вЂњAll you remember now of the yearning that devoured you is your persistence against the enemies to overcome, which did not allow you to desire or imagine anything else.вЂќ Do you not catch a strange insistence in the rolling of the drums, an excess of zeal?вЂќДЄ womanвЂ™s song floats through the window for the first time since he was a conspirator for the throne, the king yearns for something.

вЂњPerhaps danger lurks in regularity itself. Every unexpected sound and every unexpected silence are ominous but so are the expected sounds and silences. The kingвЂ™s only contact with life is the sounds he hears: the changing of the guards, the clanking in the kitchen, the courtiersвЂ™ footsteps and the hum of the city below.Д«ut it is an impotent contact. Our achievements imprison us our power makes us impotent. And what is reigning if not this long wait? Waiting for the moment when you will be deposed, when you will have to take leave of the throne, the scepter, the crown and your head.вЂќ вЂњAll your previous life has been only a waiting to become King now you are King you have only to reign. вЂњWho can guarantee that when you return you will not find someone else sitting on it?вЂќ And how would you prove you were the king, since вЂњa king is denoted by the fact that he is sitting on the throne, wearing his crown, holding the scepterвЂќ? He can command whatever he wants everything will be brought to him but he cannot leave his throne. He sits alone in his throne room, his crown on his head and his scepter in his right hand. The narrator is a king in a nameless kingdom. If вЂњUnder the Jaguar SunвЂќ is a searing and wonderfully inflected use of the sense of taste as an image of human attachments, вЂњA King ListensвЂќ uses the sense of hearing to make an even more desolate reflection. It was вЂњthe universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la Veracruzana, and enchiladas.вЂќ On the contrary, Olivia argues it was used to enhance it.ДЄnd, by the time this comic and abrasive tale ends, they are-metaphorically, but with an edge of culinary realism-greedily consuming each other. The narrator-who is the more subdued of the pair-suggests that the assertive and buried condimentation was used to disguise human flesh. They are told of cannibalism among the old Indian kingdoms. The eating binge and the inflammation continue. He muses on love as voracity, reflecting on the nun and the chaplain, and вЂњa love that, in the eyes of the world and in their own eyes, could have been perfectly chaste and at the same time infinitely carnal. вЂњIt stimulated desires, in other words, that sought their satisfaction only within the very sphere of sensation that had aroused them.вЂќ It is virtually an orgasmic state, the narrator suggests though, he adds delicately, one that did not spread. They had been eating their way, in fact, through the flamboyant local delicacies and, as they dig in, she grows inflamed. вЂњI would like to eat chiles en nogada, ' she declares, dramatically. It was a spiritual Liebestod but the narrator reflects that love вЂњin its spiritual sense sublimated but did not erase the physical emotion.вЂќ The notion leaves an uneasy void in him it makes Olivia ravenous.

Italo calvino under the jaguar sun