Maya's Notebook: A Novel by Isabel Allende

Author:Isabel Allende
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780062105622
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2013-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

Winter

June, July, August

If someone had asked me a few weeks ago when the happiest time of my life was, I would have said that it was in the past: my childhood with my grandparents in the big magical house in Berkeley. However, now my answer would be that my happiest days were the ones I spent with Daniel at the end of May, and, barring catastrophes, I’ll be experiencing more of the same in the near future. I spent nine days in his company, and for three of them we were alone in this house with its cypress soul. During those prodigious days a door half opened for me; I glimpsed love, and the light was almost unbearable. My Popo said love makes us good. It doesn’t matter who we love, nor does it matter whether our love is reciprocated or not or if the relationship lasts. Just the experience of loving is enough, that’s what transforms us.

I wonder if I can describe the only days of love in my life. Manuel Arias went to Santiago on a quick three-day trip for some reason to do with his book, he said, but according to Blanca he went to see the doctor about the bubble in his brain. I think he went in order to leave me alone with Daniel. We were completely on our own, because Eduvigis didn’t come back to clean the house after the scandal of her daughter’s pregnancy; Azucena was still in the hospital in Castro, recovering from an infection; and Blanca had forbidden Juanito Corrales and Pedro Pelanchugay to bother us. It was almost the end of May, so the days were short and the nights long and chilly, perfect weather for intimacy.

Manuel left at noon and entrusted us with the chore of making marmalade out of tomatoes, before they started to rot. Tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes. Tomatoes in the fall—who’s ever heard of that! Blanca’s garden has produced so many, and we get given so many, that we don’t know what to do with them all: salsa, pasta sauce, dried tomatoes, preserves. Marmalade is an extreme solution, I don’t know who might like it. Daniel and I peeled pounds and pounds of them, chopped them up, removed the seeds, weighed them, and put them in the pots; that took us more than two hours, which weren’t wasted, because with the distraction of the tomatoes our tongues were loosened, and we told each other all kinds of things. We added a pound of sugar for every pound of tomato flesh, and a bit of lemon juice, cooked it till it thickened, about twenty minutes, stirring constantly, and then we put it straight into sterilized jars. We boiled the full jars for half an hour, so they were hermetically sealed and ready to be exchanged for other products, like Liliana Treviño’s quince jelly and Doña Lucinda’s wool. When we finished, the kitchen was very dark and the house had a delicious fragrance of sugar and wood smoke.

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