Musings with Gabriel García Márquez
A plague is upon the land and it feels as if you are trapped in one of Gabito’s famous novels, but you are a traveler so you must go. To become a prisoner to fear—or self-preservation—is not an option. So, you travel such that the powers will allow. This border is closed, that border is open, but for how long? You choose from amongst the possible and buy the train tickets. Flights may come later, but you do not dare the plague tube, not yet.
The train arrives, you don the mask; search for the proper car, climb aboard. All of this is as it has been. What is different is the leaning away from, the awareness of others, the reluctance to brush against one another in the bustle of boarding. And there are so many fewer travelers. Fear has thinned the herd.
The compartment is empty, and it remains so for most of the six hours. New passengers have only to look, to weigh the odds. The reservation system falls by the wayside. Assigned seats give way to the desire for a safe space. The conductor aids and abets; passengers redistribute themselves or are redistributed.
Rumor has auto crossings stacked up with fever checks and reports of long delays. There is no pause on the train. You the Austrian Alps and begin the long drop into Slovenia. The tracks follow the tributaries of the Sava, rolling down.
Seven hours and one train change, and you are in Ljubljana. You cross Masarykova Cesta and see the tour buses quiet as beached whales, the drivers sprawled together in the shade, smoking cigarettes in the manner of men with a great deal of time. You set off for the center, the bridges over the Ljubljanica, and the streets are quiet. The quiet makes you a nervous, like a bad movie cliché.
You cross the Ljubljanica and the quiet is still there, worse now because this is the center. The people that should be there are missing, and you think Gabito again, of love and disease, and the quiet street reminds you of Jeremiah de Saint-Amour and how the poor bastards’s suicide is the opening for the novel.
El amor en los tiempos del cólera, only it isn’t the cholera, it is a new plague, a novel virus. The double meaning cuts home. And who could blame you for a sense of the surreal? You think of that joke you wrote, which was funny at the time; maybe not so much now.
Lewis Carroll, Roberto Bolãno, Gabriel García Márquez, and Joyce Carol Oates walk into a bar. They get drunk and decide to collaborate on a short story. The title of the story is Twenty-twenty.
So why do it—why run the risk? You think about the herd, about the lions picking off only a few. Stay to the inside, improve the odds, but that is simple fatalism. No, you go because if you don’t the world becomes too small. And you go because your Beloved’s need for travel is fierce and burning. Trapped in that small apartment, she paces and begins to growl, becomes dangerous. That is why you are in Ljubljana, sharing travel and love in the time of Corona, a time unlike any other you have known.
You find the hotel and learn the new protocols. Disinfect your hands at the door, mask on, check in. Learn to express your smile with your eyes; learn to read the smile in the eyes of others. You go up to your room, stow your bags, perform the minimum of tasks required before you can both flee to the street, the promenades along the Ljubljanica.
Back out on the street, you feel braver in the open air. Courage and laughter go together. Smiles are unmasked and people breathe freely away from the dangerous confines. Seated at a café, you return the nods from other tables. There is a shared commonality, as just before a war, or after an earthquake.
It is both everywhere and unavoidable. There are placards, warnings, pictographs: A pandemic. The prefix pan, derived from the Greek πᾶν, to mean all. Pandemic: a disease for all. Panacea: a cure for all. You see the masks, the warnings, the smiles, and you marvel at human beings; their ability to survive and their converse disability for mutual destruction.
You walk along the Ljubljanica, hand-in-hand with your beloved. You have seen these same streets thronged with tourists, unmasked and careless. Can so much change in the passage of a single year? Can so much be discarded and yet retain some essence of a journey? You imagine the smiling face of the novelist, that sly wink.
In the closing of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza set out on a decrepit riverboat, having left everything behind except their life-long love for each other. Gabriel García Márquez writes as question for Fermina Daza: “Would it be possible to make a trip without stopping, without cargo or passengers, without coming into any port, without anything?”
You roll it around in your head; the yes, the no, the maybe. And while you are pondering, the two of you do the only thing you know how to do: You continue the journey.
More Stories headed your way…
There are more travel blog entries and short stories to come, so stay tuned to the MEF posts and newsletter for updates and announcements. You may even see the news of a short story collection coming out some time in the Fall of 2020. Unless the Zombies attack. Anything seems possible this year. Stay safe, stay well, be kind, and thanks for being readers!! Readers ROCK!! For more info, head on over to my home page at:
