![\"Gabriel](\"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez-La-siesta-del-martes2.webp\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\nTuesday Siesta<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez
(Complete Story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The train emerged from the quivering tunnel of sandy rocks, began to cross the symmetrical, interminable banana plantations, and the air became humid and they couldn\u2019t feel the sea breeze any more. A stifling blast of smoke came in the car window. On the narrow road parallel to the railway there were oxcarts loaded with green bunches of bananas. Beyond the road, in uncultivated spaces set at odd intervals there were offices with electric fans, red-brick buildings, and residences with chairs and little white tables on the terraces among dusty palm trees and rosebushes. It was eleven in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You\u2019d better close the window,\u2019 the woman said. \u2018Your hair will get full of soot.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girl tried to, but the shade wouldn\u2019t move because of the rust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They were the only passengers in the lone third-class car. Since the smoke of the locomotive kept coming through the window, the girl left her seat and put down the only things they had with them: a plastic sack with some things to eat and a bouquet of flowers wrapped in newspaper. She sat on the opposite seat, away from the window, facing her mother. They were both in severe and poor mourning clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girl was twelve years old, and it was the first time she\u2019d ever been on a train. The woman seemed too old to be her mother, because of the blue veins on her eyelids and her small, soft, and shapeless body, in a dress cut like a cassock. She was riding with her spinal column braced firmly against the back of the seat, and held a peeling patent-leather handbag in her lap with both hands. She bore the conscientious serenity of someone accustomed to poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By twelve the heat had begun. The train stopped for ten minutes to take on water at a station where there was no town. Outside, in the mysterious silence of the plantations, the shadows seemed clean. But the still air inside the car smelled like untanned leather. The train did not pick up speed. It stopped at two identical towns with wooden houses painted bright colors. The woman\u2019s head nodded and she sank into sleep. The girl took off her shoes. Then she went to the washroom to put the bouquet of flowers in some water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When she came back to her seat, her mother was waiting to eat. She gave her a piece of cheese, half a corn-meal pancake, and a cookie, and took an equal portion out of the plastic sack for herself. While they ate, the train crossed an iron bridge very slowly and passed a town just like the ones before, except that in this one there was a crowd in the plaza. A band was playing a lively tune under the oppressive sun. At the other side of town the plantations ended in a plain which was cracked from the drought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman stopped eating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Put on your shoes,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girl looked outside. She saw nothing but the deserted plain, where the train began to pick up speed again, but she put the last piece of cookie into the sack and quickly put on her shoes. The woman gave her a comb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Comb your hair,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The train whistle began to blow while the girl was combing her hair. The woman dried the sweat from her neck and wiped the oil from her face with her fingers. When the girl stopped combing, the train was passing the outlying houses of a town larger but sadder than the earlier ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018If you feel like doing anything, do it now,\u2019 said the woman. \u2018Later, don\u2019t take a drink anywhere even if you\u2019re dying of thirst. Above all, no crying.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girl nodded her head. A dry, burning wind came in the window, together with the locomotive\u2019s whistle and the clatter of the old cars. The woman folded the plastic bag with the rest of the food and put it in the handbag. For a moment a complete picture of the town, on that bright August Tuesday, shone in the window. The girl wrapped the flowers in the soaking-wet newspapers, moved a little farther away from the window, and stared at her mother. She received a pleasant expression in return. The train began to whistle and slowed down. A moment later it stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no one at the station. On the other side of the street, on the sidewalk shaded by the almond trees, only the pool hall was open. The town was floating in the heat. The woman and the girl got off the train and crossed the abandoned station \u2013 the tiles split apart by the grass growing up between \u2013 and over to the shady side of the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was almost two. At that hour, weighted down by drowsiness, the town was taking a siesta. The stores, the town offices, the public school were closed at eleven, and didn\u2019t reopen until a little before four, when the train went back. Only the hotel across from the station, with its bar and pool hall, and the telegraph office at one side of the plaza stayed open. The houses, most of them built on the banana company\u2019s model, had their doors locked from inside and their blinds drawn. In some of them it was so hot that the residents ate lunch in the patio. Others leaned a chair against the wall, in the shade of the almond trees, and took their siesta right out in the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keeping to the protective shade of the almond trees, the woman and the girl entered the town without disturbing the siesta. They went directly to the parish house. The woman scratched the metal grating on the door with her fingernail, waited a moment, and scratched again. An electric fan was humming inside. They did not hear the steps. They hardly heard the slight creaking of a door, and immediately a cautious voice, right next to the metal grating: \u2018Who is it?