The Solitary

Kassim was a sickly man, a jeweler by trade, though he had no established shop. He worked for the great houses, his specialty being the setting of precious stones. Few hands were like his for delicate settings. With more drive and commercial skill, he would have been rich. But at thirty-five he was still in his room, fitted out as a workshop beneath the window.

Kassim, with his meager body and an exanguious face shadowed by a sparse black beard, had a beautiful and intensely passionate wife. The young woman, of street origin, had aspired with her beauty to a higher match. She waited until she was twenty, provoking men and her neighbors with her body. At last, fearful, she nervously accepted Kassim.

No more dreams of luxury, however. Her husband—skilled, an artist even—was completely lacking in the character to make a fortune. Therefore, while the jeweler worked bent over his pliers, she, with her elbows resting, kept a slow and heavy gaze fixed upon her husband, only to tear herself away abruptly and follow with her eyes through the glass the well-to-do passerby who could have been her husband.

Whatever Kassim earned, nonetheless, was for her. He also worked on Sundays in order to offer her a little extra. When María desired a jewel—and with what passion she desired one!—he worked at night. Afterward there would be coughing and stitches in his side; but María had her brilliant sparkles.

Little by little, daily contact with the gems made her love the artisan’s tasks, and she followed with ardor the intimate subtleties of the setting. But when the jewel was finished—it had to leave, it was not for her—she fell deeper into the disappointment of her marriage. She would try on the piece of jewelry, pausing before the mirror. In the end she would leave it about and go to her room. Kassim would get up upon hearing her sobs and find her in bed, refusing to listen to him.

“I do, however, do all I can for you,” he would say at last, sadly.

The sobs would rise with this, and the jeweler would slowly resettle himself at his bench.

These things repeated themselves so much that Kassim no longer got up to console her. Console her! Of what? Which did not prevent Kassim from prolonging his evenings further for the sake of a greater extra.

He was an indecisive, irresolute, and silent man. His wife’s gazes now lingered with a heavier fixity upon that mute tranquility.

“And you’re a man, you!” she would murmur.

Kassim, over his settings, did not cease moving his fingers.

“You’re not happy with me, María,” he would remark after a while.

“Happy! And you have the nerve to say it! Who could be happy with you? Not even the lowest of women!... Poor devil!” she would conclude with a nervous laugh, walking away.

Kassim worked that night until three in the morning, and his wife afterward had new sparkles that she considered for an instant with pressed-together lips.

“Yes... it’s not a startling tiara!... When did you make it?”

“Since Tuesday,” he looked at her with faded tenderness, “you were sleeping at night...”

“Oh, you could have gone to bed!... Immense, the diamonds!”

For her passion was the voluminous stones that Kassim mounted. She followed the work with a mad hunger for it to be finished once and for all, and the moment the jewelry was fitted, she ran with it to the mirror. Then, a fit of sobs.

“Anyone, any husband, even the worst, would make a sacrifice to please his wife! And you... and you... I don’t even have a miserable dress to put on!”

When a certain limit of respect for the man is breached, a woman may come to say incredible things to her husband.

Kassim’s wife breached that limit with a passion at least equal to the one she felt for diamonds. One afternoon, while putting away his jewels, Kassim noticed the absence of a brooch—five thousand pesos in two solitaries. He searched his drawers again.

“Haven’t you seen the brooch, María? I left it here.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“Where is it?” he turned around, surprised.

“Here!”

His wife, her eyes glowing and her mouth mocking, stood tall with the brooch pinned on.

“It suits you very well,” Kassim said after a moment. “Let’s put it away.”

María laughed.

“Oh, no! It’s mine.”

“Joking?...”

“Yes, it’s a joke! It’s a joke, yes! How it hurts you to think it could be mine... Tomorrow I’ll give it to you. Today I’m going to the theater with it.”

Kassim turned pale.

“You’re doing wrong... they might see you. They would lose all confidence in me.”

“Oh!” she shut herself away with furious annoyance, slamming the door violently.

Upon returning from the theater, she placed the jewel on the nightstand. Kassim got up and put it away in his workshop under lock and key. When he returned, his wife was sitting on the bed.

“That is to say, you’re afraid I’ll steal it! That I’m a thief!”

