The unnamed narrator notices a man with a
distinctive scar on his face who regularly comes into the bar of the Palace Hotel in Guatemala
City to sell lottery tickets. One day, the narrator is drinking in the bar with an acquaintance
who knows the man and addresses him as "general." He then tells the narrator the man's
story.
The man was a revolutionary general in Nicaragua. He was captured by
the government forces and sentenced to execution by firing squad. Before being shot, he was
given permission to say farewell to his wife, a beautiful young girl, who runs to embrace him.
As she does so, he quickly stabs her in the neck with a knife he has managed to conceal. The
girl dies almost immediately.
When the government general asks the man why he
killed his wife, he replies that it was because he loved her. The government general accepts
this explanation, calls him a brave man, and lets him go. The narrator ponders this story for a
moment then asks where the man got the scar. His acquaintance tells him it was from a bottle of
ginger ale that burst when he was opening it. The narrator ends the story by observing that he
has never liked ginger ale.
This very short story is a classic example of
bathos. There is a wryly comic contrast between the dramatic events of the man's life as a
leader of the revolution who murders his wife and narrowly escapes a firing squad and the
mundane event which gives him the scar that makes him conspicuous. The narrator thinks he will
hear a romantic explanation for the scar, particularly after the "rather high-flown
language" in which the man's capture and his wife's death are narrated. The story reflects
the randomness of life: murder goes unpunished and is even rewarded while an absurd accident
with an exploding bottle leaves the man disfigured for life.
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