One Of These Days by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[Wetzelbill]

Another classic, by an all time great writer.

One of These Days

by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ


Monday dawned warm and rainless. Aurelio Escovar, a dentist without a degree, and a very early riser, opened his office at six. He took some false teeth, still mounted in their plaster mold, out of the glass case and put on the table a fistful of instruments which he arranged in size order, as if they were on display. He wore a collarless striped shirt, closed at the neck with a golden stud, and pants held up by suspenders He was erect and skinny, with a look that rarely corresponded to the situation, the way deaf people have of looking.

When he had things arranged on the table, he pulled the drill toward the dental chair and sat down to polish the false teeth. He seemed not to be thinking about what he was doing, but worked steadily, pumping the drill with his feet, even when he didn't need it.

After eight he stopped for a while to look at the sky through the window, and he saw two pensive buzzards who were drying themselves in the sun on the ridgepole of the house next door. He went on working with the idea that before lunch it would rain again. The shrill voice of his elevenyear-old son interrupted his concentration.

"Papa."

"What?"

"The Mayor wants to know if you'll pull his tooth."

"Tell him I'm not here."

He was polishing a gold tooth. He held it at arm's length, and examined it with his eyes half closed. His son shouted again from the little waiting room.

"He says you are, too, because he can hear you."

The dentist kept examining the tooth. Only when he had put it on the table with the finished work did he say:

"So much the better."

He operated the drill again. He took several pieces of a bridge out of a cardboard box where he kept the things he still had to do and began to polish the gold.

"Papa."

"What?"

He still hadn't changed his expression.

"He says if you don't take out his tooth, he'll shoot you."

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/ootdays.html

[Botany]

1. Thanks!

One hundred years of Solitude is one the best novels ever.

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ muy bueno

[Wetzelbill]

2. si es muy excelente, de nada

I loved "Love In The Time Of Cholera." With a passion.

[Botany]

3. Love In The Time Of Cholera.

read it and thought great writing but ..... Pilar Tener was an ass .....
Get over the women and move on.

Give me babies born w/ tails like lizards any day. "Like Cien Anos del
Solitude" mi espanol is malo!

[Wetzelbill]

4. Have you ever read "Strange Pilgrims?"

"Sleeping Beauty and The Airplane" is my favorite short story ever.

[petgoat]

5. I didn't know that one, thank you.

After a setup where we think we've got this character's number, we
proceed with a series of escalating surprises. In one room and one
incident he paints a town, a country, a history.

There are no extra words, no confusion. All clarity. It's reached that
state where anything added or anything taken away would lessen it.

(A notion that was cribbed from a guy I never heard of until just now
named Joseph Joubert who wrote in 1808: "A work is perfectly finished
only when nothing can be added and nothing taken away.")