No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel García Márquez, J. S. Bernstein

with your head high and take our friendaside and say, “Friend, I’ve decided to sell you the rooster.” ’
    ‘Life is a breeze the way you tell it,’ the colonel said.
    She assumed an energetic attitude. That morning she had put the house in order and was dressed very strangely, in her husband’s old shoes, an oilcloth apron, and a rag tied around her head with two knots at the ears. ‘You haven’t the slightest sense for business,’ she said.‘When you go to sell something, you have to put on the same face as when you go to buy.’
    The colonel found something amusing in her figure.
    ‘Stay just the way you are,’ he interrupted her, smiling. ‘You’re identical to the little Quaker Oats man.’
    She took the rag off her head.
    ‘I’m speaking seriously,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take the rooster to our friend right now, and I’ll bet whateveryou want that I come back inside of half an hour with the nine hundred pesos.’
    ‘You’ve got zeros on the brain,’ the colonel said. ‘You’re already betting with the money from the rooster.’
    It took a lot of trouble for him to dissuade her. She had spent the morning mentally organizing the budget for the next three years without their Friday agony. She had made a list of the essentials they needed,without forgetting a pair of new shoes for the colonel. She set aside a place in the bedroom for the mirror. The momentary frustration of her plans left her with a confused sensation of shame and resentment.
    She took a short siesta. When she got up, the colonel was sitting in the patio.
    ‘Now what are you doing?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m thinking,’ the colonel said.
    ‘Then the problem is solved. We willbe able to count on that money fifty years from now.’
    But in reality the colonel had decided to sell the rooster that very afternoon. He thought of Sabas, alone in his office, preparing himself for his daily injection in front of the electric fan. He had his answer ready.
    ‘Take the rooster,’ his wife advised him as he went out. ‘Seeing him in the flesh will work a miracle.’
    The colonel objected.She followed him to the front door with desperate anxiety.
    ‘It doesn’t matter if the whole army is in the office,’ she said. ‘You grab him by the arm and don’t let him move until he gives you the nine hundred pesos.’
    ‘They’ll think we’re planning a hold-up.’
    She paid no attention.
    ‘Remember that you are the owner of the rooster,’she insisted. ‘Remember that you are the one who’s going todo him the favor.’
    ‘All right.’
    Sabas was in the bedroom with the doctor. ‘Now’s your chance, friend,’ his wife said to the colonel. ‘The doctor is getting him ready to travel to the ranch, and he’s not coming back until Thursday.’ The colonel struggled with two opposing forces: in spite of his determination to sell the rooster, he wished he had arrived an hour later and missed Sabas.
    ‘I canwait,’ he said.
    But the woman insisted. She led him to the bedroom where her husband was seated on the throne-like bed, in his underwear, his colorless eyes fixed on the doctor. The colonel waited until the doctor had heated the glass tube with the patient’s urine, sniffed the odor, and made an approving gesture to Sabas.
    ‘We’ll have to shoot him,’ the doctor said, turning to the colonel. ‘Diabetesis too slow for finishing off the wealthy.’
    ‘You’ve already done your best with your damned insulin injections,’ said Sabas, and he gave a jump on his flaccid buttocks. ‘But I’m a hard nut to crack.’ And then, to the colonel:
    ‘Come in, friend. When I went to look for you this afternoon, I couldn’t even see your hat.’
    ‘I don’t wear one, so I won’t have to take if off for anyone.’
    Sabas beganto get dressed. The doctor put a glass tube with a blood sample in his jacket pocket. Then he straightened out the things in his bag. The colonel thought he was getting ready to leave.
    ‘IfI were in your