---

The Son

by Horacio Quiroga, translated by Shawn M. Garrett

---

It was a powerful summer day in Misiones, with all the sunlight, heat and calm that the season brings. Nature, fully resplendent, feels satisfied with itself.

Like the sun, the heat and the calm environment, the father also opened his heart to nature.

“Be careful, little one,” he said to his son, abbreviating in that sentence all he knew of the day’s plan, which his son understood perfectly.

“Yes, dad” replied the boy, while he took the shotgun and loaded cartridges into the pockets of his shirt, which he carefully buttoned.

“Come back at lunchtime,” the father observed.

“Yes, Dad,” the boy repeated.

He balanced the shotgun in his hand, smiled at his father, kissed him on the head and walked away.

His father followed him for a while with his eyes and then returned to his day’s work, happy with the joy of his little one.

He knew that his son, educated from his earliest childhood in the habit and caution of danger, could handle a gun and hunt safely, no matter what. Although he was very tall for his age, he was only thirteen years old. And he seemed younger, judging by the purity of his blue eyes, still fresh with childlike surprise.

The father did not need to raise his gaze from his chores to follow with his mind the march of his son: he had crossed the red trail and was heading straight for the mountain through the glade of wiregrass.

To hunt in the bush—fur hunting—required more patience than his cub might be capable of. After crossing the mountain, his son would coast along the edge of the cactus to the marsh, in search of pigeons, toucans, or even herons, like the ones that his friend Juan has discovered days before.

Only now, the father briefly hinted at a smile, with the memory of the hunting passion of the two boys. Sometimes they hunted the yacútoro, or less commonly the surucuá, and they returned triumphantly, Juan to his ranch with the nine-millimeter rifle that he had been given, and his own son to the plateau, with the great Saint-Etíenne 16-gauge shotgun.

He had the same shotgun. At thirteen, he would have given his life to own a shotgun. His son, just now that age, owned one. And the father smiled.

It is not easy, however, for a widowed father, with no other faith or hope than the life of his son, to educate the child as he has done. The boy was free in his small arena of action, sure of his little hands and feet since he was four years old, aware of the immensity of certain dangers and the lack of his own strength.

The father had to fight hard against what he considered his selfishness. So easily could a man miscalculate, step into the void, and lose a child!

The danger always remained for man at any age; but the threat diminished if the boy acclimated to counting only on his own strength from an early age.

In this way the father has educated son. And to achieve this he had to resist not only his heart, but also his mental torments. Because the father, with a weak stomach and failing eyesight, had been suffering from hallucinations for some time.

He saw, solidified into very painful visions, thoughts of his happiness fading in the nothingness to which he might be confined. The image of his own son had not escaped this torment. Once, he saw him rolling around, covered in blood, after the boy struck a parabellum bullet in the workshop’s vise, even though all he was really doing was filing the buckle of his hunting belt.

Horrible things… But today, in the hot and vital summer day, a love for which his son seemed to have inherited, the father felt happy, calm and sure of the future.

At that moment, not far away, a boom sounded.

“The Saint-Etienne…” thought the father when he recognized the detonation. “Two pigeons taken on the mountain…”

With no more attention paid to the trivial event, the man again became absorbed in his task.

The sun, already high, continued to climb. Wherever you looked — stones, earth, trees — the air, rarefied as in a furnace, vibrated with heat. A deep humming filled his entire being and permeated the area as far as the eye could see, concentrating all the tropical life around.

The father took a look at his wrist: twelve o’clock. And he raised his eyes to the mountain.

His son should be back by now. In the mutual trust they placed in each other —the father with greying temples and the thirteen-year-old child — there were no mistakes. When his son replied, “Yes, Dad,” he did as he said. He said that he would be back before twelve o’clock, and so his father smiled as he watched him go.

And he hadn’t come back.

The man returned to his task, striving to focus attention on it. It was so easy, so easy to lose track of time inside the bush, sitting for a while on the ground, resting motionless…

Suddenly, the midday light, the tropical buzz and the father’s heart all stopped at what he had just envisioned: his son, resting motionless…

Time had passed; it’s half past twelve. The father left his workshop, and as he put his hand on the work bench, the explosion of a parabellum bullet rose from the bottom of his memory, and instantly, for the first time in the three hours that have elapsed, he realized that following the report of the Saint-Etienne, he had heard nothing more. He had not heard the small stones clattering in the trail pass. His son had not returned, and nature had stopped at the edge of the forest, waiting for him…

Oh! A temperate character and blind confidence in the education of a child were not enough to drive away the specter of fatality that a father, with sick eyes, saw rising from the mountain’s edge. Distraction, forgetfulness, fortuitous delay: none of those petty reasons that might delay the arrival of his son, found a place in that heart.

