García Márquez’s Five Favorite Cocktail Stories
On the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to Gabriel García Márquez in Bogotá, Colombia, Santiago Mutis Durán, the son of Márquez’s close friend Álvaro Mutis, gathered together small author-less stories that Márquez had written down or told over the course of his lifetime. Mutis Durán’s essay was originally published in Conversaciones desde La Soledad magazine in 2001 and has been translated for The Paris Review by David Unger.
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ IN HIS HOME IN MEXICO IN 2003. PHOTO: INDIRA RESTREPO.
We’ve all heard the kinds of stories that get passed around, author-less and persistent. I once heard Gabriel García Márquez tell the Mexican poet Adolfo Castañón one of these “unsigned” stories:
A young couple, a bit tired of city life, decided to move to the country with their two Labradors. Once settled into their little country house, they became friends with their neighbors, a couple that had fruit orchards and raised rabbits. One morning, their neighbors came over to say that they were going to town and would return the following day. The morning passed peacefully, but in the afternoon, the Labradors came into the kitchen
