Spring, A Love Season, by Horacio Quiroga

Primavera – Una estación de amor – – de Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte, de Horacio Quiroga – 1898 – Translated from Spanish into English by Enzo Martinelli – Spring – A Love Season – Stories of Love, Madness and Death

©️ Enzo Martinelli 2024

It was Shrove Tuesday. Nébel had just entered the corso, already at dusk, and as he was unpacking a bundle of streamers, he looked at the carriage in front. Puzzled by a face he had not seen the previous evening, he asked his companions:

– Who is she? She doesn’t look ugly.

– A devil! She’s very pretty. I think she’s the niece, or something like that, of Doctor Arrizabalaga. She arrived yesterday, I think…

Nébel then fixed his eyes attentively on the beautiful creature. She was still a very young girl, perhaps not more than fourteen, but completely nubile. She had, under her very dark hair, a face of supreme whiteness, of that dull, satin white which is the exclusive preserve of very fine complexions. His eyes were blue, long, and drooping towards his temples in the fringe of his black eyelashes. Perhaps a little wide apart, which gives, under a smooth forehead, an air of great nobility or great stubbornness. But her eyes, like that, filled that blooming countenance with the light of her beauty. And when Nébel felt them in his own eyes for a moment, he was dazzled.

– How charming! -he murmured, standing still with one knee on the surrey cushion. A moment later the streamers were flying to victory. The two carriages were already linked by the ribbon suspension bridge, and the one who caused it smiled from time to time at the gallant boy.

But this was already reaching the point of disrespect for people, coachman and even carriage: on the shoulder, head, whip, mudguards, the streamers rained down incessantly. So much so that the two people sitting in the back turned round and, smiling, examined the wastrel attentively.

– Who are they? -asked Nébel in a low voice.

– Doctor Arrizabalaga; you certainly don’t know him. The other one is your girl’s mother…. She’s the doctor’s sister-in-law.

As, after the examination, Arrizabalaga and the lady smiled frankly at this exuberance of youth, Nébel felt it his duty to greet them, to which the trio responded with jovial condescension.

This was the beginning of an idyll that lasted for three months, and to which Nébel brought as much adoration as her passionate adolescence could hold.

While the corso continued, and in Concordia it went on until unbelievable hours, Nébel stretched his arm forward incessantly, so well that the cuff of his shirt, detached, danced on his hand. The next day the scene was repeated; and as this time the corso was resumed at night with a battle of flowers, Nébel exhausted in a quarter of an hour four immense baskets. Arrizabalaga and the lady laughed and often turned round, and the young lady hardly took her eyes off Nébel. He glanced despairingly at his empty baskets; but on the surrey’s cushion there was still one, a poor bunch of evergreens and jasmines of the country. Nébel leapt with it over the surrey’s wheel, dislocated almost an ankle, and running to victory, panting, drenched in sweat, and with enthusiasm in his eyes, held out the bouquet to the young woman. She looked wildly for another, but he had none. Her companions laughed.

– But madwoman! -said her mother, pointing to her breast, “there’s one!

The carriage started off at a trot. Nébel, who had climbed down from the running board, ran and reached for the bouquet that the young woman was holding out to him, his body almost out of the carriage.

Nébel had arrived three days before from Buenos Aires, where he was finishing his baccalaureate. She had been there for seven years, so her knowledge of Concordia’s current society was minimal. He was still to spend a fortnight in his native city, enjoyed in full peace of mind, if not of body; and from the second day he lost all his serenity. But on the other hand, what a charm!

– What a charm! -he repeated to himself, thinking of that ray of light, flower and feminine flesh that had come to him from the carriage. He recognised that he was truly and deeply dazzled – and in love, of course.

And if she loved him… Would she love him? Nébel, to elucidate it, relied much more than on the bouquet at her breast, on the dazed haste with which the young woman had sought something to give him. He clearly evoked the gleam in her eyes when she saw him come running, the restless expectation with which she waited for him, and, in another order, the morbidity of the young breast, as she held out the bouquet to him.

And now, it was over! She was leaving the next day for Montevideo; what did she care for the rest, Concordia, her old friends, her father himself? At least he would go with her as far as Buenos Aires.

They did indeed make the journey together, and during it, Nébel reached the highest degree of passion that a romantic boy of eighteen, who feels loved, can reach. The mother welcomed the almost childish idyll with affable complacency, and often laughed at the sight of them, talking little, smiling incessantly, and looking at each other infinitely.

The parting was brief, for Nébel did not wish to lose the last vestige of sanity she had left, by cutting her career short after her. They would return to Concord in the winter, perhaps for a season; would he go? “Oh, not me!” And as Nébel walked slowly away along the quay, turning every moment, she, with her chest on the gunwale, her head a little lowered, followed him with her eyes, while in the ironing-room the sailors raised theirs with laughter to this idyll and to the dress, still short, of the most tender bride.