The Vampire by Horacio Quiroga11:39 Jan 03 2011
Times Read: 894
"la muerte de una mujer bella es sin lugar a dudas el tema más poético del mundo"
(Quiroga)
The Vampire.
Horacio Quiroga
- Yes! --Rhode the lawyer-- said. I had that case. It is a quite rare case, around here, of vampirism. Rogelio Castelar, a man until then normal -besides some fantasies- was found one night at the cemetery dragging the recently buried corpse of a woman. The individual had the hands destroyed because of he had removed a cubic meter of earth with the nails. In the edge of the grave laid the remains of the just burned coffin. And, as macabre complement, a cat, without any doubt foreign, laying around there with the kidneys broken. As you see, nothing was missing in that picture.
In the first interview with the man I saw that I must deal with a grim mad man. At the beginning he was obstinate in not responding, although without letting a moment to agree with his head to my reasoning. Finally he seemed to find in me the man worthy to listen to him. His mouth shook by the anxiety of communicating.
- Ah! You do understand me! --he exclaimed, fixing his fever eyes on me. And he continued with a vertigo that I can barely give some idea of what I remember:
- To you I will tell everything! Yes! About how was that about the ca... the female cat? Me! Only me!
- Listen to me: When I arrived... There, my woman...
- Where there? --I interrupted to him.
- There... The cat or not? Then?... When I arrived there my woman ran like a crazy person to embrace me. And she immediately fainted. All hurried then on me, staring at me with crazy people' eyes.
My house! It had been burned, collapsed, sunk with all I had inside! That one, that was my house! But she was not my woman!
Then a miserable one devoured by the madness shook my shoulder, shouting at me:
- What are you doing? Answer!
And I answered to him:
- She is my woman! My woman who has been saved!
Then an outcry rose:
- She is not! That one is not!
I felt that my eyes, when lowering to watch what I had between my arms, wanted to skip from the orbits. Was not that one Maria, the Maria of me, and in a faint? A blood blow ignited my eyes and from my arms fell a woman who was not Maria. Then I jumped on a barrel and I dominated all the workers. And I shouted with the hoarse voice:
- Why! Why!
No one had the hair done because of the wind threw to all the hair aside. And their eyes outside were staring at me.
Then I began to hear from everywhere around:
- She died.
- She died squashed.
- She died.
- She shouted.
- She shouted once.
- I felt that She shouted.
- I felt that too
- She died.
- His woman died squashed.
- By all the saints! --I shouted then twisting my hands. Let's save her, companions! It's our duty to save her!
And we all ran. We all ran with quiet fury to the rubbish. The bricks flew, the frames fell deformed and the removal advanced amazingly fast.
At four o'clock I was working alone. I had not a healthy nail left, nor in my fingers was anything to dig. But in my chest! Anguish and rage of huge misfortune that shook in my chest when I was looking for my Maria!
There was nothing left but the piano to remove. There was an epidemic silence, one fallen skirt and dead rats. Under the piano, knocked down, on the garnet floor of blood and coal, the maid was squashed.
I dragged her to the yard, where there were nothing but four quiet, viscous walls of tar and water. The slippery ground reflected the dark sky. Then I took the maid and I began to drag her around the yard.
They were mine, those steps. And what steps! A step, another step another step!
In the hollow of a door -coal and hole, nothing more- was curled up the cat of the house, that had escaped from the disaster, although spoiled. The fourth time that the maid and I passed in front of her, the cat sent a rage howl.
Ah! It was not me, then?, I shouted desperate. It was not me who looked for between the rubbish, the ruin and the shroud of the frames, a single piece of my Maria!
The sixth time that we passed in front of the cat, the animal bristled. The seventh time rose, taking to the dray her hind legs. And then she followed us, striving for wetting the tongue in the lubricated hair of the maid, --of her, of Maria, not damned corpse scavenger!
- corpse scavenger! --I repeated looking at him--. But then that was in the cemetery!
The vampire squashed his hair while he stared at me with his immense madman eyes.
- Then you knew it! --he said. Then everybody know it and they allow me to speak during one hour! Ah! --he claimed in a sob, throwing his head back and sliding himself by the wall until falling seated: But who can tell to the miserable of me, here, why at my house I ripped off my nails for not to save from the tar nor even the hanging hair of my Maria.
I did not need more, as you understand --the lawyer concluded, to orient myself completely about the individual. He was interned immediately. Two years ago, and last night he has been released, perfectly cured.
- Last night? --a young man dressed in a rigorous black mourning' suit- exclaimed. And at night crazy people is released?
- Why not? The individual is cured, as healthy as you and me. Besides if he backslides, what is a rule in these vampires, at these hours he must be already in functions. But these are not my business. Good night, gentlemen.
Horacio Quiroga
1921
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