A Season of Love · I

Spring

It was Carnival Tuesday. Nébel had just entered the corso, already at dusk, and while untangling a pack of streamers, he looked at the carriage ahead. Surprised by a face he hadn’t seen the previous afternoon, he asked his companions:

“Who is she? She doesn’t look bad.”

“A demon! She’s gorgeous. I think a niece, or something like that, of Dr. Arrizabalaga. She arrived yesterday, I believe...”

Nébel then fixed his eyes intently on the lovely creature. She was still a very young girl, perhaps no more than fourteen, but completely nubile. Beneath her very dark hair, she possessed a face of supreme whiteness, of that matte and satin white which is the exclusive heritage of very fine complexions. Blue eyes, long, losing themselves towards the temples in the fringe of her black eyelashes. Perhaps a little wide apart, which gives, beneath a smooth brow, an air of great nobility or of stubborn pride. But her eyes, thus, filled that blossoming countenance with the light of their beauty. And upon feeling them held for a moment by Nébel upon his own, he was dazzled.

“What a charm!” he murmured, remaining motionless with one knee on the cushion of the surrey. A moment later the streamers were flying toward the victoria. Both carriages were already linked by the hanging bridge of ribbons, and the girl who caused it smiled from time to time at the gallant youth.

Yet that was already bordering on a lack of respect toward the people, the coachman, and even the carriage: over his shoulder, his head, whip, mudguards, the streamers rained ceaselessly. So much so that the two people sitting in the back turned around and, though smiling, carefully examined the spendthrift.

“Who are they?” Nébel asked in a low voice.

“Dr. Arrizabalaga; true, you don’t know him. The other is your girl’s mother... She’s the doctor’s sister-in-law.”

As Arrizabalaga and the lady smiled frankly at that exuberance of youth, as if in the wake of the inspection, 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 three months, and to which Nébel brought all the adoration that could fit into his passionate adolescence. While the corso continued, and in Concordia it stretches on to unbelievable hours, Nébel incessantly reached his arm forward, so well that the cuff of his shirt, undone, danced upon his hand.

The next day the scene was repeated; and since this time the corso resumed at night with a battle of flowers, Nébel exhausted four immense baskets in a quarter of an hour. Arrizabalaga and the lady laughed, turning around frequently, and the young woman scarcely took her eyes off Nébel. The latter cast a look of despair at his empty baskets; yet upon the cushion of the surrey there still remained one, a poor bouquet of everlasting flowers and country jasmine. Nébel leaped with it over the wheel of the surrey, almost dislocated an ankle, and running to the victoria, panting, soaked in sweat and enthusiasm shining in his eyes, he handed the bouquet to the young woman. She frantically searched for another, but she didn’t have one. Her companions laughed.

“You crazy girl!” the lady said to her, pointing to her chest. “There’s one for you!”

The carriage was starting off at a trot. Nébel, who had stepped down from the running board, distressed, ran and caught the bouquet that the young woman held out to him, with his body almost out of the car.

Nébel had arrived three days before from Buenos Aires, where he was finishing his baccalaureate. He had stayed there seven years, so his knowledge of Concordia’s current society was minimal. He was supposed to remain another fifteen days in his native city, enjoyed in the full peace of his soul, if not of his body; and behold, since the second day he was losing all his serenity. But what a charm in exchange!

“What a charm!” he repeated, thinking of that ray of light, flower, and female flesh that had reached him from the carriage. He recognized himself as truly and deeply dazzled—and in love, of course.

And if she should want him!... Would she want him? Nébel, to figure it out, relied much more than on the bouquet at her bosom upon the bewildered haste with which the young girl had searched for something to give him. He clearly recalled the brightness of her eyes when she saw him running up, the restless expectation with which she awaited him, and—in another sense, the softness of the young bosom as she handed him the bouquet.

And now, it was over! She was leaving the next day for Montevideo. What did the rest matter to him—Concordia, his former friends, his own father? At least he would go with her as far as Buenos Aires.

Indeed, they made the trip together, and during it, Nébel reached the highest degree of passion that can be attained by an 18-year-old romantic boy who feels himself loved. The mother received the almost childish idyll with affable complacency, and often laughed upon seeing them, speaking little, smiling endlessly, and gazing at each other infinitely.

The farewell was brief, since Nébel did not want to lose the last vestige of sanity he had left, cutting his career short to follow her.

