Excerpt from UNTIL AUGUST: A NOVEL by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Anne McLean, translation copyright © 2024 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
She returned to the island on Friday, August 16, on the three o’clock ferry. She was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, plain flat shoes without socks, carrying a satin parasol and a handbag, and her only luggage was a beach bag. In the row of taxis at the dock she went straight to an old model corroded by the sea air. The driver welcomed her warmly and took her jolting across the destitute village, with its mud-walled shacks, palm-thatch roofs, and streets of burning sand beside a sea in flames. He had to swerve around undaunted pigs and naked children pretending to be toreadors. On the outskirts of the village he drove down an avenue of royal palms where the beaches and the tourist hotels were, between the open sea and a lagoon inhabited by blue herons. At last he stopped outside the oldest, most dilapidated hotel.
The concierge was waiting for her with the registration card ready to sign and the keys to the only room on the second floor that overlooked the lagoon. She climbed the stairs in four strides and entered the shabby room that smelled of recent fumigation and was almost entirely occupied by an enormous double bed. She took a kidskin toiletry case out of her bag and a book with uncut pages that she put on the nightstand with an ivory paper knife marking her place. She took out a pink silk nightgown and tucked it under the pillow. She also took out a silk scarf printed with tropical birds, a short-sleeved white shirt, and a pair of very worn tennis shoes, and carried them into the bathroom. Before getting dressed, she took off her wedding ring and the men’s watch she wore on her right wrist, put them on the shelf above the sink, and washed her face quickly to get rid of the dust from the journey, scare away the siesta-time fatigue.
CREDITS
Unidentified photographer, [Gabriel García Márquez behind a stack of books], undated. Gabriel García Márquez Papers, Box 46, Folder 4.
Draft page of Gabriel García Márquez’s En Agosto nos vemos, ca. 2003. Gabriel García Márquez Papers, 1.1.