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Gabo was... simply... a higher being.

Every time you read one of Gabo's books,

you feel like you want
to read more from him.

His charm. His special way
of looking at life.

The most famous writer to come out
of South America and the whole world.

He is our greatest pride, the greatest
that we, Cataqueños, could ever have.

The literary world

is in mourning this afternoon,

as Colombian Nobel prize winner
Gabriel García Márquez

has just passed away in Mexico City.

...we, fable weavers,
who believe everything,

feel entitled to believe
that it is not too late

to undertake the creation
of the opposite utopia.

A new and sweeping utopia of life,

where there is no one to decide
for others, down to the way they die,

where love is really true
and happiness is possible,

and where the families condemned
to live one hundred years of solitude

will have, at last and forever,

a second chance on earth.

García Márquez was the first
contemporary classic I read.

And One Hundred Years of Solitude
was one of the novels

that made me realize that this was
what I wanted to do with my life.

No one can be a writer if
they're completely satisfied.

All of literature is born from a
certain dissatisfaction

with life, with one's life story,
with the world as it is,

and writing is an attempt to
correct these deficiencies.

How on earth did a boy who came from
a small town on the Caribbean coast

end up writing a book that transformed

twentieth century Western literature?

First, one must look for the answers
in his childhood.

Gerald Martin has spent two decades
researching the details of his life.

It was a small town of between
five and ten thousand inhabitants.

It was unknown to the world
and it still is.

At the same time, it was going
through its most important moment.

The United Fruit Company
was everywhere in northern Colombia.

There were Gringos, Jamaicans,
people from all over the Caribbean

coming to work in Aracataca.

So obviously, as it was a booming town,
there were a lot of quarrels, fights,

a lot of alcohol, brothels,
and plenty of violence.

It was a town
where lots of things happened.

Macondo, the magical world in his books,

was inspired by Aracataca, where he spent
the first nine years of his life.

"Many years later,
as he faced the firing squad,

Colonel Aureliano Buendía
was to remember that distant afternoon

when his father took him to discover ice.

Macondo was a village
of twenty adobe houses back then,

built on the bank of a
river of clear water

that rushed along
a bed of massive, white

polished stones
that looked like prehistoric eggs.

The world was so new
that many things did not have a name,

and, in order to mention them,
it was necessary to point at them."

He was born in his grandfather's house.

His mother and her husband,
Gabriel Eligio, had been banished.

Her family was one of the wealthiest
in Aracataca and they did not approve

of her marriage to someone who was from
a "grim" area of northern Colombia.

He was an adventurer, a romantic.

When the boy turned one year,

his parents, Luisa Santiaga
and Gabriel Eligio moved to Barranquilla.

She had had another child
and took that child with her,

leaving Gabriel behind.

What was that child bound to think?

That he had been, "abandoned."

"It's a recurring dream
which persists even now.

What is more, every single day of my
life I wake up with the feeling,

real or imaginary, that I have dreamt
of myself in that house.

It is not that I have returned to it,
but I am there all the same.

My age is unknown and I have
no particular reason to be there.

It is as though I had never left
that big, old house."

It was the greatest of joys,
because when you're a child,

you love big spaces to run,
jump and do whatever you want.

Even more so when we knew
it was our grandparents' house,

where we could do anything we wanted

because nothing was forbidden there.

When his family moved out,
at that moment they left...

They went to work elsewhere, I obviously
don't remember exactly where.

Little Gabo was then left under the care
of his grandfather and grandmother.

To his grandfather,

he was his little Napoleon,
as he called him,

and little Gabo spent
a lot of time with him.

My grandfather was a
very considerate person,

perhaps due to his lifestyle
and his earnest nature.

My grandparents were somewhat cultured,

even without having had a formal
university education or anything.

Grandma was superstitious.

She would instill fear
in us about everything.

We were all cowardly
and easily-frightened.

If anyone suddenly opened
an umbrella inside the house,

she would tell them to close it
or someone would die.

Little Gabo would ask her why
and the question scared her.

He was the darling of the house.

In the afternoon, you would hear

frogs croaking in the garden

and she would tell them:
"Come by tomorrow and I'll give you salt."

Because she believed
that they were witches.

To me, it was a very strange life.

The women who lived before my grandmother

lived in a supernatural world.

A fantasy world where anything
was possible.

Where the most wonderful things
were commonplace,

but Grandpa was probably

the most concrete person
that I've ever met.

And he told me stories
about the Civil War.

The vicissitudes of politics.

He spoke to me as if I were an adult.

So my life was divided
between these two worlds.

García Márquez's grandfather,

Colonel Márquez, played a crucial role
in the Thousand Days' War,

the civil war between
conservatives and liberals,

in the early twentieth century.

It left an incredibly
negative legacy in Colombia.

On festivities,

when Gypsies arrived and the fruit
vendor, the candy vendor arrived,

the circus would come.

I remember that magician doing
prestidigitation things.

He did all these magic tricks
that fascinated little Gabriel.

On the one hand, there was fascination
for the intense life of the people,

on the other, there were fears and
experiences that were hard to explain.

My thesis is that
García Márquez thought...

he was buried in his grandfather's house.

Living in a house of elderly people.

A grandfather who talked
about death all the time,

a grandmother, who was
an extraordinary, superstitious woman,

and, according to whom,
there were ghosts everywhere.

It was an eerie, magical childhood,
with all those things he made up.

But at the same time,
it was also a very bleak childhood.

When he was nine years old, his
father came looking for him.

García Márquez went off to live
with his parents for the first time.

If Aracataca is Macondo,
Sucre is the darker,

more sinister town
of his other early works.

My dad, I think, was a regular guy,

he had a license to practice homeopathy,

so he combined this trade
with a pharmacy he owned,

and in this way he was more or
less capable of supporting the family.

Gabito used to say that he held
some sort of suspicion

because my dad was a strong guy.

His father was sometimes
away for months

and left the family
incredibly impoverished.

García Márquez was his mother's rock.

My mom always liked us
to use the right word,

she read us stories from the Sunday paper.

We got to primary school,
already knowing how to read

because she had taught us.

When he was a child in Sucre,

I think he was quite innocent.

His father was very different
from the Colonel.

His attitude towards sex
and relationships with women...

was more typical of what
you would expect from the coast.

Isidro Álvarez is a writer from Sucre
who shows me around the key places,

and I worried a bit about

the possible rift between fiction

and the reality that I was about to see.

