By Ignacio Ramonet on April 22, 2024 on April 21, 2024
Gabriel García Márquez,
I had been told that he was living in Havana but that, as he was ill, he did not want to see anyone. I knew where he used to stay: in a magnificent country house, far from downtown. I phoned and Mercedes, his wife, dispelled my scruples. With warmth she told me: “Not at all, it’s to keep away the heavies. Come, ‘Gabo’ will be happy to see you”.
The next morning, under a humid heat, I walked up a palm tree-lined avenue and presented myself at the door of the tropical villa. I was not unaware that he was suffering from lymphatic cancer and undergoing grueling chemotherapy. They said his condition was delicate. They even attributed to him a heartbreaking ‘goodbye letter’ to his friends and to life… I was afraid of meeting a dying man. Mercedes came to open the door and, to my surprise, she said to me with a smile: “Come in. Gabo is coming… He is finishing his tennis match”.
A little later, under the warm light of the living room, sitting on a white sofa, I saw him approaching, in full form indeed, with curly hair still wet from the shower and a shaggy mustache. He was wearing a yellow guayabera, very wide white pants and canvas shoes. A true Visconti character. Over an iced coffee, he explained to me that he felt “like a wild bird that escaped from the cage. If anything, much younger than I look”. And he added, “with age, I realize that the body is not made to last as many years as we would like to live”. He then suggested that I “do like the English, who never talk about health problems. It’s bad manners.
Gabo, Mercedes and Fidel at the house in Biran where the leader of the Cuban Revolution was born.
The breeze lifted the curtains of the huge windows very high and the room began to look like a flying boat. I told him how much I enjoyed the first volume of his autobiography, Live to Tell the Tale (1): “It’s your best novel.” He smiled and adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses: “Without a little imagination it’s impossible to reconstruct my parents’ incredible love story. Or my memories as a baby… Don’t forget that only imagination is clairvoyant. Sometimes it is truer than the truth. Just think of Kafka or Faulkner, or simply Cervantes,” he said. As a sound background, the notes of Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony flooded the hall with an atmosphere at once joyful and dramatic.
I had met García Márquez some forty years ago, around 1979, in Paris, with my friend Ramón Chao. Gabo had been invited by Unesco and, together with Hubert Beuve-Méry, the founder of Le Monde diplomatique, was part of a commission, chaired by Nobel laureate Sean McBride, to prepare a report on the North-South imbalance in mass communication. At the time, he had stopped writing novels, due to a self-imposed ban that was to last as long as Augusto Pinochet was in power in Chile. He had not yet received the Nobel Prize for literature, but his celebrity was already immense. The success of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) had made him the most universal Spanish-language writer since Cervantes. I remember being surprised by his short stature and impressed by his gravity and seriousness. He lived like an anchorite and only left his room, transformed into a work cell, to go to Unesco.
As for journalism, his other great passion, he had just published a chronicle describing the Sandinista commando assault on the National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua, which had precipitated the fall of the dictator Anastasio Somoza (2). He provided prodigious details, giving the impression that he himself had participated in the event. I wanted to know how he had achieved it. He told me: “I was in Bogota at the time of the assault. I called General Omar Torrijos, President of Panama. The commando had just found refuge in his country and had not yet spoken to the media. I asked him to warn the boys to be wary of the press, because they could distort their words. He replied: ‘Come, they will only talk to you’. I went and together with the leaders of the commando, Eden Pastora, Dora Maria and Hugo Torres, we locked ourselves in a barracks. We reconstructed the event minute by minute, from its preparation to its outcome. We spent the night there. Exhausted, Pastora and Torres fell asleep. I continued with Dora Maria until dawn. I went back to the hotel to write the report. Then I went back to read it to them. They corrected some technical terms, the names of the weapons, the structure of the groups, etc. The report was published less than a week after the assault. It made the Sandinista cause known throughout the world”.
I met Gabo again many times, in Paris, Havana or Mexico. We had a permanent disagreement about Hugo Chavez. He did not believe in the Venezuelan commander. I, on the other hand, considered him to be the man who was going to bring Latin America into a new historical cycle. Apart from that, our conversations were always very (too?) serious: the fate of the world, the future of Latin America, Cuba?
