Summer, A Love Season, by Horacio Quiroga

Spring, A Love Season, by Horacio Quiroga

Verano – 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

On the 13th of June, Nébel returned to Concordia, and though he knew from the first that Lydia was there, he passed a week without much or little concern for her. Four months are long enough for a flash of passion, and scarcely in the slumbering water of his soul did the last gleam of it reach to curl his self-love. He was, yes, curious to see her. But a trifling incident, pricking his vanity, dragged him back again. On the first Sunday, Nébel, like any good village boy, waited on the corner at the end of mass. At last, the last ones perhaps, upright and looking ahead, Lydia and her mother advanced through the line of boys.

Nébel, seeing her again, felt his eyes dilate to slurp in all their fullness at the abruptly adored figure. He waited with almost painful longing for the instant when her eyes, in a sudden flash of blissful surprise, would recognise him among the group.

But it passed, with her cold gaze fixed ahead.

– He seems not to remember you any more,” said a friend, who had followed the incident at his side.

– Not much! -And it’s a pity, because I really liked the girl.

But when he was alone, he mourned his misfortune to himself, and now that he had seen her again, how he had always loved her, he who thought he no longer remembered her! And it was over! Bang, bang, bang, bang,” he repeated without realising it, with the boy’s habit, “bang, all over!

All at once: What if he hadn’t seen me? Of course, but of course! His face became animated again, accepting with full conviction such a probability as that, profoundly reasonable.

At three o’clock he knocked at Dr. Arrizabalaga’s house. His idea was elementary: he would consult the lawyer on any miserable pretext, and in the meantime he might see her. A sudden rush across the courtyard answered the bell, and Lidia, in order to stop the impulse, had to grab violently at the glass door. She saw Nebel, uttered an exclamation, and, hiding the domestic lightness of her clothes with her arms, fled still more swiftly.

A moment later the mother opened the consulting-room, and welcomed her old acquaintance with more lively complacency than she had done four months before. Nébel was beside himself with joy, and as the lady did not seem to be troubled by Nébel’s legal concerns, he too preferred her presence to that of the lawyer a million times over. However, he was still on the verge of a happiness that was too ardent and, as he was 18 years old, he wished to leave at once to enjoy his immense happiness alone, and without any restraint.

– So soon, now! -I hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing him again? Do we not?

– Oh, yes, madam!

– We should all have great pleasure at home – all of us, I suppose! I suppose we all would! Would you like us to consult? -she smiled with maternal mockery.

– Oh, with all my heart! -said Nébel.

– Lydia! Come here a moment! There’s a person here whom you know. Nébel had already been seen by her; but it did not matter.

Lydia arrived as he was standing. She advanced to meet him, her eyes sparkling with joy, and held out a large bunch of violets, with adorable awkwardness.

– If you don’t mind,” continued her mother, “you could come every Monday…. What do you think of that?

– That’s too little, madam! -said the boy; “Fridays too? May I?

The lady burst out laughing.

– What a hurry! I don’t know… let’s see what Lidia says. What do you say, Lidia?

The child, who did not take her laughing eyes off Nébel, said “Yes!” to his face, for she owed her answer to him.

– Very well: then, until Monday, Nébel.

Nébel objected:

– Would you not allow me to come tonight? Today is an extraordinary day…

– Well! Tonight too! Come along with him, Lydia. But Nébel, in mad need of movement, took his leave there and then, and fled with his bouquet, the end of which he had almost undone, and with his soul projected to the last heaven of happiness.

For two months, every moment they saw each other, every hour that separated them, Nébel and Lidia adored each other. For him, romantic to the point of feeling the state of painful melancholy caused by a simple drizzle that sours the courtyard, that creature, with her angelic face, her blue eyes and her early fullness, must have embodied the highest possible ideal. To her, Nebel was manly, handsome and intelligent. In their mutual love there was no more cloud for the future than Nébel’s minority. The boy, leaving aside studies, careers and similar superfluities, wanted to marry. As he had proved, there were only two things: that it was absolutely impossible for him to live without his Lydia, and that he would take anything that stood in the way of it. He had a feeling – or rather, he felt – that he was going to escort her rudely.

