El solitario – de Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte, de Horacio Quiroga – 1917 – Translated from Spanish 🇪🇸 into English 🏴 by Enzo Martinelli – Stories of Love, Madness and Death
©️ Enzo Martinelli 2025
Kassim was a sickly man, a jeweller by profession, even if he did not have an established shop. He worked for the great houses, his speciality being the setting of precious stones. There were few hands like his for delicate settings. With more drive and commercial skill, he would have been rich. But at the age of thirty-five, he continued to work in his room, which was set up in a workshop under the window.
Kassim, with a mean body and an exhausted face shaded by a sparse black beard, had a beautiful and very passionate wife. The young woman, of street origin, had aspired with her beauty to a higher link. She waited until she was twenty, provoking men and her neighbours with her body. Fearful at last, she nervously accepted Kassim.
No more dreams of luxury, however. Her husband, still a skilled artist, lacked the character to make a fortune. So, while the jeweller worked bent over his tongs, she, on her elbows, held her husband in a slow, heavy gaze, only to tear herself away abruptly and follow with her eyes behind the glass the stance passer-by who might have been her husband.
Whatever Kassim earned, however, was for her. On Sundays he also worked in order to be able to offer her a supplement. When Maria wanted a piece of jewellery – and how passionately she wanted it – she worked at night. Then there were coughs and stitches on the side; but Maria had her sparks of brilliance.
Little by little the daily dealings with the gems came to make her love the work of the artificer, and she followed with ardour the intimate delicacies of the setting. But when the jewel was finished-she had to go, it was not for her-she fell deeper into the disappointment of her marriage. She tried on the jewel, pausing before the mirror. At last she left it there, and went to her room. Kassim would get up at the sound of her sobs, and find her in bed, unwilling to listen to him.
-I do, however, all I can for you,” he said at last, sadly.
The sobs rose with this, and the jeweller slowly settled back on his bench.
These things were repeated, so much so that Kassim no longer rose to comfort her. Comfort her! from what? But this did not prevent Kassim from prolonging his evenings even longer in order to supplement them.
He was an indecisive, irresolute and silent man. His wife’s eyes were now fixed with a heavier stare on his mute tranquillity.
-And you are a man, you,” she murmured.
Kassim’s fingers kept wiggling over his crimps.
-You are not happy with me, Maria,” he said after a while.
-Happy! And you have the nerve to say so! Who can be happy with you? Not the last of the women!… Poor devil!” he would conclude with a nervous laugh, leaving.
Kassim worked that night until three in the morning, and his wife then had new sparks that she considered for a moment with tight lips.
-Yes… it’s not a surprising tiara!… when did you make it?
-Since Tuesday,” he looked at her with faded tenderness, “you slept at night…..
-Oh, you could have gone to bed!… Immense, the brilliants!
For his passion was the voluminous stones that Kassim mounted. He followed the work with a mad hunger for it to be finished at once, and as soon as the jewel was ready, he ran with it to the mirror. Then a fit of sobbing.
-Every one, every husband, the last one, would make a sacrifice to flatter his wife! And you… and you… I haven’t a miserable dress to wear!
When a certain limit of respect for the man is crossed, a woman can say incredible things to her husband.
Kassim’s wife crossed that boundary with a passion at least equal to the passion she felt for diamonds. One afternoon, while putting away his jewellery, Kassim noticed a missing pin – five thousand pesos in two solitaires.
-Haven’t you seen the brooch, Maria? I left it here.
-Yes, I’ve seen it.
-Where is it?” He turned around in wonder.
-Here!
His wife, her eyes alight and her mouth mocking, stood with the pin on.
-It looks very nice on you,” said Kassim after a while, “Let’s keep it.
Maria laughed.
-Oh, no, it’s mine.
-Joke?
-Yes, it’s a joke! It’s a joke, yes! How it hurts you to think that it could be mine… Tomorrow I’ll give it to you. Today I’m going to the theatre with him.
Kassim demurred.
-You’re wrong… they might see you. They’d lose all confidence in me.
-Oh,” she closed with angry annoyance, slamming the door violently.
Returning from the theatre, she placed the jewel on the bedside table. Kassim got up and locked it in his workshop. When he returned, his wife was sitting on the bed.
-I mean, you’re afraid I’ll steal it! I’m a thief!
-Don’t look like that… You were just being reckless, that’s all.
-Ah! And to you they entrust it! To you, to you! And when your wife asks you for a little flattery, and wants… you call me a thief! -Infamous!
He fell asleep at last. But Kassim did not sleep.
Then they gave Kassim to mount, a solitaire, the most admirable brilliant that had ever passed through his hands.
-Look, Maria, what a stone. I have never seen another like it.
His wife said nothing, but Kassim felt her breathing deeply on the solitaire.
-An admirable water,” he continued, “it will cost nine or ten thousand pesos.
