Senator Onésimo Sánchez Quotes in Death Constant Beyond Love
Senator Onésimo Sánchez had six months and eleven days to go before his death when he found the woman of his life.
He met her in Rosal del Virrey, an illusory village which by night was the furtive wharf for smugglers’ ships, and on the other hand, in broad daylight looked like the most useless inlet on the desert (…) so far from everything that no one would have suspected that someone capable of changing the destiny of anyone lived there.
Senator Onésimo Sánchez was placid and weatherless inside the airconditioned car, but as soon as he opened the door he was shaken by a gust of fire and his shirt of pure silk was soaked in a kind of light colored soup and he felt many years older and more alone than ever.
Before he lay down he put in a glass of drinking water the rose he had kept alive all across the desert (…) and he took several analgesic pills before the time prescribed so that he would have the remedy ahead of the pain. Then he put the electric fan close to the hammock and stretched out naked for fifteen minutes in the shadow of the rose, making a great effort at mental distraction so as not to think about death while he dozed. Except for the doctors, no one knew that he had been sentenced to a fixed term, for he had decided to endure his secret all alone, with no change in his life, not out of pride but out of shame.
Nevertheless, the erosion of death was much more pernicious than he had supposed, for as he went up onto the platform he felt a strange disdain for those who were fighting for the good luck to shake his hand, and he didn’t feel sorry as he had at other times for the groups of barefoot Indians who could scarcely bear the hot saltpeter coals of the sterile little square.
“We are here for the purpose of defeating nature” he began, against all his convictions. “We will no longer be foundlings in our own country, orphans of God in a realm of thirst and bad climate, exiles in our own land. We will be a different people, ladies and gentlemen, we will be a great and happy people.”
There was a pattern to his circus. As he spoke his aides threw clusters of paper birds into the air and the artificial creatures took on life, flew about the platform of planks, and went out to sea.
The audience turned around. An ocean liner made of painted paper was passing behind the houses and it was taller than the tallest houses in the artificial city. Only the senator himself noticed that since it had been set up and taken down and carried from one place to another the superimposed cardboard town had been eaten away by the terrible climate and that it was almost as poor and dusty as Rosal del Virrey.
Then he realized that she was naked under her dress, for her body gave off the dark fragrance of an animal of the woods, but her heart was frightened and her skin disturbed by a glacial sweat.
“No one loves us,” he sighed.
Then she laid his head on her shoulder with her eyes fixed on the rose. The senator held her about the waist, sank his face into woods-animal armpit, and gave in to terror. Six months and eleven days later he would die in the at same position, debased and repudiated because of the public scandal with Laura Farina and weeping with rage at dying without her.
Senator Onésimo Sánchez Quotes in Death Constant Beyond Love
Senator Onésimo Sánchez had six months and eleven days to go before his death when he found the woman of his life.
He met her in Rosal del Virrey, an illusory village which by night was the furtive wharf for smugglers’ ships, and on the other hand, in broad daylight looked like the most useless inlet on the desert (…) so far from everything that no one would have suspected that someone capable of changing the destiny of anyone lived there.
Senator Onésimo Sánchez was placid and weatherless inside the airconditioned car, but as soon as he opened the door he was shaken by a gust of fire and his shirt of pure silk was soaked in a kind of light colored soup and he felt many years older and more alone than ever.
Before he lay down he put in a glass of drinking water the rose he had kept alive all across the desert (…) and he took several analgesic pills before the time prescribed so that he would have the remedy ahead of the pain. Then he put the electric fan close to the hammock and stretched out naked for fifteen minutes in the shadow of the rose, making a great effort at mental distraction so as not to think about death while he dozed. Except for the doctors, no one knew that he had been sentenced to a fixed term, for he had decided to endure his secret all alone, with no change in his life, not out of pride but out of shame.
Nevertheless, the erosion of death was much more pernicious than he had supposed, for as he went up onto the platform he felt a strange disdain for those who were fighting for the good luck to shake his hand, and he didn’t feel sorry as he had at other times for the groups of barefoot Indians who could scarcely bear the hot saltpeter coals of the sterile little square.
“We are here for the purpose of defeating nature” he began, against all his convictions. “We will no longer be foundlings in our own country, orphans of God in a realm of thirst and bad climate, exiles in our own land. We will be a different people, ladies and gentlemen, we will be a great and happy people.”
There was a pattern to his circus. As he spoke his aides threw clusters of paper birds into the air and the artificial creatures took on life, flew about the platform of planks, and went out to sea.
The audience turned around. An ocean liner made of painted paper was passing behind the houses and it was taller than the tallest houses in the artificial city. Only the senator himself noticed that since it had been set up and taken down and carried from one place to another the superimposed cardboard town had been eaten away by the terrible climate and that it was almost as poor and dusty as Rosal del Virrey.
Then he realized that she was naked under her dress, for her body gave off the dark fragrance of an animal of the woods, but her heart was frightened and her skin disturbed by a glacial sweat.
“No one loves us,” he sighed.
Then she laid his head on her shoulder with her eyes fixed on the rose. The senator held her about the waist, sank his face into woods-animal armpit, and gave in to terror. Six months and eleven days later he would die in the at same position, debased and repudiated because of the public scandal with Laura Farina and weeping with rage at dying without her.
