Andres Rico has translated a piece of prose from Spanish, which can be seen below. Please direct any correspondence to him at arico@macalester.edu

An Excerpt from:

incredible that the sailors of the navy got up on the decks of the ship to take color pictures of him with long distance equipment, but the women that had left mass, ruined they’re intentions, they covered up the dying man with a sheet and they put blessed palms on top of him, some because they did not like it that the infantry profane the body with machines of adventists, others because it scared them to keep on looking at this idolater that was capable of dying of laughter, and others so that just in case by doing this, his soul wouldn't get poisoned. Everyone in the world took him to be dead when he brushed the palms away with a shove in a daze and still not recovered from his bad experience, and was able to straighten out the table without anyone’s help and he started to get up like a crab, and there he was again, crying out that this cure for poison was truly the hand of God in a jar, since we had all seen him with our own eyes, even though it only cost two cuartillas because he had not invented it for business but for the good of humanity, and who called out for one, ladies and gentlemen, and I only ask please, don’t all rush me at once, there’s enough for everyone.

But of course, everyone rushed him, and they did a good job because in the end there wasn’t enough for everyone. Even the admiral of the battleship went away with a jar, convinced by him that it was also good for the poisoned lead of the anarchists, and the crew members did not resign themselves to taking color pictures of him up on the table instead of as dead so they made him sign autographs until his arm cramped up. It was almost nightfall and only we, the most perplexed, remained in the port when he started to look around for the dumbest one out of all of us to help him put away the jars and of course he noticed me. It seemed as if this were destiny calling, not just me but also him, because this was almost a century ago, and we remember the day as if it happened last Sunday. The situation is that we were putting his circus pharmacy into a trunk with purple wheels that looked more like the coffin of an erudite, when it seemed he saw a spark in me that he hadn’t seen before, because sourly he asked me who are you, and I replied that I was the only orphan of a mother and father, and whose father still hadn’t died and he burst out with roars of laughter that were even worst then when he was poisoned, then afterwards asked me what I do for a living and I told him I didn’t do anything else but stay alive because everything else wasn’t worth it, and still crying with laughter he asked me what was the science that I most wanted to learn in the world, and that was the only time that I told him without joking around that I wanted to be a fortune teller, and instead of laughing he told me, as if he were thinking out loud, that this wouldn’t be too hard because I had already learned the hardest part which was the stupid look on my face, that same night he talked with my father and for a real and two cuartillos and a pack of cards that predict adultery, he purchased me for good.

That’s how Blacaman was, the bad one because the good one was me. He was able to convince an astronomer that the month of February wasn’t anything more but a herd of invisible elephants, but when his luck would turn his heart would get callous. In his glory days he had been an embalmer of Virreyes and they used to say that he would construct a facial expression of so much authority that for many years they would keep on governing better than when they had been alive, and that no one would dare bury them as long as he would not place back their semblance of death but his prestige was given a blow with the invention of a never ending game of chess that drove a chaplain crazy and provoked two illustrious suicides, and that’s how he started losing his reputation, as an interpreter of dreams to a birthday hypnotizer, as a hypnotizing tooth puller to a fairgrounds charlatan, in such a way that by the time I met him even the filibusters didn’t regard him too highly. We would wander around with our fraudulent set-up and life was an eternal anxiety trying to sell the suppositories of evasion that would turn smugglers transparent, the clandestine drops that the baptized wives would put in the soup to infuse the fear of God in their dutch husbands, and everything you would willingly want to buy, ladies and gentlemen, because we’re not making you buy this stuff, we’re just advising you, and finally, and in the end neither is happiness an obligation. However, for all that we would die laughing from his activity, the truth is that we would barely have enough to eat and his last hope was in my vocation as a fortune-teller. He would lock me up in the coffin-like trunk dressed up like a Japanese and tied up in starboard chains so that I would try to predict what I could, while he scourged the language to find out the best way to convince the world of his new science, and here we have it ladies and gentlemen to this creature tormented by the glowworms of Ezekiel, and you with that look of incredulity, we’re going to see if you’re bold enough to ask him when you’re going to die, but I could never even find out what date we were at , and that’s why he gave up on me as a fortune-teller because the stupor of digestion disturbs the gland of foreboding, then after smacking me to give him good luck he decided to take me to my father so that he would return him the money. However at that time he got the idea to find practical applications for the electricity of suffering, and he set himself to make a sewing machine that worked by means of connections between vents and the part of the body in pain. Since I would complain all night of the beatings he gave me to conspire away misfortune, he had to stay with me to prove the working of his invention, and that’s how the return took longer and longer and he started to get into a better mood until the machine worked so well that it didn’t just work better than a novice, but it also embroidered birds and astromelias according to the position and the intensity of the pain. In this we were convinced of our victory over bad luck, when we received the news that the commander of the battleship wanted to repeat in Philadelphia the proof of the poison antidote and he turned into an admiral marmalade in front of his staff.

The story continues with Blacaman the bad and the narrator (Blacaman the good) finding more misfortune. A US marine invasion forces them to go into hiding in a colonial mansion. Because of their isolation, the two nearly starve, and Blacaman now convinced that his bad luck is caused by the presence of the narrator, proceeds to torture him and starve him in the dungeon of the house. A supernatural phenomena allows the narrator to escape and from then on his life takes a good turn as he comes to occupy Blacaman's former position as a successful "peddler of miracles." The narrator then lets us know that Blacaman is now a shell of his former self. He is old, decrepit and lost all talent he once had. Blacaman eventually dies and the narrator has him buried in a coffin. The narrator ends the story by telling us that he revives Blacaman from death so he can live his eternal life dying in a coffin, and if he ever dies the narrator will revive him again so that he can continue suffering. The second half of the story uses the same technique shown in the first half. Garcia Marquez uses long run-on sentences chock full of descriptive and colorful details.

Garcia Marquez constructs his "sentences," in an almost stream of consciousness manner. He'll have a sentence going and then introduce a new thought. In order to spare my audience confusion I added in conjunctions. Considering the writer's unique style I think I treaded into some of the problems with poetics. Expecially in this story, and in much of his work, one feels as if the narrarator is sitting right in front of you telling a story in which he can meander off to describe something. I think that the inclusion of some commas detracted a little from this style but again I was keeping clarity in mind.