Otoño

Otoño is the novel’s autumnal time frame, registering change not only in the landscape but in the emotional weather of the asylum. For Alice Gould, the season brings a calm, subdued sadness; as the cold advances, departures and a surprising photograph make its passing visible in personal terms.

A Season of Quiet Sadness

Autumn arrives with a change of color in nature, as though the same things had been painted anew for the season. Its emotional counterpart is a mixture of peace and vague sorrow. Alice Gould finds a precise name for her own state: a tranquil sadness. The season therefore serves less as a dramatic turning point than as an atmosphere through which her feelings become legible.

Alice Gould and César Arellano

Alice Gould’s outings with César Arellano are few and widely spaced. Other doctors’ vacations add to his workload, but her own caution also limits their meetings: she does not want to encourage hopes that would exceed the strict boundaries she has set for their courtship. This restraint costs her something. César Arellano’s company is at once a comfort and a sedative, a compensation and a stimulus; declining to foster the relationship leaves her withholding a source of ease as well as excitement.

Departures from the Asylum

The season also brings departures. La Duquesa de Pitiminí is discharged and goes home, and other patients whom Alice Gould barely knows are returned to their households. Their exits give autumn a concrete human rhythm: while the landscape changes gradually, the asylum’s population changes through decisions that carry people back into domestic life.

Cold Weather and a Distant Image

As autumn advances, the trees lose their leaves and the cold takes hold of the region, while heat persists in Almería and Lower Andalusia. Against this seasonal contrast, Alice Gould receives a letter signed by César Arellano and Carlos, accompanied by a color photograph. In it, César Arellano wears a black oilskin suit and carries a harpoon from which hangs a sea creature as large as its captor. The image startles her: the severe doctor in his white coat and tortoiseshell glasses appears transformed into a sea triton. The photograph brings César Arellano’s life beyond the asylum into view, making the familiar figure briefly strange and deepening the season’s blend of closeness and separation.