Saint

The Saint is a short story written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It tells us the story of a man named Margarito Duarte who spent 22 years of his life striving to get his daughter canonised by the Catholic Church, to no avail.

 The girl had died at the age of 7 due to a fever. A few years after her death, her grave is opened because the cemetery in which she is buried is going to be taken over for the construction of a dam. Margarito wants to bury her bones elsewhere just as all other people of the place were doing with the bones of their departed ones. When the grave was dug open came the surprise. The miracle. Eleven years after her burial, the girl’s body showed no sign of decay.

The body shows “a little girl dressed as a bride who was still sleeping after a long stay underground. Her skin was smooth and warm, and her open eyes were clear and created the unbearable impression that they were looking at us from death.” The body exudes fragrance of fresh-cut roses.

Everyone in the place is convinced that it is a miracle. Even the bishop agrees. Funds are collected to enable Margarito to go to the Vatican and meet the Pope with the supplication for getting the girl declared a saint of the Church.

Margarito waits and waits in Rome to meet the Pope. Weeks pass into months which become years. Four Popes come and go in the 22 years that Margarito waited with a single mission in his life. Some time during his waiting, Margarito is told about a museum in Palermo where there were many incorruptible corpses, all disinterred from the same cemetery as his daughter’s. Margarito goes to Palermo and sees that those corpses looked what they are: corpses, unlike his daughter who looked like a living angel. Margarito’s waiting continues.

Someone who feels pity for the man decides to give Margarito a diversion. A beautiful young girl is paid to give the diversion. She is sent to Margarito’s room totally naked and perfumed with an exotic cologne. On seeing the girl, Margarito is shocked. He puts on his shirt and shoes to receive her with all due respect. The girl tells him to hurry because they only had an hour. Margarito does not understand. The girl then sees the trunk in which the dead girl’s body is kept. She opens the lid and sees the corpse whose eyes stare at her with an ethereal ardour. The girl runs out of the room in terror. Seeing her run totally naked, an inhabitant of the building thinks that it is a ghost.

Margarito waited and waited. “Four popes had died, eternal Rome was showing the first signs of decrepitude, and still he waited.” Marquez concludes the story thus: “Without realising it, by means of his daughter’s incorruptible body and while he was still alive, he had spent twenty-two years fighting for the legitimate cause of his own canonization.”

Margarito is the saint, in other words, for the narrator of the story. Margarito’s absolute dedication to the cause for which he had set out 22 years ago from his village makes him a saint. No temptation could lead him astray. What is saintliness but the shedding of one’s ego, one’s self, and being merged with a holy cause?