Eva Luna Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the bud any blossoming of fear, and never allowed the other servants to frighten me with their macabre ideas. I think she must have tried to keep me away from the laboratory. In fact, I almost never saw the mummies; I simply knew they were there on the other side of the door. Those poor people are very fragile, Eva, she used to tell me. I don’t want you to go into that room. Just a little push and you might break one of their bones, and then the Professor would be very angry. For my peace of mind she gave a name to each body and invented a past for every one, transforming them into friendly spirits like elves and fairies.
    We did not often leave the house. One of the rare occasions we did was to watch a procession during the drought, an occasion when even atheists were prepared to pray, because it was a community event more than an act of faith. I remember hearing people say that not a drop of rain had fallen in the country for three years; the earth had split open in thirsty cracks, all the vegetation had died; animals had perished with their muzzles buried in the dust; and, in exchange for water, people who lived in the plains trudged to the coast to sell themselves into slavery. In view of this national disaster, the Bishop had decided to carry the image of the Nazarene through the streets and implore the Almighty to bring an end to this punishment, and as it was the last hope, all of us came—rich and poor, young and old, believers and agnostics. Professor Jones sputtered with rage when he learned of it—Barbarians! Indians! Black savages!—but he could not prevent his servants from dressing in their best clothes and going off to see the procession. The multitudes, with the Nazarene in the lead, set out from the Cathedralbut did not get even as far as the Public Utility Company before they were overtaken by a violent cloudburst. Forty-eight hours later, the city had become a lake; storm sewers were clogged, roads inundated, residences flooded. In the country, houses were carried off by the downpour, and in one town on the coast it rained fish. A miracle, a miracle! the Bishop clamored. And we joined in the chorus, unaware that the procession had been organized after a meteorologist had forecast typhoons and torrential rains throughout the Caribbean—as Jones proclaimed from his wheelchair: Superstitious, ignorant, illiterate fools! the poor man howled. But no one listened. That miracle accomplished what neither the Mission priests nor the Little Sisters of Charity had been able to achieve: my mother accepted God, because now she visualized him seated on his celestial throne gently mocking mankind, and to her this god was very different from the awesome patriarch of religious books. Perhaps one manifestation of his sense of humor was to keep us in a state of confusion, never revealing his plans and proposals to us. But every time we remembered the miracle of the rain, we would die laughing.
    The world was bounded by the iron railings of the garden. Within them, time was ruled by caprice; in half an hour I could make six trips around the globe, and a moonbeam in the patio would fill my thoughts for a week. Light and shadow created fundamental changes in the nature of objects: books, quiet during the day, opened by night so their characters could come out and wander through the rooms and live their adventures; the mummies, so humble and discreet when the morning sunlight poured through the windows, at twilight became stones lurking in the shadows, and in the blackness grew to the size of giants. Space expandedand contracted according to my will: the cubby beneath the stairs contained an entire planetary system, but the sky seen through the attic skylight was nothing more than a pale circle of glass. One word from me and abracadabra! reality was transformed.
    I grew up free and secure in that mansion at the foot of the hill. I had no contact with any other children, nor was I accustomed to strangers,