A story is “ A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings ”
It was written by Gabriel García Márquez .
The story began after three days of rain. Crabs infested Pelayo and Elisenda's house, causing a horrible stench believed to be making their baby sick. When Pelayo came back from throwing the crabs into the sea, he saw a very old man with wings lying face down in the mud in his courtyard. Startled, Pelayo went to get his wife, and they examined the man. He was dressed in raggedy clothing and was very dirty. After staring at him for so long, Pelayo and Elisenda were able to overcome their initial shock of seeing the man with wings. They tried to speak to him, but the man spoke in an incomprehensible dialect. They decided he was a castaway from a shipwreck; however, a neighbor informed them that the man was an angel.
The following day, the entire town knew about the man with wings who was said to be an angel. Pelayo decided to chain up the man and keep him in the chicken coop. A day later, when the rain stopped, the baby felt better and was able to eat. Pelayo and Elisenda wanted to send the old man out to sea with food and water for three days and let nature take care of him.
However, when they went out to their courtyard, they saw a mass of people gathered around the chicken coop to see the angel; they were harassing him by treating him like a circus animal instead of a person. The priest, Father Gonzaga, came by the house because he was surprised by the news of the angel. At that time, onlookers made hypotheses about what should happen to the angel, saying things like "he should be the leader of the world" or "he should be a military leader in order to win all wars."
However, Father Gonzaga decided to determine whether the man was an angel or not by speaking to him in Latin. Since the man with wings did not recognize Latin and looked too human, the priest decided the man could not be an angel. Father Gonzaga then warned the onlookers that the man was not an angel. However, the people did not care, and word spread that the old man with wings was an angel. People began coming from all over to Pelayo and Elisenda's house to see the angel. It reached a point where they had to build a fence and charge people admission. However, the old man wanted nothing to do with his act. His audiences attempted to get him to react, at one point prodding him with hot iron pokers. The angel responded in anger, flapping his wings and yelling in his strange language. Later, a new carnival arrived in town, bringing a woman who had metamorphosed into a spider. The townspeople lost interest in the angel.
However, Pelayo and Elisenda were able to build a mansion with the fortune they had gained by charging admission. The child grew older and was told not to go into the chicken coop. Yet the child did, and later the child and the old man had chicken pox at the same time. Once the child reached school age, the chicken coop was broken down, and the man began to appear in Pelayo and Elisenda's house. He then moved into the shed and became very ill. Yet, he survived the winter and became stronger.
One fateful day, Elisenda was making lunch and looked out the window to see the old man trying to fly. His first attempts were clumsy, but eventually, he was able to gain altitude and fly away from Pelayo and Elisenda's house. Elisenda was relieved "for herself and for him" upon seeing him go.
