THE DAY THAT Florentino Ariza saw Fermina Daza irium of the Cathedral, in the sixth month of her pregnand in full and of her new dition as a woman of the world, he made a fierce decision to win fame and fortune in order to deserve her. He did not even stop to think about the obstacle of her being married, because at the same time he decided, as if it depended on himself alohat Dr. Juvenal Urbino had to die. He did not know when or how, but he sidered it aable event that he was resolved to wait for without impatience or violence, even till the end of time.
He began at the beginning. He presented himself unannounced in the office of Uncle Leo XII, President of the Board of Directors and General Manager of the River pany of the Caribbean, and ex-pressed his willio yield to his plans. His uncle was angry with him because of the manner in which he had thrown away the good position of telegraph operator in Villa de Leyva, but he allowed him-self to be swayed by his vi that human beings are not born ond for all on the day their mive birth to them, but that life obliges them over and ain to give birth to themselves. Besides, his brother』s widow had died the year before, still smarting from rancor but without any heirs. And so he gave the job to his errant nephew.
It was a decision typical of Don Leo XII Loayza. Ihe shell of a soulless mert was hidden a genial lunatic, as willing t forth a spring of lemonade in the Guajira Desert as to flood a solemn funeral with weeping at his heartbreakiion of 「Ia Tomba Oscura.」 His head was covered with curls, he had the lips of a faun, and all he needed was a lyre and a laurel wreath to be the image of the indiary Nero of Christian mythology. When he was not occupied with the administration of his decrepit vessels, still afloat out of sheer distra on the part of fate, or with the problems of river navigation, which grew more and more critical every day, he devoted his free time to the enrit of his lyric repertoire. He liked nothier than to sing at funerals. He had the voice of a galley slave, untrained but capable of impressive registers.
Someone had told him that Enrico Caruso could shatter a vase with the power of his voice, and he had spent years trying to imitate him, even with the windowpanes. His friends brought him the most delicate vases they had e across iravels through the world, and they anized special parties so that he might at last achieve the culmina-tion of his dream. He never succeeded. Still, in the depth of his thun-dering there was a glimmer of tenderhat broke the hearts of his listeners as if they were the crystal vases of the great Caruso, and it was this that made him so revered at funerals. Except at one, whehought it a good idea to sing 「When I Wake Up in Glory,」 a beauti-ful and moving funeral song from Louisiana, and he was told to be quiet by the priest, who could not uand that Protestant intru-sion in his church.
And so, betweeicores and Neapolitan serenades, his creative talent and his invincible entrepreneurial spirit made him the hero of river navigation during the time of its greatest splendor. He had e from nothing, like his dead brothers, and all of them went as far as they wished despite the stigma of being illegitimate children and, even worse, illegitimate children who had never been reized. They were the cream of what in those days was called the 「shop-ter aristocracy,」 whose sanctuary was the ercial Club. A, even when he had the resources to