Gabriel García Márquez

The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow (1976), by Gabriel García Márquez, tells the tragic story of the honeymoon of Nena Daconte and Billy Sánchez, a young Colombian couple traveling through France by car on their way to Paris. It all begins with a simple prick on Nena’s finger when she receives a bouquet of roses at the Madrid airport, a wound that soon turns into persistent bleeding. Although they don’t think much of it at first, the blood continues to flow as they cross the border and drive through the winter snow. Finally, they arrive at a hospital in Paris, where Nena is rushed into emergency care. Billy, confused by the language and bureaucracy, is separated from his wife and left in a disconcerting limbo with no news of her condition. Unable to understand the system around him, he spends his days alone while the authorities search for him unsuccessfully. When he finally manages to return to the hospital, he is informed that Nena died several days earlier.

In Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses, a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, a dead boy recounts how, every Sunday, he tries to take roses from the altar tended by a woman to take them to his own grave. The story takes place in the house where they both lived decades ago. Having died in an accident, the boy remains as a spirit tied to the place, while the woman, who was close to him in life, devoutly maintains the altar erected in his memory. Although she cannot see him, the woman seems to sense his presence and watches over the roses with growing unease. Through the boy’s memories, the relationship between the two and the accident that led to his death are reconstructed. The house, abandoned for years, retains traces of that past life: forgotten shoes, accumulated dust, and the restored altar. The story foreshadows a future outcome: the day will come when the woman dies, and then the boy must find the men who took her to the hill, as they did with him. Only then will she understand that it was his presence—and not the wind—that disarranged the roses on the altar every Sunday.

Tuesday Siesta, a short story by Gabriel García Márquez published in 1962 as part of the collection The Funeral of Big Mama, narrates the journey of a mother and her daughter to a small town in intense heat. Dressed in mourning and with a serene attitude, they look for the priest to ask for the keys to the cemetery. In an atmosphere marked by the drowsiness of the siesta, the story shows how both women face the weight of social prejudice with dignity.