The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories Read online

  Quiroga’s is an art that speaks to us clearly and passionately, charged with the emotion of his jungle setting. The action is usually of heroic simplicity. Quiroga does not transcribe life; he dramatizes it. His vision is fresh, intense, dramatic. He seems caught up in it, and so are we.

  George D. Schade

  The Feather Pillow

  Her entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers. A blond, angelic, and timid young girl, the childish fancies she had dreamed about being a bride had been chilled by her husband’s rough character. She loved him very much, nonetheless, although sometimes she gave a light shudder when, as they returned home through the streets together at night, she cast a furtive glance at the impressive stature of her Jordan, who had been silent for an hour. He, for his part, loved her profoundly but never let it be seen.

  For three months—they had been married in April—they lived in a special kind of bliss. Doubtless she would have wished less severity in the rigorous sky of love, more expansive and less cautious tenderness, but her husband’s impassive manner always restrained her.

  The house in which they lived influenced her chills and shuddering to no small degree. The whiteness of the silent patio—friezes, columns, and marble statues—produced the wintry impression of an enchanted palace. Inside, the glacial brilliance of stucco, the completely bare walls, affirmed the sensation of unpleasant coldness. As one crossed from one room to another, the echo of his steps reverberated throughout the house, as if long abandonment had sensitized its resonance.

  Alicia passed the autumn in this strange love nest. She had determined, however, to cast a veil over her former dreams and live like a sleeping beauty in the hostile house, trying not to think about anything until her husband arrived each evening.

  It is not strange that she grew thin. She had a light attack of influenza that dragged on insidiously for days and days: after that Alicia’s health never returned. Finally one afternoon she was able to go into the garden, supported on her husband’s arm. She looked around listlessly. Suddenly Jordan, with deep tenderness, ran his hand very slowly over her head, and Alicia instantly burst into sobs, throwing her arms around his neck. For a long time she cried out all the fears she had kept silent, redoubling her weeping at Jordan’s slightest caress. Then her sobs subsided, and she stood a long while, her face hidden in the hollow of his neck, not moving or speaking a word.

  This was the last day Alicia was well enough to be up. On the following day she awakened feeling faint. Jordan’s doctor examined her with minute attention, prescribing calm and absolute rest.

  “I don’t know,” he said to Jordan at the street door. “She has a great weakness that I am unable to explain. And with no vomiting, nothing . . . if she wakes tomorrow as she did today, call me at once.”

  When she awakened the following day, Alicia was worse. There was a consultation. It was agreed there was an anemia of incredible progression, completely inexplicable. Alicia had no more fainting spells, but she was visibly moving toward death. The lights were lighted all day long in her bedroom, and there was complete silence. Hours went by without the slightest sound. Alicia dozed. Jordan virtually lived in the drawing room, which was also always lighted. With tireless persistence he paced ceaselessly from one end of the room to the other. The carpet swallowed his steps. At times he entered the bedroom and continued his silent pacing back and forth alongside the bed, stopping for an instant at each end to regard his wife.

  Suddenly Alicia began to have hallucinations, vague images, at first seeming to float in the air, then descending to floor level. Her eyes excessively wide, she stared continuously at the carpet on either side of the head of her bed. One night she suddenly focused on one spot. Then she opened her mouth to scream, and pearls of sweat suddenly beaded her nose and lips.

  “Jordan! Jordan!” she clamored, rigid with fright, still staring at the carpet.

  Jordan ran to the bedroom, and, when she saw him appear, Alicia screamed with terror.

  “It’s I, Alicia, it’s I!”

  Alicia looked at him confusedly; she looked at the carpet; she looked at him once again; and after a long moment of stupefied confrontation, she regained her senses. She smiled and took her husband’s hand in hers, caressing it, trembling, for half an hour.

  Among her most persistent hallucinations was that of an anthropoid poised on his fingertips on the carpet, staring at her.

  The doctors returned, but to no avail. They saw before them a diminishing life, a life bleeding away day by day, hour by hour, absolutely without their knowing why. During their last consultation Alicia lay in a stupor while they took her pulse, passing her inert wrist from one to another. They observed her a long time in silence and then moved into the dining room.

