Isabel Allende by Eva Luna

Author:Eva Luna [Luna, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Rolf Carle began working with senor Aravena the same month the Russians launched a space capsule containing a dog. Rolf’s Uncle Rupert was infuriated when he heard the news: “That’s the Soviets for you, they don’t even respect animals!”

“What’s all the fuss, husband? She was only a mutt, not even pedigreed,” Aunt Burgel replied without looking up from the pastry she was rolling out.

That unfortunate comment unleashed one of the worst fights the couple ever had. They spent all of Friday shouting at each other and hurling insults stored up during thirty years of married life. Among many other deplorable remarks, Rupert heard his wife confess for the first time that she had always detested the dogs; she was sick of raising and selling them, and she prayed every single one of the damned German shepherds would get distemper and die and get the hell out of her life. In turn, Burgel learned that her husband knew of an infidelity she had committed in her youth, but had not mentioned so they could live in peace. They said unthinkable things, and both ended in a state of collapse. When Rolf arrived Saturday at La Colonia, he found all the doors closed, and thought the family was down with the Asian flu that was taking its toll that season. Burgel was prostrate, lying on the bed with sweet-basil compresses on her forehead, and Rupert, purple with rage, had locked himself in the carpentry shop with his bitches and fourteen whelps, and was methodically destroying all the cuckoo clocks he had built for the tourist trade. The cousins’ eyes were swollen from crying. The girls had married their candle-makers, adding the delicious aroma of beeswax to their natural bouquet of cinnamon, dove, vanilla, and lemon. They lived on the street where they had lived as children, dividing the day between their own housekeeping and helping their parents with the hotel, chickens, and dogs. No one reacted to Rolf Carle’s excitement over his new movie camera or, as they usually did, begged to hear detailed accounts of his activities and the political unrest at the university. The argument had so radically disturbed the spirit of that tranquil home that for once he could not even pinch and nuzzle his cousins: they went around with long faces and failed to show any enthusiasm whatever for airing the eiderdowns in the unoccupied rooms. Sunday night Rolf returned to the capital, inflamed but celibate, wearing last week’s dirty clothes, without the usual biscuits and sausages his aunt always packed in his suitcase, but with the uncomfortable sensation that a Muscovite bitch was more important in his family’s eyes than he was. Monday morning he met senor Aravena for breakfast in a comer coffee shop near the newspaper office.

“Forget the damned dog and your aunt and uncle’s tiff,” his mentor said, attacking the toothsome dishes that helped him begin a new day. “Something important’s in the air.” “What are you talking about?”

“There’s going to be a popular election in a couple of months.

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