Published in 1968, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” begins with an infestation of crabs on a property inhabited by Pelayo and Elisenda, a couple of humble means, living on a Columbian shore.  The crabs begin to rot, and believing this rot is making his and Elisenda’s baby sick, Pelayo is tasked with disposing them in the sea; however, upon his return, he sees an old man lying face down in the mud – an old man with large and imposing wings.  The old man speaks in an unintelligible dialect, and, at first, Pelayo and his wife believe him to be a castaway; however, neighbors have a different take altogether: the old man, they insist, is an angel.  Their baby, after all, begins to get well.  Soon enough, the entire town knows, and Pelayo is forced to chain the old man up and keep him in the chicken coop.  Crowds come.  Pelayo begins to charge an entrance fee.  A priest arrives, and begins to speak to the old man in Latin.  The old man does not seem to understand, the priest quickly deduces that this is no angel.  Soon thereafter, another attraction arrives on the scene – a girl who can transform into a spider, and the crowd lessons.  Even so, Pelayo and Elisenda make enough money to build a mansion, and the child grows to school age.  At some point, the old man begins to come into the house, becoming comfortable with his hosts, until, one day, he flies off, much to his relief, and, surprisingly, Elisenda’s relief.  The temporary union was just too much. 

Garcia Marquez is famously known for being a pioneer in magical realism, a literary genre, as the name suggests, that seamlessly combines the mundane with the fantastical.  In his world, the magical and the real are two halves of one sphere; spotted together, there should be no call for alarm.  A man might be going about the humdrum task of mowing his lawn, only to look up, and see a dragon flitting about in the air.  His reaction would be like that of someone spotting a robin or an airplane.  There is no cause for alarm or surprise; he has seen it all before. 

Such is the approach taken by Garcia Marquez in a story about the sudden appearance of a winged old man in a muddy piece of property. They want to make money. Garcia Marquez is certainly pointing toward humankind’s less flattering impulses.  In the face of the miraculous, many human beings get dollar signs for eyes.  Perhaps this is why the magical does not appear to use more regularly. Perhaps the Author of the supernatural knows exactly what human beings would do with it.  Perhaps He knows our collective tendency to be crass and self-serving.  Garcia Marquez may be imparting a lesson to his readership here.  The story is less about the old man and more about our treatment of him. 

When I was nine-years-old, my father died.  His funeral was in Kentucky, many miles from my hometown in Pennsylvania.  We drove the long way down and ended up staying at a cheap hotel where a maid with a German accent worked.  She cleaned our room, and when she found out why me and my sister were there, she left us candy.  It was something to look forward to after the viewings.  On the day we buried him, the German maid actually came to the graveyard and put an arm around me and my sister. Days later, we called the hotel to see about a forgotten garment and to thank the German maid.  In hindsight, she was a great help and great comfort to the kids.  After my mother described her, the proprietor gave the answer you, dear listeners, have likely already guessed.  We have no one of that description who works here, ma’am.  I do not know who you are talking about. 

Perhaps the outcome of Garcia Marquez’s story would have been different if Pelayo and Elisenda were younger, much younger.  Innocence has a way of opening doors the experienced and worldly cannot.  It is perhaps why we are all called children of God, for it is only with those eyes, youthful eyes, that we can see the magical among us.