Chronicle of a Death Foretold

by Gabriel García Márquez

One of the few houses open on that misbegotten street was that of Prudencia Cotes, Pablo Vicario’s fiancée. Whenever the twins passed by there at that time, and especially on Fridays when they were going to the market, they would drop in to have their first cup of coffee. They pushed open the door to the courtyard, surrounded by the dogs, who recognized them in the half light of dawn, and they greeted Prudencia Cotes’s mother in the kitchen. Coffee wasn’t ready yet. “We’ll leave it for later,” Pablo Vicario said. “We’re in a hurry now.” “I can imagine, my sons,” she said. “Honor doesn’t wait.” But in any case, they waited, and this time it was Pedro Vicario who thought his brother was wasting time on purpose. While they were drinking their coffee, Prudencia Cotes came into the kitchen in all her adolescent bloom, carrying a roll of old newspapers to revive the fire in the stove. “I knew what they were up to,” she told me, “and I didn’t only agree, I never would have married him if he hadn’t done what a man should do.” Before leaving the kitchen, Pablo Vicario took two sections of newspaper from her and gave them to his brother to wrap the knives in. Prudencia Cotes stood waiting in the kitchen until she saw them leave by the courtyard door, and she went on waiting for three years without a moment of discouragement until Pablo Vicario got out of jail and became her husband for life. “Take good care of yourselves,” she told them.