46 pages • 1 hour read
Luis SepulvedaThe Old Man Who Read Love Stories
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Back in the present day, the rainy season has started in earnest. Antonio lies in his hammock considering what it might be like to live in the great Western cities of Paris, London, or Geneva. But mostly he thinks about snow, remembering what it was like when he was a child living in the mountains. He contemplates the “unforgivable extravagance” (62) of the characters in his book dirtying the fresh snow. One night as Antonio dives for crayfish, he hears someone shouting that a canoe is abreast of the town. He walks to the quay and sees settlers and the mayor, who sits fat and shirtless under a huge black umbrella, looking at the canoe tied to the quay. Inside is another dead man, a gold prospector named Napoleon Salinas. When he is fished out of the canoe, his gold-toothed smile “aroused no admiration” (66). Salinas is one of the people who had his rotten teeth “patched up with bits of gold” (66) rather than removed.
The mayor asks Antonio if the death is due to the cat again. Antonio, “his mind still on the crayfish” (67), looks at the dead man and affirms that the ocelot has attacked again. The mayor points out that it’s no big deal; the man probably would have died anyway, since every year prospectors drink too much and are swallowed by the raging rivers. Many times, in fact, swollen bodies are seen floating by among the tree trunks and branches, left to eventually sink into the watery depths. In the dead man’s pocket they find a few coins and 20 gold nuggets. After dividing the gold among the settlers, the mayor kicks the body into the water. Antonio mentions that, from the evidence, it’s clear the female ocelot is on their side of the river. This observation provokes “a nervous round of chatter” (69).
The mayor puts on his fake studious face and tries to convince everyone that the cat isn’t close enough to threaten them. But Antonio, who is so much smarter, points out that the body isn’t yet decayed or stiff enough to sink, which suggests it hasn’t floated very far. The old man doesn’t say anything else, and he doesn’t wait for any answers. He’s too busy thinking about his crayfish and how delicious they will be. He contemplates whether to fry or boil them. When he arrives back at his hut, he sees the “lonely obese silhouette of the mayor under his umbrella at the quay, like a giant, dark mushroom that had sprouted from the wooden planks” (70).
Chapter 6 Summary
Back to his crayfish, Antonio opens a bottle of Frontera and picks out one of the novels brought by the dentist. He likes the way it begins with a man named Paul kissing a woman “ardently” in Venice, Italy, as they are sitting in a gondola. He has no idea what a gondola is, but he likes this beginning because the author has clearly defined who the “bad ones” (72) are. Knowing who is good and bad in a book means you “avoided misunderstanding and misplaced sympathy” (72). The bad one in this case is the ardent kisser, Paul. Antonio doesn’t know what the word “ardent” means, but it sounds uncouth. Antonio is convinced that Paul is a “real swine” (73). He thinks about when he used to kiss his wife Dolores, then realizes he’s spent most of his life not kissing anyone, since the Shuar don’t kiss. He remembers once seeing a gold prospector having sex with a Jibaro woman and, when the man kissed the Jibaro, she threw sand in his eyes “and went off to vomit, visibly disgusted” (73). The rest of the day and into siesta, Antonio worries that he can’t picture this city, Venice. He thinks it must be underwater but cannot imagine what a gondola is, though it must be some kind of canoe. He considers his own canoe and thinks a good name for it would be “The Gondola of the Nangaritza,” since this is the river that borders El Idilio. As he dozes off, Antonio imagines the people of Venice stepping outside their doors and falling straight into the water.
Later Antonio is awoken by the mad braying of a mule that is saddled but empty of a rider. He runs outside and sees men trying to catch the mule by the bridle. When the mule is finally caught, the men see he is covered in deep scratches, like the wounds on the deceased men. The ocelot has struck again. The mayor shoots the mule to put it out of its misery. The mule belongs to Alkaseltzer Miranda, a man who gave up the settlement and was “snatched back by the jungle” (75), where he owns a “miserable” store that sells liquor, tobacco, salt, and his nickname’s sake, Alka-Seltzer. The mayor orders the men to get ready for a search party the next day. They will start by heading to Miranda’s store. Two men cut the mule up and dole out the meat, then throw the head and other inedible parts into the river. Antonio doesn’t want to be part of the search party. While thinking about his aversion, he recalls a memory in which the mayor made his life miserable.
