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

hecould stay in town.’
    ‘And that’s how he could buy the property of his fellow-partisans whom the mayor kicked out at half their price,’ the doctor replied. He knocked on the door, since he didn’t find his keys in his pockets. Then he faced the colonel’s disbelief.
    ‘Don’t be so naïve,’ he said. ‘Sabas is much more interested in money than in his own skin.’
    The colonel’s wife went shopping thatnight. He accompanied her to the Syrians’ stalls, pondering the doctor’s revelations.
    ‘Find the boys immediately and tell them that therooster is sold,’ she told him. ‘We mustn’t leave them with any hopes.’
    ‘The rooster won’t be sold until my friend Sabas comes back,’ the colonel answered.
    He found Alvaro playing roulette in the pool hall. The place was sweltering on Sunday night. The heatseemed more intense because of the vibrations of the radio turned up full blast. The colonel amused himself with the brightly colored numbers painted on a large black oilcloth cover and lit by an oil lantern placed on a box in the center of the table. Alvaro insisted on losing on twenty-three. Following the game over his shoulder, the colonel observed that the eleven turned up four times in ninespins.
    ‘Bet on eleven,’ he whispered into Alvaro’s ear. ‘It’s the one coming up most.’
    Alvaro examined the table. He didn’t bet on the next spin. He took some money out of his pants pocket, and with it a sheet of paper. He gave the paper to the colonel under the table.
    ‘It’s from Agustín,’ he said.
    The colonel put the clandestine note in his pocket. Alvaro bet heavily on the eleven.
    ‘Startwith just a little,’ the colonel said.
    ‘It may be a good hunch,’ Alvaro replied. A group of neighboring players took their bets off the other numbers and bet on eleven after the enormous colored wheel had already begun to turn. The colonel felt oppressed. For the first time he felt the fascination, agitation, and bitterness of gambling.
    The five won.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ the colonel said, ashamed,and, with anirresistible feeling of guilt, followed the little wooden rake which pulled in Alvaro’s money. ‘That’s what I get for butting into what doesn’t concern me.’
    Alvaro smiled without looking at him.
    ‘Don’t worry, colonel. Trust to love.’
    The trumpets playing a mambo were suddenly interrupted. The gamblers scattered with their hands in the air. The colonel felt the dry snap, articulateand cold, of a rifle being cocked behind his back. He realized that he had been caught fatally in a police raid with the clandestine paper in his pocket. He turned halfway around without raising his hands. And then he saw, close up, for the first time in his life, the man who had shot his son. The man was directly in front of him, with his rifle barrel aimed at the colonel’s belly. He was small,Indian-looking, with weather-beaten skin, and his breath smelled like a child’s. The colonel gritted his teeth and gently pushed the rifle barrel away with the tips of his fingers.
    ‘Excuse me,’ he said.
    He confronted two round little bat eyes. In an instant, he felt himself being swallowed up by those eyes, crushed, digested, and expelled immediately.
    ‘You may go, colonel.’
    He didn’t needto open the window to tell it was December. He knew it in his bones when he was cutting up the fruit for the rooster’s breakfast in the kitchen. Then he opened the door and the sight of the patio confirmed his feeling. It was a marvelous patio, with the grass and the trees, and the cubicle with the privy floating in the clear air, one millimeter above the ground.
    Hiswife stayed in bed untilnine. When she appeared in the kitchen, the colonel had already straightened up the house and was talking to the children in a circle around the rooster. She had to make a detour to get to the stove.
    ‘Get out of the way!’ she shouted. She glowered in the animal’s direction. ‘I don’t know when I’ll ever