just system than capitalism. But that in practice, this wasn’t socialism. At that moment, the Cuban Revolution occurred,’ he says” (pp. 33–4).
38. On 15 November 1957, GGM published “I Visited Hungary” in Momento, and on 22 and 29 November, “I Was in Russia” 1 and 2, also in Momento. Almost two years later, end of July to end of September 1959, eleven further articles appeared under the general heading, “90 Days Behind the Iron Curtain,” in the weekly Cromos, Bogotá—three on Germany three on Czechoslovakia, one on Poland and four on the USSR (effectively repeating the 1957 articles); curiously, he does not repeat the Hungarian article. For a detailed reconstruction of the sequence of writing and publication, see Gilard, ed., De Europa y América 1, pp. 33–8.
39. Tachia Quintana, interview, Paris, 1993.
40. GGM, London, to Luisa Santiaga Márquez, Cartagena (via Mercedes, Barranquilla), 3 December 1957.
41. Gilard, ed., De Europa y América 1, p. 44.
42. GGM, “Un sábado en Londres,” El Nacional (Caracas), 6 January 1958.
43. GGM, Mexico City, to Mario Vargas Llosa, London, 1 October 1966.
44. GGM, London, to Luisa Santiaga Márquez, Cartagena (via Mercedes, Barranquilla), 3 December 1957. See Claudia Dreifus, “Gabriel García Márquez,” Playboy 30:2, February 1983, pp. 65–77, 172-8: Playboy: “How did Mercedes react [to his departure for Europe]?” GM: “This is one of the mysteries of her personality that will never be clear to me—even now. She was absolutely certain I’d return. Everyone told her she was crazy, that I’d find someone new in Europe. And in Paris, I did lead a totally free life. But I knew when it was over, I’d return to her. It wasn’t
a matter of honor but more like natural destiny, like something that had already happened.”
45. Conversation, Mexico City 1993.
46. Conversation, Mexico City 1999.
12 / Venezuela and Colombia: The Birth of Big Mama (1958–1959)
1. See GGM, “Caribe mágico,” El Espectador, 18 January 1981. This chapter and the next one draw on conversations with Plinio Mendoza (Bogotá, 1991), Consuelo and Elvira Mendoza (Bogotá, 2007), José Font Castro (Madrid, 1997), Domingo Miliani (Pittsburgh, 1998), Alejandro Bruzual (Pittsburgh, 2005), Juan Antonio Hernández (Pittsburgh, 2004, 2008), who read this chapter in manuscript, Luis Harss (Pittsburgh, 1993), José Luis Díaz-Granados (Bogotá, 1991 and after), José (“Pepe”) Stevenson (Bogotá, 1991, Cartagena, 2007), Malcolm Deas (Oxford and Bogotá, 1991), Eduardo Posada Carbó (Oxford, 1991), Eduardo Barcha Pardo (Arjona, 2008), Alfonso López Michelsen (Bogotá, 1993), Germán Arciniegas (Bogotá, 1991), Ramiro de la Espriella (Bogotá, 1991), Jacques Gilard (Toulouse, 1999, 2004), Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot (Barcelona, 1992), Jesús Martín Barbero (Pittsburgh, 2000), Luis Villar Borda (Bogotá, 1998), Rita García Márquez and many others.
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