By their awakening of every day

In August of that year a new civil war, one of the many that had been devastating the countryfor over half a century, threatened to spread, and the government imposed martial law and a sixo'clock curfew in the provinces along the Caribbean coast. Although some disturbances hadalready occurred, and the troops had committed all kinds of retaliatory abuses, Florentino Arizawas so befuddled that he was unaware of the state of the world, and a military patrol surprised himone dawn as he disturbed the chastity of the dead with his amorous provocations. By some miraclehe escaped summary execution after he was accused of being a spy who sent messages in the keyof G to the Liberal ships marauding in nearby waters.

"What the hell do you mean, a spy?" said Florentino Ariza. "I'm nothing but a poor lover."For three nights he slept with irons around his ankles in the cells of the local garrison. Butwhen he was released he felt defrauded by the brevity of his captivity, and even in the days of hisold age, when so many other wars were confused in his memory, he still thought he was the onlyman in the city, and perhaps the country, who had dragged five-pound leg irons for the sake oflove.

Their frenetic correspondence was almost two years old when Florentino Ariza, in a letter ofonly one paragraph, made a formal proposal of marriage to Fermina Daza. On several occasionsduring the preceding six months he had sent her a white camellia, but she would return it to him inher next letter so that he would have no doubt that she was disposed to continue writing to him,but without the seriousness of an engagement. The truth is that she had always taken the comingsand goings of the camellia as a lovers' game, and it had never occurred to her to consider it as acrossroads in her destiny. But when the formal proposal arrived she felt herself wounded for thefirst time by the clawings of death. Panic-stricken, she told her Aunt Escol tica, who gave heradvice with the courage and lucidity she had not had when she was twenty and was forced todecide her own fate.

"Tell him yes," she said. "Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, becausewhatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no."Fermina Daza, however, was so confused that she asked for some time to think it over. Firstshe asked for a month, then two, then three, and when the fourth month had ended and she hadstill not replied, she received a white camellia again, not alone in the envelope as on otheroccasions but with the peremptory notification that this was the last one: it was now or never.

Then that same afternoon it was Florentino Ariza who saw the face of death when he received anenvelope containing a strip of paper, torn from the margin of a school notebook, on which a one-line answer was written in pencil: Very well, I will marry you if you promise not to make me eateggplant.