Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Garcia Marquez wrote this novella in 1981. In 1982 he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Although the Nobel recognizes a body of work, not a single accomplishment, no doubt this book helped, but mostly he won the prize for his 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I’ve read One Hundred Years of Solitude twice. Once in the early 80s. The second time about 15 years ago when I recommended it to a church book club. The church folks didn’t like it that much. It’s long, personal, political, strange. I love it. It’s one of my all time favorites. I’ve read Love in the Time of Cholera as well, Garcia Marquez’ book that followed Chronicle of a Death Foretold in 1985. Love in the Time of Cholera might be his best book. It’s more straightforward than One Hundred Years of Solitude, though still full of beauty and magic, it’s not so long, and the story is a romance. One Hundred Years of Solitude was translated into English, in 1970, by Gregory Rabassa, the same man who translated Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in 1982, the year after it was written (in Spanish) and the same year Garcia Marquez won the Nobel.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold poses as a work of detective journalism. I say poses because, although it’s based on a true story, Garcia Marquez changes the facts and adds fictional elements. A murder is committed in a small Latin American village and years later the narrator, not named in the book, returns to the village to investigate and write an account of the events. There is no mystery to the murder itself. The victim and his fate are specified in the first sentence. The murderers are identified only about 10 pages later. The motive takes a little longer to be revealed but it’s no spoiler to tell it. Santiago Nasar, the victim, was accused by a young woman named Angela of having taken her virginity, causing her to be rejected by her new husband, Bayardo San Ramon, on their wedding evening. San Ramon returns Angela to her family. Angela names Santiago. Angela’s twin brothers, Pablo and Pedro Vicario, kill Santiago to revenge their sister’s stolen honor.

The story pieces together the events of the day of the wedding, a Sunday, that night, and the next morning, when Santiago is killed at the door of his home. The entire village celebrates the wedding of Angela and San Ramon in spectacular style. Santiago himself enjoys mentally accounting the cost of everything. After the newlyweds leave to celebrate their wedding night the party continues. Santiago and his friends, including the narrator, spend the night drinking and at a whore house. Other villagers make ready for the other big event in the village, the planned visit Monday morning of the Bishop who is expected to arrive by steamship coming up the river.

The story is pieced together through dozens and dozens of individual witnesses. Most are named, speak a single sentence of testimony, and then disappear again into the anonymity of the village. New characters are introduced this way even in the novella’s closing pages. At first the numerous voices are confusing. But gradually the major characters appear and the rest become the background chorus of the village as everyone responds to the urge to be included in the major story.

The mystery that most drives the narrator’s investigation is how it comes to be that so many of the villagers seem to know of the pending murder and yet do so little to prevent it. The brothers are seen sharpening their knives and tell their intentions to several people. Some people disbelieve them. Others feel that stopping the murder is someone else’s responsibility, or surely someone else must have warned Santiago. One directly confronts the brothers and believes he’s dissuaded them, even confiscating their knives, only for the brothers to change their minds again and re-arm themselves with new knives. Others respect the moral cause of the brother’s act, or at least feel they shouldn’t interfere in their familial duty. Other characters hear the news and forget, or mistakenly believe the act has already been committed, or are distracted by the necessary preparations for the Bishop’s visit. Every possible reason both practical or psychological is offered. A fatal warning note slipped under the front door of Santiago’s house is only discovered after the killing. Most tragically, one character sees a vision that makes her believe Santiago is safe in his bedroom when in fact he is locked outside the front door confronting his attackers.

The novel begins with a dream. Santiago awakes Monday morning, an hour before his death, having dreamed of running happily through a grove of trees in a light rain, only to emerge from the trees to discover he is covered with bird shit. His mother tells him dreaming of birds always means good health. Then at nearly the end of the book she confesses that she “mixed up the magnificent augury of trees with the unlucky one of birds” (p. 98) but whether it’s the trees or the birds that are unlucky would make no difference to the interpretation. It’s as though nothing could be done; fate and human nature combine to make life and death inevitable.

And the whole novella has the sense of a dream. The random voices speaking a sentence and disappearing. The spectacular wedding. The drunken revelry of the villagers. The Bishop, whose boat steams up the river and straight past the village without stopping. The slightly confused and sometimes contradictory memories of the witnesses. Though the murder is horrible, the writing throughout is gorgeous, like poetry, beautiful images following one after the other, and the author’s knowing insights to human thoughts and actions. I read it with a charmed smile.

The murder scene comes at the very end. It’s gory: a slaughter. And yet the sense of a dream continues. And though the murder is no mystery, the sense of an essential mystery continues as well. The narrator interviews the villagers years later, Pablo and Pedro, and Angela; even San Ramon, who disappeared soon after the wedding, appears again. An endless turning and returning of a single incident, like the facets of a diamond, impossible to put down, fascinating, beguiling, clear, but only reflecting our gaze back on ourselves.