Tramontana by Gabriel García Márquez. Short summary

5 seconds

In a bar in Barcelona, a company of Swedes persuades a 20-year-old boy to go with them to Cadaqués. The boy refuses, as he believes he will die there inevitably.

1 minute

Only once did the narrator see the dead 20-year-old young man. They bumped into each other in a fashionable Barcelona cabaret, hours before the unfortunate man’s terrible death. Eleven young Swedes tried to persuade him to go with them to Cadaqués to continue the revelry. The frightened young man tried to explain that he could not go.

A cabaret-goer intervened, shouting at the Swedes to leave the young man alone, but they did not listen. The young man had previously lived in Kadakesh. According to his contract with the cabaret, he was to perform songs of the Antilles. One day he was struck by a tramontana (a cold north wind from behind the mountains).

He escaped the next day, and did not want to return here, for he was sure that death awaited him here. But the company of Swedes did not want to believe it and soon took the lad away. Fearing his imminent death in Kadakesh, he jumped out of the car, fell into an abyss and was killed after all.