Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon

“The cage was finished. Balthazar hung it under the eaves, from force of habit, and when he finished lunch everyone was already saying that it was the most beautiful cage in the world. So many people came to see it that a crowd formed in front of the house, and Balthazar had to take it down and close the shop.” 

The story begins at the moment Balthazar’s cage is finished. In this opening passage, García Márquez introduces tension: The cage is the most beautiful cage in the world and its beauty causes such discord that he must close the shop, his main source of revenue, because of its presence.

“Ursula had not paid any attention to it until then. She was annoyed because her husband had neglected the work of his carpenter’s shop to devote himself entirely to the cage, and for two weeks he had slept poorly, turning over, and muttering incoherence, and hadn’t thought of shaving.” 

While the cage threatens Balthazar’s livelihood, Ursula’s annoyance with the cage provides another, quieter tension. Others fawn and gossip over the cage, but Ursula is more pragmatic, pleased that Balthazar has finished the work and eager to help him profit from it. Ursula represents the material concerns of the world that Balthazar seems unable to grasp. 

“‘How much will you charge?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know,’ Balthazar answered. ‘I’m going to ask for thirty pesos to see if they’ll give me twenty.’ ‘Ask for fifty,’ said Ursula. ‘You’ve lost a lot of sleep in these two weeks.” 

Ursula presses Balthazar to ask for more money for the cage. One of the story’s main dramatic questions is how to assign monetary value to time. Ironically, Balthazar receives nothing for the cage and yet continues to use the rate of sixty pesos that Ursula suggests in the story he tells the townspeople. His return to this sum demonstrates Balthazar’s naivety and his dependence on external voices to appraise his worth.