“Don’t look at me like that... You were imprudent, nothing more.”

“Ah! And they trust you! You, you! And when your wife asks you for a little flattery, and wants... you call me a thief! Infamous!”

She fell asleep at last. But Kassim did not sleep.

Later they handed Kassim a solitaire to set, the most admirable diamond that had ever passed through his hands.

“Look, María, what a stone. I’ve never seen another like it.”

His wife said nothing; but Kassim felt her breathing deeply over the solitaire.

“An admirable water...” he continued, “it will cost nine or ten thousand pesos.”

“A ring!” María murmured at last.

“No, it’s for a man... A pin.”

To the rhythm of the solitaire’s mounting, Kassim received upon his hardworking back all that burned with rancor and frustrated coquetry in his wife. Ten times a day she would interrupt her husband to go with the diamond before the mirror. Afterward she would try it on with different dresses.

“If you want to do it later...” Kassim ventured. “It’s urgent work.”

He waited for a reply in vain; his wife was opening the balcony.

“María, they can see you!”

“Take that! There’s your stone!”

The solitaire, violently torn away, rolled across the floor.

Kassim, livid, picked it up, examining it, and then raised his gaze from the floor to his wife.

“Well, why are you looking at me like that? Did your stone take any harm?”

“No,” replied Kassim. And he immediately resumed his task, although his hands trembled enough to pity.

But he finally had to get up to see his wife in the bedroom, in the midst of a nervous crisis. Her hair had come undone and her eyes were popping out of their sockets.

“Give me the diamond!” she cried. “Give it to me! We’ll run away! For me! Give it to me!”

“María...” Kassim stammered, trying to untangle himself.

“Ah!” his maddened wife roared. “You’re the thief, you wretch! You’ve stolen my life from me, thief, thief! And you thought I wasn’t going to get even... cuckold! Ha! Look at me... it never occurred to you, did it? Ah!” and she brought both hands to her choked throat. But when Kassim was leaving, she sprang from the bed and fell, managing to grab him by a boot.

“It doesn’t matter! The diamond, give it to me! I don’t want anything else! It’s mine, you wretched Kassim!”

Kassim helped her up, livid.

“You’re sick, María. We’ll talk later... go to bed.”

“My diamond!”

“Well, we’ll see if it’s possible... go to bed.”

“Give it to me!”

The lump rose again in her throat.

Kassim went back to working on his solitaire. Since his hands possessed a mathematical certainty, only a few hours were left now.

María got up to eat, and Kassim showed her his usual solicitude. At the end of dinner his wife looked him straight in the face.

“It’s a lie, Kassim,” she told him.

“Oh!” Kassim replied, smiling, “it’s nothing.”

“I swear to you it’s a lie!” she insisted.

Kassim smiled again, touching her hand with clumsy affection.

“Crazy girl! I tell you I don’t remember anything.”

And he got up to resume his task. His wife, with her face in her hands, followed him with her gaze.

“And he says nothing more to me than that...” she murmured. And with a deep nausea for that sticky, flabby, and inert thing that was her husband, she went to her room.

She did not sleep well. She woke up, late already, and saw light in the workshop; her husband was still working. An hour later, the latter heard a shriek.

“Give it to me!”

“Yes, it’s for you; there’s not long now, María,” he replied hurriedly, getting up. But his wife, after that nightmare scream, was sleeping again. At two in the morning Kassim could consider his task finished; the diamond gleamed, firm and manly in its setting. With a silent step he went to the bedroom and lit the candle. María was sleeping on her back, in the icy whiteness of her nightgown and the sheet.

He went to the workshop and came back again. He contemplated the almost bare chest for a moment, and with a faded sonrisa he pulled the unbuttoned nightgown aside a little more.

His wife did not feel it.

There was not much light. Kassim’s face suddenly took on a harsh immobility, and holding the jewel for an instant just above her bare breast, he drove the entire pin straight down, firm and perpendicular like a nail, into his wife’s heart.

There was a sudden opening of the eyes, followed by a slow lowering of the eyelids. The fingers arched, and nothing more.

The jewel, shaken by the convulsion of the wounded nerve, trembled unsteadily for an instant. Kassim waited a moment; and when the solitary stone finally lay perfectly still, he was able to withdraw, closing the door quietly behind him.