Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez Page B

at us.
    One day during this time I stayed to have breakfast with Rosa Cabarcas, who was beginning to seem less decrepit to me in spite of her rigorous mourning and the black bonnet that concealed her eyebrows. Her breakfasts were known to be splendid, and prepared with enough pepper to make me cry. At first fiery bite I said, bathed in tears: Tonight I won’t need a full moon for my asshole to burn. Don’t complain, she said. If it burns it’s because you still have one, thanks be to God.
    She was surprised when I mentioned the name Delgadina. That isn’t her name, she said, her name is… Don’t tell me, I interrupted, for me she’s Delgadina. She shrugged: All right, after all, she’s yours, but to me it sounds like a diuretic. I mentioned the message about the tiger that the girl had written on the mirror. It couldn’t have been her, Rosa said, she doesn’t know how to read and write. Then who was it? She shrugged: It could be from somebody who died in the room.
    I took advantage of those breakfasts to unburden myself to Rosa Cabarcas, and I requested small favors for the well-being and good appearance of Delgadina. She granted them without thinking about it, and with the mischievousness of a school girl. How funny! She said at the time. I feel as if you were asking me for her hand. And speaking of that, she said in a casual way, why don’t you marry her? I was dumbfounded. I’m serious, she insisted, it’ll be cheaper. After all, at your age the problem is whether you can or can’t, but you told me you have that problem solved. I cut her off: Sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love.
    She burst into laughter. Ah, my scholar, I always knew you were a real man, you always were and I’m glad you still are while your enemies are surrendering their weapons. There’s a reason they talk so much about you. Did you hear Marcos Perez? Everybody hears him, I said, to change the subject. But she insisted: Professor Camacho y Cano, too, on
The Little Bit of Everything Hour
, said yesterday that the world isn’t what it once was because there aren’t many men like you left.
    That weekend I found that Delgadina had a fever and cough. I woke Rosa Cabarcas to ask for a household remedy, and she brought a first-aid kit to the room. Two days later Delgadina was still prostrate and had not been able to return to her routine of attaching buttons. The doctor had prescribed a household treatment for a common grippe that would be over in a week, but he was alarmed by her general malnourished state. I stopped seeing her, felt how much I missed her, and used the opportunity to arrange the room without her in it.
    I also brought in a pen-and-ink drawing by Cecilia Porras for
We Were All Waiting
, Alvarro Cepeda’s book of short stories. I brought the six volume of Romain Rolland’s
Jean Christophe
to help me through my wakeful nights. And so, when Delgadina was able to return to the room, she found it worthy of sedentary happiness: the air purified by an aromatic insecticide, rose-colored walls, shaded lamps, fresh flowers in the vases, my favorite books, my mother’s good paintings hung in a different way, according to modern tastes. I had replaced the old radio with a shortwave model that I kept tuned to classical music program so that Delgadina would learn to sleep to Mozart’s quartets, but one night I found it tuned to a station that specialized in popular boleros. It was her preference, no doubt, and I accepted this without sorrow, for I had cultivated the same preference in my better days. Before returning home the next day, I wrote on the mirror with her lipstick:
Dear girl, we are alone in the world
.
    During this period I had the strange impression that she was growing older before her time. I mentioned this to Rosa Cabarcas, who thought it was natural. She turns fifteen on December 5, she said. A perfect Sagittarius. It troubled me that she was real enough to have birthdays. What could I give her? A