A very old man with huge wings (Gabriel Garcia Marquez). "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" (Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes) (1968) An old man with large wings

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Very old man with huge wings

It rained for the third day in a row, and they could barely keep up with the crabs crawling into the house; together they beat them with sticks, and then Pelayo dragged them through the flooded yard and threw them into the sea. The newborn had a fever last night; apparently, it was caused by dampness and stench. Since Tuesday, the world has plunged into gloom: the sky and the sea have mixed into some kind of ash-gray mass; the beach, glittering in March with sparks of sand, turned into a liquid slurry of mud and rotting shellfish. Even at noon, the light was so fuzzy that Pelayo couldn't see what was moving and moaning plaintively in the far corner of the patio. Only when he got very close did he discover that it was an old, very old man who had fallen face down in the mud and was trying to get up, but could not, because his huge wings were in the way.

Frightened by the ghost, Pelayo ran after his wife Elisenda, who at that time was applying compresses to a sick child. Together they looked in silent stupor at the creature lying in the mud. He was wearing a beggar's robe. A few strands of colorless hair stuck to his bare skull, there were almost no teeth left in his mouth, and there was no grandeur in his whole appearance. Huge hawk wings, half plucked, bogged down in the impenetrable mud of the yard. Pelayo and Elisenda looked at him so long and so carefully that they finally got used to his strange appearance, he seemed almost familiar to them. Then, emboldened, they spoke to him, and he answered in some incomprehensible dialect in the hoarse voice of a navigator. Without much thought, immediately forgetting about his strange wings, they decided that this was a sailor from some foreign ship that had been wrecked during a storm. And yet, just in case, they called a neighbor who knew everything about this and that world, and one glance was enough for her to refute their assumptions.

It's an angel, she told them. Surely he was sent for a child, but the poor fellow is so old that he could not stand such a downpour and fell to the ground.

Soon everyone already knew that Pelayo had caught a real angel. No one raised a hand to kill him, although the omniscient neighbor claimed that modern angels are none other than participants in a long-standing conspiracy against God, who managed to avoid heavenly punishment and take refuge on earth. The rest of the day, Pelayo watched him from the kitchen window, holding a rope in his hand just in case, and in the evening he pulled the angel out of the mud and locked it in the chicken coop along with the chickens. At midnight, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still fighting the crabs. A little later, the child woke up and asked for food - the fever had completely disappeared. Then they felt a surge of generosity and decided among themselves that they would put together a raft for the angel, give him fresh water and food for three days, and set him free to the waves. But when at dawn they went out into the patio, they saw almost all the inhabitants of the village there: crowded in front of the chicken coop, they stared at the angel without any spiritual awe and put pieces of bread through the holes of the wire mesh, as if it were a zoo animal, and not a heavenly creature.

His call for caution fell on barren ground. The news of the captured angel spread with such speed that in a few hours the patio turned into a market place, and troops had to be called in to disperse the crowd with bayonets, which at any moment could destroy the house. Elisenda's back hurt from the endless garbage collection, and she had a good idea: fence the patio and charge five centavos from anyone who wants to see the angel at the entrance.

People came all the way from Martinique itself. Once a traveling circus arrived with a flying acrobat, which flew several times, buzzing, over the crowd, but no one paid attention to him, because he had the wings of a star bat, not an angel. Desperate patients arrived from all over the Caribbean in search of healing: an unfortunate woman who from childhood counted the beats of her heart and already lost count; a Jamaican martyr who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars tormented him; a sleepwalker who got up every night to destroy what he did during the day, and others with less dangerous diseases. In the midst of this pandemonium, from which the earth trembled, Pelayo and Elisenda, although infinitely tired, were happy - in less than a week they stuffed their mattresses with money, and the line of pilgrims, waiting for their turn to look at the angel, continued to disappear over the horizon.

Marquez Gabriel Garcia

Marquez Gabriel Garcia

Very old man with huge wings

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Very old man with huge wings

It's an angel, she told them. Surely he was sent for a child, but the poor fellow is so old that he could not stand such a downpour and fell to the ground.

