Read Online Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online

brothers divided the inheritance, gave Eusebio his share, and hoped they would never hear from him again. He sold his lands and went abroad, where in a few years he spent his last penny in princely diversions befitting his reputation as a ne’er-do-well. He returned to his native land through the mercy of the Consulate, in itself enough to discredit him forever in the eyes of any marriageable girl, but Beatriz Alcántara fell in love with his aristocratic bearing, his surname, and the aura that surrounded him. She was from a middle-class family, and from the time she was a little girl her one ambition had been to ascend the social ladder. Her capital consisted of her beauty, the artifice of her manners, and a few English and French phrases misused with such assurance that she gave the impression of being fluent in those languages. A veneer of culture served her well in social gatherings, and her skill in dressing and grooming earned her the reputation of being elegant. Eusebio Beltrán was for all practical purposes ruined; he had hit bottom in many aspects of his life but was confident that this was merely temporary, for he had the notion that people from good families always kept their heads above water. Besides, he was a liberal. The ideology of the liberals in those days could be summed up in a few words: help your friends, screw your enemies, and in all other cases be just. His friends did help him, and shortly he was playing golf in the most exclusive club and enjoying a season ticket at the Municipal Theater and a box at the Hippodrome. With the backing of his charm and his air of British nobility, he found associates in a variety of enterprises. He began to live opulently because it seemed to him foolish to live any other way, and he married Beatriz Alcántara because he had a weakness for beautiful women. The second time he invited her out, she asked him, without preamble, what his intentions were, saying she did not want to waste her time. She was twenty-five and did not intend to spend months in a pointless flirtation, since she was interested only in finding a husband. Her frankness greatly amused Eusebio, but when she refused to appear again in his company, he realized that she was serious. It took him one minute to yield to the impulse to propose matrimony, and a lifetime was not long enough to regret it. They had a daughter, Irene, who inherited the angelic bemusement of her paternal grandmother and the constant good humor of her father. While his daughter was growing up, Eusebio Beltrán had undertaken a number of business dealings, some profitable and others openly absurd. He was a man gifted with unlimited imagination, of which the prime example was his coconut-knocking machine. One day he had read in a magazine that picking this fruit by hand greatly increased its price. A native was chosen to climb the palm tree, pick the coconut, and descend. Climbing and descending consumed valuable time, and some pickers fell from the high branches, causing unforeseen expenses. Beltrán was determined to find a solution. He spent three days locked in his office, tormented by the problem of the coconuts, about which, to say the least, he had little firsthand knowledge, since in his travels he had avoided the tropics and in his home exotic foods were not eaten. But he learned. He studied the diameter and weight of the fruit, the climate and terrain suitable for its cultivation, the season for harvesting, the time for maturation, and other details. He devoted hours to drawing plans, and the result of all his sleeplessness was the invention of a machine capable of gathering a surprising number of coconuts per hour. Ignoring the mockery of family and friends, who knew as little as he about coconuts in their natural state, having only seen them adorning the turbans of mambo dancers or shredded over wedding cakes, he went to the Registry and patented a rampant tower outfitted with a retractable arm. Eusebio