What short story is this?

March 29, 2020 7:13 AM

I'm trying to remember the title and author of a literary short story. The premise as best I can remember it involved a woman, looking for someone to light her cigarette, unwittingly wondering into a mental asylum (it was set in that era of psychiatry, I believe) and being trapped there. Her attempts to convince the (sadistic?) orderlies that she's sane only backfire and when she manages to call her lover on the phone, he doesn't believe her either. I think it was written by a famous Latin American author in the mid 20th century. Google is being no help at all, but maybe you know the story I'm thinking about?
posted by Panthalassa to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

Best answer: Sounds like "Solo vine a hablar por teléfono" by Gabriel García Márquez.
posted by simmering octagon at 8:05 AM on March 29, 2020

Best answer: Gabriel García Márquez's I Only Came to Use the Phone (in Strange Pilgrims): A woman's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. She hitches a ride on a bus on its way to a mental institute. Before she knows what's happening, she has been admitted as a patient. Her husband, referring to their trouble-ridden history, believes she has run off with another man. When she finally finds an opportunity to call him, he curses her and hangs up. She is forced to sleep with a guard to pass along the full message to her husband. When he arrives, he takes the doctor's account to heart and leaves the woman at the hospital, where she eventually adopts the role of insanity imposed upon her by the medical staff.
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:05 AM on March 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: You guys done did it. I don't know how I couldn't find it via Google. Thanks a squillion!
posted by Panthalassa at 8:39 AM on March 29, 2020

If you find that story interesting, I also want to make sure you know of the 1973 paper On Being Sane in Insane Places, documenting the controversial Rosenhan experiment which tested this effect in real life.
posted by automatronic at 8:40 AM on March 29, 2020 [5 favorites]