It so happened that in those days one of the many fair rides that wandered along the Caribbean coast arrived in the town. A sad sight - a woman turned into a spider because she once disobeyed her parents. It was cheaper to see the Spider-Woman than to see an angel, besides, it was allowed to ask her any questions about her strange appearance, to look at her this way and that, so that no one would have any doubts about the truth of the sacred punishment that had happened. It was a disgusting tarantula the size of a lamb and with the head of a sad maiden. People were amazed not so much by the appearance of this fiend, but by the mournful truthfulness with which the spider woman told the details of her misfortune. As a girl, she once ran away from home to dance against the will of her parents, and when, having danced all night, she returned home along the forest path, a terrible clap of thunder split the sky in two, blinding lightning darted from the abyss into the open crevice and turned the girl into a spider. Her only food was lumps of minced meat, which kind people sometimes threw into her mouth. Such a miracle - the embodiment of earthly truth and God's judgment - naturally, should have eclipsed the arrogant angel, who almost did not honor mere mortals with a glance. Besides, ...

Then, emboldened, they spoke to him, and he answered in some incomprehensible dialect in the hoarse voice of a navigator. Without much thought, immediately forgetting about his strange wings, they decided that this was a sailor from some foreign ship that had been wrecked during a storm. And yet, just in case, they called a neighbor who knew everything about this and that world, and one glance was enough for her to refute their assumptions.

“It's an angel,” she told them. “Surely he was sent for a child, but the poor fellow is so old that he could not stand such a downpour and fell to the ground.

Soon everyone already knew that Pelayo had caught a real angel. No one raised a hand to kill him, although the omniscient neighbor claimed that modern angels are none other than participants in a long-standing conspiracy against God, who managed to avoid heavenly punishment and take refuge on earth. The rest of the day, Pelayo watched him from the kitchen window, holding a rope in his hand just in case, and in the evening he pulled the angel out of the mud and locked it in the chicken coop along with the chickens. At midnight, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still fighting the crabs. A little later, the child woke up and asked for food - the fever completely disappeared. Then they felt a surge of generosity and decided among themselves that they would put together a raft for the angel, give him fresh water and food for three days, and set him free to the waves. But when at dawn they went out into the patio, they saw almost all the inhabitants of the village there: crowded in front of the chicken coop, they stared at the angel without any spiritual awe and put pieces of bread through the holes of the wire mesh, as if it were a zoo animal, and not a heavenly creature.

Padre Gonzaga arrived at seven o'clock, alarmed by the unusual news. At this time, a more respectable audience appeared at the chicken coop - now everyone was talking about what future awaits the captive. The simpletons believed that he would be appointed alcalde of the world. The more sensible assumed that he had the good fortune to become a general who would win all the wars. Some visionaries advised leaving him as a producer in order to breed a new breed of winged and wise people who would put things in order in the universe. Padre Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, was a lumberjack. Approaching the wire mesh, he hastily recalled everything he knew from the catechism, and then asked to open the door of the chicken coop in order to see close up this frail male, who, surrounded by dumbfounded chickens, himself looked like a huge helpless bird. He sat in a corner, spreading his wings to the sun, among the droppings and the remains of the breakfast he was treated to at dawn.

Although many believed that it was the usual reaction of pain, and not anger, after this incident, they tried not to excite him, for everyone understood that his calmness was the calmness of a calmed hurricane, and not the passivity of a retired seraph. In anticipation of the highest interpretation of the nature of the captive, Padre Gonzaga unsuccessfully tried to reason with his windy flock on the spot. But, apparently, in Rome they have no idea what urgency means. It took time to establish whether the stranger had a navel, whether anything similar to Aramaic was found in his language, how many like him could fit on the point of a pin, and whether he was simply a Norwegian with wings.

Detailed letters would probably go back and forth until the end of the century, if one day Providence did not put an end to the torment of the parish priest. It so happened that in those days one of the many fair rides that wandered along the Caribbean coast arrived in the town. A sad sight - a woman turned into a spider because she once disobeyed her parents.

It was cheaper to see the Spider-Woman than to see an angel, besides, it was allowed to ask her any questions about her strange appearance, to look at her this way and that, so that no one would have any doubts about the truth of the sacred punishment that had happened. It was a disgusting tarantula the size of a lamb and with the head of a sad maiden. People were amazed not so much by the appearance of this fiend, but by the mournful truthfulness with which the spider woman told the details of her misfortune. As a girl, she once ran away from home to dance against the will of her parents, and when, having danced all night, she returned home along the forest path, a terrible clap of thunder split the sky in two, blinding lightning darted from the abyss into the crack that opened and turned the girl into a spider. Her only food was lumps of minced meat, which kind people sometimes threw into her mouth.

