8 THE DILEMMA

Poco a poco y sin saber cómo, se formó alrededor de Andrés una mala reputación;
se le consideraba hombre violento, orgulloso, mal intencionado, que se atraía la antipatía de todos.
Era un demagogo, malo, dañino, que odiaba a los ricos y no quería a los pobres.
Andrés fue notando la hostilidad de la gente del casino y dejó de frecuentarlo.
Al principio se aburría.
Los días iban sucediéndose a los días y cada uno traía la misma desesperanza, la
seguridad de no saber qué hacer, la seguridad de sentir y de inspirar antipatía, en el fondo sin motivo, por una mala inteligencia. Se había decidido a cumplir sus deberes de médico al pie de la letra.

Llegar a la abstención pura, completa, en la pequeña vida social de Alcolea, le
parecía la perfección. Andrés no era de estos hombres que consideran el leer como un sucedáneo de vivir; él leía porque no podía vivir. Para alternar con esta gente del casino, estúpida y mal
intencionada, prefería pasar el tiempo en su cuarto, en aquel mausoleo blanqueado y silencioso. ¡Pero con qué gusto hubiera cerrado los libros si hubiera habido algo importante que hacer; algo como pegarle fuego al pueblo o reconstruirlo! La inacción le irritaba.

GRADUALLY, without his knowing why, Andres was
given a bad name; he was considered violent, proud,
and malicious, a man to be universally disliked.
He was a wicked, ferocious demagogue who hated the
rich and did not care for the poor.
Andres began to notice the ill-will of the people at the
Casino and stopped going there.
At first he was bored. Day followed day and each one
filled him with the same despair, the certainty of not
having anything to do, the certainty of disliking and
being disliked, without reason, through misunderstanding.
He had made up his mind to pedorm his duty as
doctor scrupulously; and as to the petty social life of
Alcolea absolute forbearance seemed to him to be ideal.
He was not one of those men who consider reading
subsidiary to life; he only read because he could not
live. Rather than associate with the stupid, malicious
people of the Casino he preferred to spend the time in
his room, a whitewashed silent tomb.
Yet how willingly would he have set his books aside
if he had had anything important to do, as for instance
to burn down the town and rebuild it.
Inaction nettled him.

De haber caza mayor, le hubiera gustado marcharse al campo; pero para matar
conejos, prefería quedarse en casa.
Sin saber qué hacer, paseaba como un lobo por aquel cuarto.
Muchas veces intentó dejar de leer estos libros de filosofía. Pensó que quizá le
irritaban. Quiso cambiar de lecturas. Don Blas le prestó una porción de libros de
historia. Andrés se convenció de que la historia es una cosa vacía.
Creyó como Schopenhauer que el que lea con atención “Los Nueve Libros de
Herodoto”, tiene todas las combinaciones posibles de crímenes, destronamientos,
heroísmos e injusticias, bondades y maldades que puede suministrar la historia. Intentó también un estudio poco humano y trajo de Madrid y comenzó a leer un libro de astronomía, la Guía del Cielo de Klein, pero le faltaba la base de las matemáticas y pensó que no tenía fuerza en el cerebro para dominar esto. Lo único que aprendió fue el plano estelar. Orientarse en ese infinito de puntos luminosos, en donde brillan como dioses Arcturus y Vega, Altair y Aldebarán era para él una voluptuosidad algo triste; recorrer con el pensamiento esos cráteres de la Luna y el mar de la Serenidad; leer esas hipótesis acerca de la Vía Láctea y de su movimiento alrededor de ese supuesto sol central que se llama Alción y que está en el grupo de las Pléyades, le daba el vértigo.

Had there been any big game he would have gone
into the country, but when it was only a question of
shooting rabbits he preferred to stay at home.
Having nothing to do, he strode up and down his room
like a wolf. Often he resolved to give up reading those
books of philosophy. He thought that perhaps they were
irritating him and tried a change of subject. Don Blas
lent him some hooks of history. Andres became convinced
that history was an insubstantial thing. He believed
with Schopenhauer that if one reads The Nine
Books of Herodotus one has all the possible combinations
of crimes, revolutions, heroisms, injustices, good
deeds, and vice that history is able to furnish.
He then turned to a study lacking human interest and
got from Madrid and began to read a hook on astronomy,
Klein's Guide to the Heavens; but he had not the necessary
foundation of mathematics and came to the conclusion
that his brain was too weak to understand the
subject. All that he learnt was the map of the stars. To
he able to find his way about that infinity of luminous
dots where shine the gods Arcturus and Vega, Aldebaran
and Altair, was for him a gloomy delight; to traverse in
tho:ught the craters of the Moon and that calm sea; to
read hypotheses about the Milky Way and its movement
about a supposititious central sun called Alcion, in the
group of the Pleiades, made his mind dizzy.

