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Los Inmigrantes, de Horacio Quiroga
Los Inmigrantes, de Horacio Quiroga
Disponível em:
https://www.textos.info/horacio-quiroga/el-salvaje-y-otros-cuentos/ebook
Acesso em: 03 de maio de 2020.
Os imigrantes, de Horacio Quiroga
Tradução de Paulo Soriano
The man and the woman had been walking since 4 am. The weather was
becoming into a suffocating calm, like the one that comes before a storm, and the
nitrous steam of the estuary made it even muggier. The rain finally came down.
During an hour the couple, that was wet to the bones, went forward obstinately.
The rain stopped. The man and the woman watched to each other with a
desperate anxiety.
“Can you go on?" He asked. "Maybe we can get them…”
The woman shook her head. She had deep bags under her eyes and
looked livid. “Let’s go on.” She said keeping on walking.
But she stopped pretty soon, and contorted with pain she caught a branch
to help her stay stand. The man was going ahead, and returned to her when he
heard a groan.
“I can't go on anymore…!” She muttered. She was sweaty and her mouth
was strained. “Oh, my God...!”
The man watched around long enough and realized that he could not do
anything. His wife was pregnant. So, without knowing where he was stepping on,
perplexed by the situation, he cut branches, put them on the floor and lay his wife
over them… He sat and put her head over his legs.
Fifteen minutes passed on silence. Then, the woman shuddered
uncontrollably forcing the man to use all his strength to hold the woman’s body,
which was moving violently because of the eclampsia.
When the seizure stopped, he remained a little more over her, keeping her
arms on the floor with his knees. Finally, the man stood up and walked some
steps aside, he socked his forehead, and returned to her, putting the woman’s
head over his legs. She was immersed in a deep sopor.
Then came another seizure and the woman became inert. Soon, there was
another, but when this one came to an end, her life ended too.
The man noticed it when he was astride his wife, using all his strength to
hold the convulsion shakes. He was terrified; his eyes were fixed on the bloody
foam that was coming from her mouth.
Without knowing what to do, he touched her jaw with a finger.
“Charlotte!” He spoke with a voice that seemed not to be his and with no
intonation at all. The sound of his voice made him recover conscious; he sat up
then and looked all around with crazy eyes.
"It’s too much fatality,” he murmured. “It’s too much fatality…” He
murmured again, making an effort to understand what have happened. They were
coming from Europe. There is no doubt about that. They had left their two-year
old first-born there. His wife was pregnant, and both of them were going to
Makallé with other partners. They were delayed and alone because she could not
walk well. She was in a bad condition. His wife could have been in danger…
Suddenly, he turned around, berserked with grief: “She is dead, there!” He
said.
He sat down again, and put the head of his dead wife on his legs. In the
next four hours he thought what to do.
He remained without knowing what to do; but when the noon was coming,
he carried his wife on his shoulders and returned the way back.
They passed by the border of the estuary again. The pajonal looked
endless in the silver and immobile night, where the buzz of mosquitoes could only
be heard. The man, with his nape bent, walked steadily until the body of his wife
fell sharply. He stood up a moment, he was rigid, and then he fell down after her.
When he woke up the sun was burning. He ate fruits from the tree
philodendron though he wished something more nutritive to eat because he had
to walk several days until getting the dead body of his wife in holy ground.
He took the body again, but his strength was decreasing. He made a
bundle with the body by knotting together lianas, which made easier to walk.
During three days he walked and walked like a sleepwalker poisoned by
the cadaverous miasmas. He just rested a little, and kept on walking under the
white hot sky and devoured by insects during nights. His mission was only one
obstinate idea; take the body of his adored wife from the savage and hostile
country.
The fourth day he was forced to stop and in the afternoon he could hardly
continue. When the sun was sinking, he felt a deep shiver on his exhausted
nerves; he put the body on the ground and sat down next to it.
The night had come, and the monotonous buzz of mosquitoes invaded the
air. He could have felt the insects all over his face but the constant shivers on his
frozen marrow did not let him.
Finally, the ochre waning moon came up behind the estuary. The high and
rigid straws shone until the horizon like a mournful yellowish sea. Now, the
pernicious fever rose rapidly.
The man glanced to the horrible whitish mass that was lying next to him.
While he was crossing his hands over the knees he stayed with his eyes fixed
ahead, to the poisoned estuary. In the distance, the delirium drew the village of
Silesia, where he and his wife, Charlotte Phoening, were returning to - happy and
rich - to get their loved first-born child.
Disponível em:
http://www.cuentoseningles.com.ar/shortstories/latinamerican/TheImmigrants2.
html
Acesso em: 03 de maio de 2020.