GLORIA TRIANA: When he turned eighty, we were having lunch at the house of Alberto Abello, the Samarian. He was on a sofa and we were on cushions on the floor. He hadn’t said anything in all that time, and someone mentioned that Santiago Mutis, the son of Álvaro Mutis, his lifelong friend, was negotiating his pension. So then that was the subject and I said: “The fact is that when you stop seeing people, they freeze in the moment that you last saw them.” I said: “Santiago, so young, already on a pension.” Then he, who in those last days didn’t maintain a long dialogue or argue or anything, but he would say . . . they were like proverbs. Of course the proverbs he said were all in his style and the style of his books. Then when he commented on that he says in that tone of his, the way he talked: “The truth is I don’t know what happened but from one day to the next we all woke up old.”
JAIME ABELLO BANFI: He always maintained his routine until his last day. He would dress, always elegantly, and go down to his office, where his life-long secretary, Mónica Alonso, was waiting for him. There I don’t know what he did. He would read, I suppose. I don’t know what he read. Then they had lunch, or as they say in Mexico, they ate. They always had a delicious lunch, lunches were very important. First an aperitif. Mercedes, a tequila. Gabo, champagne. In the afternoon they took care of domestic matters and at night they watched a movie like any other couple in the world.
GLORIA TRIANA: On his last visits to Cartagena he was dressed in absolutely perfect white and you could feel his serenity. He produced tenderness in me because he would say things. He would greet you with great warmth but it seemed to me he didn’t know whom he was greeting.
DANIEL PASTOR: On the day of Mercedes’s eightieth birthday he looked very happy. He was wearing a Greek sailor’s cap. I’ve been a friend of his son Gonzalo since we were teenagers. I don’t think Gabo recognized me but he took my hand very sweetly and kissed it and said: “How good to be here with real friends.”
GLORIA TRIANA: One afternoon I went to their house in Cartagena, and he was there with Mercedes, and in front of Mercedes he took my hand and said to me: “Do you know I think of you every day?” And then I said to him: “So do I, Gabo.” And he said: “And why haven’t you told me?” Then I said to him, since she was standing right there: “Well, because I thought Mercedes wouldn’t like my telling you that.” And then he said: “No, no, no. She doesn’t say anything.” He was like that, first with that warmth, but at the same time as serene as a child. You never saw him embittered or anything.
CARLITOS GONZÁLEZ ROMERO: Gabo is flying like an eagle. He’s pure sweetness. With his half-boots and his plaid jackets, he must have dozens of them. I just saw him sitting in his office in Mexico City. He looks handsomer than ever in that afternoon light, in his golden age. He wants to dance. He kept saying: “And who’s going dancing? You look like you’ll go dancing. Take me dancing!” . . . To those who say he’s losing his memory, I want to say: What do you expect, with how hard he set his mind to working to be able to write all those books he gave us?
RODRIGO MOYA: I saw him a year ago at lunch in his house. He sat with me and dedicated the special edition of One Hundred Years: “To Don Rodrigo from Don Gabo.” But there was no more conversation. The person he liked very much was Susana, my wife. He adored Susana. Susana was sitting beside him, on his right, and there was a moment when he had to get up because they were going to give him a massage or something; then Susana helped him up and he, as if he were surprised, turned around. When he saw who had helped him up, he kept looking at her, gave a big smile, and said: “Ay, how delicious.”
GLORIA TRIANA: I gave Gabo his last farewell party in Cartagena. They were going to return to Mexico City and had spent three or four months here, and I told Mercedes that I wanted to give them a party. Make a lunch for him; she knows my lunches have live music, porro and vallenato, his favorites, and cumbia. She said: “Wait, because Gonzalo and my grandchildren are coming, and I want them to be there.” I told the musicians: “The moment he comes in, you begin to play.” He came in dancing a porro. He was absolutely ecstatic. That’s the last image I have of him. It was the last time I saw him.
CARMEN BALCELLS: I remember that perfectly. The last time I saw him in Barcelona. And in my house. I have a memory that I hope stays with me until the last day of my life.
JAIME ABELLO BANFI: I arrived in Mexico City on Monday, April 15, for a conference on journalism. I called Mercedes and she sounded calm. Gabo was weak but stable. We made plans for me to visit them when I was finished with my work. I called again on Wednesday and I felt something else. “How’s everything going?” I asked. “Badly,” she replied, plain and simple. I immediately communicated with my team in Cartagena so they could be prepared.
GUILLERMO ANGULO: I took a plane. I arrived at the house in Pedregal at 1:15 in the afternoon. Gabito had died at 12:08. Rodrigo, the older of the Gabos, said to me: “How good you came, brother. The more of us there are, the better we can share the blows.”
JAIME ABELLO BANFI: The house was surrounded by reporters, cameras, admirers holding yellow flowers, and it was difficult to gain access. I was coming from Calle de Fuego in a taxi when the police stopped me. I showed them my card. I told them I was the director of the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation and they let me through. When I finally could go in I realized that nothing was prepared. Everything was being resolved very quickly but in a coherent way, and with their style. Mexico announced that they would pay him civil tribute in the Palace of Fine Arts. I spoke to his son Gonzalo at about five on Friday afternoon, and he said that in addition to the chamber music by Bartók and other composers that Gabo liked, he also wanted there to be a vallenato group to accompany the people who would wait in line to enter the Teatro Bellas Artes.
GUILLERMO ANGULO: I was the only one besides the family who saw Gabo dead. He looked very well, very peaceful, I gave him a goodbye kiss on the cheek. The vallenatos that had been playing until his death were silent.
CARLITOS GONZÁLEZ ROMERO: That day I found Mercedes in the kitchen surrounded by her sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, and Maestro Angulo. She was serene and tranquil, dressed in the blouse and shoes of a tigress, holding a cigarette and a glass of white tequila, taking phone calls. All the calls were short, she listened, not speaking very much, and at the end she would say: Thank you. When I went back the next day, she already had the box of ashes in her study. I approached and placed a red rose on it. Mónica, his secretary, was there, just beside the urn, and we talked for quite a while.
GUILLERMO ANGULO: Before we went out, Mercedes said to all of us going to Bellas Artes: “Nobody cries here. Here everything’s pure macho from Jalisco.”
CARLITOS GONZÁLEZ ROMERO: I have my pockets full of butterflies made of paper, yellow butterflies they brought from Colombia. Now the presidents have spoken. Let’s do away with the seriousness. There are some electric fans that will make them fly.
KATYA GONZÁLEZ RIPOLL: Look outside. They’re flying. Let’s go there.
Viva Gabo! Viva Gabo!
CECILIA BUSTAMANTE: Viva Gabo!
TANIA LIBERTAD: Viva Gabo!
UNKNOWN VOICE: Viva Gabo!