The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

Chapter 3 opens with a description of Antonio’s simple hut: “A ten-yard square foot bamboo hut in which he’d arranged his meager furniture” (27). On one wall is a photo, retouched by an artist, of Antonio and his wife. Antonio acknowledges that his two prized possessions are his teeth and the magnifying glass that he uses for reading.

The narrator takes the reader back to the distant past, providing a detailed description of the finery and youth of Antonio and his beloved wife, Dolores Encarnación del Santísimo Sacramento Estupiñán Otavalo. They met as children in the mountain village of San Luis, where they were raised. At 13 they were betrothed, and two years later they were married. The couple spent their first three years of marriage in the bride’s father’s house. Dolores never got pregnant and soon the gossip started. They “drifted from one quack to another” (29) to find a cure for infertility, but eventually Dolores, deeply wounded by all the gossip, hid herself in shame in a corner of the house. The gossip began to circulate that Antonio was the sterile one. The neighbors suggested Antonio take his wife to the June festival of San Luis, get her drunk, and eventually put her in a “mingling of bodies under cover of darkness” (30) to see if she got pregnant.