As the narrator becomes increasingly obsessed with this innocent young woman -- who, truth be told, does little ever but doze in his presence -- fantasy and dreamlike hallucinations begin to take over. After one imagined exchange with her, he says: "From then on I had her in my memory with so much clarity that I could do what I wanted with her. I changed the color of her eyes according to my state of mind: the color of water when she woke, the color of syrup when she laughed, the color of light when she was annoyed. I dressed her according to the age and condition that suited my changes of mood: a novice in love at 20, a parlor whore at 40, the queen of Babylon at 70, a saint at 100."
The narrator imagines that Delgadina has been to his house and prepared him breakfast. Later he flies into a jealous rage, convinced -- with hardly any evidence -- that she has been sleeping with other men. He assiduously courts her with flowers and presents, and reads books like The Little Prince to her as she sleeps. "We continued," he says, "with Perrault's Tales, Sacred History, the Arabian Nights in a version sanitized for children, and because of the differences among them I realized that her sleep had various levels of profundity depending on her interest in the readings."
The relationship between the narrator and his virgin is really a relationship that exists inside the narrator's head, and since Garcia Marquez makes little effort to make this man remotely interesting it's hard for the reader to care really about what happens. Moreover, the trajectory of this narrative turns out to be highly predictable, leading to a banal ending to a banal story that's quite unworthy of the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez's prodigious talents.
Publication Notes
Memories of my Melancholy Whores
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
115 Pages
Alfred a Knopf
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