Eva Luna by Isabel Allende Page A

hair, straighten my dress, put on the shoes I wore to market, and go to the dining room. I placed a chair in front of this window on storyland, satdown—back straight, knees together, hands in my lap, as I sat at Mass—and set out on my voyage. Sometimes I saw the patrona watching me from the open doorway, but she never said anything. She was afraid of me now.
    â€œThat’s good, little bird,” Elvira would say approvingly. “You have to fight back. No one tries anything with mad dogs, but tame dogs they kick. Life’s a dogfight.”
    It was the best advice I ever received. Elvira used to roast lemons in the coals, then quarter and boil them, and give me a drink of the mixture to make me more courageous.
    *  *  *
    For several years I worked in the house of that elderly bachelor and spinster, and during that time many things happened to change the country. Elvira used to tell me about them. After a brief interval of republican freedom, we once again had a dictator. He was a military man so harmless in appearance that no one imagined the extent of his greed. The most powerful man in the government was not the General, however, but the Chief of Political Police, the Man of the Gardenia. He had many affectations, among them slicked-down hair and manicured fingernails, impeccable white linen suits—always with a flower in the buttonhole—and French cologne. No one could ever accuse him of being common—and he was not the homosexual his many enemies accused him of being. He personally directed the torture of prisoners, elegant and courteous as ever. It was during his time that the penal colony of Santa María was reopened, a hellhole on an island in the middle of a crocodile- and piranha-infested river at the edge of the jungle, where political prisoners and criminals, equals in misfortune, perished from hunger, beatings, and tropical diseases. Not a breath of any of this wasreported on the radio or published in the newspapers, but Elvira found out through rumors on her days off, and often talked about them. I loved Elvira very much; I called her grandmother; abuela , I would say. They’ll never part us, little bird, she promised, but I was not so sure; I already sensed that my life would be one long series of farewells. Like me, Elvira had started working when she was a little girl, and through the long years weariness had seeped into her bones and chilled her soul. The burden of work and grinding poverty had killed her desire to go on, and she had begun her dialogue with death. At night she slept in her coffin, partly to become accustomed to it, to lose her fear of it, and partly to irritate the patrona , who never got used to the idea of a coffin in her house. The maid could not bear the sight of my abuela lying in her mortuary bed in the room they shared, and one day simply went away, without advising even the patrón , who was left waiting for her at the hour of the siesta. Before she left, she chalked crosses on all the doors in the house, the meaning of which no one ever deciphered, but for the same reason never dared erase. Elvira treated me as if she were my true abuela. It was with her that I learned to barter words for goods, and I have been blessed with good fortune, for I have always been able to find someone willing to accept such a transaction.
    I did not change much during those years; I remained rather small and thin, but with defiant eyes that nettled the patrona. My body developed slowly, but inside something was raging out of control, like an unseen river. While I felt I was a woman, the windowpane reflected the blurred image of a little girl. Even though I did not grow much, it was still enough that the patrón began to pay more attention to me. I must teach you to read, child, he used to say, but he neverfound time to do it. Now he not only asked for kisses on his nose; he began giving me a few centavos to help him bathe and sponge his body. Afterward