[Colombia] Márquez: Somebody messed up the roses

　　Today was Sunday, the rain had stopped, and I wanted to take a few red and white roses to my cemetery that she had planted to make garlands for the altar. This winter was frighteningly dull, and the morning after the rain was full of bleak scenes, and I couldn't help but think of the hill where the dead bodies were buried in town. It was a bare slope with no trees in sight, and after a gust of wind, occasionally a few tree lints drifted. When the rain stops, the midday sun will surely dry the muddy ground on the hillside, but it will also burrow all the way into my grave, decaying my young body and mixing with insect shells and grass roots.

　　I wanted to fly up to the altar and pluck some of the brightest roses, but I failed. She knelt before the idol, where she had been kneeling with rapt concentration ever since my first encounter. Maybe today I can make it. But the light flickered, and she woke up from her musings, looked up at the corner of the wall, where the chair was. She must have been thinking, "It's windy again." Because there was a "creaking" sound on the altar, the house shook a little, as if the memories that had been deposited in her mind for many years were churning again. Then I understood that I had to pick the roses at another time, because she was still watching the chair warily, and she would notice it when my hand passed by her face. I should wait a little longer and she'll leave here and go to the next room for a nap. Every Sunday, this nap makes sure she sleeps. Only then would it be possible for me to go out with the roses and come back before she went back to the room to look at the chair.

　　Last Sunday, it was particularly bad, and I waited almost two hours for her to make up her mind. She seemed a little restless, suspicious, and distraught by the thought that her loneliness at home was about to be broken. She held a bouquet of roses in her hand, which had not yet been placed on the altar, and walked around the house. Then she came down the hallway, turned and went into the next room, and I knew she was looking for a light. After a while, she walked towards the door. In the light of the hallway, I saw her in a dark coat and pink socks, and I thought she was the same little girl who threw herself on my bed in this room forty years ago. At that time she said to me: "You have put a small stick in your eyes, look, your eyes are so big, so round." "Nothing has changed, and from that distant August afternoon, time seems to freeze. That afternoon, the women took her into the room, made her look at the body, and said to her, "Cry! He's your brother! She threw herself against the wall and cried obediently into tears.

　　For about three or four Sundays, I wanted to get some roses, but she stood vigilantly at the altar and watched over her attentively, and in the twenty years she had lived in the house, I had never seen her so attentive. Last Sunday, while she was out looking for a lamp, I made a bouquet out of the best-looking roses, and I felt more likely than ever to grant my wish. However, as I was about to return to my chair, I suddenly heard footsteps in the hallway, and I quickly put the flowers back on the altar. At this time, I saw her holding a lamp at the door.

　　She wore a dark coat and pink socks, and had a bright light on her face that resembled exposure. In the bright light, she did not look like a woman who had been planting roses in the garden for twenty years, but still like a little girl who was led to the next room to change clothes on that August afternoon. Now, twenty years later, she came back with the lamp, fatter and older.

　　My shoes had been roasting by the stove for twenty years, but the mud had not yet fallen off that afternoon. That day I went to look for shoes, the door was closed, the bread and reed strips hanging from the door frame had been removed, the furniture had been removed, all of it had been moved, except for the chair in the corner on which I spent my time. I knew they were baking shoes and they forgot to take them when they left home, so I had to go back and find them.

　　After many years, she returned. Over time, the smell of musky and dust in the room and the pungent stench of insects mixed together. I was the only one left in the room, sitting there waiting. I could hear the sound of wood rotting and the vibrations of the air that was getting old in the bedroom with the door closed. It was at this time that she returned. She appeared in the doorway, carrying a suitcase, a certain green hat, and a cloth tunic that had not been taken off since. At that time, she was still a little girl, not yet fat, and her legs and stomach did not look so bloated as they are now. When she opened the door and came in, I was covered in dust and cobwebs, and the crickets that had been singing in a corner of the room for twenty years suddenly fell silent. Nevertheless, despite the dust and cobwebs on me, despite the abrupt cessation of the crickets singing, and despite the age of the person who had come, I recognized her, the little girl who had accompanied me to the stables to dig out the bird's nest on a stormy August afternoon. She stood in the doorway, carrying a box in her hand and a small green hat on her head. It was as if she was about to cry out and repeat what she had said that afternoon. That afternoon, when they arrived, I was already lying on my back on the grass in the stables with a broken ladder in my hand. She pushed the door open completely, and the hinge on the door creaked. As if someone had knocked on the roof, dust from the ceiling plopped down. She hesitated at the door, then leaned in halfway and looked at the room, calling twice as if to wake up a sleeping person: "Child, child!" I still sat safely in my chair, my legs straight. I thought she was coming back to see the house, but she stayed at home. She opened the doors and windows of the room, and the room was filled with a musky smell again, just like when the box was opened. The original furniture and clothes in the suitcase were removed, and she also took the smell from the room. Twenty years later, she brought the smell back. She restored the altar to its original appearance. As long as she returns, even if it is just one person, it will be enough to repair this world that has been broken by the relentless time. From then on, she spent all her time here except for eating and sleeping in the next room, silently talking to the Holy Spirit. In the afternoon, she sat on a chair by the door, selling flowers while making needlework and thread. She always shook the floor in a chair when she sewed clothes, and when someone came to buy roses, she always put money in a small cloth bag on her belt, and she always said with the same words: "Take it from the right, the flowers on the left are for the Holy Spirit." ”

　　She sat in the rocking chair for twenty years, shaking, patching up the seams, occasionally looking at the chair in the corner, as if she was now taking care of not her brother who had spent her childhood with, but a young grandson who was physically crippled and older than her grandmother who always sat in a corner chair.

　　I looked down and thought that maybe I could touch a rose this time. If I could get the flower, I would take it to the hillside, stick it on my grave, and then go back to my chair until one day she stopped coming here and there was no more sound in the next room.

　　When this day comes, everything in front of you will change. I had to run out again and tell the people that the woman who sold roses, the woman who lived in the broken house, needed a few men to carry her up the hillside, and that then I would be alone in the room forever. She will be satisfied, though, for she will know that it is not just the invisible wind that comes to her altar every Sunday to mess with the roses.