\u2019 The woman tried to see through the grating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I need a priest,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018He\u2019s sleeping now.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It\u2019s an emergency,\u2019 the woman insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her voice showed a calm determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The door was opened a little way, noiselessly, and a plump, older woman appeared, with very pale skin and hair the color of iron. Her eyes seemed too small behind her thick eyeglasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Come in,\u2019 she said, and opened the door all the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They entered a room permeated with an old smell of flowers. The woman of the house led them to a wooden bench and signaled them to sit down. The girl did so, but her mother remained standing, absent-mindedly, with both hands clutching the handbag. No noise could be heard above the electric fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman of the house reappeared at the door at the far end of the room. \u2018He says you should come back after three,\u2019 she said in a very low voice. \u2018He just lay down five minutes ago.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018The train leaves at three-thirty,\u2019 said the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a brief and self-assured reply, but her voice remained pleasant, full of undertones. The woman of the house smiled for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018All right,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the far door closed again, the woman sat down next to her daughter. The narrow waiting room was poor, neat, and clean. On the other side of the wooden railing which divided the room, there was a worktable, a plain one with an oilcloth cover, and on top of the table a primitive typewriter next to a vase of flowers. The parish records were beyond. You could see that it was an office kept in order by a spinster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The far door opened and this time the priest appeared, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. Only when he put them on was it evident that he was the brother of the woman who had opened the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018How can I help you?\u2019 he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018The keys to the cemetery,\u2019 said the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girl was seated with the flowers in her lap and her feet crossed under the bench. The priest looked at her, then looked at the woman, and then through the wire mesh of the window at the bright, cloudless sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018In this heat,\u2019 he said. \u2018You could have waited until the sun went down.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman moved her head silently. The priest crossed to the other side of the railing, took out of the cabinet a notebook covered in oilcloth, a wooden penholder, and an inkwell, and sat down at the table. There was more than enough hair on his hands to account for what was missing on his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Which grave are you going to visit?\u2019 he asked<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Carlos Centeno\u2019s,\u2019 said the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Who?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Carlos Centeno,\u2019 the woman repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The priest still did not understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018He\u2019s the thief who was killed here last week,\u2019 said the woman in the same tone of voice. \u2018I am his mother.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The priest scrutinized her. She stared at him with quiet self-control, and the Father blushed. He lowered his head and began to write. As he filled the page, he asked the woman to identify herself, and she replied unhesitatingly, with precise details, as if she were reading them. The Father began to sweat. The girl unhooked the buckle of her left shoe, slipped her heel out of it, and rested it on the bench rail. She did the same with the right one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It had all started the Monday of the previous week, at three in the morning, a few blocks from there. Rebecca, a lonely widow who lived in a house full of odds and ends, heard above the sound of the drizzling rain someone trying to force the front door from outside. She got up, rummaged around in her closet for an ancient revolver that no one had fired since the days of Colonel Aureliano Buend\u00eda, and went into the living room without turning on the lights. Orienting herself not so much by the noise at the lock as by a terror developed in her by twenty-eight years of loneliness, she fixed in her imagination not only the spot where the door was but also the exact height of the lock. She clutched the weapon with both hands, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger. It was the first time in her life that she had fired a gun. Immediately after the explosion, she could hear nothing except the murmur of the drizzle on the galvanized roof. Then she heard a little metallic bump on the cement porch, and a very low voice, pleasant but terribly exhausted: \u2018Ah, Mother.\u2019 The man they found dead in front of the house in the morning, his nose blown to bits, wore a flannel shirt with colored stripes, everyday pants with a rope for a belt, and was barefoot. No one in town knew him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018So his name was Carlos Centeno,\u2019 murmured the Father when he finished writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Centeno Ayala,\u2019 said the woman. \u2018He was my only boy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The priest went back to the cabinet. Two big rusty keys hung on the inside of the door; the girl imagined, as the mother had when she was a girl and as the priest himself must have imagined at some time, that they were Saint Peter\u2019s keys. He took them down, put them on the open notebook on the railing and pointed with his forefinger to a place on the page he had just written, looking at the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Sign here.