His father, indeed, who had been deeply displeased by the year Nébel had lost after a carnival love affair, was to point the “i’s” with terrible vigour. At the end of August, he spoke definitively to his son one day:

– I have been told that you continue your visits to Arrizabalaga’s. Is it true? Because you don’t deign to say a word to me.

Nébel saw the whole storm in that form of dignity, and his voice trembled a little.

– If I didn’t say anything to you, papa, it’s because I know you don’t like me talking about it.

– Bah! how to like it, you may, indeed, save yourself the trouble? But I should like to know what state you are in. Are you going to that house as a bridegroom?

– Yes, I am.

– And are you formally received?

– I-I think so.

The father stared at him and drummed on the table.

– It’s good! Very good!… Listen to me, because it’s my duty to show you the way. Do you know what you’re doing? Have you thought about what might happen?

– Happen? What?

– That you marry that girl. But look: you’re old enough to think about it, at least. Do you know who she is? Where she comes from? Do you know anyone who knows what life she leads in Montevideo?

– Dad! Dad!

– Yes, what they do there! Bah! Don’t make that face… I don’t mean your… girlfriend. She’s a child, and as such she doesn’t know what she’s doing. But do you know what they do for a living?

– No! I don’t care, because even if you’re my father…

– Bah, bah, bah! Leave that for later. I speak to you not as a father, but as any honest man might speak to you. And since you’re so indignant about what I’m asking you, find out from whoever wants to tell you, what kind of relations your girlfriend’s mother has with her brother-in-law, ask!

– Yes! I know she has been….

– Ah, do you know that it was Arrizabalaga’s mistress? And that he or someone else supports the house in Montevideo? And you’re so cool!

– ¡…!

– Yes, I know, your girlfriend has nothing to do with this, I know! There’s no more beautiful impulse than yours…. But be careful, because you might be late!… No, no, calm down! I have no idea of offending your bride, and I believe, as I have told you, that she is not yet contaminated by the rot that surrounds her. But if the mother wants to sell her to you in marriage, or rather to the fortune you are to inherit when I die, tell her that old Nebel is not disposed to such traffic, and that the devil would sooner take him than consent to it. That’s all I wanted to say.

The boy was very fond of his father, in spite of his father’s hard character; he went out full of rage at not having been able to give vent to his anger, which was all the more violent because he knew it to be unjust. He had not been unaware of this for some time: Lidia’s mother had been dear to Arrizabalaga during her husband’s lifetime, and even four or five years later. They still saw each other from time to time, but the old libertine, now wrapped in the arthritis of a sickly bachelor, was far from being to his sister-in-law what he pretended to be; and if he kept up the mother-daughter train, it was out of a sort of ex-lover’s compassion, bordering on vile selfishness, and chiefly to sanction the current gossip which swelled his vanity. Nébel evoked her mother; and with a boy’s extreme madness for married women, he recalled a certain evening when, as they were leafing through an Illustration together, leaning back, he had thought he felt on his suddenly tense nerves, a deep breath of desire rising from the full body that brushed against him. Lifting his eyes, Nebel had seen her gaze, in languid dizzy vagueness, resting heavily on his.

Had she been mistaken? She was terribly hysterical, but with rare overflowing manifestation; the disordered nerves clattered inwardly, and hence the sudden tenacity in a nonsense, the abrupt abandonment of a conviction; and in the prodromes of the crises, the growing, convulsive obstinacy, building up to great blocks of absurdities. She abused morphine, out of anguished necessity and for elegance. She was thirty-seven years old; she was tall, with very thick, flaming lips, which she moistened incessantly. Without being large, her eyes seemed so because they were a little sunken and had very long eyelashes; but they were admirable in shade and fire. She painted herself. She dressed, like her daughter, with perfect good taste, and this, no doubt, was her greatest seduction. She must have had, as a woman, deep charm; now hysteria had worked her body hard – being, of course, sick at the womb. When the whiplash of morphine passed, her eyes would mist over, and from the corners of her lips, from the globular eyelid, hung a fine net of wrinkles. But in spite of this, the same hysteria that was undoing his nerves was the nourishment, a little magical, that sustained his tonicity.