Se le ocurrió también escribir; pero no sabía por dónde empezar, ni manejaba suficientemente el mecanismo del lenguaje para expresarse con claridad.
Todos los sistemas que discurría para encauzar su vida dejaban precipitados
insolubles, que demostraban el error inicial de sus sistemas. Comenzaba a sentir una irritación profunda contra todo.
A los ocho o nueve meses de vivir así excitado y aplanado al mismo tiempo,
empezó a padecer dolores articulares; además el pelo se le caía muy abundantemente.

—Es la castidad —se dijo.
Era lógico; era un neuroartrítico. De chico, su artritismo se había manifestado por jaquecas y por tendencia hipocondríaca. Su estado artrítico se exacerbaba. Se iban acumulando en el organismo las sustancias de desecho y esto tenía que engendrar productos de oxidación incompleta, el ácido úrico sobre todo. El diagnóstico lo consideró como exacto; el tratamiento era lo difícil.
Este dilema se presentaba ante él. Si quería vivir con una mujer tenía que casarse, someterse. Es decir, dar por una cosa de la vida toda su independencia espiritual, resignarse a cumplir obligaciones y deberes sociales, a guardar consideraciones a un suegro, a una suegra, a un cuñado; cosa que le horrorizaba.
Seguramente entre aquellas muchachas de Alcolea, que no salían más que los
domingos a la iglesia, vestidas como papagayos, con un mal gusto exorbitante, había algunas, quizá muchas, agradables, simpáticas. ¿Pero quién las conocía? Era casi imposible hablar con ellas. Solamente el marido podría llegar a saber su manera de ser y de sentir.

He also thought of writing, hut he did not know where
to begin, and had not sufficient mastery of style to express
his thoughts clearly.
All the plans devised to order his life ended in chasms
which proved that there was an initial error in the plan.
He began to feel profoundly irritated against the
whole world.
After eight or nine months of this life, in a state of
both excitement and depression, he began to suffer from
articular pain, and his hair began to fall out abundantly.
"This comes of continence," he said to himself.
It was natural; he was neuro-gouty. As a boy it had
taken the form of headaches and a tendency to hypochondria.
His arthritis now grew worse; the accumulation of
waste matter in his system gave imperfectly oxidized results,
especially uric acid.
This seemed to him the correct diagnosis of his case;
how to treat it was a more difficult matter.
He was faced by this dilemma. If he wished to live
with a woman he must marry and subject himself. He
would have to give up all spiritual independence, resign
himself to fulfilling obligations and social duties;
as well as to being on friendly terms with his fatherin-
law, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law; all of
which he considered a terrible fate.
No doubt among those girls of Alcolea who only
went out on a Sunday to church, dressed up like parrots,
in extravagantly bad taste, there must be some, perhaps
many, who were pleasant and attractive. But who knew
of them? It was almost impossible to speak to them.
Only their husbands would be able to know who and
what they were.

Andrés se hubiera casado con cualquiera, con una muchacha sencilla; pero no sabía
dónde encontrarla. Las dos señoritas que trataba un poco eran la hija del médico
Sánchez y la del secretario.
La hija de Sánchez quería ir monja; la del secretario era de una cursilería
verdaderamente venenosa; tocaba el piano muy mal, calcaba las laminitas del “Blanco y Negro” y luego las iluminaba, y tenía unas ideas ridículas y falsas de todo.

 

De no casarse Andrés podía transigir e ir con los perdidos del pueblo a casa de la
Fulana o de la Zutana, a estas dos calles en donde las mujeres de vida airada vivían
como en los antiguos burdeles medievales; pero esta promiscuidad era ofensiva para su orgullo. ¿Qué más triunfo para la burguesía local y más derrota para su personalidad si se hubiesen contado sus devaneos? No; prefería estar enfermo.

Andrés decidió limitar la alimentación, tomar sólo vegetales y no probar la carne, ni el vino, ni el café. Varias horas después de comer y de cenar bebía grandes cantidades de agua. El odio contra el espíritu del pueblo le sostenía en su lucha secreta, era uno de esos odios profundos, que llegan a dar serenidad al que lo siente, un desprecio épico y altivo. Para él no había burlas, todas resbalaban por su coraza de impasibilidad.