A shot, a single shot had sounded, and it had been a long time. Behind him the father had not heard a noise, he had not seen a bird, not a single person has crossed the plain to announce that while crossing a fence, a great misfortune occurred…

Head held high and without a machete, the father went. He cut through the wiregrass pass, entered the mountain, skirted the line of cactus without finding the slightest trace of his son.

But nature remained static. And when the father had trodden the familiar hunting trails and explored the marsh in vain, he gained the certainty that every step he took forward led him, fatally and inexorably, to the corpse of his son.

There was no reproach of misfortune. Only the cold, terrible and consummate reality: his son had died crossing a…

But where, in what place? There were so many wire fences there, and the mountain was so, so foul!… Oh, very foul!… As young as he was, uncareful when crossing the wires with the shotgun in his hand…

The father smothered a cry. He had seen his spirit ascending into the air… Oh, not his son, no!… And so he returned to another trail, and to another, and to another…

Nothing would be gained to see the color of his complexion and his anguished eyes. The man hadn’t said his son’s name aloud yet. Though his heart cried out for him, his mouth remained mute. He knew too well that the mere act of pronouncing a name, of calling to him out loud, would be a confession of his death…

“My little one!” He blurted out suddenly. And if the voice of a man of character was capable of weeping, let us cover our ears with mercy before the anguish that arose in that voice.

No one and nothing answered. Through the red heat of the sun, aged ten years in a day, the father went looking for his son, who has just died.

“My little boy!… My little boy!…” his cry rose from the depths of his chest.

Before, in a life filled with happiness and peace, the father had suffered a hallucination of his son rolling with his forehead split open by a chrome nickel bullet. Now, in every dark corner of the forest he saw flashes of wire fencing, the foot of a post, a spent shotgun next to it, saw his…

“Little boy! My son!”

But the forces that allowed a poor delusional father to surrender to the most atrocious nightmare also had limits. Those limits were approaching when… he suddenly saw his son emerge from a canyon.

It was enough for the thirteen-year-old boy to see the expression of his father’s face from fifty meters away, his father who was in the bush without a machete, to quicken his pace with moistened eyes.

“Little one…” the man murmured. And, exhausted, he sat down on the white sand, wrapping his arms around his son’s legs.

The boy, thus girded, remained standing; and since he understood his father’s pain, he slowly caressed his head:

“Poor dad…”

---

Finally, some time passed. It was near three o’clock. Together, now, father and son undertook the return to the house.

“How come you didn’t look at the sun to reckon the time?” murmured the father.

“I noticed, dad… but just when I was going to come back, I saw Juan’s herons and I followed them…”

“What you’ve put me through, little one!…”

“Papa…” the boy also murmured.

And, after a long silence:

“And the herons, did you kill them?” the father asked.

“No.”

An insignificant detail, after all. Under the sizzling sky and broiling air, through the wiregrass pass, the man returned home with his son, on whose shoulders, almost as high as his own, rested the arm of his happy father. The father returned drenched with sweat, and though broken in body and soul, he smiled with happiness… He smiled with delusional happiness…

The father walked alone. He has found no one, and his arm rested on nothing. Because behind him, at the foot of a post and with his legs up, entangled in the barbed wire, his beloved son lay in the sun, dead since ten in the morning.

---

The Feather Pillow

by Horatio Quiroga, translated by Shawn M. Garrett

---

Her honeymoon was one long shivering tremble. Blonde, angelic and shy, the hard character of her husband iced over the dreamy childishness of her youth. She loved him very much, however, when returning together at night through the street, she cast a furtive glance at Jordan’s tall form, mute for an hour, and shuddered. He, for his part, loved her deeply, without letting it be known.

For three months—they had been married in April—they lived in special bliss. No doubt she would have wanted less severity in that rigid celestial realm of love, a more expansive and incautious tenderness; but the impassive countenance of her husband always limited her.

The house in which they lived had some small influence, as well, on her shudders. The whiteness of the silent patio, the friezes, columns and marble statues, produced an autumnal impression of an enchanted palace. Inside, the icy shine of the stucco, without the slightest scratch on the high walls, affirmed that sensation of unpleasant cold. When crossing from one room to another, the footsteps echoed throughout the house, as if a long abandonment had sensitized their resonance.