  “Phew . . .” The discouraged chief physician shrugged his shoulders. “It is an inexplicable case. There is little we can do . . .”

  “That’s my last hope!” Jordan groaned. And he staggered blindly against the table.

  Alicia’s life was fading away in the subdelirium of anemia, a delirium which grew worse throughout the evening hours but which let up somewhat after dawn. The illness never worsened during the daytime, but each morning she awakened pale as death, almost in a swoon. It seemed only at night that her life drained out of her in new waves of blood. Always when she awakened she had the sensation of lying collapsed in the bed with a million-pound weight on top of her. Following the third day of this relapse she never left her bed again. She could scarcely move her head. She did not want her bed to be touched, not even to have her bedcovers arranged. Her crepuscular terrors advanced now in the form of monsters that dragged themselves toward the bed and laboriously climbed upon the bedspread.

  Then she lost consciousness. The final two days she raved ceaselessly in a weak voice. The lights funereally illuminated the bedroom and drawing room. In the deathly silence of the house the only sound was the monotonous delirium from the bedroom and the dull echoes of Jordan’s eternal pacing.

  Finally, Alicia died. The servant, when she came in afterward to strip the now empty bed, stared wonderingly for a moment at the pillow.

  “Sir!” she called Jordan in a low voice. “There are stains on the pillow that look like blood.”

  Jordan approached rapidly and bent over the pillow. Truly, on the case, on both sides of the hollow left by Alicia’s head, were two small dark spots.

  “They look like punctures,” the servant murmured after a moment of motionless observation.

  “Hold it up to the light,” Jordan told her.

  The servant raised the pillow but immediately dropped it and stood staring at it, livid and trembling. Without knowing why, Jordan felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

  “What is it?” he murmured in a hoarse voice.

  “It’s very heavy,” the servant whispered, still trembling.

  Jordan picked it up; it was extraordinarily heavy. He carried it out of the room, and on the dining room table he ripped open the case and the ticking with a slash. The top feathers floated away, and the servant, her mouth opened wide, gave a scream of horror and covered her face with her clenched fists: in the bottom of the pillowcase, among the feathers, slowly moving its hairy legs, was a monstrous animal, a living, viscous ball. It was so swollen one could scarcely make out its mouth.

  Night after night, since Alicia had taken to her bed, this abomination had stealthily applied its mouth—its proboscis one might better say—to the girl’s temples, sucking her blood. The puncture was scarcely perceptible. The daily plumping of the pillow had doubtlessly at first impeded its progress, but as soon as the girl could no longer move, the suction became vertiginous. In five days, in five nights, the monster had drained Alicia’s life away.

  These parasites of feathered creatures, diminutive in their habitual environment, reach enormous proportions under certain conditions. Human blood seems particularly favorable to them, and it is not rare to encounter them in feather pillows.

  Sunstroke
/>
  Old, the puppy, went out the door and across the patio, walking lazily but erect. He paused at the edge of the grass, stretched in the direction of the bush; eyes half-closed, nose twitching, he sat down, tranquil. He could see before him the monotonous plains of the Chaco with its alternating bush and fields, fields and bush—its only color the cream of the dried grass and the black of the bush. Two hundred meters away, on the horizon, the bush closed in three sides of a tilled field. Toward the fourth side, on the west, the fields widened out into a valley framed in the distance by the inescapable line of the jungle.

  At that early hour, in contrast to the obfuscating light of midday, the boundary had an air of restful clarity. There was neither a cloud in the sky nor a breath of air stirring. Beneath the calm of the silvery sky the fields exuded a tonic freshness that could bring to a pensive soul, facing the certainty of another day of dryness, melancholy thoughts of work better rewarded.

  Milk, the puppy’s father, in his turn crossed the patio and sat down beside Old with a lazy sigh of well-being. Both lay motionless, since it was still too early to be bothered by flies.

  Old, who for a while had been staring into the bush, observed, “It’s a cool morning.”

