marquez on that summer

later when the original inhabitants had all died, the settlers would talk about that ugly summer of 12, of the gross desperation of drought. there were fires, 19,216 of them in 5 weeks. but sadly no one died in those fires, for when the birds were falling down dead from the heat, the old men would wait for the sun to set to bury their sons, dead because they were maddened in those hot afternoons in their siestas, leaving their beds, sleepwalking, to go to the disreputable quarters where withered whores would make wild love to them in a daze before choking to death on their own saliva.


hemingway

the boxing matches had come to a stop those days. the boxers would go down to montgomerys and pass idle hours sulking in the heat. the bar could only serve barely cold beer, there were too many power cuts and the coolers were just little boxes keeping the bottles dipped in mildly cool meltwater. the boys from the more informal rings would come and hang out and talk loudly as if they were the men there about some bust up theyd recently had, which was almost always last night. if there werent too many people around the waiter would even sometimes hang on a little to hear one of those stories. but that summer, in 12, no one really cared. things were desperate. the burly fighters, the real fighters just wouldnt get a fight. it was absurd. here they were all pumped up and desperate and spoiling for a fight even for peanuts yet suddenly nobody cared no longer.


conan doyle

as i peer into my notebook for the startling events of the cruel summer of 12, i am instantly taken back to that afternoon when my enigmatic co-signor, stoned on the cashmere rug, pointed at the thermometer tilting precariously on the bureau. 45C it read. i had to get up from my comfortable perch on the armchair in order to actually see what the curious bachelor was referring to and i have to confess that i started upon discovering that he had read my thoughts, again. prior to that interruption, i had been engrossed in the deepest rumination on the recent scandal in which the scion of one of the realm's most influential families was almost banished to political exile but for my friend's extraordinarily energetic pursuit of the real and apocalyptic scam at the bottom of it all, a grand conspiracy involving the water and electricity supply department. my wise roommate had endorsed, with the utmost intimate ease and in his casual manner, my cogitations as valid. the heat had become an issue.