Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez Page B

informed of my disappearance. Since the planes hadn’t come back, I was sure they had abandoned the search and declared me dead.
    All of that was so, up to a point. Yet I tried to take care of myself every moment. I kept finding ways to survive, something to prop myself up with—insignificant though it might have been—some reason to sustain hope. But on the sixth day I no longer hoped for anything. I was a dead man in the raft.
    In the afternoon, thinking about how soon five o’clock would come, and with it the return of the sharks, I tried to lash myself to the side. On the beach in Cartagena two years earlier I had seen the remains of a man who had been mangled by a shark. I didn’t want to die that way. I didn’t want to be torn to shreds by a mob of voracious beasts.
    It was almost five. The sharks arrived and circled the raft. I struggled to rouse myself to untie a rope from the mesh floor. The afternoon was cool, the sea calm. I felt slightly stronger. Suddenly I saw the sea gulls from the previous day, and the sight of them reawakened my desire to live.
    At that point I would have eaten anything. Hunger gnawed at me. But the pain in my ravaged throat and in my jaws, hardened by lack of exercise, was worse. I needed to chew something. I tried in vain to tear off pieces of the rubber sole of my shoe. Then I remembered the business cards from the shop in Mobile.
    They were in one of my pants pockets, nearly disintegrated from the dampness. I tore them up, put them in my mouth, and began to chew. It was like a miracle: my throat felt a little better and my mouth filled with saliva. I chewed slowly, as if it were gum. My jaws hurt at the firstbite. But eventually, chewing the cards I had saved without knowing why since the day I went shopping with Mary Address, I felt stronger and more optimistic. I thought I would keep chewing them forever to relieve the pain in my jaw. It seemed terribly wasteful to throw them overboard. I could feel a tiny piece of mashed-up cardboard move all the way down to my stomach, and from that moment on I felt I would be saved, that I wouldn’t be destroyed by the sharks.
What do shoes taste like?
    The relief I felt while chewing the cards spurred my imagination to look for things to eat. If I had had a knife, I would have cut up my shoes and chewed slices of the rubber soles. They were the closest thing at hand. I tried to pry off the clean, white soles with my keys. But I couldn’t pull off a piece of the sole, it was glued so tightly to the fabric.
    Desperately I gnawed at my belt until my teeth hurt. I couldn’t even tear off a mouthful. I must have looked like a fiend then, trying to rip off pieces of my shoes, belt, and shirt with my teeth. At twilight I took off my clothes, which were now soaked with sweat, and I was down to my shorts. I don’t know if it was the result of chewing the cards, but I fell asleep almost immediately. Perhaps because I had grown accustomed to the discomfort of the raft, perhaps because I was so drained after six nights of keeping a vigil, I slept soundly for many hours. At times a wave would awaken me. I would start up, frightened that the force of the wave would throw me into the water, but immediately afterward I would go back to sleep.
    Eventually I woke to my seventh day at sea. I don’t know why I was sure it wouldn’t be my last. The sea was calm and the day cloudy, and when, at about eight o’clock, the sun came out, I felt reassured by the good sleep of the previous night. Against the low, leaden sky, the seven sea gulls flew over the raft.
    Two days before, I had been cheered by their presence. But when I saw them the third time, I felt terror again. They’re seven lost sea gulls, I thought in despair. Every sailor knows that sea gulls sometimes get lost at sea and fly for several days without direction, until they find a ship to point the way to port. Maybe the gulls I had been seeing for three days now were the same ones each day, lost