Here in this space, just
outside the village,

was the location of La Hora,

the brothel where all young
men in this town lost their virginity.

García Márquez was also initiated there,
when he was barely twelve years old,

by one of the girls who worked
at the place.

In most of his interviews,

he says it was a wonderful thing,

and that he discovered sex and
that somehow... "Thanks dad", and so on.

However, there is an interview...

that he later confirmed with me,

where he says it was the scariest
thing that ever happened in his life.

Later he had many other far more positive
experiences in his teenage years.

Shortly after this radical
change in his life,

he heard of the death of his grandfather.

Its impact further strengthened
his perpetual horror of death.

I think that was the breaking point,
because he later states

that after his grandfather's death,
nothing seems to be of interest to him.

When Grandpa died, the world was over,
it was completely over,

but the memory of Grandpa,
who supported me the most

so that I could do what I most wanted,

which was to express myself.
That was Grandpa's memory.

It's hard to forget
a grandfather like that.

It would take García Márquez many years

to transform the reality of
his childhood into fiction.

The diverse themes
and atmospheres in his books,

the war stories,
his grandmother's ghosts,

the world, sex, the fear of incest,

all of that is rooted here.

It is very difficult to imagine

what Colombia was like in 1943.

I was in a house

where a sibling was born every year.

Then I realized that leaving
was the only possible alternative,

so I decided to go
from Barranquilla to Bogota,

to sit for a scholarship exam.

I went on a boat that crossed
the Magdalena River.

It normally took eight days
to get there,

but if the boat broke down,
depending on the time of year,

it could take up to fifteen or sixteen.
You never knew.

Besides, you didn't mind
if the boat broke down. It was a party.

That boat was at times a two-week party,

where you danced,
where García Márquez sang

all the songs he knew by heart, non-stop.

Gabito was a born musician,

I was convinced he had become a singer.

The Magdalena River quickly
became a metaphor,

because it was the route he took
to get from his culture, his family,

to the distant, cold, remote places
of the Colombian capital and its environs.

The coldness and remoteness were not only
geographical, they were also existential.

I arrived alone in Bogota, in 1943,

at four in the afternoon,
at Savannah Station,

and found a gray city, an ashen town,

with rain, with trams

that would throw sparks
when they touched corners

and in which everyone held tight,
while standing up.

All men were dressed in black
and wore hats,

and there wasn't a single woman
in sight.

The first thing García Márquez noted,
was the deep despair

he felt upon arriving
in this icy, rainy city,

then seeing a line of people that went
around the block and bursting into tears

at the realization of his loneliness
in this hostile place,

where he didn't know anyone.

The first days of his new life
were marked by drizzle and cold.

He was surrounded
by people he didn't know.

These things combined
lead García Márquez to two revelations

that I consider crucial, in order
to understand his literary vocation.

These revelations are
solitude and nostalgia.

I had written, perhaps,
not one but two stories.

I put them in an envelope

and sent them to El Espectador.

The following Saturday, I went outside,

went into a café on Seventh Street

and saw a guy who had opened the
literary supplement of El Espectador.

It showcased the title of my story,
covering the width of eight columns.

It was published in Eduardo Zalamea's
section "The City and the World",

with a note

in which he stated that he hoped
the supplement's readers had realized

that a new writer had been featured,
a writer they'd never heard of.

And he paid a great
a deal of compliments to this writer,

And my thought at that moment

was that I'd got into a hell of a mess,

because there was no way back,

so I had to remain a writer
for the rest of my life.

"He was in his coffin, ready to be buried,
and yet he knew he was not dead.

He knew that if he tried to get up,
he would be able to do so with ease,

at least spiritually,

but it wasn't worth it, it was
better to let himself die there,

dying of death, which was his illness."

This meeting must have taken place
around 1947.

It was at a café, in Bogota. Back then
downtown Bogota was full of cafés.

I was to meet up with an old friend
who had been a fellow student at school

and who had been in university
with García Márquez.

I was talking to her when Gabo,

as we now call him, walked in.

He was the typical guy from the Caribbean.

He was too exotic for Bogota back then.

He was flirting with the waitress too,

and I started to stare at him in horror.

He was there for a while and then left.

I think he had a beer or something.
He paid and left.

Then my friend told me, "Look,
that boy is in university with me,

but he's a lousy, lousy student.

His life is totally crazy,
he lives around here in a student home,

he drinks booze" and so on.

"It's a pity", was our conclusion.

He's got talent, but he's a lost cause.

He returned to Sucre during the holidays.

The ambitions of the family,
which had eleven children by then,

were all focused
on his career in Bogota,

Meanwhile, he had fallen in love
with a local girl.

What was here Isidro?

It was the home of the Barcha Pardos.

Mercedes Barcha lived in Sucre,
right in this house.

It was a pharmacy owned by Demetrio,

and García Márquez
went there to talk to Demetrio.

It was as if he was more in love with
Demetrio Barcha than with Mercedes.

He fell in love with Mercedes when
she was nine and he was fourteen.

He would walk around
the pharmacy where Mercedes worked

because he did not dare to talk to her.

Mercedes was in those days
an archetype to him.

She ignored me.

Men really go for that, for being ignored.

Pieces of Mercedes have been scattered
throughout my books, pieces everywhere,

entire characters

who appear in One Hundred Years of
Solitude, one even bearing her name.

García Márquez always knows

where to be
when things are happening.

Gaitán was a great popular leader.

As a journalist, I knew

Castro's rallies, also Peron's,

and they cannot compare with the passion

elicited by Jorge Eliecer Gaitán.

He was a different type of liberal.

Everyone thought
that he was two or three months

away from becoming President.

He was killed while I was
walking with my father.

I was there. We heard the three shots.

I went down,
and got there before everyone else

because they had just caught the murderer

and I was left kneeling
in front of Gaitán's body.

García Márquez, was at his student house,
some 330 yards away from the scene.

He could go out,
see the body, see the crowd.

Gaitán's supporters could not
accept what had happened.

They burned the whole city center,

burned García Márquez's student house.

They burned everything.

Not only did this split
Colombia's history in two,

it also divided Colombia's
literature in two,

because a whole literary phenomenon
began to emerge from there,

it was called "the novel of violence".
This concerns García Márquez directly

because narrating the violence

had also become an obsession to him.

