A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
On Gabriel García Márquez’s short story
I read this story on a subway ride back home from work a day after the demise of García Márquez, and have read it a couple of more times since. It’s about how a seaside village goes into a rapturous mode when an amazing old man appears out of nowhere in the backyard of a nondescript household, after a spell of heavy rains.
It wasn’t clear whether he was an angel or just an old man with enormous wings, but he seemed to be the only one who would not buy in to the spectacularity of it all.
“His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience.”
In a typical Márquez fashion at some point, the wings on the man are seen as totally normal, so much so that it’s a wonder all men don’t have them.
After a long circus-ey period when the house is flocked by the entire village over a marvel, the kind of which has never been seen before, and opportune money-making, the old man is left to his own means in a chicken coop until something even more extraordinary happens.
“The quality of a society, I would say of a civilization, is judged by how well older people are treated and the place reserved for them in community life. Whoever makes room for the elderly makes room for life! Whoever welcomes the elderly welcomes life!” said former Pope Benedict XVI during a visit to a home for the elderly in 2012.
I learned that García Márquez wrote this story in 1955 in the middle of a ten year civil war in Colombia. The “angel”, parish priest, papal lunches, irreverence shown by the villagers etc. betray a frustration on the writer’s part that is part religious conservatism and part mocking of citizens pouncing on the first chance to ridicule the very traditions that they wish to be governed under.
But in the light of this day, I feel there is something to be said about how we treat our elders in societies around the world.
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