He met a man who lived like a king by exploiting three women at the same time. The three of them rendered… — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
He met a man who lived like a king by exploiting three women at the same time. The three of them rendered their accounts at dawn, prostrate at his feet to beg forgiveness for their meager profits, and the only gratification they sought was that he go to bed with the one who brought him the most money. Florentino Ariza thought that terror alone could induce such indignities, but one of the three girls surprised him with the contradictory truth.
"These are things," she said, "you do only for love."
Conoció a un hombre que se daba una vida de rey explotando a tres mujeres al mismo tiempo. Las tres le rendían cuentas al amanecer, humilladas a sus pies para hacerse perdonar sus recaudos exiguios, y la única gratificación que anhelaban era que él se acostara con la que le llevara más dinero. Florentino Ariza pensaba que sólo el terror peodía inducir a semejante indignidad. Sin embargo, una de las tres muchachas lo sorprendió con la verdad contraria.
—Estas cosas —le dijo— sólo pueden hacerse por amor.
p. 91Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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The lesson was not interrupted, but the girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later.
p. 80
He had made notes of these premature observations, intending to write a practical supplement to the Lovers’ Companion, but the project met the same fate as the previous one after Ausencia Santander sent him tumbling with her old dog’s wisdom, stood him on his head, tossed him up and threw him down, made him as good as new, shattered all his virtuous theories, and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.
p. 235
Florentina Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights.
'Forever,' he said.
p. 461