He would try to do this,
departing from the theory that

what matters in the novel of violence
is not the dead,

but the living who are left
in a cold sweat, in their hiding places,

waiting for the moment
when death will finally catch them.

He fled to the coast, but not to his home.

He went to Cartagena,

and arrived with nothing,
no possessions, no money.

He went looking for work.

García Márquez moved from Bogota
to Cartagena in a state of despair,

not knowing where he'd sleep,
where he'd live, where he'd work.

A few months earlier,
on the 8th of March of that year,

the newspaper El Universal
had just been launched.

Clemente Manuel Zabala greets
the young García Márquez.

Zabala got excited when he asked:
"what is the young man's name"?

and heard: "Gabriel García Márquez."

He said, "are you the one
who published some stories

on the Saturday supplement?
I liked them very much.

And the following day, García Márquez's
first piece was published.

It was about the oppressive state

in a militarized Cartagena.

"We, city dwellers,
had already become used

to the brass throat announcing the curfew.

The clock at the mouth of the bridge,

looming again over the city,

with its clean, whitewashed convalescence,

had lost its standing as a familiar thing,

its irreplaceable place
as a domestic animal..."

It's really good...

Journalism soon lead him to Barranquilla,

a much more open and cosmopolitan city,

where he made friends
who would change his life.

García Márquez met a group of people,

journalists, writers, sculptors,
painters, hunters, fishermen,

a very mixed bag... bohemians.

The Barranquilla group is one
of the most important things

that happened to García Márquez.

It was a group of people
that devoured the world

through literature, through painting.

A group of people that held literature
as the most important thing in life,

but it was not something that
had to be taken seriously.

Ramón Vinyes, a Catalonian
expatriate, and a bit of an adventurer,

who had come to Barranquilla at
the turn of the century,

introduced them to authors, and
transmitted a notion of literature,

which I believe, defined in more
than one way, García Márquez's vocation.

It's that whole idea of
never letting others read one's drafts,

yet constantly telling them the story
one is writing.

Telling it to friends, telling it to
the wife, telling it to the people.

To García Márquez, literature

was never something that could be
understood without friendship.

His mother went to Barranquilla,
looking for him,

asking him to go with her
to Aracataca, for the first time,

ever since he had left as a child,
so that they could sell the house.

He has said many times that he
had an epiphany at that moment.

Upon going to Aracataca and seeing
for the first time, after so long,

the dusty streets, the broken houses.

Upon witnessing thus the passing of time,

he became aware, for the first time,
of the value of his own experience.

After several drafts, he
finally had a novel

of which he was relatively proud.
He sent it to Argentina,

to a publishing house, Editorial Losada,

and Guillermo de Torre,
Borges' brother-in-law,

not only rejected the novel,
but also advised him in a note

to find something else to do.

"Literature is not for you."

It was obviously devastating.

Leaf Storm, which was the
novel, is undoubtedly...

nobody says it, but I state it
right here and right now,

is one of the first major
avant-garde works in Latin America.

It is an extraordinary thing.

For a young man of 22 or 23 years of age,

it was almost a miracle.

He then returned to Bogota

and with the help of a friend,
Alvaro Mutis,

he got a job
in the El Espectador newspaper.

Gabo came to El Espectador and
the first impression he had,

according to others,
I got to meet Gabo later...

This man showed up
in these colorful shirts...

and everybody went "who is this nut?".

His native Caribbean flair emerged,
even in his behavior.

Throughout his life, Gabo gradually
changed those colors.

But esthetically speaking, he wanted
to be very different from us,

folks who lived in Bogota.

He wrote film reviews and enjoyed it,
but eventually got a bit bored of it.

He wanted to be a reporter.

He ceased to be the typical

Latin American chronicler,

who writes inventive, imaginative things.

García Márquez started writing articles
that were simultaneously literary works.

"The Story of a Shipwrecked
Sailor" is impressive

because this is a story that appeared

in all of the papers, all of them.

After working a month and
a half on "The Shipwrecked Sailor",

he sat down, he went back,
he traced the story back

and began to write it
as if it were a novel.

Well, El Espectador's sales soared.

People were buying
El Espectador just to read

the next chronicle García Márquez
would publish,

regarding a story that
everyone had already told.

This was clear proof of how
García Márquez was learning

to transform a reality
that had been told a thousand times

into something new.

At that moment, he already
had, like a magician,

the technique to fascinate the public.

He would still need some time to learn

how to use it in his own stories,
with the material from his own biography.

El Espectador sent its star reporter
to Europe, as a correspondent.

The first dream of my life
finally came true.

This dream was to be able
to sit down and write,

without anyone bothering me.

And I sat down to write No
One Writes to the Colonel.

I knew the story of my grandfather,

who waited his whole life for his pension,

as a veteran of the civil war,

but this pension never came.

I met up with friends who were
Colombian poets and writers

and we talked a lot about literature.
When Gabo showed up at that café,

I had already received the book
Leaf Storm, his first novel.

I was very interested
and we started talking,

but we had read the reviews
and thought that Colombian critics

exaggerated when they compared it
to Proust and stuff like that,

so we criticized the novel.

We said it was strongly
influenced by Faulkner.

We found him a little presumptuous.

He had changed completely.

He no was no longer the boy from the coast
but a formally dressed guy.

He was somewhat distant.

He had been heavily influenced
by the world of Bogota.

Two days later, I invited him to dinner
and it started snowing.

When we left the restaurant,
Gabo looked at Boulevard Saint-Michel.

It was completely white.
White trees, white cars,

and then he shivered.

He had never seen snow, ever,

he'd read a lot of stories about it,
but had never seen it.

His face trembled and he said "shit"

and ran off,

like footballers when they score
a goal, exactly like that.

He would run and raise his arms,
and fall down.

We then became friends.

I had invited a friend
to one of my poetry recitals,

he was a very nice Portuguese guy,

who had met Gabriel
at the Geneva Conference.

Gabriel says he told him,

"a lady reciting poetry
is the most boring thing ever.

No way, I'll wait at the café."

The Mabillon Café.

We actually went down there
and I met him there.

He was kind of...
he looked just like an Arab.

He looked Algerian,

because he had that big mustache,
like Arabs always do,

he had curly hair, he was this thin.

He was not my type at all. Not at all.

From the very start, I was fascinated
by the way he spoke.

He spoke with such magical images.

I would say, "what a wonderful twilight"

and he would say "it's my gift to you."

He was very tender.
The word is tenderness,

a great tenderness.