Such a miracle - the embodiment of earthly truth and God's judgment - naturally, should have overshadowed the arrogant angel, who almost did not honor mere mortals with a glance. In addition, those few miracles that people attributed to him betrayed his mental disability: a blind old man who came from afar in search of healing did not find his sight, but he grew three new teeth, the paralytic never got to his feet, but almost didn't win the lottery, and the leper sprouted sunflowers from sores. All this looked more like mockery than holy deeds, and thoroughly tarnished the reputation of the angel, and the spider woman completely crossed it out with her appearance. It was then that Padre Gonzaga finally got rid of the insomnia that tormented him, and Pelayo's patio again became as deserted as in those days when it rained for three days in a row and crabs walked around the rooms.

The owners of the house did not complain about the fate. With the proceeds, they built a spacious two-story house with a balcony and a garden, on a high plinth so that crabs would not crawl in in winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that angels would not fly in. Not far from the town, Pelayo started a rabbit kennel and forever abandoned the position of alguacil, and Elisenda bought herself high-heeled patent leather shoes and many dresses of shimmering silk, which in those days were worn on Sundays by the most noble lords. The chicken coop was the only place on the farm that was neglected. If sometimes they washed it or burned myrrh inside, then this was by no means done to please the angel, but in order to somehow fight the stench emanating from there, which, like an evil spirit, penetrated into all corners of the new house. In the beginning, when the child learned to walk, they made sure that he did not come too close to the chicken coop. But gradually they got used to this smell, and all their fears disappeared. So even before the boy's milk teeth began to fall out, he began to freely climb into the chicken coop through holes in the leaky wire mesh. The angel was as unfriendly with him as with other mortals, but endured with dog obedience all the cruel childish tricks. They got chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who treated the child could not resist the temptation to examine the angel and found that he had absolutely
bad heart, and the kidneys are no good - it's amazing how he was still alive. However, most of all the doctor was struck by the structure of his wings. They were so naturally perceived in this absolutely human body that it remained a mystery why other people did not have the same wings.

By the time the boy started school, the sun and rain had completely destroyed the chicken coop. The liberated angel wandered back and forth like an exhausted lunatic. Before they had time to kick him out of the bedroom with a broom, he was already underfoot in the kitchen. It seemed that he could be in several places at the same time, the owners suspected that he was bifurcated, repeating himself in different parts of the house, and the desperate Elisenda screamed that it was real torture to live in this hell full of angels. The angel was so weak that he could hardly eat. His eyes, covered with patina, no longer distinguished anything, and he barely hobbled, bumping into objects; only a few scanty feathers remained on its wings. Pelayo, pitying him, wrapped him in a blanket and took him to sleep under a canopy, and only then did they notice that he had a fever at night and he was delirious, like that old Norwegian who was once picked up on the seashore by local fishermen.

Pelayo and Elisenda were seriously alarmed - after all, even the wise neighbor could not tell them what to do with the dead angels.

But the angel did not even think of dying: he survived this very difficult winter of his own and began to recover with the first sun. For several days he sat motionless on the patio, hiding from prying eyes, and in early December his eyes brightened, acquiring their former glassy transparency. Large elastic feathers began to grow on the wings - the feathers of an old bird, which seemed to be planning to put on a new shroud. The angel himself, apparently, knew the reason for all these changes, but carefully concealed them from strangers. Sometimes, thinking that no one could hear him, he softly sang the sailors' songs under the stars.

One morning, Elisenda was chopping onions for breakfast when suddenly a breeze like that of the sea blew into the kitchen. The woman looked out the window and found the last moments of the angel on earth. He prepared for the flight somehow awkwardly, clumsily: moving with clumsy leaps, he plowed the entire garden with his sharp claws and almost destroyed the canopy with the blows of wings that shone dully in the sun. Finally he managed to gain altitude. Elisenda breathed a sigh of relief for herself and for him as she saw him fly over the last houses of the village, almost touching the roofs and zealously flapping his huge wings like those of an old hawk. Elisende watched him until she had finished cutting the onion and until the angel was out of sight, and he was no longer a nuisance in her life, but just an imaginary point above the sea horizon.

(Translation: A. Yeshchenko)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Very old man with huge wings

It's an angel, she told them. Surely he was sent for a child, but the poor fellow is so old that he could not stand such a downpour and fell to the ground.