The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo Read Free Book Online Page A

busy stretching the last sunny days of their childhood, playing that they were already grown up and inventing and acting out episodes and dramas with dialogues, never-ending like life itself. You could say that they were growing up as they played being grown up, like when they decided to pretend to be brother and sister who were leaving home to travel around the world in search of fame and fortune, but first they had to have breakfast, let’s pretend that this is bread and that’s milk, bread, no, I was eating eggs for breakfast, now we have to pack the suitcases, you’re the woman and you have to take care of that, no, you’re the man, you take care of it and I’ll sharpen our swords, let’s pretend that these are your clothes, these are mine and this box is the trunk where we keep them, but before we go we have to give hay to our horses. These railings are our horses! Okay, but let’s pretend that yours is sick with a tumor and we have to heal him with this bandage, and so on, and from one preparatory step to another the shadows of night were falling on the patio. Todos los Santos served them real bread and real glasses of milk, the game was over and the two adventurous siblings hadn’t even crossed the threshold of their house.
    Todos los Santos started to notice that some of her clothes were missing, first stockings, then handkerchiefs embroidered with her initials, then a short-sleeved blouse, then some other article.
    â€œIn which trunk have the traveling brother and sister put my silk stockings?” she grew tired of asking, and as they swore that they hadn’t seen her stockings, pillowcases and hand towels began to disappear.
    One morning, as she was cleaning the kitchen, Todos los Santos perceived a strong, rancid odor whose origin she couldn’t pinpoint no matter how diligently she rummaged through boxes looking for rotten food and moved furniture to see if it was coming from dead mice. The following day the odor was even more intense and the madrina stood up on a stool to clean off the top shelves, from which she took down a reeking basket filled with dirty rags. Rags that weren’t rags; they were her lost stockings, her blouses, her pillowcases, and her handkerchiefs, twisted into knots, wadded up and stained with dried blood.
    â€œGirl, come here!”
    â€œWhat happened now, madrina ?”
    â€œWhat is this?”
    â€œWho knows?”
    â€œThis is the clothing that I was missing.”
    â€œHow nice that you found it.”
    â€œWho stuffed it up there all dirty?”
    â€œYou probably did and you just don’t remember,” said the girl as she scurried away.
    â€œGirl, come here!”
    â€œYes, madrina ?”
    â€œTell me why this clothing is stained with blood.”
    â€œBecause of a cut I have on my arm that bleeds a lot.”
    â€œShow it to me.”
    â€œIt’s already healed now, madrina . It was here, on my knee.”
    â€œWasn’t it on your arm?”
    â€œOne on my knee and another on my arm.”
    â€œBut you don’t have any scabs or scars . . .”
    â€œIt was a pretty small cut.”
    â€œThen why did it bleed so much . . .?”
    â€œIt was very deep, I think.”
    â€œCould it have been a bullet wound?”
    â€œMore likely from a knife, a very sharp one . . .”
    â€œDid you get it in the war? Or was it the police?”
    Then the girl covered her face and moved away to cry and Todos los Santos, after closing the kitchen door to be alone with her, sat the girl on her lap and began to repeat the same complicated saga about the pollination of flowers that she herself had heard from the nuns dozens of years earlier and under similar circumstances, with the protagonist of a bee who buzzed around a rose to accomplish an incomprehensible and loving mission, in the midst of a great anatomical mixing of stamens, corollas, and pistils, until by some miracle of