Poets are almost always prophets.

Gabriel himself was a bit
of a sorcerer, a bit of a prophet.

He was with me and we walked down
Boulevard Saint-Michel.

It suddenly occurred to me to buy Le Monde

and I read the news about
El Espectador closing down.

I said, "look, they closed
your newspaper".

He wasn't able to pay the hotel.

Madame La Croix, the owner,
an exceptional woman,

didn't throw him out. She put him
up, in an attic, on the top floor,

and he lived there, writing.

Problems began to arise there,

because I could not see myself working,

and going to and fro,
trying to make a living,

while he did nothing but write.

Write and write and write.

And I would often say to him,

"that's not possible,
you have to do something".

And he didn't know how.
He only knew how to write.

The hardest thing began then, yes.

Because this story, I don't know.
I've never wanted to talk about this.

Having a child was impossible,
absolutely impossible.

I did my best not to have it.

There was no reaction from him.
He was totally devoted to me.

I mean, anything I'd wanted
could have happened.

At that very instant,
I finally decided to leave,

and that is when he said goodbye
at the station.

He followed the train for a little while,
like that, you know what happens,

the train starts off slowly and then
goes straight off and that's it.

We were sad, because, in spite of it all,

there was this strong bond
between us all the same.

We stayed friends, in spite of it all.

"The woman continued in a
smooth, fluent, merciless tone.

'Everybody will win
with the rooster, except us.

We're the only ones who
don't have a cent to bet.'

'The owner of the rooster is
entitled to twenty percent.'

'You were also entitled to get a position

when they made you break
your back for them in the elections,'

the woman replied.

'You were also entitled
to a veteran's pension

after risking your neck in the civil war.

Now everybody has their future assured
and you're dying of hunger,

completely alone.'

'I'm not alone, ' the Colonel said..."

He wouldn't give up writing,

he wouldn't, and finally, he gave me...
I was one of the first readers...

of No One Writes to the Colonel.

I had always thought
that this story would suit a comedy,

but when I was in Paris, I would take
some money from the nightstand,

I'd go downstairs,
eat at the corner and go back up

until the day I no longer had
a single penny.

I started sending an S.O.S. to friends.

This was the seventh floor, no elevator,

and I would go down,
I'd see there were no letters for me,

and I would then go back up
and add one more page.

Then there was a moment when the story,

what I was writing, matched reality.

and that is why I think,
against the opinion of all the critics,

that the best book I've written,

I mean, if I've ever written
a masterpiece,

said masterpiece is
No One Writes to the Colonel.

He had a very hard time getting
No One Writes to the Colonel published.

García Márquez went back to journalism.

But first, he traveled around
Eastern Europe with his friend, Plinio.

They had a close look at Soviet Socialism
and experienced it first hand.

They suffered, in various ways and
degrees, something akin to disappointment.

García Márquez returned to Latin America

to work with Plinio and,
three months later,

he married Mercedes, in Barranquilla.

She was a woman
who was absolutely allergic to excess,

an organized woman, discreet.

From the start, he chose a woman,

who was simultaneously elegant,
somehow superior, intelligent,

but who was also local.
She was from the coast.

"A socialism that can be
touched with the hands

is the type of socialism that Cubans

are building, according to their
needs and possibilities,

with exemplary passion and seriousness,

but always laughing and putting into each
of their acts that deep spark of madness

that is perhaps their most ancient
and fruitful virtue."

We were there
when Fidel arrived in Havana,

but as Venezuelan journalists.

We were there, in Cuba, and
we saw the arrival of Fidel,

heard his first speech there,
in the square.

We had a wonderful impression of Cuba.

The Cuban revolution
was an apotheosis in Latin America,

a revolution of the young,
it was very sexy.

In 1959, Cuba was the place to go
if you were a young Latin American.

Gabo found this atmosphere
and tried to stay.

García Márquez was already in love

with the figure of Fidel
Castro from the very start.

García Márquez was in Cuba.

He and Plinio went there right away.
They wanted to see what was going on.

Both remained convinced
socialist revolutionaries.

They soon had the chance to be
in Prensa Latina, the new Cuban agency.

Both accepted right away.

We became great friends with Masetti,

the General Director of Prensa Latina.

He was a very strong,
very firm Argentinian guy,

and he discovered there was a problem

within the agency: the communist
journalists would gather aside

and would plot to gain control
over the agency.

That did not sit well with
Masetti, who would say,

"we're all with the revolution,
there's no need to meet separately."

He fired them from the agency,

convinced that Fidel
supported his decision.

And suddenly, I was at the
apartment with Masetti,

when news arrived that the agency

had appointed a new director,

and that the communist group

had completely taken over.

So, I submitted my resignation,
I went looking for Gabo,

who was in Prensa Latina, in New York,

highly threatened by Cuban exiles.

Mercedes waited for me at the airport,

with my godson Rodrigo, and told me,
"Gabo has also resigned."

When he left Prensa Latina, in 1961,

his relationship with Cuba
was very difficult.

While all Latin American writers,

even the more or less liberal,
borderline conservatives ones,

made the pilgrimage to Cuba,
García Márquez did not go.

That story about García Márquez
having a close relationship

with Cuba, in the 60's, is false.

He said to me, "I'm going
to Mexico, no matter what.

I have no money to go by plane,

I'll go by bus with
Mercedes and your godson,

you'll send me what you can."

And all I could send him were 150 dollars.

He got to Mexico with 20 dollars.

Gabo would have his main home
in Mexico for the rest of his life.

After getting married, he surprised
everyone who knew him.

A surprisingly responsible man.

García Márquez gradually got to the point
where he never did what he wanted.

He was always frustrated,
yet always successful.

He worked in advertising, worked in film.

He didn't do what he wanted,
but was a successful screenwriter,

with a very nice house, a car,

clothes for him, for his
wife, for his family.

He went to to the poshest parties
in Mexico City.

Carlos Fuentes was about 35
years old when they met.

They couldn't be any more different.

García Márquez was a guy who had spent
the past 15 years in literature

and still had nothing to show,

while Carlos Fuentes had written
in 1958 the first great novel

that preceded the arrival
of the Latin American boom generation.

He knew everybody,
he moved with incredible ease

between worlds, Mexican, Latin American...

Additionally, his intellectual
and vital generosity had no bounds.

He suddenly got
what he had long been waiting for.