Andres would have married any simple girl, but he
did not know where to find her. The only two girls he
ever met were the daughter of Dr. Sanchez and the daughter
,of the secretary.
The daughter of Sanchez was set on being a nun; the
daughter of the secretary was poisonously uninteresting;
she played the piano execrably, cut out and coloured
illustrations from a weekly paper, and had the most
false and ridiculous ideas. If he did not marry he might
behave like the dissolute youth of Alcolea and frequent
such and such houses in the two streets where the
women lived in brothels which were really medieval; but
to do so was offensive to his pride. What greater triumph
for the local bourgeois than to be able to tell of
his doings? At the thought of such a come-down he
preferred to remain ill.
He resolved to eat less and limit himself to vegetables,
without ever touching meat, wine, or coffee. Several
hours after luncheon and dinner he drank large quantities
of water. His hatred of the spirit of the tc,wn sustained him in his secret struggle; it was one of those
profound hatreds which make one serene; a lofty epic
contempt. He was impervious to mockery; it glanced off
harmlessly from the armour of his indifference.

Algunas veces pensaba que esta actitud no era lógica. ¡Un hombre que quería ser de
ciencia y se incomodaba porque las cosas no eran como él hubiese deseado! Era
absurdo. La tierra allí era seca; no había árboles, el clima era duro, la gente tenía que ser dura también. La mujer del secretario del ayuntamiento y presidenta de la Sociedad del Perpetuo Socorro, le dijo un día:
—Usted, Hurtado, quiere demostrar que se puede no tener religión y ser más bueno
que los religiosos.

—¿Más bueno, señora? —replicó Andrés—. Realmente, eso no es difícil.
Al cabo de un mes del nuevo régimen, Hurtado estaba mejor; la comida escasa y
sólo vegetal, el baño, el ejercicio al aire libre le iban haciendo un hombre sin nervios. Ahora se sentía como divinizado por su ascetismo, libre; comenzaba a vislumbrar ese estado de “ataraxia”, cantado por los epicúreos y los pirronianos. Ya no experimentaba cólera por las cosas ni por las personas.
Le hubiera gustado comunicar a alguien sus impresiones y pensó en escribir a
Iturrioz; pero luego creyó que su situación espiritual era más fuerte siendo él sólo el
único testigo de su victoria.

Sometimes it occurred to him that such an attitude was
not logical; for him who claimed to be a man of
science to feel angry because things were not as he
wished was surely absurd. The soil was dry, there were
no trees; the climate was harsh, the inhabitants were
naturally hard.
The wife of the secretary, who was president of the
Society of Everlasting Aid, said to him one day:
"You, Hurtado, wish to show that one can be without
religion and be better than those who are religious."
"Better?" replied Andres. "Really that doesn't seem
to me very difficult."
At the end of a month of his new way of life Andres
felt better. His frugal and vegetable diet, his bath
and exercise in the open air were converting him into
a man without nerves.

Ya comenzaba a no tener espíritu agresivo. Se levantaba muy temprano, con la aurora, y paseaba por aquellos campos llanos, por los viñedos, hasta un olivar que él llamaba el trágico por su aspecto.
Aquellos olivos viejos, centenarios, retorcidos, parecían enfermos atacados por el tétanos; entre ellos se levantaba una casa aislada y baja con bardales de cambroneras, y en el vértice de la colina había un molino de viento tan extraordinario, tan absurdo, con
su cuerpo rechoncho y sus brazos chirriantes, que a Andrés le dejaba siempre sobrecogido.
Muchas veces salía de casa cuando aún era de noche y veía la estrella del
crepúsculo palpitar y disolverse como una perla en el horno de la aurora llena de resplandores. Por las noches, Andrés se refugiaba en la cocina, cerca del fogón bajo. Dorotea, la vieja y la niña hacían sus labores al amor de la lumbre y Hurtado charlaba o miraba arder los sarmientos.

His asceticism made him feel
free and godlike; he began to have a glimpse of ataraxia
sung by the Epicureans and Pyrrhonians.
He no longer felt anger at either things or persons.
He would have liked to communicate his impressions to
somebody, and he thought of writing to Iturrioz; but
then it occurred to him that his spiritual position was
stronger if he were the only witness of his victory.
He even began to be no longer aggressive. He rose
very early, at dawn, and went for walks through those
flat plains and vineyards to an olive-yard which he
thought had a tragic look. Those aged, twisted olive-trees
seemed to him like persons suffering from tetanus;
among them stood an isolated low house with a hedge of
box-thorn; and on the hill-top was a windmill so extraordinary
and absurd, with its squat body and arms
shrilly turning, that it overawed him completely.
Often he went out when it was still dark and watched
the morning star twinkle and melt like a pearl in the
glowing furnace of the dawn.
In the evening he took refuge in the kitchen; Dorotea,
her aged mother, and her daughter worked by the fire,
and Andres talked to them or in silence watched the
vine-twigs burn