They would return to Concordia in the winter, perhaps for a season. Would he go? “Oh, not me return!” And while Nébel walked away slowly along the dock, turning back every moment, she, with her chest against the rail, her head slightly lowered, followed him with her eyes, while on the gangway the sailors lifted their smiling ones to that idyll—and to the still-short dress of the very tender sweetheart.

Summer

On June 13th Nébel returned to Concordia, and although he knew from the very first moment that Lidia was there, he spent a week without worrying much or little about her. Four months are ample time for a flash of passion, and scarcely in the dormant water of his soul did the last glimmer manage to ruffle his self-esteem. He felt a curiosity to see her, yes. But a trifling incident, pricking his vanity, dragged him back in. The first Sunday, Nébel, like any good village boy, waited on the corner for mass to let out. At last, perhaps the last ones, erect and looking straight ahead, Lidia and her mother advanced through the line of boys.

Nébel, upon seeing her again, felt his eyes dilate to drink in to the fullest the abruptly adored figure. He awaited with an almost painful eagerness the instant when her eyes, in a sudden flash of joyful surprise, would recognize him among the group.

But she passed, with her cold gaze fixed straight ahead.

“It seems she doesn’t remember you anymore,” a friend told him, who beside him had watched the incident.

“Not much!” he smiled to himself. “And it’s a pity, because I really liked the girl.”

But when he was alone he wept to himself over his misfortune. And now that he had seen her again! How, how he had always loved her, he who thought he didn’t remember her anymore! And it was over! Bang, bang, bang!—he repeated without realizing it, with the habit of a boy.—Bang! everything is over!

Suddenly: What if she hadn’t seen me?... Of course! but of course! His face brightened again, embracing with full conviction a probability like that, profoundly reasonable.

At three o’clock he was knocking at Dr. Arrizabalaga’s house. His idea was elementary: he would consult the lawyer on some wretched pretext, and meanwhile perhaps he would see her. A sudden run across the patio answered the doorbell, and Lidia, to check her momentum, had to grab violently onto the glass door. She saw Nébel, uttered an exclamation, and hiding the domestic plainness of her clothes with her arms, fled even more swiftly.

An instant later the mother was opening the office, and welcomed her old acquaintance with a more lively complacency than four months before. Nébel was beside himself with joy, and since the lady didn’t seem concerned with Nébel’s legal worries, he preferred such a presence a million times over to that of the lawyer.

Even so, he was on pins and needles from a happiness that was too ardent and, since he was 18 years old, he wished to leave once and for all to enjoy his immense bliss alone and unhindered.

“So soon, already!” the lady told him. “I hope we’ll have the pleasure of seeing you again... Isn’t that so?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am!”

“At home we would all have a great deal of pleasure... I suppose all of us! Shall we consult?” she smiled with maternal mockery.

“Oh, with all my soul!” Nébel replied.

“Lidia! Come for a moment! There is someone here whom you know.”

Nébel had already been seen by her; but it didn’t matter.

Lidia arrived when he was standing. She advanced to meet him, her eyes sparkling with happiness, and handed him a large bouquet of violets with adorable awkwardness.

“If you don’t mind,” the mother continued, “you could come every Monday... what do you think?”

“That it’s far too little, ma’am!” replied the young man. “Fridays too... may I?”

The lady burst out laughing.

“How eager! I don’t know... let’s see what Lidia says. What do you say, Lidia?”

The child, who kept her laughing eyes fixed on Nébel, said yes right to his face, since it was to him that her answer was owed.

“Very well: then until Monday, Nébel.”

Nébel objected:

“Wouldn’t you allow me to come tonight? Today is an extraordinary day...”

“Well then! Tonight too! Accompany him, Lidia.”

But Nébel, in a mad need for movement, said goodbye right there, and fled with his bouquet, whose stem he had almost undone, and with his soul projected into the highest heaven of happiness.

For two months, every moment they saw each other, every hour that separated them, Nébel and Lidia adored one another. To him, romantic to the point of feeling the state of painful melancholy provoked by a simple drizzle that grays the courtyard, that child, with her angelic face, her blue eyes and her early fullness, had to embody the utmost possible sum of the ideal. To her, Nébel was manly, handsome and intelligent. There was no cloud for the future in their mutual love other than Nébel’s minority. The young man, setting aside studies, career paths and superfluities of the sort, wanted to get married. As proven facts, there were only two things: that it was absolutely impossible for him to live without his Lidia, and that he would plow through anything that opposed it. He foresaw—or rather, felt—that he was going to run aground harshly.