This gentrified, alienated,
but seemingly happy

García Márquez traveled
to Acapulco with his family,

driving their white Opel,

when he suddenly saw the novel
he had tried to write for over 20 years.

He would say, "I'm going to write
a very dangerous novel

because it is not a safe novel,
but a novel that has... magical things.

I'm going to tell things
the way my grandmother did."

The tone, the first paragraph of
One Hundred Years of Solitude,

came to him almost like an apparition.

He said to Mercedes:
"Look, I'm sick of it all,

I can no longer do what we're doing,
you know my ambitions,

I know it's a huge risk,

but I want to be devoted to writing.
What do you say?"

I remember we were halfway,

when the owner of the house
called Mercedes and said,

"Madam you owe three months' rent"

and Mercedes covered the phone
and asked me:

"how much longer
until you finish the book?"

I told her "about six months."

She then said, "look sir,
not only do we owe three months,

we're going to owe you six more."

And then the guy told her,

"and you'll pay it all within seven."
And she said, "yes, all of it."

And he said, "if you give me your word,

I have no problem waiting."

She covered the phone and whispered,

"word, I gave my word."
Then she said, "word of honor."

This is the creation that is
known as magical realism.

That perfect structure, describing
a whole world from its birth to its death

in 20 chapters, all of them
with the same number of pages.

One Hundred Years of Solitude
is the story of a town called Macondo,

through the vicissitudes of a
single family, the Buendía family.

The world is understood in such a way
that the line between the supernatural,

the legends, the superstitions
and the real, everyday world

is practically invisible.

On the other hand, normal events
are narrated in a supernatural fashion.

These are the absolute essentials
of what we call magical realism.

It began to become aware of the continent
and of its own Latin American identity.

Macondo then ceased to be

a transposition of Aracataca,

and became a metaphor
for all of Latin America.

It had immediate effect.

Back then, press runs were of 500 copies.

With García Márquez, even at the start,
they printed five or six thousand copies,

because they had the vision, they knew.

That's when García Márquez became

the biggest selling author
in the history of Latin America.

"When they woke up,
with the sun already high in the sky,

they were speechless with fascination.

Before them, surrounded
by ferns and palm trees,

white and powdery in the
silent morning light,

was an enormous Spanish galleon."

In one of the first public readings
he made,

as he stepped down after reading,
he found Mercedes crying

and the whole audience
was nearly levitating,

entranced by the magic effect
of the reading.

García Márquez instantly knew
he had found something.

He realized that he told stories
that had never been told in Spanish.

García Márquez always remembers
the years in Barcelona

as one of the happiest periods
of his life.

He came here with his wife,
Mercedes Barcha, and their two sons,

Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

He experienced in Barcelona the biggest
metamorphosis a writer can go through.

He went from having financial
problems to being a rich writer.

He was spellbound, he told this to his
friends as if he couldn't believe it,

I live off the income generated
by my book, it's amazing isn't it?

He was a genius, no doubt,

so with a genius you can
set up a political party,

a religion, or a revolution,

and I replied that I chose the revolution,

because thanks to García Márquez,

I brought about revolution
in the publishing world.

Carmen Balcells revolutionized
the global literary market,

while staying a mother figure
to her writers.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is the
big bang of literature in Spanish.

Every reader of that book

immediately felt an urgent need

to share it with two, three, five people.

The impact was absolute and decisive.

It was a readers' phenomenon.

That great metamorphosis that
García Márquez went through in Barcelona,

from being an unknown author to becoming
the world's most famous writer,

deeply transformed him.

He was terribly shy.
His friends in Barcelona

said he couldn't speak in public.

He had to learn here about
coping with fame,

and the interest of the media.
He acquired sophistication.

Another close friendship came about

with another future Nobel laureate,
Mario Vargas Llosa.

These were also years
of growing political tension

between Latin American intellectuals,
regarding the situation in Cuba.

Heriberto Padilla was a poet,
he was openly critical of the revolution.

He was soon arrested by state security.

And he was eventually given the chance
to confess in public.

It was a demeaning spectacle

in which someone vilified himself.

Mario Vargas Llosa proposed to draft
a letter, not a critical one just yet,

but a letter to let Fidel know

about our concerns regarding this arrest,

and to highlight the importance
of his intervention.

Everybody signed, Cortázar,
everyone, everyone.

We just needed Gabo's signature.

I wasn't able to find Gabo
and inform him over the phone.

But I came into the office one day
and said, "we have to add Gabo's name,

I assume all responsibility.

Let's add Gabo's name,
because that's what he thinks."

Vargas Llosa was one of the great leaders

of the anti-Cuban, anti-Fidel movement.

García Márquez refused to sign.
Plinio signed for him.

As García Márquez later said, "he signed
for me, but I would not have done it."

Gabo didn't sign.

The letter appeared everywhere.

We already began to think
very differently about Cuba.

An unexpected change in the life
of García Márquez was about to occur.

The paradox is that his enormous fame

would make him retire from literature
for a while.

The new novel,
The Autumn of the Patriarch,

was a commercial failure.

It was the story of a lonely,
obsessive, all-powerful dictator.

Many have seen in it a reflection
on the new life of García Márquez.

A life inside that horrible thing
called fame.

I think this is an excellent example

of critics' stupidity.

"The book is not likable,
the book falls halfway."

It is a frustrated book,

It is a book written entirely

from personal experience,
which is encrypted in the story.

If someone is curious enough

to read it with a different key,

and, instead of thinking of a dictator,

they think of a famous writer,

then the book will probably
be easier to understand.

"Useful idiot at your service.
Political and personal friends overseas

wonder how we explain the paradox

of this magazine stating that there is
no freedom of the press in Colombia,

when this sole printed statement
is proof that there is.

They basically wonder
what sort of country this is,

where such things can still happen,

while the rest of the continent
is a jungle of gorillas."

It was a time of political turmoil
and social upheaval.

That was the period when
I became friends with García Márquez.

Following the Pinochet coup
against Allende,

Gabo openly declared his famous
break-up with literature.

His literary strike was
a refusal to ever write again

unless Pinochet fell.

These quotes from Gabo,
they are fantastic aren't they?

"I am sick of García Márquez."

I couldn't believe
he spoke ill of himself.

He said things, such as:
"I'll spend my fame on politics."

Gabo was perhaps
at his most radical moment.

Che died in 1967.
Many of the guerrilla attempts

from the 1960's were introduced,
got established and eventually failed.

Many people died.

