Eyes Of A Blue Dog by Gabriel García Márquez, 1950
The magic trick:
Surrealist romance united by a secret code phrase
The title of the story serves almost as a secret code for the two characters. The phrase unites them together and to some kind of shared past or longing. It also seems to act as a boundary for them. They are stuck in this surreal dreamlike world only – unable to push their relationship in reality to where they want to go.
The reader is stuck there with them, unable to get beyond the surreal and into something recognizably normal.
And that’s quite a trick on García Márquez’s part.
The selection:
For a few brief minutes that’s all we did: look at each other. I looked from the chair, balancing on one of the rear legs. She stood, with a long and quiet hand on the lamp, looking at me. I saw her eyelids lighted up as on every night. It was then that I remembered the usual thing, when I said to her: “Eyes of a blue dog.” Without taking her hand off the lamp she said to me: “That. We’ll never forget that.” She left the orbit, sighing: “Eyes of a blue dog. I’ve written it everywhere.”
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