-A ring,” murmured Maria at last.
-No, it’s a man’s… A pin.
To the beat of the solitaire’s mounting, Kassim received on his hard-working back all that burned with resentment and frustrated cocooning in his wife. Ten times a day she interrupted her husband to go to the mirror with the shiny one. Then she would try it on with different dresses.
-If you want to do it later,” Kassim dared, “it’s an urgent job.
He waited in vain for an answer; his wife was opening the balcony.
-Maria, they can see you!
-Here’s your stone!
The solitaire, violently wrenched away, rolled on the floor.
Kassim, livid, picked it up and examined it, then looked up from the floor at his wife.
-Well, why are you looking at me like that? Did your stone do something to itself?
-No,” said Kassim. And he resumed his work at once, though his hands were shaking with pity.
But he had to get up at last to see his wife in the bedroom, in the throes of a nervous breakdown. Her hair had come loose and her eyes were bulging out of their sockets.
-Give me the shiny!” he cried, “Give it to me! We’ll get away! For me! Give it to me!
-Maria…” Kassim stammered, trying to shake it off.
-Ah,” roared his wife madly, “you’re the thief, you wretch! you’ve stolen my life, thief, thief! and you thought I wasn’t going to get even, you cuckold! aha! Look at me… you never thought of that, did you? Ah – and she put both hands to her throat, choking. But as Kassim was leaving, she jumped off the bed and fell, reaching down to grab it from a booty.
-It doesn’t matter! The shiny one, give it to me! I don’t want more than that! It’s mine, Kassim wretch!
Kassim helped her up, livid.
-You’re sick, Maria. We’ll talk later… lie down.
-My brilliant!
-Well, we’ll see if it’s possible… -Lie down.
-Give it to me!
The ball went back to the throat.
Kassim went back to work on his solitaire. As his hands had a mathematical certainty, there were only a few hours left.
Maria got up to eat, and Kassim had the usual request with her. At the end of the meal his wife looked him straight in the face.
-It’s a lie, Kassim,” she said.
-Oh,” Kassim replied, smiling, “it’s nothing.
-I swear it’s a lie,” she insisted.
Kassim smiled again, touching her hand with clumsy affection.
-Crazy! I tell you, I don’t remember anything.
And he got up to continue his work. His wife, her face in her hands, followed him with her eyes.
-And it tells me no more than that,” she murmured. And with a deep nausea for the sticky, flabby, inert thing that was her husband, she went to her room.
She did not sleep well. She woke up late and saw light in the workshop; her husband was still working. An hour later, he heard a shriek.
-Give it to me!
-Yes, it’s for you; it won’t be long now, Maria,” he said hastily, and got up. But his wife, after that nightmarish cry, slept again. At two o’clock in the morning, Kassim was able to finish his task; the brilliant was gleaming, firm and manly in its setting. With silent steps he went to the bedroom and lit the candle. Mary slept on her back, in the icy whiteness of her nightdress and the sheet.
He went to the workshop and came back again. He gazed for a while at the almost bare breast, and with a faded smile he pulled the loose nightdress a little further aside.
His wife did not feel it.
There was not much light. Kassim’s face suddenly took on a hard immobility, and suspending for an instant the jewel in the flower of her bare breast, he plunged, firm and perpendicular as a nail, the whole pin into his wife’s heart.
There was a sudden opening of the eyes, followed by a slow drooping of the eyelids. The fingers arched, and nothing more.
The jewel, shaken by the convulsion of the wounded ganglion, trembled for a moment, unbalanced. Kassim waited a moment; and when the solitaire was at last perfectly still, he was then able to withdraw, closing the door noiselessly behind him.
Step into the eerie, beautiful, and captivating world of Horacio Quiroga, the master of the short story in Latin American literature. Known for his gripping tales that blur the lines between man and nature, life and death, and reason and madness, Quiroga’s stories are as haunting today as when they were first written.
This new translation brings a fresh, modern voice to Quiroga’s timeless works, making them more accessible than ever to contemporary English readers. From the perilous jungles of Misiones to the psychological depths of human nature, Quiroga’s narratives pull you into a world where survival and horror are intricately intertwined.
What sets this edition apart is its complementary critical analysis, offering insights into Quiroga’s writing style, thematic preoccupations, and his influence on modern horror and psychological fiction. Explore how his tragic personal life shaped his fascination with death, isolation, and the frailty of the human mind.
Additionally, this edition features stunning AI-generated imagerybringing Quiroga’s vivid and unsettling landscapes to life in a way never before seen. These visuals, inspired by the visceral imagery of his stories, serve as an artistic interpretation of the strange and eerie atmospheres that define his work.
Whether you are new to Quiroga or a longtime fan, this collection promises to both captivate and unsettle, offering a fresh lens on the terrifying beauty of his storytelling.
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