From 1973 onwards,
there was a shift to the far right

in many countries in Latin America.

There was a violent outbreak
of repression.

García Márquez wanted to
know to whom he could donate

a $10,000 dollar literary prize that
the University of Arizona had granted him.

He called me and said,

"Well, I need a good human rights
committee to hand in this award".

I said: "Gabo there are no
human rights committees here."

So he said:
"Hell, make one up! Found it, damn it!"

Later, along with a group of friends
from different political persuasions,

we wanted to start a magazine.

A leftist magazine in Colombia.

We already had a name for it: Alternativa.

I said, well, Gabo owes me one.

I called him and pitched it,
and Gabo went "no, no, no,"

but I put a lot pressure on him.

Gabo got into
a political-journalistic project,

this gave way to the development
of militant journalism.

He wrote articles every month, which
were additionally world exclusives.

They were looking for the lost dream
of the Latin American revolution.

In the magazine we sympathized, if you
will, with the armed struggle in general.

The M19 was the first group to ever
mention national dialog and peace.

The M19 represented something new.

A group of intellectuals from universities

who were coming to replace

a series of guerrillas that had been,
until then, almost exclusively rural.

So Gabo's interest was piqued
by M19 because,

after such a spectacular appearance,
and massive success,

its discourse dealt with stopping
the armed struggle and making peace.

So that's where Gabo began
supporting peace initiatives.

During the 1970's, García Márquez
became aware of his power.

He gradually began to approach Cuba.

He thought that Fidel was, perhaps,

a prisoner of the communist hardliners.

Just imagine, Fidel had completely
isolated himself

from the intellectual, cultural world.

With a few exceptions,
everyone in the Cuban revolution

had severed

from the progressive intellectuals
of the 1960's.

The return of a figure
like García Márquez was crucial.

He had an intellectual
and literary fascination

with the phenomenon of power,

particularly with Latin American
caudillos and dictators.

I think Fidel later came to embody,
in part, that fascination.

Leaving aside any allegiance

with the Cuban revolution,
any possible political affinity

or the fact that both men were
Caribbean personalities,

everything had been set up to establish

some sort of mutual attraction
by the time they finally met.

Some might say a fatal attraction, right?

But it's not like Gabo was issuing
pro-Cuba manifestos all the time.

He simply did not join
those who condemned Cuba.

He used to say, "I don't want to be used.
So any criticism I make

will be used by Americans
and imperialists and so on to...

I don't want to join that chorus.

Next week,

the New Latin American Cinema Foundation

will receive a donation
from the Cuban government

and we will never cease
to feel grateful for it,

due to the unprecedented generosity
as well as the timeliness,

and the personal dedication put into it

by the world's least known filmmaker:

Fidel Castro.

His relationship with Fidel
is one of the most controversial

things about his life.

He has a great sense of humor,

but I think he's very cautious with jokes
because sometimes

he goes a little overboard
and immediately says, "I'm only joking."

He thanks President Castro for
his invitation to lunch today.

We were discussing how you
are the new Hemingway.

I hope to be the old Hemingway!

No, no, you cannot accuse García
Márquez of being a communist.

He's been trying to persuade me
for 30 years, but hasn't been able to.

The richer he becomes,
the harder to persuade him.

Give up everything you own and follow me.

That was what Christ said, give up
everything you own and follow me.

But it is better to follow you,
without giving up everything I own.

We'll go with everything I have.

I questioned him myself
and he insisted that they were friends,

but he additionally used this friendship
for the benefit of other people.

They were friends.

They went on yacht trips, they went
diving, they drank wine together. Yes.

And at the same time, Fidel kept people
imprisoned in the island.

Gabo insisted that he used his friendship

to get them out of jail.

And that this did not affect
his friendship with Fidel.

This intrigues us all,

but he insisted
that things were indeed like that.

I think that the fundamental elements

about Cuba are its resistance

and its permanent
and firm defense of sovereignty,

in the face of a blockade
that has been on for over 30 years.

I think that this hurt García Márquez.
It hurt his image,

his credibility as an intellectual,
as an author.

He came across as someone
who glossed over or avoided criticizing

the obvious human rights
abuses and violations in Cuba.

I used to tell him,

"Are you still hanging out
with that bearded guy?

What are you doing with that man?"

And he said,

"And you turned rightwing
when you were a lefty".

And so on and so forth,
but they were all jokes.

So we took it like that.

But the important bit is,
whenever I was asked

to sign a letter to see if Padilla
or Norberto Fuentes,

or any other Cuban writer
could be released,

I said, "Wait,
if you want to help this writer,

I have a much more powerful resource
than a signed letter.

I then called Gabo and said,
"Help me, Gabo."

And we freed many poets.
We freed many poets and writers.

He became a very useful person.

He never changed his position,
regarding the communist world,

nor was he a communist. Not at all.

But he was friends with Fidel, he was.

Gabo's political position
always sparked in Colombia,

a lot of controversy.

This is a rightwing country, deeply so,
because of the war.

And Gabo was convinced that this country
had to achieve peace.

He became obsessed with it,
that provoked a reaction from the right,

to the point where he was practically
deemed a guerrilla supporter.

Military intelligence services
began to build some sort of file

to implicate him
as an accessory to subversion,

as a collaborator of M19.

Gabo obviously knew
they would take him to trial,

and that's when he decided to seek
asylum in the Mexican Embassy.

I really preferred to return
to Mexico in the safest possible way,

which was through the embassy.

I have nothing to hide.

Never in my life
have I fired a weapon,

other than the typewriter.

But I really could not tolerate
that the Colombian government,

or rather, some sectors of the
Colombian government

pulled a publicity stunt to detain me,

even if it was just for questioning.

But, was there really
a warrant for your detention,

according to the reports
that you received?

I cannot possibly know.
The thing is,

I received three different
versions from different sources,

as well as an anonymous call.

And frankly, I preferred to save my skin,

than give my wife, my children
and my family

the opportunity to receive
the deepest sympathies

and the funeral wreaths
from the presidents of the Republic.

"On the day they were going to kill him,

Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty
in the morning

to wait for the boat
on which the Bishop would arrive.

He had dreamt he was going
through a grove of timber trees,

where a gentle drizzle was falling,

and for an instant he
was happy in his dream,

but when he awoke he felt completely
spattered with bird shit.

'He always dreamt of trees,'

told me Plácida Linero, his mother,
twenty-seven years later,

recalling the details
of that fatal Monday."