He loved Lydia dearly; and with the morals of bourgeois hysterics, he would have debased his daughter to make her happy – that is, to give her that which would have made his own happiness. Thus the anxiety of Nébel’s father in this respect touched his son to the depths of his lover’s chords. How had Lydia escaped?

For the cleanliness of her complexion, the frankness of her girlish passion that sprang with adorable freedom from her bright eyes, were, no longer proof of purity, but of a step of noble joy by which Nebel ascended triumphantly to pluck from the rotten plant the flower that begged for him.

This conviction was so intense that Nébel had never kissed it before. One afternoon, after lunch, when he was passing by Arrizabalaga’s house, he had a mad desire to see her. His joy was complete, for he found her alone, in her dressing gown, with her curls on her cheeks. As Nébel held her against the wall, she leaned back, laughing and cut, against the wall. And the boy, in front of her, almost touching her, felt in his limp hands the high happiness of an immaculate love, which it would have been so easy for him to stain.

But then, once his wife! Nébel hastened her marriage as much as possible. His age qualification, obtained in those days, allowed him, through his mother’s legitimate right, to pay the expenses. The father’s consent remained to be obtained, and the mother was pressing for this detail.

Her situation, which was too equivocal in Concordia, demanded a social sanction that had to begin, of course, with that of her daughter’s future father-in-law. And above all, she was sustained by the desire to humiliate, to force bourgeois morality to bend its knees before the very inconvenience she despised.

She had already touched on the point several times with her future son-in-law, with allusions to “my father-in-law”…. “my new family”… “my daughter’s sister-in-law”…. Nébel was silent, and the mother’s eyes then glowed with more fire.

Until one day the flame rose. Nébel had fixed the 18th of October for her marriage. It was still more than a month away, but the mother made it clear to the boy that she wanted his father present that night.

– It will be difficult,” said Nébel after a mortifying silence. He has a hard time going out at night… He never goes out.

– Ah,” exclaimed only the mother, biting her lip quickly. Another pause followed, but this one was already foreboding.

– Because you don’t make a clandestine marriage, do you?

– Oh,” smiled Nébel diffidently. My father doesn’t think so either.

– What then?

Another silence, more and more stormy.

– Is it because of me that your father doesn’t want to attend?

– No, no, madam! -exclaimed Nébel at last, impatiently. It is in his way … I’ll speak to him again, if you like.

– Me, want to? -smiled the mother, with her nose flaring. Do as you please…. Will you go away, Nébel, now? I’m not well.

Nébel went out, deeply displeased. What was he to say to his father? His father was always adamantly opposed to such a marriage, and already the son had taken steps to dispense with it.

– You can do that, and much more, and anything else you like, but my consent to make that entertaining woman your mother-in-law, never! After three days Nébel decided to clear up this state of affairs once and for all, and took advantage of a moment when Lidia was away.

– I spoke to my father,” Nébel began, “and he told me that it will be completely impossible for him to attend.

The mother turned a little pale, while her eyes, in a sudden gleam, stretched towards her temples.

– Ah! and why?

– I don’t know,” said Nébel in a muffled voice.

– That is to say… That your master’s father is afraid of getting dirty if he sets foot here?

– I don’t know,” he repeated with unconscious obstinacy.

– It’s a wanton offence, this gentleman! What has he imagined? -Who is he,” he added, his voice already altered, his lips quivering, “that he should give himself such a tone?

Nébel then felt the backlash of reaction in his family’s deepest stock.

– What is he, I don’t know! -he replied, his voice rushing in his turn, “but he not only refuses to attend, but he does not consent to it.

– What? what refuses? and why? who is he? the most authorised for this!

Nébel rose:

– Madam…

But she had risen too.

– Yes, him! You’re a creature! Ask him where he got his fortune, stolen from his clients! And with such airs! His blameless, spotless family, he fills his mouth with it! His family!… Tell him to tell you how many walls he had to jump over to go to sleep with his wife, before he married! Yes, and he comes to me with his family!… Very well, go away; I’ve had enough of hypocrisy! Have a good time!

