Read Online The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo - Free Book Online Page A

love. She was the pain of my conscience.”
    Since he knew about señor Manrique, Sacramento was attacked by a frenzy of labor that was incomprehensible to the neighbors who always caught him taking a siesta in the shade of some tree and who now saw him slaving away under the broiling sun like a mad ant, thumping his cart along the streets of the pueblo from dawn well into night to carry cans of gasoline from the docks to the sawmill and lumber from the sawmill to the docks, to carry recently arrived travelers from the train station to the Hotel Pipatón and travelers about to depart, from the Hotel Pipatón to the train station, to haul cement or bricks to construction sites, cans of water to the higher barrios, sacks of rice and grain from the river to the cooperative and from the cooperative to the Troco’s kitchens. They even saw him dragging up to the peak of Cristo del Pronto Alivio sick people who were going there to beg for their health and the recently healed who were going to give thanks for the miracle of their healing. At the end of a week of maximum output he presented himself in Todos los Santos’s house with his pockets filled with coins, which he dumped on the table in the kitchen.
    â€œI have come to pay for the girl’s thing.”
    â€œWhat thing?”
    â€œHer first night of love.”
    Olguita, Tana, Machuca, Delia Ramos, all of them had gathered to prepare tamales for the leper colony bazaar, with corn masa and pork wrapped tightly in banana leaves, then tied with string, and they all stiffened with their hands in the masa when they saw the boy’s expression of pathetic solemnity as he delivered his capital; the wind of life or death ruffling his hair; the lyric tenor’s ardor with which he had burst onto the scene of tamale preparation, trying to prevent the inevitable by presenting his petition; his delicate supplication that broke into stammering when the chuckling started and he saw the women doubled up with laughter over the yellow corn flour, and their laughter slid like liquid fire through his ears, ulcerating his body inside, burning even more because of the presence of his idolized Claire, who wasn’t making tamales with the others, of course, but was sitting there in the background painting her fingernails killer red, and who, like the others, threw the boiling flood of her laughter in his face.
    â€œCome here, my precious child,” said Machuca, still shaking from the hilarity of it, crushing his face against her soft breasts. “This boy is worth his weight in gold.”
    â€œSuch beautiful curly eyebrows!” said Olguita, kissing his eyes. “When he grows up he’s going to be a considerate man, God bless him.”
    Once again able to be serious, Todos los Santos gathered up the coins on the table, put them in a paper bag, took some more coins from her savings drawer, and put them in the bag too.
    â€œTake this,” she said to Sacramento, giving him the bag. “Take the girl to the movies. Buy some chocolates and cotton candy, you’ll have more than enough there.”
    The two kids went to the movies together and saw a few westerns in which a riled-up John Wayne didn’t leave an Indian standing. But when they got back to Todos los Santos’s house, Sacramento said he didn’t want to go inside and stubbornly insisted on saying good-bye at the door.
    â€œI’m leaving Tora, girl,” he announced. “I am going to sign up as a petrolero to come back bronzed by the sun, shaggy and with a lot of money, so the mujeres of La Catunga won’t ever laugh at me again.”
    â€œOkay,” she said, “we were going far away; I was going to be a petrolero too and we were going through the jungle with our horses and . . . ”
    â€œNo more silly games; this time it’s for real. Adiós .”
    The girl just stood there against the falling sunset, devoid of sorrow or glory, featuring