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

the woman’s snuffling. No one had the nerve to tell the girl that the old man was married and had six children. Finally, Vargas picked up the girl’s bundle and pulled her to her feet.
    â€œAll right, Conchita, if that’s what you want, that’s what it’ll be. We’ll go to my house right this minute.”
    That was how it happened that when Antonia Sierra got home from work she found another woman resting in her hammock, and for the first time in her life, her pride was not strong enough to conceal her feelings. Her insults could be heard all down the main street; they echoed in the plaza and penetrated every house; she screamed that Concha Díaz was a filthy sewer rat, and that Antonia Sierra would make her life so miserable that she would creep back to the gutter she never should have crawled out of, and that if she thought her children were going to live beneath the same roof with a bitch like her, she had another think coming, because Antonia Sierra was no dumb yokel, and her husband had better watch his step, too, because she had swallowed all his deviltry and cheating for the sake of her children, poor innocents they were, but this was the last straw, they’d see who Antonia Sierra was. Her tantrum lasted a week, at the end of which her cries faded to an incessant muttering. She lost the last vestiges of her beauty, she even lost her way of walking, and dragged around like a whipped dog. Her neighbors tried to tell her that it was Vargas’s fault, not Concha’s, but she was in no mood to listen to advice to be kind or fair.
    Life in that house had never been pleasant, but with the arrival of the concubine it became unrelenting hell. Antonia spent the nights huddled in her children’s bed, spitting curses, while next to her snored her husband, cuddling the girl. With the first light of dawn Antonia had to get up, boil the coffee, stir up the cornmeal cakes, get the children off to school, tend the garden, cook for the police, and wash and iron. She performed all these chores like an automaton, while bitterness overflowed her heart. Since she refused to feed her husband, Concha took charge of that task after Antonia left, not wanting to meet her face to face over the cookstove. Antonia Sierra’s hatred was so savage that there were those in the town who feared she would end up murdering her rival, and they went to Riad Halabí and the schoolteacher Inés to ask them to intervene before it was too late.
    But that was not how things worked out. In two months, Concha’s belly was the size of a watermelon, her legs were so swollen her veins seemed about to burst, and because she was lonely and afraid she never stopped crying. Tomás Vargas grew tired of all the tears and came home only to sleep. That meant the women no longer had to take turns cooking. Concha lost the last incentive to get up and get dressed, and lay in the hammock staring at the ceiling, without the energy even to boil a cup of coffee. Antonia ignored her all the first day, but by night had one of the children take her a bowl of soup and a glass of warm milk, so no one could say that she had let anyone die of hunger beneath her roof. The routine was repeated, and after a few days Concha got up to eat with the rest of them. Antonia pretended not to see her, but at least she stopped cursing every time the girl walked near her. Little by little, pity got the best of her. When she saw the girl growing thinner every day, a poor scarecrow with an enormous belly and deep circles under her eyes, she began to kill her hens one by one to make broth, and when all the chickens were gone, she did what she had never done before, she went to Riad Halabí for help.
    â€œI’ve had six children, and some dead before they were born, but I’ve never seen anyone so sick from a pregnancy,” she explained, blushing. “She’s wasted down to her bones, Turk, the minute she swallows a bite of food she