However, I remember that once I laughed to tears. I was returning from Cartagena de Indias, a sumptuous colonial Colombian city; I had spotted his mansion behind the walls and talked to him about it. He asked me: “Do you know how I acquired that house? No idea. “Since I was very young I wanted to live in Cartagena,” he told me, “and when I had the money, I started looking for a house there. But it was always too expensive. A lawyer friend explained to me: ‘They think you’re a millionaire and they raise the price. Let me look for you. A few weeks later, he finds the house, which at the time was an old printing press that was almost in ruins. He talks to the owner, a blind man, and between them they agree on a price. But the old man makes one demand: he wants to meet the buyer. My friend comes to me and says: ‘We have to go and see him, but you mustn’t talk. Otherwise, as soon as he recognizes your voice, he will triple the price… He is blind, you will be mute’. The day of the meeting arrives. The blind man begins to ask me questions. I answer him with an indecipherable pronunciation… But, in a moment, I commit the imprudence of answering with a resounding: ‘Yes’. Ah,” the old man jumps up, “I know that voice, you are Gabriel García Márquez! He had unmasked me… Then he adds: ‘We are going to have to revise the price. Now, things are different’. My friend tries to negotiate. But the blind man repeats: ‘No. It can’t be the same price. No way.’ Well, how much then?’ we ask, resigned. The old man thinks for a moment and says: ‘Half’. We didn’t understand anything… Then he explained: ‘You know I have a printing press. What do you think I’ve lived on until now? Printing pirated editions of García Márquez’s novels!
Ignacio Ramonet speaking at a press conference advocating for the release of The Cuban 5 in Washington, DC, 2013, photo: Bill Hackwell
That fit of laughter still echoed in my memory when, back home in Havana, I continued my conversation with an aging Gabo, though intellectually as lively as ever. He was talking to me about my book of interviews with Fidel Castro (3). “I’m very jealous,” he said to me, laughing, “you were lucky enough to spend more than a hundred hours with him. “I am the one who is impatient to read the second part of your memoirs -I answered-. At last you are going to talk about your meetings with Fidel, whom you have known for much longer. You and he are like two giants of the Hispanic world. If you compare it to France, it would be like if Victor Hugo had met Napoleon…”. He let out a laugh, as he smoothed his bushy eyebrows. “You have too much imagination… But I’m going to disappoint you: there will be no second part… I know that many people, friends and adversaries, somehow expect my ‘historical verdict’ on Fidel. It is absurd. I have already written what I had to write about him (4). Fidel is my friend and always will be. Until the grave.
The sky had darkened and the room, in the middle of the day, was now plunged into gloom. The conversation had become slower, more subdued. Gabo meditated with his eyes lost and I wondered: “Is it possible that he left no written testimony of so many confidences shared in friendly complicity with Fidel? Will he have left it for a posthumous publication when neither of us is in this world?
Outside, a torrential rain was pouring down from the sky with the force of tropical squalls. The music had fallen silent. A strong scent of orchids pervaded the room. I looked at Gabo. He had the exhausted look of an old Colombian catopard. He stood there, silent and meditative, staring at the inexhaustible rain, permanent companion of all his solitudes. I slipped away in silence. Not knowing that I was seeing him for the last time.
Source: Cubaperiodista, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano – English
References
(1) Gabriel García Márquez, Vivir para contarla, Barcelona, Mondadori, 2003.
(2) Gabriel García Márquez, “Asalto al Palacio”, Alternativa, Bogotá, 1978.
(3) Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel Castro. Biografía a dos voces, Madrid, Debate, 2006.
(4) Gabriel García Márquez, “El Fidel que creo conocer”, preface to the book by Gianni Minà, Habla Fidel, Mexico, Edivisión, 1988, and “El Fidel que yo conozco”, Cubadebate, Havana, August 13, 2009.
Ignacio Ramonet is the author of 100 Hours with Fidel and former editor of Le Monde Diplomatique