Several years before a large flat-bottomed boat, big enough for eight people, showed up and docked at the quay. Eight Americans crawled out of the boat and spent several days “flattering the mayor” (77) until the fat man brought them to Antonio’s hut. The mayor introduced Antonio as “the local expert on the Amazon,” calling Antonio his “friend” and “right-hand man” (77), while the Americans crashed into his hut, touching his things and looking at his meager belongings. One of them insisted on buying the framed photo of his wife, Dolores. Antonio watched as the man put it in his backpack and left a wad of notes on the stand. Antonio tried to control his anger. He told the mayor to tell the man to return the photograph or he would “pump two rounds into him and blow his balls off” (78). The Americans all understood Spanish, but Antonio didn’t care. When the mayor expressed his fury at Antonio for offending the Americans, he warned Antonio that the hut may have been his, but the ground it stood on belonged to the government. He could kick Antonio off any time. Antonio shouted back that the land didn’t belong to anyone. Antonio had half a mind to pull the trigger on the mayor. In the end, no one came to blows, and the Americans left the next day with a settler and a Jibaro to guide them.
Antonio waited in his hut for the mayor to come and order him to leave. Instead, his friend Onecén Salmudio from the mountains stopped by. Onecén said Slimy Toad wanted him to chaperone the Americans up the river since he had a gringo name. Antonio asked how “Onecén” was a gringo name. Onecén is the name of a white person’s saint: “It appears on their little coins and it is written in two words with a ‘t’ on the end” (X). Antonio asked why Onecén came to visit. Onecén was there to warn him: The mayor asked the gringos to contact the police in El Dorado and send them back to kick Antonio off his land. Antonio could not sleep for several nights after that.
Days later the flat-bottomed boat returned, but there were only three Americans. Shortly after the Americans talked to the mayor, the mayor came to Antonio to “make peace” (80). In fact, Antonio learned that the Jibaro took off almost right away with the Americans’ liquor. The settler guiding them told the Americans not to worry; he would take them, per their wish, deeper into the jungle. But the Americans were attacked by monkeys who killed the settler and one of the Americans. This sounded absurd to Antonio until he realized that the Americans went into the jungle wearing all their shiny gold and silver, carrying their glinting cameras around their necks. He explained that monkeys are small and hardly able to kill, though they have been known to attack, and “a thousand of them can tear a horse to pieces” (82). He then explains that the Shuar taught him that you must strip your body free of jewelry, ornaments, and machetes because monkeys love shiny things. The Americans made the crucial mistake of bringing their trinkets into monkey territory. The mayor offered a peace offering, a swig of his whiskey, and told Antonio they wanted someone to go back and fetch the bodies. Antonio agreed to bring back what was “left of the gringo” (X) in exchange for peace.
Antonio had no trouble finding the bodies. He located the settler first, whom he recognized by his “toothless skull” (84). He then saw the American’s skeleton “receiving the last attention of the ants” (84). Not in any hurry, he lit a cigar and waited till the jungle was done with the bodies. At one point he broke out laughing when he heard a noise and saw a monkey tightly holding a camera tumble out of a tree. He finished his cigar and used his machete to help the ants finish, and when the bones were clean and white, he placed them into his saddlebag. He returned to El Idilio and gave the bones back. He was happy not to be disturbed by the mayor anymore and appreciated the peace, for it was peace that allowed him his “moments of pleasure by the river, standing at the high table and slowly reading love stories” (85).
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
In Chapter 5, when Antonio contemplates snow and remembers it from his youth, he thinks how it is an unforgivable and extravagant act to dirty the pure snow. This is a metaphor for the pain caused when purity is destroyed by outside forces, much like the when Amazon’s perfect ecosystem is ravaged by outsiders who come to exploit its soil. With the rainy season fully upon the jungle, the story’s tension grows. The next attack is upon the village, this time in the form of a body in a canoe that has been tied up to the quay. In this chapter we see Antonio calmly contemplating his crayfish meal—how it will taste, how to best cook it—as he also deals with the bloody mess of a new victim. His nonchalant attitude demonstrates his lack of concern for the death of the white men, as if he is not surprised by the unfolding events and doesn’t care. This foreshadows his attitude in Chapter 6, when he is dispatched to retrieve the body of the American tourist from the monkeys. There he waits calmly, enjoying a cigar while ants devour the flesh. In addition to being nonchalant about the death of interlopers, Antonio is also an old man by now and has seen it all before. His life is one of death and violence and disappointment, so what difference does one more body make? And indeed, when the narrator mentions the occasional bloated body that floats down the river during the rainy season, it’s with an indifferent attitude, as if such a sight is as natural as the rain itself.
