Chapter 4
After Santiago Nasar’s murder, the mayor orders an immediate autopsy despite lacking any proper facilities. Father Carmen Amador, a former seminary student with medical training, is forced to dissect the corpse in a public school, aided only by a druggist, a first‑year medical student and a few craftsmen’s tools. The body lies on an iron cot under fans; stray dogs are locked, escape, and are shot. Amador’s report details seven fatal wounds – deep cuts to liver, stomach, pancreas, transverse colon, small intestine, right kidney, and perforations of the thoracic cavity – plus numerous minor injuries. A gold medal swallowed by Santiago as a child is recovered. The priest notes a slightly enlarged brain and a hypertrophic liver, attributing the latter to past hepatitis, and concludes death resulted from massive hemorrhage. The corpse is crudely reassembled, wrapped in linen, placed in a hastily built coffin, and buried at dawn.
Meanwhile, the Vicario twins, Pedro and Pablo, are confined in a windowless cell with a portable latrine. They are tormented by the lingering smell of Santiago’s blood, experience severe diarrhoea, urinary blockage, groin pain, and become convinced they are being poisoned. They repeatedly request water, soap, bandages, laxatives and diuretics. Their fears prompt the mayor to move them to a better‑guarded house and, after a magistrate arrives, to transfer them to the panoptic prison in Riohacha. Colonel Lázaro Aponte, fearing further retaliation, surveys the local Arab community. He finds the immigrants—Catholic, clannish, peaceful—deeply mourning Santiago, with no intention of vengeance, disproving rumors of an Arab revenge plot. Su‑sana Abdala, a centenarian matriarch, prepares a potent infusion of passion flowers and absinthe that cures Pablo’s diarrhoea and triggers Pedro’s brief insomnia, after which the brothers finally rest.
Later, after a lunar eclipse, widower Xius discovers Bayardo San Roman unconscious in his bedroom, surrounded by empty bottles and in the last stages of ethylic intoxication. Dr. Dionisio Iguarán confirms his condition. Bayardo awakens, expels the Xius family with contempt, and declares he will not be dominated. The mayor reports the incident to General Petronio San Roman, whose daughters arrive in mourning dress, wade barefoot through the town, and escort Bayardo back to the hilltop house, where he is carried in a hammock, barely alive, and later returns to his home to continue his pattern of heavy drinking.
The narrative then jumps forward decades. Angela Vicario, now an elderly woman living far from Manaure, has spent twenty‑three years writing countless letters to Bayardo, who never replies. She recounts the night of her forced marriage to Bayardo, the loss of her virginity, and her obsessive correspondence. She describes sending six bundles of letters, each tied with colored ribbons, to the local postmistress, all unopened. One night she finally sees Bayardo, aged, gaunt, carrying his leather saddlebags and the unopened bundles. He places the bags on her sewing machine, says “Well, here I am,” and walks away without reading a single letter. Angela continues to write in solitude until her death, her lifelong obsession never resolved.