I strongly celebrate the great occurrence of resuscitating the House of number 19 of La Loma street, in what they call San Angel Inn, south of Mexico City. From now on it will be Casa-Estudio Gabriel García Márquez, sponsored by the Foundation for Mexican Letters and under the guidance and guidance of Juan Villoro, thanks to the family of its owner decided to donate it ... something that reflects or clones what his owner Luis Coudurier a little more than half a century ago: trusting Mercedes and Gabriel José de la Concordia, Rodrigo and Gonzalo's parents, and extending to them with Samaritan patience the months that were due for rent in what the Colombian writer (in the process of universal Mexicanization) ) finished writing a mysterious novel that he himself knew from the front line that would be his masterpiece.
María Luisa Elío and Jomí García Ascot, Álvaro Mutis, Carlos Fuentes and a large basket of food, ham and canned sardines and bottles of wine arrived every Saturday at that Casa de La Loma. First twelve and even add almost eighteen months from Saturday to Saturday to hear the advances of the novel Gabo titled "The House" in a loud voice. We must thank the unconditional epiphany with which María Luisa and Jomí helped the Gabos in the payment of dry cleaners and pantries, shoes and clean shirts, tuition and household items and the miraculous night in which María Luisa sentenced García Márquez that “yes en You really get to write what you say you write the world will never be the same again. ” A year and a half later, when reading the original, Mutis would exclaim one of his beloved damn things! Checking that the priceless jewel in his hands had nothing to do with what Gabo narrated Saturday through Saturday. Until the title changed at the end, in the penultimate line, where we are told that the strains condemned to one hundred years of solitude that should not have a second chance on Earth.
One hundred years of solitude is the novel of our language, the soul of the imagination and memory of America, the very jungle from which all the intact paragraphs of Gabriel García Márquez branch as a mother-in-law: her prize in the snows of Stockholm and the endless rain of Macondo, the ghosts of Rulfo and the poetry of flaming wings of Darío or Neruda, all the pages that exploded with the Boom! and the desire to cry. It is the novel with a ship lost in the branches of its cover and the inverted cover designed by Vicente Rojo and the pages that fly like yellow butterflies and a thread of blood that creeps along the shady paths of all the ghost towns where our childhood is preserved and the record of contrary love affairs, the Bella who flies on the roofs with clean sheets and the giant with long beards that sells magnets and a compass. It is the novel of our skin and the invisible curtain that extended as an impassable wall in a small house on La Loma street, Mafia cave , where a man sat daily on a discreet table of light wood to interpret the keyboard the quiet symphony of a miracle.
MORE INFORMATION
Galdós in Gran Vía- Batucada goose step
- Out of paper
Now, the House will be the setting for conferences and workshops; the rooms of two children whom I love as brothers will now serve as accommodation for visiting writers from other landscapes and cultures and where the beautiful union of Mercedes and Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez flourished, pure literature has to flourish, as always. At the door of that house came the manager of a bank that had previously agreed with Gabo the delivery of a suitcase filled with bills with the cash advance that had come from Buenos Aires, from the South American Publishing House, to seal the first edition of a endearing infinite mamotreto that Mercedes and Gabo had taken in person to the Post Office of Toluca Avenue (having been delicately typed in clean by the infallible Pera) and all so that the arrival of the bank official synchronized with the children's school schedules, They opened the door to discover that the world would never be the same again .
In that House, the round of the finest journalism that Gabo distilled and the adorable seeds of his stories floated like mist, the impalpable transparency of all the novels to come, but also the smell of the kitchen and a coffee for two that were taken early in the morning to follow the saga and the games of the children who learned to read in that house, and the cartoons of yesterday and today and the smell of the guava and the taste of the mamey, and the tracks of a train that passed by nearby and that perhaps it is now heard invisible in the minds of writers who are invited to share lyrics in that legendary house that for the good of literature is already, as always, the House of all.
Jorge F. Hernández
You can follow THE COUNTRY Opinion on Facebook, Twitter or subscribe here to the Newsletter.