Violeta [English Edition] by Isabel Allende

Author:Isabel Allende [Allende, Isabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Looking back, I realize that I lost Nieves well before I thought I did. My daughter was fourteen when Julián decided that instead of our annual trip to Santa Clara she’d spend her vacation time with him, just the two of them, like a father-daughter honeymoon. Julián had lost all hope of turning Juan Martín into “a man,” which is to say a man like him. His son was an awkward and idealistic teenager who seemed more interested in reading Albert Camus and Franz Kafka than the Playboy magazines his father brought him from Miami. Juan Martín spent his time discussing Marxism and imperialism with a handful of similarly tormented boys instead of making out with one of his sister’s friends in a dark corner.

Over the following years, Julián took Nieves on trips and taught her to drive a car and copilot an airplane. When he caught her smoking and drinking the dregs of cocktail glasses, he began to supply her with menthol cigarettes and instructed her in the art of drinking in moderation, something he himself rarely practiced. Very soon Nieves was dressing in provocative clothing and wearing makeup like a model to go out with her father to nightclubs and casinos, where they placed bets at the tables without anyone suspecting her age; their big joke was that people thought she was Julián’s latest conquest. The burns she’d suffered at age ten had left only faint scars, thanks, I suppose, to Yaima’s treatment. Her beauty, according to Julián, stopped traffic. By eighteen she was singing for tips at hotels and casinos. Julián delighted in showing off his daughter at a prudent distance, but he ran off any young suitor who came near her.

“I’m never going to get a boyfriend if you keep this up, Dad,” Nieves would complain.

“At your age, the last thing you need is a boyfriend. That’ll happen over my dead body,” he responded. He was as jealous as a lover.

In the meantime, I lived here in our country with Juan Martín, who was studying philosophy and history. In his father’s eyes this was a waste of time, completely pointless. Since his university was in the capital, I rented an apartment that we shared, but we seldom saw each other; I had one foot in Sacramento and flew regularly to the United States to see Nieves. My son spent long periods of time alone.

By the time the annulment of my first marriage finally came through, I no longer cared about it. I’d become well aware of the advantages my situation offered; I had my freedom for all intents and purposes, and to satisfy the demands of desire I could turn to that impetuous man who after all those years of shared routines, unwilling collusion, and accumulated resentment, could still seduce me with a kiss. Lust can hold us hostage for so long! It was never so humiliating as in my middle age, when the woman in the mirror showed her fifty years of struggle and exhaustion, body and soul.

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