In that strange love nest, Alicia spent the whole autumn. However, she had ended up throwing a veil over her old dreams, and she lived as if in a waking sleep in that hostile house, not wanting to think about anything until her husband returned home in the evening.

It is not uncommon for her to lose weight. She had a slight bout of influenza that dragged on insidiously for days on end, from which she never fully recovered. Finally, one afternoon she was able to go out into the garden, leaning on his arm. She looked indifferently from side to side. Suddenly Jordan, with deep tenderness, ran his hand over her head, and Alicia immediately 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 the slightest attempt to caress her. Then the sobs slowed down, and she remained hidden in his neck for a long time, without moving or saying a word.

That was the last day Alicia walked on her own. The next day she woke up faint. Jordan’s doctor examined her very carefully, ordering complete calm and rest.

“I’m not sure,” he told Jordán at the front door, his voice still low. “She has a great weakness that I can’t explain, and with no vomiting, nothing… If tomorrow she wakes in the same state as today, call me right away.”

The next day Alicia was still worse. There was a consultation that found a very acute anemia, completely inexplicable. Alicia had no more fainting spells, but she was visibly wasting into death. All day the bedroom was suffused with lights, and in complete silence. Hours passed without the slightest noise. Alice dozed, while Jordan dwelled in the living room, which was also filled with light. He paced endlessly from one wall to the other, with tireless obstinacy. The carpet drowned out his footsteps. From time to time he would enter the bedroom and continue his mute pacing next to the bed, looking at his wife every time he walked in her direction.

Soon Alicia began to have hallucinations; confused and floating visions at first, then solid and moving near her. The young woman, her eyes wide open, did nothing but look at the carpet on either side of her headboard. One night she suddenly stared, finally opening her mouth to scream, her nose and lips beaded with sweat. “Jordan! Jordan!” she cried, rigid with fear, without taking her eyes off the carpet.

Jordan ran into the bedroom, and when she saw him appear, Alicia gave a scream of horror.

“It’s me, Alicia, it’s me!”

Alicia looked at him blankly, looked at the rug, looked at him again, and after a long moment of stupefied confrontation, she calmed down. She smiled and took her husband’s hand in hers, caressing it with her trembling own.

Among the most stubborn hallucinations of hers was that of an anthropoid, resting on the carpet on his fingertips, his eyes fixed on her.

The doctors returned to no avail. Before them was a life that was ending, bleeding away day by day, hour by hour, without any indication of how. In the last consultation, Alicia lay in a stupor while they pressed her, passing her inert wrist from one to the other. They examined her for a long time in silence and then moved to the dining room.

“Phew…” the doctor shrugged, discouraged. “It is a serious case… but there is little to be done…”

“You were my last hope!” Jordan snorted. And he drummed sharply on the table.

Alicia was weakened by her anemic delirium, which was aggravated in the afternoon but always subsiding in the first hours. During the day her illness did not progress, but every morning she woke up livid, almost fainting. It seemed that only at night was her life drained away in a continuous wave of blood. When she woke up, she always had the sensation of being pressed into the bed surface by a heavy weight. After the third day this sinking feeling no longer left her. She could barely move her head. She refused to let them touch her bed, or even to fix her pillow. Her twilight terrors worsened in the form of monsters that crawled to the bed and scrambled up the quilt.

Then she lost consciousness. The final two days she raved endlessly in a low voice. The lights still burned on mournfully in the bedroom and the living room. In the agonizing silence of the house, nothing could be heard except the monotonous delirium that arose from her bedroom, and the muffled scuffing of Jordan’s eternal footsteps.

She died, finally. The servant, who came in later to unmake the empty bed, looked at the cushion for a while in puzzlement.

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

Jordan hurried over and bent to look. Indeed, on the cover, on both sides of the indent left by Alicia’s head, there were small dark spots.

“They look like punctures,” the servant murmured, after observing quietly.

“Hold it up to the light,” Jordan ordered. The servant picked it up, but she immediately dropped it, staring at it, livid and trembling. Without knowing why, Jordan felt his hair stand on end.

“What’s the problem?” he muttered hoarsely.

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

Jordan lifted it up. It was exceedingly heavy. They carried it out, and on the dining room table, Jordan cut the cover and wrapper with one slice. The upper feathers flew away, and the servant girl gave a gasp of horror, her mouth wide open, clutching her clenched hands to her sides: inside the pillow, among the feathers, slowly moving its hairy legs, was a monstrous thing, a living, viscous ball. It was so tight and swollen one could scarcely make out its mouth.