It was very curious that his next novel,
Chronicle of a Death Foretold

was about a private, family matter,

30 years earlier, and that it is devoid
of political references.

It is a novel narrated by a man,

whom we immediately
identify as García Márquez

and who acts as the chronicler
of the story he is trying to tell.

He asks questions, investigates,
reports and thus sets up

a false chronicle, a fictional chronicle.

It was a major publishing milestone.

It was the first million copy edition.

García Márquez had been
thinking of the Nobel prize

since he was 20 years old.

It's surprising but true.

He perfectly knew
that he deserved the Nobel prize,

but he also knew that

those who prepare the ground properly,
often reap the important things.

To what extent was his
literary ambition a calculated matter?

I think there's a high degree
of intuition there.

His books were stories that he had been
brewing in his head for 20 or 30 years.

He never wrote a book less than 20 years
after having first thought about it.

But something unconscious
pointed to him the right time

to sit down and write this book.
It was that fantastic intuition

he had of his place in the world,
for every moment of his life.

Extra!

Gabriel García Márquez has just won
the Nobel Prize in Literature!

I repeat! Gabriel García Márquez,

Nobel Prize in Literature.

Now that we see you on this plane,
you don't seem to be afraid of flying.

It's because it is the first time
I fly as a Nobel prize winner.

This gives me a certain confidence.

The Nobel was a general joy.

When they invited us,

Mercedes and I went out to buy clothes.

Everyone should be here for the picture,
come here, everyone.

Can we take a bath later?

Gabriel was so happy.

He was like a little boy,
like a little boy who'd won the lottery.

Is this the most important
moment of your life?

No, the most important moment
of my life was when I was born.

But I am very happy anyway.

The party was wild,
like nothing you've seen before.

Gabriel told me that the queen,
who was sitting beside him,

said that she loved the cumbia because
all these women had come down

going "ta, ta,ta" with their skirts.

And he said he told her:

"Look, this literature thing
is only a hobby,

I am, in reality, a cumbia master."

That's what he said, it was
one of those silly things he loved saying.

Gabriel García Márquez
has already garnered

every single success
in the literary world.

Does García Márquez expect
to become a politician?

No, my biggest dream
is to write a great novel.

Haven't you written a great novel yet?

You always think that the next one
will be the best one.

And the day I stop thinking that,
I will cease to be a good writer.

Is García Márquez writing right now?

Not today, no.

I mean,

when they asked me how I'd feel
if I won the Nobel prize,

I always said I would be
as delighted as any other writer,

but that it would also be,
in my perspective, a personal tragedy.

And it has been true in the sense
that it has disorganized my life.

It has even interrupted
the novel I was writing.

It has upset my private life.

And my goal, once I return from Stockholm,

is to declare the pleasant

and somewhat confusing episode
of the Nobel prize a closed chapter.

And I will try to be a good writer.

He was very aware of the Nobel myth

and had even written several columns
on the subject.

According to this myth,

no Nobel laureate has written anything
of value after winning the prize.

The book he wanted to write at the time

was some sort of
personal family challenge

because it involved getting
close to his father.

García Márquez always forgave everyone

and the person who was
the hardest for him to forgive

was his dad. He finally managed to do it.

I was very afraid of him.
He scared me as much as my teacher.

Was he very strict?

No, no. The thing is,
he had a sense of authority

that I never managed to understand.

I understand him much better

now, that I myself am a father
and especially now that I am a teacher.

Love in the Time of Cholera
is the meticulous biography

of his parents' love.

A love that is at first challenged,

a topic García Márquez favored,

but then overcomes all obstacles
in the end.

The entire geography in the novel
is authentic.

I wrote it here, in Cartagena.

I used to work all morning.

In the afternoon I would take a walk

around the portico of the sweet vendors,
just to hear phrases, to hear words.

I would wander, looking
for the places where my characters lived.

I worked by locations,
as if I were making a film,

and I would invariably end up
at my parents' home

every afternoon, in order to ask them
about their love story,

I would ask him first,
then I'd ask my mother some other times.

I always did this separately, otherwise,
it was hard to get the real information.

All of the information they gave me,

the less metaphorical one,

the less poetically transposed,

is the account of their love.

Because I wanted them
to be exactly verbatim.

Everything, how they met exactly,

how they were separated.
The journey she made.

The way he communicated with her,

by pegging all of the telegraph offices

in the region of Magdalena,
in the region of Valledupar.

All of my novels are about love.

You see that, even if I try to conceal it.
All of them are romance novels.

It is the great book
of their reconciliations.

It's a soap opera, but it's a soap opera
written by Flaubert.

It's as if Love in the Time of Cholera
were the flipside

of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

One Hundred Years of Solitude
is a novel in which

all the forces of love, sex
and passion combined

are insufficient to prevent the
ultimate destruction of the world.

In Love in the Time of Cholera,

love accomplishes its ultimate goals.

Love is the ultimate redemption.

It is what saves us.

It is a terribly risky book because
it is a love story with a happy ending.

Around the time he was writing
the novel, he used to say

on interviews: "I'm going
to make happiness fashionable."

He set out to do that and succeeded.

We began to discover a story that we never
thought would reach the places it reached.

It wasn't only the guerrillas, there was
something bigger we didn't know of.

It turned out to be drug trafficking.

In 1976, Pablo Escobar
was in jail for drugs.

Guillermo Cano was the first journalist

who realized what was happening
in this country.

Gabo grew professionally at El Espectador.
Gabo loved the newspaper.

Gabo was a close friend of Guillermo Cano.

Guillermo sent me to the
Havana film festival.

"Tell Gabo I want him to write an article,

a speech, a few words

on the seventy years of El Espectador."

And I got there.

Gabo told me, "I don't want
to write anything about Colombia.

I love El Espectador, but I'm not
writing anything about Colombia."

He said, "I won't write anything
about that country.

If you write something, they kill you."

I told Gabo he was exaggerating.
"Don't be a liar. It's not that bad."

This revealed the pain that Gabo felt,

after half Colombia had said
all sorts of things about him.

And around the third day,
I was coming out of the cinema

when someone said,
"García Márquez is looking for you."

And I found Gabo and Gaba
on the verge of tears.

And Gabo said, "See? I told you!
That fucking country!

That country is not worth anything.

They killed my friend, Guillermo Cano."

Gabo was very upset.

He found death
difficult to handle.

