She felt the abyss of disenchantment.

There had never been a death so foretold.

Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.

I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.

As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance.

An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its path.

Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination.