No One Writes to the Colonel

by Gabriel García Márquez

The colonel with his habitual way of walking which resembled that of a man retracing his steps to look for a lost coin.

‘You can’t eat hope,’ the woman said. ‘You can’t eat it, but it sustains you,’ the colonel replied. ‘It’s something like my friend Sabas’s miraculous pills.’

Several times I’ve had to put stones on to boil so the neighbors wouldn’t know that we often go for many days without putting on the pot.’

She plugged in the fan. ‘Last week a woman appeared at the head of my bed,’ she said. ‘I managed to ask her who she was and she replied, “I am the woman who died in this room twelve years ago.” ’ ‘But the house was built barely two years ago,’ the colonel said. ‘That’s right,’ the woman said. ‘That means that even the dead make mistakes.’