Pigeon Fancier

This afternoon I was digging through boxes in the basement looking for my copy of Love in a Time of Cholera. I was looking for this book because I was in the mood to read Márquez's fable of the beautiful pigeon fancier, Olimpia Zuleta. She comes to a bad end, but her character is delightful and has stayed with me over the years. Many of my books are in boxes in the basement due to the waves of remodeling projects Przemek has embarked on in the past five years.

These projects have been major enough to require us to move out of the house (twice) for six or seven months at a time. Now the house is beautiful, and I think he is turning his attention to the garage. He doesn't talk about it very much because we are in the middle of the great recession and he suspects that I am tired of remodeling. Actually, I support ripping down the garage, particularly if it means that I can keep pigeons in the upper level. Last night, over dinner and lots of wine Przemek agreed to the idea.

Keeping pigeons may sound like a passing whim, but I do have some experience with the little fellows. Every woman in my family aspires to possess a pigeon flock of her own. My mother kept pigeons, as did her mother before her. My mother kept tumbler pigeons. I remember the flock flying overhead. She would clap her hands, and they would "tumble" while flying. They would tumble from side to side as well as provide entertaining tumbles backward while in flight. No doubt this skill originally developed as a clever means to avoid birds of prey. I would probably keep tumblers myself, although there is a romantic, impractical part of myself that is a little enamored with the idea of keeping white messenger pigeons. I could trade secret notes with other pigeon enthusiasts.

Anyway, let me leave you with the passage from Love in a Time of Cholera I was looking for.

Six months after their first meeting, they found themselves at last in a cabin on a riverboat that was being painted at the docks. It was a marvelous afternoon. Olimpia Zuleta had the joyous love of a startled pigeon fancier, and she preferred to remain naked for several hours in a slow-moving repose that was, for her, as loving as love itself. The cabin was dismantled, half painted, and they would take the odor of turpentine away with them in the memory of a happy afternoon.

Shortly after this passage, Florentino has a very bad idea that leads to Olimpia's death (how could she forget a painted message on her body?), but the story, even with its unhappy ending, stays with one.