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman scribbled her name, holding the handbag under her arm. The girl picked up the flowers, came to the railing shuffling her feet, and watched her mother attentively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The priest sighed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Didn\u2019t you ever try to get him on the right track?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman answered when she finished signing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018He was a very good man.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The priest looked first at the woman and then at the girl, and realized with a kind of pious amazement that they were not about to cry. The woman continued in the same tone:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I told him never to steal anything that anyone needed to eat, and he minded me. On the other hand, before, when he used to box, he used to spend three days in bed, exhausted from being punched.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018All his teeth had to be pulled out,\u2019 interrupted the girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018That\u2019s right,\u2019 the woman agreed. \u2018Every mouthful I ate those days tasted of the beatings my son got on Saturday nights.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018God\u2019s will is inscrutable,\u2019 said the Father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But he said it without much conviction, partly because experience had made him a little skeptical and partly because of the heat. He suggested that they cover their heads to guard against sunstroke. Yawning, and now almost completely asleep, he gave them instructions about how to find Carlos Centeno\u2019s grave. When they came back, they didn\u2019t have to knock. They should put the key under the door; and in the same place, if they could, they should put an offering for the Church. The woman listened to his directions with great attention, but thanked him without smiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Father had noticed that there was someone looking inside, his nose pressed against the metal grating, even before he opened the door to the street. Outside was a group of children. When the door was opened wide, the children scattered. Ordinarily, at that hour there was no one in the street. Now there were not only children. There were groups of people under the almond trees. The Father scanned the street swimming in the heat and then he understood. Softly, he closed the door again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Wait a moment,\u2019 he said without looking at the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His sister appeared at the far door with a black jacket over her nightshirt and her hair down over her shoulders. She looked silently at the Father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018What was it?\u2019 he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018The people have noticed,\u2019 murmured his sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You\u2019d better go out by the door to the patio,\u2019 said the Father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It\u2019s the same there,\u2019 said his sister. \u2018Everybody is at the windows.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman seemed not to have understood until then. She tried to look into the street through the metal grating. Then she took the bouquet of flowers from the girl and began to move toward the door. The girl followed her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Wait until the sun goes down,\u2019 said the Father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You\u2019ll melt,\u2019 said his sister, motionless at the back of the room. \u2018Wait and I\u2019ll lend you a parasol.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Thank you,\u2019 replied the woman. \u2018We\u2019re all right this way.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She took the girl by the hand and went into the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
THE END<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Tuesday Siesta” (La siesta del martes) by Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez tells the story of a mother and her daughter who travel to a small town on a hot August day. Their visit has a particular purpose that arouses the curiosity of the local inhabitants. As the plot unfolds, the reasons behind their journey and the history of their family are revealed. The story explores themes such as dignity, social judgment, and the complexities of family relationships, all within the context of a traditional Latin American society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[694,692,630],"class_list":["post-9223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-stories","tag-colombia-en","tag-gabriel-garcia-marquez-en","tag-realism","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":559,"label":"Short stories"}],"post_tag":[{"value":694,"label":"Colombia"},{"value":692,"label":"Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez"},{"value":630,"label":"Realism"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez-La-siesta-del-martes2.webp",1024,1024,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Juan Pablo Guevara","author_link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/author\/spartakku\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":559,"name":"Short stories","slug":"short-stories","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":559,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":418,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":559,"category_count":418,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Short stories","category_nicename":"short-stories","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":694,"name":"Colombia","slug":"colombia-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":694,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":14,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":692,"name":"Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez","slug":"gabriel-garcia-marquez-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":692,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":14,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":630,"name":"Realism","slug":"realism","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":630,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":52,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}