Paula by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online

or even get within breathing distance; he considered the telephone and the mail to be invasions of privacy, always laid an open book beside his place at the table to discourage attempts at conversation, and then tried to intimidate the person next to him with his barbaric table manners. We all knew, though, that he was a compassionate soul who secretly, hoping no one would suspect, lent a hand to a true army of needy persons. He was Tata’s right arm, his best friend, and his partner in the enterprise of raising sheep and exporting wool to Scotland. The household servants adored him and, despite his unsociable silences, his peculiarities and practical jokes, he had a legion of friends. Many years later, this eccentric man hopelessly bitten by the reading bug fell in love with a delightful cousin who had been reared in the country, where life was lived in terms of hard work and religion. That branch of the family, very formal and conservative, had to call on all their restraint to endure the bizarre behavior of their daughter’s suitor. One day, for instance, my uncle bought a cow’s head in the market, then spent two days scraping it clean inside—to the revulsion of us children, who had never seen anything so foul or monstrous at close range. The next Sunday, when the task was complete, he showed up after mass at his sweetheart’s house, dressed in a tuxedo and wearing the head like a tribal mask. The servant who opened the door never blinked an eye, she just stood aside and said, “Come in, don Pablo.” My uncle’s bedroom was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and in the center was an anchorite’s cot where he spent a major portion of the night reading. He was the one who convinced me that in the dark the characters escaped and roamed through the house. I used to hide my head under the sheets because I was afraid of the devils in the mirrors and that throng of characters wandering about the house reliving their adventures and desires: pirates, courtesans, bandits, witches, and fair damsels. At eight-thirty I was supposed to turn off the light and go to sleep, but Uncle Pablo gave me a flashlight so I could read under the covers; ever since, I have enjoyed the vice of secret reading.
    It was impossible to be bored in a house filled with books and outrageous relatives, a forbidden cellar, litter after litter of kittens—which Margara drowned in a bucket of water—and a kitchen radio that was turned on behind my grandfather’s back to blare popular songs, news of bloodcurdling crimes, and serialized dramas. My uncles invented a game they called Ruffin, for “roughing up the ruffians,” a ferocious entertainment that consisted basically of teasing us children until they made us cry. They never ran out of ideas, from pasting our ten-peso allowances on the ceiling, where we could see them but not reach them, to offering us bonbons from which, using a syringe, they had removed the chocolate filling and replaced it with hot chili sauce. They used to push us from the top of the stairs in cardboard boxes, hold us upside down over the toilet and threaten to pull the chain, fill the washbasin with alcohol and light it, offering us money to put our hands in the flame, and stack up my grandfather’s used tires and drop us inside, where we screamed with fear in the dark, half choked by the smell of rotted rubber. When we traded in an old gas stove for a new electric one, they stood us on the burners, turned them on low, and, as we hopped from one foot to the other, began to tell us a story to see whether the heat on the soles of our shoes was more compelling than our interest in the tale. My mother defended us like a lioness, but she was not always there to protect us. Tata, on the other hand, had the idea that Ruffin built character and was a necessary part of our education. The theory that childhood must be a period of placid innocence did not exist then, this is