Read Online The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online

was a long night, perhaps the longest in my life. I spent it sitting next to Rosa’s tomb, speaking with her, accompanying her on the first part of her journey to the Hereafter, which is when it’s hardest to detach yourself from earth and you need the love of those who have remained behind, so you can leave with at least the consolation of having planted something in someone else’s heart. I remembered her perfect face and cursed my luck. I blamed Rosa for the years I had spent dreaming of her deep within the mine. I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t seen any other women all that time except for a handful of shriveled old prostitutes, who serviced the whole camp with more good will than ability. But I did tell her that I had lived among rough, lawless men, that I had eaten chickpeas and drunk green water far from civilization, thinking of her night and day and bearing her image in my soul like a banner that gave me the strength to keep hacking at the mountain even if the lode was lost, even if I was sick to my stomach the whole year round, even if I was frozen to the bone at night and dazed by the sun during the day, all with the single goal of marrying her, but she goes and dies on me, betraying me before I can fulfill my dreams, and leaving me with this incurable despair. I told her she had mocked me, that we had never been completely alone together, that I had only been able to kiss her once. I had had to weave my love out of memories and cravings that were impossible to satisfy, out of letters that took forever to arrive and arrived faded, and that were incapable of reflecting the intensity of my feelings or the pain of her absence, because I have no gift for letter writing and much less for writing about my own emotions. I told her that those years in the mine were an irremediable loss, and that if I had known she wasn’t long for this world I would have stolen the money that I needed to marry her and built her a palace studded with treasures from the ocean floor—with pearls and coral and walls of nacre. I would have kidnapped her and locked her up, and only I would have had the key. I would have loved her without interruption almost till infinity, for I was convinced that if she had been with me she would never have drunk the poison that was meant for her father and she would have lived a thousand years. I told her of the caresses I’d saved for her, the presents with which I’d planned to surprise her, the ways I would have loved her and made her happy. In short, I told her all the crazy things I never would have said if she could hear me and that I’ve never told a woman since.
    That night I thought I had lost my ability to fall in love forever, that I would never laugh again or pursue an illusion. But never is a long time. I’ve learned that much in my long life.
    I had a vision of anger spreading through me like a malignant tumor, sullying the best hours of my life and rendering me incapable of tenderness or mercy. But beyond confusion and rage, the strongest feeling I remember having that night was frustrated desire, because I would never be able to satisfy my need to run my hands over Rosa’s body, to penetrate her secrets, to release the green fountain of her hair and plunge into its deepest waters. In desperation I summoned up the last image I had of her, outlined against the satin pleats in her virginal coffin, with her bride’s blossoms in her hair and a rosary in her hands. I couldn’t know that years later I would see her once again for a fleeting second just as she was then, with orange blossoms in her hair and a rosary in her hands.
    With the first glints of dawn the caretaker appeared again. He must have felt sorry for the half-frozen madman who had spent the night among the livid ghosts of the graveyard. He held out his flask.
    â€œHot tea,” he offered.
    But I pushed it away and walked out with great furious strides, cursing, among the lines