Read Online The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online Page A

left his counter so fast he forgot to close the shop but raced, choked with righteous wrath, to set things right in the Vargas household. He never needed to say much; the minute Vargas saw him, he calmed down. Riad Halabí was the only person capable of shaming the brute.
    Antonia Sierra, Vargas’s wife, was twenty-six years younger than he. But she was an old woman by the time she was forty: she had hardly a tooth left in her head, and her once-audacious body had been ruined by work, births, and miscarriages; even so, she still displayed a trace of her past arrogance, a way of walking with her head held high and her body arched—an aftertaste of her old mulatto beauty—and a ferocious pride that arrested any overture of pity. For Antonia, there were not enough hours in the day, because besides caring for her children and looking after the garden and the hens, she earned a few pesos by cooking lunch for the police, taking in washing, and cleaning the school. There were times that her body was covered with black-and-blue marks; no one had to ask, all Agua Santa knew about the abuse she took from her husband. Only Riad Halabí and the schoolteacher Inés dared to give her something now and then, thinking up excuses to keep from offending her—a few clothes, a little food, notebooks and vitamins for the children.
    Antonia had to put up with a lot from her husband, including his bringing his concubine into her house.
    *  *  *
    Concha Díaz arrived in Agua Santa on one of the National Petroleum trucks, as sad and mournful as a ghost. The driver had taken pity on her when he saw her walking barefoot down the road with one bundle over her shoulder and another in her belly. All the trucks stopped when they drove through town, so Riad Halabí was the first to hear the story. He saw the girl appear in his doorway, and by the way she plopped down her bundle before the counter, he immediately realized that she was not passing through; this girl had come to stay. She was very young, dark-skinned, and short, with a thick mop of sun-streaked curly hair that seemed not to have seen a comb for some time. As he always did with visitors, Riad Halabí offered Concha a chair and a cool pineapple drink, and prepared to listen to the account of her adventures or misfortunes. This girl, however, said very little; she just blew her nose with her fingers and kept her eyes on the floor, mumbling a string of laments as tears slowly trickled down her cheeks. Finally the Turk made out that she wanted to see Tomás Vargas, and he sent someone to fetch him from the tavern. He waited in the doorway, and as soon as he saw Vargas, he grabbed the old man by the arm and led him before the girl, not giving him time to recover from his fright.
    â€œThe girl says this is your baby,” said Riad Halabí, in the mild tones he used when he was angry.
    â€œNo one can prove it, Turk. You always know who the mother is, but you can’t be sure about the father,” said Vargas, discomfited, but with still enough gall to try a raffish wink, which no one appreciated.
    With that, the girl raised the pitch of her weeping, gulping out that she would never have come all this way if she hadn’t known who the father was. Riad Halabí told Vargas that he should be ashamed, that he was old enough to be the girl’s grandfather, and if he thought that people were going to forgive him his sins this time, he was mistaken, what could he have been thinking, but when the girl wailed even louder, he said what everyone knew he would say.
    â€œThere, there, child. It’s all right. You can stay here in my house for a while, at least until the baby’s born.”
    Concha Díaz began to sob even more wildly, and declared that she would not live anywhere except with Tomás Vargas; that was why she had come. The air congealed in the store; there was a long silence punctuated only by the sound of the ceiling fans and