A couple of years ago, out of the blue, I read again “Love in the Time of Cholera” and felt my memory jolt, recalling my times as a college student, when literature consumed my study hours.
This story, as romantic as it is disturbing, makes me question the characters’ behavior. Fermina Daza suffered in silence the absence of her beloved one, caused by the trickery of her father, who took it upon himself to engage her in marriage for his own interests.
Florentino Ariza resigned himself to losing the only woman he had loved but lived with the hope of having her in his arms someday. He waited patiently for fifty years, during which he had to go through the most painful experiences. So has she, but he never knew it.
Although those were difficult times, especially for women because they had to take care of their honor and always be an example of righteousness, and for men of kind feeling, because they could be considered weak. In this case, neither of them fought hard enough to achieve their dream of being with the one they really loved.
Florentino found refuge in unbridled sex, moving his feeling into an emotions freezer. Fermina assumed her new destiny with height and dignity, always respecting the one she was assigned to be her husband. Could she have refused? I believe that she would have been socially destroyed. She would have been discriminated against and punished with people’s gossip tongues. The woman’s role was always to keep quiet, cleanse her heart wounds and continue to bear in silence the agony of being tied to a man she did not love.
I remember my mother’s words when we would sit and share stories, and there was a phrase that struck me when telling me about a close case of an abusive husband and his hopeless wife, I asked her, Why did she put up with so much? Why didn’t she leave him and divorced? And she replied, “Honey, in those days it was worse to be a divorcee than a prostitute. There was no choice for her.”
A love cut short by fate’s moves, but firm in the hope of joining paths, even though it might mean a half-century wait. Could it prevail on the spiritual dimension? Two broken souls on earth, could they be united in death? I do not know if there are still Ferminas and Florentinos willing to wait for so long, but a love like theirs is well worth the attempt without waiting to die so they can be reunited.
Written by Layla Garrido.