- La ilusión no se come - dijo ella. - No se come, pero alimenta - replicó el coronel. - Gabriel García Márquez

But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none.

"You're a great man, General, greater than anyone," she told him. "But love is still too big for you."

For a week, almost without speaking,
they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief, lighted only by the tenuous
reflection of luminous insects, and their lungs were overwhelmed by a suffocating smell of blood.