Paradise by Elena Castedo

Author:Elena Castedo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 1990-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

JUST BEFORE LUNCHTIME, a big, roundish car glided quietly through the front-gardens driveway. It took all the excitement out of arrivals to sneak up like that. The chauffeur let out a stocky man my father’s age, dressed in white, as silent on his rubber-soled shoes as his fat car had been. With the arms of a sweater thrown over his shoulders and tied on his chest, he held a smoking cigar and a tennis racquet. There were no tennis courts here, so maybe he was on his way somewhere. La Mamota nervously gathered the girls. People, dogs, Jali and the guanaco drifted over from the pool to greet him. Tío Juan Vicente went to put on a record of funeral music and came back to smile impishly at Tía Merce.

“Hola, Tío Armando.” The girls planted their compulsory kisses on the man’s cheek and accepted huge bags of candy. My eyes scanned the cellophane bags eagerly and, yes! yes! lots of foil-wrapped bonbons for my ball! It was needed more than ever, since my father had come and gone without us. The girls took forever to open the bags; I did little leaps in place to keep myself from reaching out and ripping the bags right out of their parsimonious hands.

I didn’t like the way the girls’ uncle looked at my mother in her bathing suit, nor the way he hugged her. I didn’t like the way my mother stretched her neck, unfocusing her eyes the way she did when men complimented her. Mile. Vicky hugged him so vigorously her tiny suit slid toward the wrong places. Her big hat smothered him and forced him to push back his thinning hair.

Tía Merce hummed her chuckle. “You’re a little early for votes, aren’t you, Armando dear? By election time the peasants will have forgotten your big asado and your red-wine demijohns.”

He looked at her with a round, blank face. “Mercedes, have you acquired any decent horses? I presume the priest from Las Cabras is coming to say mass Sunday?” Jali took a nibble at his tennis racket. Instead of laughing, he swung it menacingly. It made me snicker. He didn’t know that when you met a goat, a dog or a guanaco, you had to let them do their greetings first.

La Mamota mumbled her indignation about everybody receiving her Amito in bathing suits. She waited by the door. “La Mamota,” he said, as if none of us knew who it was, and patted her arm.

“Now, you behave yourself, Amito. Do you think I don’t know why you’ve come? Don’t forget who you are. And do something about my girls going back to Galmeda. You must convince Doña Mercedes. And why didn’t you bring your brothers Toto and Miguel?”

“How can I, Mamota, my brothers are always cruising the Atlantic to Paris and back.”

To my great surprise, he came to say hello to me, then patted Niceto on the head. The girls immediately gathered around their uncle. They hadn’t shown that much interest in him before, except for his candy, but now they acted proprietary, asking him about his horses.

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