Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online

the mythological bed, she under the covers, with her account books on one side and her pastries on the other, and he, sitting at her feet between the naiad and the dolphin, discussing family and business affairs. Only with Severo did Paulina permit such a level of intimacy; very few people had access to her private rooms, but with him she felt totally at ease in her nightgown. This nephew gave her the satisfaction she never received from her children. The two younger sons lived the life of heirs, luxuriating in symbolic employment as directors of the clan's enterprises, one in London, the other in Boston. Matias, the firstborn, was destined to head the line of the Rodríguez de Santa Cruz y del Valles, but he didn't have the least vocation for it. Far from following in the footsteps of his spirited parents, taking an interest in their empire, or fathering male sons to prolong the family name, he had made hedonism and celibacy an art form. "He's little more than a well-dressed fool," Paulina described him once to Severo, but when she learned how well her son and her nephew got on, she worked diligently to foster that emerging friendship. "My mother never takes a stitch with an unthreaded needle," Matias joked. "She must be planning for you to save me from a life of dissipation." Severo had no thought of taking on the task of changing his cousin. Just the opposite—he would have been happy to be like him; by comparison he felt stiff and funereal. Everything about Matias astounded him: his impeccable style, his glacial irony, the ease with which he threw money around.
    "I want you to be familiar with my business dealings. This is a vulgar and materialistic society, with very little respect for women. Here nothing matters except fortune and contacts—that's why I need you," Paulina announced to her nephew a few months after he arrived. "You will be my eyes and ears."
    "I don't know anything about business."
    "But I do. I'm not asking you to think, that's my job. You keep your mouth shut, watch, listen, and report to me. Then you do what I tell you, without asking too many questions. Are we clear on this?"
    "Don't ask me to play any tricks, Aunt," Severo replied with dignity.
    "I see you've heard gossip about me. Look, my boy, laws were invented by the strong in order to dominate the weak—there are so many more of them. But I have no obligation to respect those laws. I need a lawyer I have complete confidence in so I can do whatever I please without getting into trouble."
    "In an honorable fashion, I hope," Severo warned.
    "Oh, child! We won't get anywhere that way. Your honor will be safe, as long as you don't exaggerate."
    So they sealed a pact as strong as the blood ties that united them. Paulina, who had taken him in with no expectations, convinced that he was a rogue or they would never have sent him to her from Chile, was happily surprised by this clever nephew with the noble sentiments. Within a few years, Severo had learned to speak English with a facility no one else in the family had shown; he had come to know his aunt's various undertakings like the palm of his hand, had traveled twice across the United States by train—one of them attacked by Mexican bandits—and even had time to complete his legal training. Severo maintained a weekly correspondence with his cousin Nívea, which with the passing years was becoming more intellectual than romantic. She wrote him about the family and Chilean politics; he bought her books and clipped articles about the advances of the suffragettes in Europe and the United States. The news that an amendment to authorize the vote for women had been presented before the North American Congress was celebrated by both, long distance, although they were in agreement that to imagine anything similar in Chile was madness. "What do I gain by studying and reading so much, Cousin," wrote his sweetheart, "if there is no place for action in a woman's life? My mother says it will be impossible to