  Milk followed the puppy’s gaze and lay staring, blinking distractedly. After a while, he said, “There are two falcons in that tree.”

  They glanced indifferently toward a passing ox and continued, as was their custom, to observe the things around them.

  In the meantime the eastern sky began to open like a purple fan, and the horizon had now lost its early-morning preciseness. Milk crossed his front feet and felt a slight twinge of pain. Without moving, he looked at his toes, deciding finally to sniff them. The preceding day he had extracted a thorn from his paw, and in memory of what he had suffered he generously licked the injured toe.

  “Couldn’t walk,” he exclaimed as he finished with his paw.

  Old didn’t know what he was referring to. Milk added, “There’s lots of thorns.”

  This time the pup understood, and in agreement he replied, after a long silence, “There’s lots of thorns.”

  Both fell silent again, convinced.

  The sun came out, and in the first bath of light the air filled with the brassy concert of the wild turkey’s tumultuous trumpeting. The dogs, gilded in the oblique sunlight, rolled back their eyes, settling into luxury, blinking their eyes devoutly. One by one the pair was augmented by the arrival of other companions: Dick, the taciturn favorite; Prince, whose upper lip had been split by a coati, revealing his teeth; and Isondú, the only one of the dogs with a native name. Stretched out, stupified with well-being, the five fox terriers slept.

  At the end of an hour they raised their heads; from the opposite side of the bizarre two-storied ranch house—the lower floor of clay and the upper of wood, with chaletlike balconies and railing—they had heard their master’s footsteps descending the stairs. Mister Jones, his towel over his shoulder, paused a moment at the corner of the house and looked at the sun, already high in the sky. He was still bleary eyed and droopy lipped after his more than usually prolonged solitary evening of drinking.

  As he washed, the dogs approached and, lazily wagging their tails, sniffed his boots. Like wild animals that have become tame, dogs know the least sign of their master’s drunkenness. Slowly they moved away and again lay down in the sun. But soon the rising heat forced them to abandon the sunlight for the shade of the balconies.

  The day advanced as had all the preceding days of the month: dry, clear, fourteen hours of calcining sun that seemed to melt the sky and in an instant split the dew-dampened earth into whitish scabs. Mister Jones went to his field, observed the preceding day’s work, and returned to the house. He did no work that morning. He ate lunch and went upstairs for his siesta.

  In spite of the burning sun, the peons returned about two to their hoeing, since nothing stops weeds from growing in cotton plants. The dogs followed them to the field, great aficionados of cultivation ever since the preceding winter when they had learned to challenge the falcons for the white worms turned up by the plow. Each of the dogs stretched out beneath a cotton plant, their panting accompanying the dull thuds of the hoe.

  Meanwhile, it grew hotter. In the silent and sun-blinded landscape, the shimmering light wounded the eyes. The peons, mutely working the fields and swathed to their ears in kerchiefs, were struck by oven-hot blasts of air from the freshly turned earth. From time to time the dogs changed position, choosing a new plant in an attempt to find cooler shade. They stretched out full length, but often their fatigue would oblige them to sit up to facilitate breathing.

  Shimmering before their eyes was a clayey hillock which no one had ever attempted to plow. There, suddenly, the puppy saw Mister Jones, sitting on a tree trunk and staring at him. Old stood up, wagging his tail. The others, too, rose to their feet, but with hair bristling.

  “It’s the patrón,” exclaimed the puppy, surprised by the attitude of the others.

  “No, that’s not him,” Dick replied.

  The four dogs stood together growling quietly, their eyes glued on the figure of Mister Jones, who stood motionless, staring at them. The pup, incredulous, was about to move toward him, but Prince snarled at him, showing his teeth.

  “That isn’t him, that’s Death.”

  The pup’s hair rose in fright and he moved back to the group.

  “Is the patrón dead?” he asked anxiously.

  The others, without answering, broke into furious barking but maintained a fearful attitude. But now Mister Jones was dissolving in the shimmering air.

  Hearing the barking, the peons had looked up but had seen nothing. They turned their heads around to see if some horse had entered the field and then again bent over their work.

