There are two short completely abrupt full stops in Fermina & Florentino's relationship, both taking place in a matter of a sentence or two (so I'm not talking about punctuation here, I'm talking about huge vast trains piling into immovable buffers). The first is the last and it comes when Fermina turns Florentino away after Dr. Urbino's death ( it seems appropriate to refer to him more formally, why?) "Get out of here" she says, and adds a little more insult to injury by telling him she hopes he will die soon. And that's it. Although going back to the passage, I realise there is another page of description of her grief, ending in the fact that she is thinking more about Florentino than her husband. But the dismissal is short and sweet, the reflection is what takes the page and a half. And it prefigures the first rejection where after such an intense epistolary relationship he accosts her in the insalubrious market place and she rejects him out of hand.
" ...she erased him from her life with a wave of her hand.
'No, please', she said. 'Forget it' "
And that's it, that's the moment of unfulfillment Marquez pinpoints as surely as a pin through a butterfly's heart (do butterflies have hearts? - my insectology isn't up to much, but you get my drift) the exact end of the affair. The rest is just one sided pleading, there is nothing left in her heart.
It's an incredibly economic and powerful technique. The reader has been swept along by the intensity of the affair, and the intensity of the two lover's separate lives from Fermina's saddle sore ulcers to Florentino's hopeless search for treasure, broiling in a frock coat , hoodwinked by a twelve year old.
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