When the men determine that the body is that of Napoleon Salinas, a gold prospector who’d been treated by the dentist that morning, the narrator refers to the gold in the man’s teeth. The name Napoleon alludes to Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the Western world’s most notorious and well-known conquerors. Though Salinas is a common Spanish surname, here it may also refer to the Spanish conqueror Jeronimo Salinas. Thus, the author has given this gold prospector the names of two colonialists and conquerors.
The mayor rolls the dead body out of the boat and kicks it into the river. By now, it is impossible to ignore the constant throwing of unwanted people, discarded teeth, and trash into the river. Such disregard becomes a significant habit of the white invaders. The river, considered sacred by the Shuar, is one giant, swift-moving trashcan to the plunderers.
Another recurring symbol is teeth. Every man’s teeth are examined by the narrator, who notes that the gold prospector’s teeth have turned into gold. In this book, teeth gnash and bite; they are weapons and storage for gold; they signal strength and powerless; they can often mean the difference between life and death. In this chapter Napoleon Salinas, named for those who conquer and destroy, also hordes his gold in his mouth, via his teeth. Of course, his gilded teeth cannot save him from death, which supports the text’s argument that no one truly benefits from colonization.
When Antonio returns to his hut to eat the crayfish, he gazes out his window and sees the fat mayor and thinks he looks like a mushroom. This powerful image implies that the mayor is nothing more than a giant, spreading, amorphous fungus whose survival depends on taking over its host.
In Chapter 6, after consuming his much-anticipated crayfish, Antonio ponders the meanings in his new book. He doesn’t know what “ardent” means or what a gondolier is, but he fills this lack of knowledge in with his own deductions and imagination. Though Antonio is a master of the jungle, his book learning is nonexistent. However, he is still portrayed as clever, as he sorts out the meanings and, if he must, ascribes to them what seems logical. Paul is a “swine” for kissing a woman in front of someone else, which puts him in the category of “bad.” Antonio likes that the book clearly distinguishes bad from good so there are no misunderstandings about who to hate and who to love. In a highly ironic gesture, the author steps into his own book to suggest that he will not be so clear. Antonio, as the main character, cannot be easily categorized as bad or good. He embodies split loyalties, nuance, and confusion. Like imperialism itself, Antonio is complex: His characteristics are not black and white, and we both like him and dislike him.
For example, just when Antonio does a hero’s deed by avenging Nushiño’s death, he turns around and commits the ultimate insult to his Shuar family. Similarly, he wants to name his boat using the word “gondola” and the jungle river’s name, Nangaritza, creating contradictory symbols that exist side by side. He is a product, and perhaps the actual embodiment of, the complex way colonialism divides sensibilities and creates turmoil. The further irony is that Antonio has miscalculated the meaning of “ardent” and misjudged who is bad and who is good. Once again, the author steps in to say that colonialism creates illusions and bewilderment.
The ocelot’s attacks become the main event in town. The attacked mule belongs to a jungle shop owner, Alkaseltzer Miranda, whose name refers to a common Western medicine, one that eases heartburn and stomach aches. It is as if Alkaseltzer and his mule now become the metaphor for the villagers’ next episode of indigestion.
The mayor gives Antonio a portion of the mule’s liver from the mule and, as he fries up the liver, Antonio thinks about how the mayor can so easily make life difficult for him. He revisits the past, remembering how the mayor brought eight rude American tourists into his hut. Antonio’s refusal to take the Americans into the jungle, and the mayor’s threats to take his land away, again highlight how power is dangled over the captives of an authoritarian governmental body. Antonio is relieved when his friend, Onecén, visits instead of the mayor. The striking message in his friend’s name clearly signals how Americans idolize and worship money over everything, just as the other whites name their boat the Sucre after Ecuador’s paper currency.
The mayor makes peace, but Antonio knows this peace is conditional. Antonio agrees to do the mayor’s bidding, but this scene is just another example of how the rich and powerful hold their status and ability to do whatever they please over the heads of the weaker and less powerful. Antonio may not like how the mayor treats him, but he knows the consequences, so he agrees. After he finds the bodies, he notices the toothless skull of the settler who went with the Americans and stayed even after the Jibaro stole the alcohol and fled. The toothless mouth is yet another image of the teeth and mouths of the dead. Here the toothlessness is a metaphor for the powerlessness and victimization of the poor and needy inhabitants of the rainforest who are forced to do the mayor’s bidding.
