23. What time is it?
The patriarch of the family condemned, in Gabriel García Márquez' novel, to One hundred years of solitude, is José Arcadio Buendía. It is he who led the small band of explorers into an uncharted wilderness to found the village of Macondo.
It is he who, in his madness, tethered to a tree
in the garden, refutes in Latin the arguments of the Catholic priest,
even his practical demonstration of levitation powered by hot chocolate.
It is he who with skill and fairness lays out the streets and houses
of the little encampment in such a way that each home enjoys equal access
to the sparkling stream, equal shade from the midday sun.
José Arcadio looked up into the sky and looked down again to
see his mother and sister embroidering on the veranda of their house.
Day after day he saw them shuffle their chairs deeper under the awning
out of the sun in summer, then forward again towards
the light in winter. Thinking about this strange, slow ballet he recognised
– as did Copernicus – a truth which convinced his family
that he was, indeed, completely insane. He told them:
'The world is round, like an orange.'
I like this sense of a character being so aware of time passing. That
awareness is passed on to the reader. It is rather like drawing the
shadow of an object in a painting – it makes the object seem more
solid, more real. Perhaps it isn't as important in the way you work,
but I like to know exactly what time it is in my
novels at all times …