His father, indeed, who had been deeply displeased by the year Nébel was wasting after a carnival romance, was bound to dot the i’s with terrible vigor. At the end of August, he spoke decisively to his son one day:

“I’ve been told you continue your visits to the Arrizabalagas. Is that true? Because you don’t deign to tell me a word.”

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

“If I didn’t tell you anything, Dad, it’s because I know you don’t like me talking about that.”

“Bah! How could I like it? You can, in fact, save yourself the trouble... But I’d like to know what state you’re in. Are you going to that house as an engaged man?”

“Yes.”

“And do they receive you formally?”

“I-I think so.”

The father looked at him fixedly and drummed on the table.

“That’s good! Very well!... Listen to me, because I have the duty to show you the way. Do you well know what you’re doing? Have you thought about what might happen?”

“Happen?... what?”

“That you marry that girl. But pay attention: you are already old enough to reflect, 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!”

“Yes, what they do over there! Bah! Don’t make that face... I’m not referring to your... fiancée. She is a child, and as such does not know what she is doing. But do you know what they live on?”

“No! Nor do I care, because even though you’re my father...”

“Bah, bah, bah! Leave that for later. I am not speaking to you as a father, but as any honest man could speak to you. And since you are so outraged by what I ask, find out from anyone willing to tell you what kind of relations your fiancée’s mother has with her brother-in-law, go on, ask!”

“Yes! I already know she has been...”

“Ah, do you know she has been Arrizabalaga’s mistress? And that he or someone else maintains the house in Montevideo? And you’re as cool as a cucumber!”

“...!”

“Yes, I know, your fiancée has nothing to do with this, I know! There is no impulse nobler than yours... But walk carefully, because you might arrive too late!... No, no, calm down! I have no idea of offending your fiancée, and I believe, as I’ve told you, that she is not yet contaminated by the rot that surrounds her. But if her mother wants to sell her to you in marriage, or rather to the fortune you will inherit when I die, tell her that old Nébel is not disposed to such traffickings, and that the devil will take him before he consents to that. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

The young man loved his father very much despite the latter’s hard character; he left full of rage at not having been able to vent his anger, all the more violent since he himself knew it to be unjust. For some time now he had not been ignorant of this: Lidia’s mother had been Arrizabalaga’s mistress during her husband’s lifetime, and even four or five years afterward. They still saw each other from time to time, but the old libertine, huddled now in the arthritis of a sickly bachelor, was far from being what was claimed regarding his sister-in-law; and if he maintained the mother and daughter’s lifestyle, he did so out of a sort of ex-lover’s compassion bordering on vile selfishness, and above all to authorize the current gossip that puffed up his vanity.

Nébel conjured up the mother; and with a shudder of a young man mad for married women, he recalled a certain night when, turning the pages of an Illustration together and leaning close, he had believed he felt, upon his suddenly tense nerves, a deep breath of desire arising from the full body that brushed against him. Upon raising his eyes, Nébel had seen her gaze, in a languid vagueness of dizziness, rest heavily upon his.

Had he been mistaken? She was terribly hysterical, but with a rare overflowing manifestation; her disordered nerves ticked inward, and hence her sudden tenacity in a nonsense, the abrupt abandonment of a conviction; and in the prodromes of her crises, a growing, convulsive obstinacy, building itself up out of massive blocks of absurdities. She abused morphine, out of agonizing necessity and for elegance. She was thirty-seven years old; she was tall, with very thick and glowing lips, which she constantly moistened. Without being large, her eyes seemed so because they were somewhat sunken and had very long lashes; but they were admirable for their shadow and fire. She painted her face. She dressed, like her daughter, with perfect good taste, and this was undoubtedly her greatest seduction. She must have had, as a woman, profound charm; now hysteria had worked heavily upon her body—being, moreover, a sufferer from abdominal illness. When the lash of the morphine passed, her eyes would cloud over, and from the corners of her lips, from her bulbous eyelid, a fine net of wrinkles would hang. But despite this, the very hysteria that unstrung her nerves was the nourishment, somewhat magical, that sustained her tonicity.