Isle of Passion by Laura Restrepo Read Free Book Online

distinguish floral scents—the sweet jasmines, the slightly acrid daisies, the steamy gardenias, the familiar roses, and the almost imperceptible yet treacherous charm of orchids. The overloaded breath of air wrapped around her and numbed her senses, isolating her from reality.
    She opened her eyes, inhaling deeply, and was able, little by little, to focus on the blurred images. Particularly one of them, a stranger who stood stiffly by her side. She looked at him in amazement, as if seeing for the first time his thin mustache, his doll-like eyelashes, his round, introspective eyes, his hair, disciplined with brilliantine and sharply parted in the middle. He, Ramón, the stranger with whom she was to live for the rest of her days, turned to look at her and smiled. Though it came from that strange face, his smile was warm and familiar, and brought Alicia back down to earth.
    I know him little, but I love him, Alicia thought, after catching her breath, and she busied herself arranging her tulle veil around her feet. Actually, they had known each other since childhood and had been engaged since adolescence, but during their courtship they never had the opportunity of being alone, of talking freely until they ran out of topics to talk about, of being close, of being in physical contact, of scrutinizing the nooks and crannies of each other’s soul. In the last seven years, Ramón had been away on military duty. Once or twice a year he had been granted a furlough to return to Orizaba, and on those visits, which would last a few days or a few weeks, he alternated between sleeping all his postponed siestas, letting himself be fed and pampered by his mother, and courting his fiancée.
    An engagement in Orizaba—a twisted, fearful, and overly pious town, teeming with gossip—consisted of no more than after-dinner family gatherings, bouquets of roses, croquet games, kissing of hands, and walks on the alameda. There is testimony, for instance, that after their engagement was formalized and made public, the two lovers began to stroll arm in arm. This is stated in an unpublished manuscript by a local friend of Alicia’s family, Don Antonio Díaz Meléndez, entitled “Orizaba de mis recuerdos” (The Orizaba I remember).
    There is no mention in it, however, of the piles of garbage on the streets where the pigs snooped around, of the dark vestries where priests used to exorcise epileptics by beating them, nor of the street corners, right in the center of town, where the poor used to relieve themselves. But the lost graces of Orizaba do get nostalgic mention: the well-trimmed lawn and shade trees in the alameda, the fountain of playful waters, the aristocratic family gatherings listening to the strains of the Municipal Military Band playing Juventino Rosas’s “Over the Waves” waltz in the gazebo of the central plaza after the eleven o’clock mass. Don Antonio tells how one Sunday in the middle of an open-air concert and the pleasant strolling of the townspeople, he saw a beautiful girl “wearing an elegant hat and a dress with a discreet neckline, reaching down to the tips of her shiny patent leather booties, as the fashion in those days demanded. She was Miss Alicia Rovira, on the arm of a handsome officer, whom she introduced to me as her fiancé. It was Captain Arnaud. This was the first and last time I saw him, and he made an excellent impression on me with his pleasant conversation and loving behavior toward his fiancée, charming Alicia.”
    One day, dressed up and serene, they were walking a few steps ahead of her parents, siblings, and cousins when Alicia stopped suddenly and told Ramón, “Besides being in love and getting married, I would like us to be friends, you and me.”
    Ramón looked at her in surprise. He kept silent for a while.
    “I would like that, too. But that will have to be when we live together, alone. For now, with so many people around us, it’s even difficult to be romantically in love like in the