Chronicle of a Death Foretold

by Gabriel García Márquez

The night he arrived he gave them to understand at the movies that he was a track engineer, and spoke of the urgency for building a railroad into the interior so that we could keep ahead of the river’s fickle ways. On the following day he had to send a telegram and he transmitted it on the key himself, and in addition, he taught the telegrapher a formula of his so that he could keep on using the worn-out batteries. With the same assurance he talked about frontier illnesses with a military doctor who had come through during those months of conscription. He liked noisy and long-lasting festivities, but he was a good drinker, a mediator of fights, and an enemy of cardsharps. One Sunday after mass he challenged the most skillful swimmers, who were many, and left the best behind by twenty strokes in crossing the river and back. My mother told me about it in a letter, and at the end she made a comment that was very much like her: “It also seems that he’s swimming in gold.” That was in reply to the premature legend that Bayardo San Román not only was capable of doing everything, and doing it quite well, but also had access to endless resources.