The surreal sights that dot the path

Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Penguin

Love, the eternal two-faced dream, never stops mesmerizing us. Writers all over the world end up contributing to the ever-increasing definition of love at some point in their writing careers because they find almost every quality of life in love. The kingdom of love is so vast that it reigns over every other human emotion and this, needless to say, heaps on love a dual nature on top of its universality. If love is like a soothing ointment from a beautiful maiden, it is also the sword of an angry lover. If love is the reason behind the magnificent Taj Mahal, it is also the reason behind a burning Troy. If love made Lochinvar valiant, it made Romeo take his own life. In fact, at times it seems that literally everything springs from love the love of money or the love of power or the love of a person or the love of God. While you may categorize the contradictory faces of love by good and evil you can't refuse to acknowledge its mysterious duality which is like a surreal sight.
It is this inexplicable dream this love which talks to us through Love in the Time of Cholera. And its prophet is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Garcimarquesian voice, set against the backdrop of magic realism, hypnotises readers and tries to give them a vision of the manifold manifestations of love. And once the novel is over, it becomes a joy for a reader to meditate upon the visions revealed.
The story takes place in a Caribbean city and out of its total population, there are three dazzling characters, each unique in its own way, whom we will observe as they travel through time on the boat of love. Fermina Daza is a 'beautiful adolescent with… almond shaped eyes' who walks with a 'natural haughtiness… her doe's gait making her seem immune to gravity'. Expectedly (because who wouldn't want a companion like that?) Florentino Ariza, the carnal and transcendent lover, falls in love with her. His affair transforms him into a poet though his fate binds him to a River Company of the Caribbean. Fermina and Florentino don't get the chance to talk to each other much and therefore fall back on writing passionate and secret letters and telegrams. Fermina's angry father, on learning of the clandestine romance, takes her on an extended 'journey of forgetting'; and Florentino is exasperated in his office (amidst the letter-writing tutorial books) because he is unable to write any business letter at all. Every time he touches the pen or the typewriter, all he can gather are words of ardent love. Oh boy, only Marquez can give you as sweet a humour as that.
When Fermina returns from her journey, she remembers Florentino quite well but rejects the lovesick man and surprisingly meets and marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino who, in contrast to the poor, diseased Florentino, is blue blooded, the hero of the cholera resistance, an attractive dresser, and though somewhat concerned with himself only is charming nonetheless.
The lovelorn poet's heart is torn in shreds but he is still not disheartened. Having proclaimed his love for Fermina, he decides to wait until the day comes when Fermina will be his. And thus commences the battle of the eternal vow of love against the finite hours of the earth. In between, during these years, Marquez takes time to portray the various appearances of love between men and women as Florentino takes to the street to find lovers who can satisfy his manly needs and Fermina spins the strings of marriage. Florentino and Fermina's love affair at this stage is the unrequited version of love while Fermina and Urbino's state of monotonous love is marital love. Florentino and Leona share a platonic love and with the poetess, Florentino shares an angry love. We experience jealous love in the incident of the adulterous wife being killed because of her affair with Florentino and love becomes dangerous when Florentino develops a relationship with an asylum fleeing lunatic. Young love, with its pitfalls, is exhibited in the juvenile affair of Florentino and Fermina in the early days while adulterous love is sketched in Urbino's extramarital affair. May-December love is exposed in Florentino's affair with his ward and, to mention beforehand, we spot love between old couples in the last stages of the novel though the fear of social criticism barges into their lovely daydreams.
The spellbinding voice becomes all the more magnetic as the story proceeds. Here's how a balloon-trip is described:
'From the sky they could see, just as God saw them, the ruins of the very old and heroic city of Cartagena de Indias, the most beautiful in the world, abandoned by its inhabitants because of the sieges of the English and the atrocities of the buccaneers. They saw the walls, still intact, the brambles in the streets, the fortifications devoured by heartsease, the marble palaces and the golden altars and the viceroys rotting with plague inside their armour.' Marquez's words are translucently pure like gemstones among gray rocks. His words can praise critically and criticize praiseworthily while they themselves can be labeled with only one word: soulful. Each line strikes a different chord in the reader's heart and a paragraph gives birth to a tune. They can fabulously speak or even harmoniously sing when invoked accordingly. Marquez makes his words soar through time as he narrates the story in equal fragments of past and present on a need-to-know basis.
The afore-mentioned long-lasting battle ends exactly after 51 years, 9 months and 4 days when Urbino dies in the process of chasing a churlish parrot parked upon a mango tree. Impatient as Florentino is, he hopefully proposes to Fermina after the funeral but all he receives is a rude chastisement from a furious Fermina. He leaves but prepares to try again and again until the last day of his life.
The final chapter is in fact serene and yet vibrant like the dawn. Its tempo is like that of a travelling boat as the author unerringly navigates the readers through a skeptic landscape cut open by a serpentine river. Floating on this river Florentino proclaims his virginity to Fermina as they lie on bed admiring each other. Aye, he was still a virgin of heart if not of the phallus. And even though it is no more possible for Florentino to make love with Fermina, his love has transcended carnal desires and has become spiritual.
Love in the Time of Cholera rides hard on our hearts but in the end alights on a soft melody that opulently states: love's labour is never lost.
Efadul Huq is a freelance writer and book reviewer.