Read Online The Sands of Time by Sidney Sheldon - Free Book Online Page A

spend a few moments with her after the service each Sunday, and when he had time, he would take her to a little café for a treat of helado.
    In the winter Graciela’s life was a dreary landscape, monotonous and gloomy. Las Navas del Marqués was in a valley surrounded by mountains, and because of that, the winters were six months long. The summers were easier to bear, for then the tourists arrived and filled the town with laughter and dancing, and the streets came alive. The tourists would gather at the Plaza de Manuel Delgado Barredo, with its little bandstand built on stone, and listen to the orchestra and watch the natives dance the sardana, the centuries-old traditional folk dance, barefoot, their hands linked as they moved gracefully around in a colorful circle. Graciela watched the visitors as they sat at the sidewalk cafés drinking aperitivos or shopping at the pescaderia —the fish market—or the farmacia. At one o’clock in the afternoon the bodega was always filled with tourists drinking chateo and picking at tapas —seafood, olives, and chips.
    The most exciting thing for Graciela was to watch the paseo each evening. Boys and girls would walk up and down the Plaza Mayor in segregated groups, the boys eyeing the girls, while parents and grandparents and friends watched, hawk-eyed, from sidewalk cafés. It was the traditional mating ritual, observed for centuries. Graciela longed to join in it, but her mother forbade her.
    “Do you want to be a puta? ” she would scream at Graciela. “Stay away from boys. They want only one thing from you. I know from experience,” she added bitterly.
    If the days were bearable, the nights were an agony. Through the thin curtain that separated their beds, Graciela could hear the sounds of savage moaning and writhings and heavy breathing, and always the obscenities.
    “Faster…harder!”
    “¡Cógeme!”
    “¡Mámame el verga!”
    “¡Mételo en el culo!”
    Before she was ten years old, Graciela had heard every obscene word in the Spanish vocabulary. They were whispered and shouted and shuddered and moaned. The cries of passion repelled Graciela, and at the same time awakened strange longings in her.
    When Graciela was fourteen years old, the Moor moved in. He was the biggest man Graciela had ever seen. His skin was shiny black, and his head was shaved. He had enormous shoulders, a barrel chest, and huge arms. The Moor had arrived in the middle of the night when Graciela was asleep, and she got her first sight of him in the morning when he pushed the curtain aside and walked stark naked past Graciela’s bed to go outside to the outhouse. Graciela looked at him and almost gasped aloud. He was enormous, in every part. That will kill my mother, Graciela thought.
    The Moor was staring at her. “Well, well. And who do we have here?”
    Dolores Pinero hurried out of her bed and moved to his side. “My daughter,” she said curtly.
    A wave of embarrassment swept over Graciela as she saw her mother’s naked body next to the man.
    The Moor smiled, showing beautiful white, even teeth. “What’s your name, guapa? ”
    Graciela was too shamed by his nakedness to speak.
    “Her name’s Graciela. She’s retarded.”
    “She’s beautiful. I’ll bet you looked like that when you were young.”
    “I’m still young,” Dolores snapped. She turned to her daughter. “Get dressed. You’ll be late for school.”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    The Moor stood there, eyeing her.
    The older woman took his arm and said cajolingly, “Come back to bed, querido. We’re not finished yet.”
    “Later,” the Moor said. He was still looking at Graciela.
    The Moor stayed. Every day when Graciela came home from school she prayed that he would be gone. For reasons she did not understand, he terrified her. He was always polite to her and never made any advances, yet the mere thought of him sent shivers through her body.
    His treatment of her mother was something else. The Moor stayed in the small