  The fox terriers started back toward the house. The pup, his hair still on end, ran ahead and then dropped back with short nervous trotting steps; he had learned from the behavior of his companions that, when a thing is about to die, it first makes an appearance.

  “And how do you know that what we saw wasn’t the patrón, alive?” he asked.

  “Because it wasn’t him,” they answered peevishly.

  So it was to be Death, and with her a change of owners, misery, kicking; all this lay before them! They spent the remainder of the afternoon by their master’s side, somber and alert. Not knowing where to direct their attack, they growled at the least noise. Mister Jones was well satisfied by the solicitude of his uneasy guardians.

  Finally the sun sank behind the black palms in the arroyo, and in the calm of the silvery night the dogs stationed themselves around the house where Mister Jones was beginning his habitual evening whiskey drinking on the upper floor. At midnight they heard his footsteps, then the double thud of his boots on the wooden floor, and the light went out. There beside the sleeping house the dogs felt alone, closer to the imminent change of owners, and they began to whimper. They whimpered in chorus, pouring out their dry convulsive sobs in a howl of desolation; led by Prince’s hunting voice, the others took up the sobbing anew. The puppy barked. Night advanced, and the four older dogs—well fed and caressed by the owner they were about to lose—grouped together in the moonlight, their muzzles pointing heavenward and swollen with laments, to cry out their domestic misery.

  The following morning Mister Jones himself went to get the mules and harnessed them to the plow, working until nine o’clock. Even so, he was not satisfied. In addition to the fact that the land had never been well plowed, the blades had no edge, and the plow leapt in the furrow behind the rapid pace of the mules. He returned to the house with the plow and filed the edges, but a bolt he had noticed was flawed when he bought the plow broke as he was putting it back together. He sent a peon to the neighboring plantation, warning him to be careful of the horse, a good animal, but one extremely sensitive to the sun. Mister Jones raised his head to the melting midday sun and insisted that the peon not gallop one step! He lunched immediately and went upsta
irs. The dogs, who had not left their master for a second during the morning, lay on the balcony.

  The siesta lay heavy upon them, weighted with sunlight and silence; everything was hazy in the burning rays. Around the house the whitish dirt shone like lead in the sun, seeming to lose its contours in the boiling shimmer that closed the blinking eyes of the fox terriers.

  “It hasn’t come back anymore,” Milk said.

  Old, when he heard come back, perked up his ears.

  Then, incited by the evocation, the pup stood up and barked, without knowing at what. After a while, he was silent and joined the group in their defensive battle against the flies.

  “Nope, it didn’t come again,” Isondú added.

  “There was a lizard underneath the tree stump,” Prince recalled for the first time.

  A hen, beak open, wings held away from its body, crossed the patio at a heavy, heat-slowed lope. Prince followed her lazily with his eyes and then leapt up.

  “Here it comes again!” he yelled.

  Across the patio to the north the horse was returning alone. The dogs arched their backs, barking with prudent fury at Death, which was approaching them. The animal walked with its head hung low, apparently indecisive about what course it should follow. As it passed in the front of the house, it took a few steps in the direction of the well and gradually disappeared in the pitiless light.

  Mister Jones came down; he had not been sleepy. He was preparing to repair the plow when unexpectedly he saw the peon on horseback return. To get back so soon he must have been galloping—in spite of his orders. He reproached the peon with all the logic typical of his nationality, reproaches to which the peon responded evasively. Once free, his mission concluded, the poor horse—across whose ribs lay countless lash marks—trembled, lowered his head, and fell on his side. His whip still in his hand, Mister Jones sent the peon to the field to avoid the lashing he would give him if he continued to listen to his Jesuitical excuses. But the dogs were content. Death, who had been searching for their master, had contented itself with the horse. They felt happy, free of worry, and consequently they were starting toward the field when they heard Mister Jones yelling at the peon, far in the distance now, asking him for the bolt. There wasn’t any bolt: the store was closed, the owner was sleeping, and so on and so on. Mister Jones, without a word, took his pith helmet from a nail and set out himself in search of the replacement. He was as resistant to the sun as a peon, and the walk would do marvels for his ill humor.