III

Nébel lived four days wandering in the deepest despair. What could he expect after what had happened? On the fifth, and at nightfall, he received an obituary:

“Octavio: Lidia is quite ill, and only your presence could calm her.

María S. de Arrizabalaga”.

It was a ruse, he had no doubt. But if his Lidia was really….

He went that evening, and the mother received him with a discretion that astonished Nébel, without excessive affability, or the air of a sinner asking for an apology.

– If you want to see her…

Nebel came in with her mother, and saw her adored love in bed, her face with that unpowdered freshness that only fourteen years can give, and her body tucked up under the clothes that concealed her full youth.

She sat down beside him, and in vain did her mother wait for them to say something to each other: they only looked at each other and laughed.

Suddenly Nébel felt that they were alone, and the image of the mother came up sharply: “She is going away, so that in the transport of my won-over love, she may lose her head, and the marriage thus forced. But in that quarter of an hour of final enjoyment offered to him in advance and free of charge at the cost of a marriage promissory note, the 18-year-old boy felt – as if again against the wall – the pleasure without the slightest stain, of a pure love in all its halo of poetic idyll.

Only Nebel could say how great was his joy recovered after the shipwreck. He too forgot whatever it was in the mother’s explosion of slander, rabid craving to insult the undeserving. But he had the coldest resolve to cut the mother out of his life once they were married. The memory of his tender bride, pure and laughing in the bed of which a tip had been laid for him, kindled the promise of a voluptuous integrity, from which he had not robbed even the smallest diamond.

The following night, on arriving at Arrizabalaga’s, Nébel found the hall dark. After a long time, the maid opened the window:

– The ladies are not here.

– Have they gone out,” he asked in surprise.

– No, they’re going to Montevideo…. They have gone to the Salto to sleep on board.

– Ah,” muttered Nébel, terrified. He still had one hope.

– The doctor? Can I speak to him?

– He’s not here, he’s gone to the club after lunch….

Once alone in the dark street, Nébel raised and dropped his arms in mortal despondency: It was all over! His happiness, his joy, his happiness regained the day before, lost again and forever! She had a feeling that this time there was no redemption possible. His mother’s nerves had gone wild, like keys, and there was nothing more he could do.

It was beginning to drizzle. He walked to the corner, and from there, motionless under the street lamp, he stared stupidly at the pink house. He walked round the block, and stopped again under the lantern. Never, never!

Until half-past eleven he did the same thing. At last he went home and loaded his revolver. But a memory stopped him: months ago he had promised a German draughtsman that before he committed suicide – Nébel was a teenager – he would go to see him. A lively friendship, based on long philosophical talks, united him with Wilhelm’s old military man.

The next morning, very early, Nébel called at the poor man’s room. The expression on his face was quite explicit.

– Is it now? -asked the paternal friend, shaking him firmly by the hand.

– Pst! anyway!…. -replied the boy, looking away.

The draughtsman, with great calmness, then told him his own love drama.

– Go home,” he concluded, “and if you haven’t changed your mind by eleven o’clock, come back and have lunch with me, if that’s what we have to do. Then you’ll do as you like. Do you swear to me?

– I swear it,” Nébel replied, returning his tight grip with a great desire to cry.

A card from Lidia was waiting for him at home:

::::: “Idolatrous Octavio: My despair could not be greater, but mother has seen that if I married you, great pains were in store for me, I have understood as she did that the best thing was to separate us, and she swears to you never to forget that

your Lydia.

– Ah, it had to be like that! -cried the boy, and at the same time he saw with horror his face distorted in the mirror; it was his mother who had inspired the letter, she and her accursed madness! Lydia could not but write, and the poor girl, in her madness, wept all her love in her writing. Ah, if I could only see her some day, tell her how I have loved her, how much I love her now, my dearest soul!

Trembling, he went to the night table and picked up the revolver, but he remembered his new promise, and for a while he remained motionless, obstinately wiping a stain from the barrel with his finger-nail.