But Gabo's most impressive gesture
was to send the article,

and he wrote a piece on Guillermo Cano
that was so spectacular,

I cried every time I read it.

"President Fidel Castro
was telling me a gripping story,

at a party, among friends,

when I heard Mercedes'
tremulous voice, nearly whispering:

'Guillermo Cano has been killed.'

The murder had taken place
fifteen minutes earlier

and someone had rushed to the
phone to give us a very brief account.

Teary-eyed, I barely had the strength
to wait for the end

of Fidel Castro's phrase.

Bewildered by grief as I was,
the only thing in my mind

was the usual impulse
to call Guillermo Cano,

so that he would tell me the full story

and then we could share together
the anger and pain of his death."

It was a very challenging phenomenon.

And the bombs that exploded back then,
exploded all across the country.

Even Peru's Shining Path in its heyday

would pale, compared to Escobar's actions
during that period.

I don't think there's been
a period of terrorism quite like it.

In Medellin, at the start of 1989,

he began to pay for the
death of all policemen

and killed, one by one, some 400 policemen
in just a couple of months.

"Two men opened Maruja's door
and another two opened Beatriz's.

The fifth man shot the driver
in the head, through the glass,

but the silencer made it
sound no louder than a sigh.

Then he opened the door, pulled him out,

and shot him three more times
as he lay on the ground.

It was another man's destiny:

Angel María Roa had been
Maruja's driver for only three days,

and he was displaying for the first time
his new dignity, with the dark suit,

the starched shirt and black tie,
the trademarks of a minister's chauffeur."

News of a Kidnapping
is a return to his country.

It is also a return to the elite
who has gone

through the terrible ordeal of kidnapping

in Pablo Escobar's heyday.

Gabo returned to journalism at some point.

He returned several times,
in his attempts to launch magazines,

creating the New Journalism Foundation
in the mid 90's.

We're a group of journalists

who thought there was an opportunity
to become independent

and make a proposal to make
a television news show

created exclusively by journalists.

We wanted to start with people
with no habits, freshly out of college.

We practically started a kindergarten.

It was nice to see him sitting beside
the trainee journalists.

They really learned, sitting next to him.
He was unpretentious, devoid of arrogance.

If you speak to any of the journalists
who worked at QAP

you'll hear nothing but admiration

and a profound love.

In many Latin American countries,
journalists are just messengers.

Or advertising salespeople.

He wanted to raise the bar,

so that journalists honored

his definition of the profession,
as the best in the world.

That effort to be respected as
a journalist by journalists

in News of a Kidnapping.

To do things right.

To reconstruct what seems
an impartial truth

and leave it impartially on the page.

News of a Kidnapping. When the
first version is produced,

he grabs the book, grabs a
normal postal box and writes,

"Bill Clinton, White House, Washington."

I was invited to a State Dinner

and when I was in the greeting line,

President Clinton says
to me "I read the book".

What was the President of the
United States telling me?

What book could he be talking about?

He was a little distressed
because the book obviously shows

the complexities of Colombia.

The complexity of the drug
trafficking problem in Colombia.

The threats, the kidnappings.
The terrorism.

Gabo's message through literature,

clearly establishes his moral conscience.

It is a strong humanist argument.

It's not that he approached all the
presidents and all leaders, no.

There had to be a certain compatibility
with him and his way of thinking.

I think that, if things had
been a little different,

we could be here talking
about how Gabo and Clinton

managed to put an end the U.S.
blockade of Cuba.

It didn't happen,

but it came pretty close, and it
came pretty close, thanks to Gabo.

"The truth is, every time I return
to the town of Reality

I find it looks less
like the town of Fiction

The trees from the towns tend to live
longer than human beings

and I have always suspected
that they remember us too,

perhaps better than we remember them."

The setting is Sucre.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold
is a masterpiece by García Márquez.

The language it uses is deeply its own,

and it enriches reality, magnifies it.

One notices the magic of García Márquez,

in the struggle of Santiago Nasar,

who was, in real life, Cayetano Gentile,
one of his great friends,

against a verdict that has been passed

in a realm he does not understand.

The struggle of the murderers,

who are dragged by forces beyond them.

One of the clashes that haunted
him in his life as a writer was

man against his fate.

This is what the locals say.

That morning, Santiago Nasar was coming
back from delivering some steers

from one of the farms
on the outskirts of town

and came from the side of the alley

of María Amalia Sampayo, the Big Mama,

He was coming down that alley and
the Vicario brothers or the Chica Salas

were opposite,
at Clotilde Armenta's tavern.

They were there, waiting
and scrutinizing the entire square.

Upon seeing him round the alley,

they came out behind him to stab him.

A little earlier he had tried to go
into his house, but it was closed.

He tried to enter through the back,

so he looked for ways
to reach the fatal alley.

The Chica Sala brothers
caught him at the bottom of the alley

and cut him to pieces

at 9:30 am, on January 22, 1958.

At that moment, I was already
dressed to go to school.

Then I heard, "they killed Cayetano."

I ran out.

When I got there,

the doctor took his stethoscope off

and tried to give Cayetano's mom a shot,
to sedate her or something.

-"What are you going to do?"
-"To calm you down."

-"But..."
-"This will tranquilize you."

She said,
"No, why would you calm me down?

He's my son, I have to mourn him.
I need to mourn him."

In recent years, I noticed that Gabo

was losing his memory.

What remained of the original
Gabo was his tenderness.

He carried on being
affectionate, tactile, kind.

Having been a man
so obsessed with memory,

it's incredible his life ended this way.

I think that this is part of his life,

part of the experience he had.

It had to be this way.

I think that the cycle is now closed.

He said, "you're writing about me."
I said, "yes."

"And you're going to say that I had it
all planned, right here in my head."

I said, "perhaps" and he went,
"well, it's not true.

I never knew where I was going,
how far I was going.

It was impossible to know
where I'd end up.

All I did was push, like pushing a cart.
Push and push and push...

without knowing whether
you'll get there or not."

A writer's tempo

can only be measured like music.

It starts when he's seven years old

and ends when he dies.

Not dying is the only option I accept.

I think it is the single most
important thing you have in life.

Being alive is what matters,

and I think death is a trap.

It's a betrayal that they set on you,
without giving you a choice.

The fact that it is all going to end
sounds grim to me.

Our involvement in the matter
is null, until it comes.

I think it is unfair.

What can we do to avoid it?

Write a lot.