Gabriel
Garcia Marquez’s novella, Memories of My
Melancholy Whores, is about an old man who wishes to gift himself “a night
of wild love” with an adolescent virgin on his 90th birthday. The
nameless narrator never found time to marry because whores kept him too busy
all his life. He never loved anyone, in fact. “Sex is the consolation one has
for not finding enough love,” he says. He is a mediocre writer until his
perverse desire on his 90th birthday changes him radically.
The
madam of a brothel offers him a 14 year-old girl who is a virgin. Poverty leads
her into this venture. She has been drugged by the madam because she is
terribly scared of what may happen to her. One of her friends died of bleeding
after having sex with a man from Gayra with whom she had run away. The “men
from Gayra are famous for making she-mules sing,” says the madam. The
narrator’s sexual prowess is well-known to the madam.
The
narrator sees the girl sleeping under the effect of the valerian she was made
to drink. He watches her naked body and leaves her untouched. He calls her
Delgadina, the name of a girl in a song which he sings for her though she is
sleeping. The girl is sleeping every time he meets her with the intention of
making love to her. Eventually he falls in love with her.
The
love brought about a miraculous change in him. He starts writing love poems in
his newspaper columns and the poems make him famous. He discovers a new joy in
his life, a new passion to live. He never has sex with the girl. He loves her.
Interestingly, the girl loves him too. The “colours of a joyous dawn” envelope
his house now. And his heart is full of
a “joyful agony.” He hopes to live on to the age of hundred in order to enjoy
the pleasures of love that he has discovered for the first time in his life.
The
novel is not as great as the other works of Marquez. His writing has the usual
magical touch with all its lyrical beauty. But the theme is disturbing with what
may be described as paedophilia though that is not what it really is. None of
the characters other than the narrator comes alive like Marquez’s characters
usually do. The heroine sleeps most of the time.
Yet
the love that the narrator discovers at the age of 90 is magical indeed. Love
is what actually works wonders in life. Love is a wizard.
As
I read the last lines of the novella, I was left with a question that nagged me
for most of the time I spent with the short book: Why did the girl have to be
so young? I have no answer yet.
Perhaps the story is all about youth versus aging. Just a guess.
ReplyDeletePerhaps its all about finding youth in aging. Just a guess.
ReplyDelete