The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende

Author:Isabel Allende
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Searching for a Bride

NICO HAD BECOME VERY HANDSOME. He was wearing his hair long, like an apostle, and his grandfather’s features had become more accentuated: large sultry eyes, aristocratic nose, square chin, elegant hands. It was inexplicable to me that there weren’t a dozen women milling about at his front door. Behind Willie’s back—he doesn’t understand these matters—Tabra and I decided to look for a girlfriend for Nico. And that’s exactly what you would have done, daughter, so don’t scold me.

“In India, and many other places in the world, marriages are arranged. There are fewer divorces there than in Western countries,” Tabra explained.

“That doesn’t prove that they’re happy, only that they have to put up with more,” I contended.

“The system works fine. Marrying for love carries a lot of problems with it, it’s more successful to unite two compatible persons who with time will learn to love one another.”

“That’s a little risky, but I don’t have a better idea,” I admitted.

It isn’t easy to make these arrangements in California, as she herself had proved for years; none of the matchmaking agencies had found a man who was worth her while. The best had been Lagarto-Emplumado, but still she had no news of him. We checked the newspapers regularly to see if Moctezuma’s crown had been returned to Mexico, but found nothing. In view of the negative results obtained by Tabra, I didn’t want to put ads in the papers or go to agencies; that seemed a little indiscreet in view of the fact that I hadn’t as yet consulted Nico. My friends were no help; they were no longer young, and no menopausal woman would take on my three grandchildren, however gorgeous Nico was.

I devoted myself to looking for a potential sweetheart everywhere I went, and in the process my eye grew sharper. I made inquiries among people I knew, I scrutinized the young women who asked for my autograph in bookstores, I even brazenly stopped a pair of girls in the street, but that method was inefficient and very slow. At that pace Nico would be seventy and still a bachelor. I studied women, and in the end would discard them for different motives: serious or tedious, talkative or shy, smokers or macrobiotic fiends, dressed like their mothers or with a tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe on their backs. This was for my son; the choice could not be made frivolously. I was beginning to lose hope when Tabra introduced me to Amanda, a photographer and writer who wanted to make a trip to the Amazon with me for a travel magazine. Amanda was very interesting, and beautiful, but she was married and planned to have children very soon; she wasn’t, unfortunately, a good candidate for my romantic designs. However, during one conversation, the subject of my son came up and I told her the whole drama—there was no secret about what had happened with Celia; she herself had broadcast it right and left. Amanda told me she knew the ideal girl: Lori Barra.

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