Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online Page B

saying such a barbarous thing about your own son!" protested Feliciano. "We've never had one of those in my family, or in yours!"
    "Do you know any normal man who matches the color of his muffler to his wallpaper?" snorted Paulina.
    "All right, goddammit! You're his mother, and it's up to you to find a sweetheart for him! This boy is already thirty and is still a bachelor. You'd better be finding one soon, before we have a tubercular alcoholic on our hands, or worse," warned Feliciano, unaware that it was already too late for lukewarm measures of salvation.
    On one of those nights of chilling winds so typical of summer in San Francisco, Williams, the butler of the swallowtail coat, knocked at the door of Severo del Valle's room.
    "Forgive the intrusion, sir," he murmured with a discreet cough, entering with a three-candle candelabrum in his gloved hand.
    "What is it, Williams?" asked Severo, alarmed because it was the first time anyone had interrupted his sleep in that house.
    "I fear we have a small difficulty on our hands. It's Mr. Matias," said Williams, with that pompous British deference, unknown in California, that always sounded more ironic than respectful. At that late hour, he explained, a message had been delivered to the house, sent by a lady of doubtful reputation, one Amanda Lowell, whom the young gentleman often visited, one of those people from "a different ambience," as Williams put it. Severo read the note by the light of the candles: only three lines, seeking immediate help for Matias.
    "We must advise my aunt and uncle—Matias may have had an accident," Severo del Valle decided.
    "Look at the address, sir. Right in the very center of Chinatown. It seems to me that it would be better if the master and his lady were not informed," suggested the butler.
    "Really! I thought you had no secrets from my aunt Paulina."
    "I try to avoid upsetting her, sir."
    "What do you suggest we do?"
    "If it is not asking too much, that you don your clothing, collect your weapon, and come with me."
    Williams had waked a stable boy to ready one of the coaches, but since he wanted to keep the matter as quiet as possible, he himself took the reins and drove purposefully through the dark, empty streets toward the Chinese quarter, guided by the instinct of the horses after the wind kept blowing out the lamps on the carriage. Severo had the impression that this was not the first time the man had driven through these alleyways. Soon they got out of the coach and on foot plunged into a passageway that opened onto a shadowy courtyard filled with a strange, sweetish odor like roasted nuts. There was not a soul to be seen and no sound but the wind, and the only light filtered through the chinks in a pair of small windows at street level. Williams struck a match, once more read the address on the paper, and without ceremony pushed one of the doors that opened onto the courtyard. Severo, with his hand on his weapon, followed. They walked into a small, unventilated though clean and neat room in which they could barely breathe for the dense aroma of opium. Around a center table, lined against the walls, were wooden compartments, one above another like berths on a ship, covered by a mat and with a block of hollowed out wood in way of a pillow. These spaces were occupied by Chinese, sometimes two in a cubicle, lying on one side facing small trays containing a box with a black paste and a small lighted lamp. It was long past midnight, and the drug had already exerted its effect on most. Lethargic, the men lay wandering through their dreams; only two or three still had the strength to dip a thin metal rod into the opium, heat it over the lamp, fill the tiny thimble of the pipe, and inhale through the bamboo stem.
    "Good God!" murmured Severo, who had heard of this but never seen it.
    "It is less harmful than alcohol, if you will allow me to say so," replied Williams. "It does not induce violence, and it does no harm to others, only the person who