Night after night, since Alicia had been bedridden, it had stealthily applied that mouth—that trunk, rather—to her temples, sucking her blood. The puncture was almost imperceptible. The daily plumping of the cushion had undoubtedly limited its initial advances, but once the young woman could not move, the sucking was dizzying. In five days, in five nights, it had emptied Alicia.

These bird parasites, tiny in their usual environment, come to acquire enormous proportions under certain conditions. Human blood seems to be particularly favorable to them, and it is not uncommon to find them on feather cushions.

---

Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 878

July 14th 2023

Two by Horacio Quiroga: The Son (El Hijo) and The Feather Pillow (El almohadón de plumas)

Narrated by Diogo Ramos

Audio Production by Chelsea Davis

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart

 

Hi everyone, welcome to PseudoPod, the weekly horror podcast. I’m Alasdair your host and this week’s brace of stories, audio produced by the amazing Chelsea, are from Horacio Quioga. “El Hijo” was first published under the title “El padre” in La Nación, 15 January 1928. “El Almohadón de Plumas” was first published in the magazine Caras y Caretas, 13 July 1907; it was revised when collected in 1917. Both of these are new translations by our own amazing Shawn Garrett.

 

Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937) was a Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer. He wrote stories which used the supernatural and the bizarre and excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. He was an obsessive reader of Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant, and was attracted to topics covering the most intriguing aspects of nature, often tinged with horror, disease, insanity and human suffering. Many of his stories belong to this movement, embodied in his work Tales of Love, Madness and Death. His influence can be seen in the Latin American magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar. He committed suicide, due to the extreme pain of advanced prostate cancer, by drinking cyanide in 1937.

 

Your narrator this week is Diogo Ramos. Brazilian, born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Diogo is an English teacher and the Editor-in-Chief of Revista A Taverna (Twitter), an online Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine that publishes short stories in Portuguese. He’s been teaching for almost fifteen years and, once in a while, he dares to translate stories from English to Portuguese. Diogo also narrates stories, which have appeared in PseudoPod, PodCastle, Escape Pod, and Apex Magazine. Find him online at:

 

So, get ready for a pair of stories, both horrific and both true. Firstly, immense thanks to Shawn for the translation work on these. Translation is an art form like no other and to communicate the spirit of the story, the intent, the structure and the rhythm like this is an incredible feat. Outstanding work, buddy.

 

What I love about stories like this, especially when we place them side by side, is how they harmonise. In both cases there, assumption is protection, but not for the main character. The comforting routine of domestic life in The Son feels like it’s all there ever needs to be. It’s the light that guides the father, the golden path his son walks and in doing so the father knows its safe because it was safe for him. He can’t see that it’s a trap. He can’t see that there is no certainty and when the unthinkable happens, we realize he physically cannot perceive it. His joy, his love, is a shelter. It’s also a prison and the only blessing here is that as the story closes it isn’t a prison he can let himself perceive. Ignorance sometimes really is bliss.

 

The Feather Pillow builds on that and twists the knife a little more for the lead and for us. Here the ignorance is a shield for the predator, and the horror is the result. The idea that the very thing that should be making the victim better is killing her is terrifying. The fact that no one is able to see it until it’s far too late, doubly so. Plus there’s just a hint of the gothic to the end. The horrifically over-sized predator, hiding inside a feathered nest. What we think, for a half page, is a vampire revealed to be something more mundane and somehow far worse. Again, normality as shield and, again, normality as blindfold. Only here the luxury of forgetting is denied everyone and the only thing that’s left is the horror, and the nagging sense that perhaps you should check your pillow before sleeping tonight. Brilliantly written, translated, performed and produced. Thank you all.

 

We’re an independent production, and one powered entirely by you. We rely on you to pay our authors, staff and cover our costs. There’s a recession, a pandemic and yet here we are, making art for you. We can only do that if you help us.

We’ve got Paypal and Patreon subscriptions that start at 5 bucks a month.

Both get you access to our audio archive. The Patreon subscription tiers get you all sorts of goodies

at the higher levels. Please help out if you can. It’s always needed.

If you can’t help financially, we understand completely please consider talking about us. It helps a lot too. If you liked an episode, please link to it, or blog about it or leave a review on your podcatcher of choice. It all helps and with your help we can keep doing this.

 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

 

PseudoPod returns next week with Chelsea hosting and producing on Resilience by Christi Nogle and read by Dani Daly. We’ll see you then but before we go, PseudoPod wants to remind you it’s doing its best but “But I find I get pretty tired when I try.”