Free Kingdom of the Golden Dragon by Isabel Allende

jungle, living off what they hunted and fished, the fourrepresentatives were dropped right into the middle of the twenty-first century. As soon as they got used to wearing clothes and had mastered a basic vocabulary in Portuguese, they threw themselves valiantly into learning “the magic of the nahab ,” beginning with two formidable inventions: matches and buses. In fewer than six months, they had learned of the existence of computers, and at the rate they were going, according to César Santos, one day in the not too distant future they would be able to engage in cutthroat combat with the feared lawyers of corporations that were exploiting the Amazon. As Iyomi had said: “There are many kinds of warriors.”
    Kate told César Santos that it was important to let his daughter come visit her. She argued that just as Iyomi had sent the young people to study in Manaos, he ought to send Nadia to New York. The girl was old enough now to leave Santa María de la Lluvia and see something of the world. It was all very well to live with nature and to know the ways of the Beasts and the Indians, but his daughter should also be receiving a formal education. A couple of months in civilization would be very good for her, the writer maintained. Secretly, she was hoping that a temporary separation would ease César Santos’s mind, and then maybe in the near future he would decide to send his daughter to the United States to study.
    For the first time in her life, Kate was willing to be responsible for someone. She hadn’t taken responsibility even with her own son, John, who after her divorce had lived with his father. Her work as a journalist, her trips, her eccentric lifestyle, and her chaotic apartment were not ideal for taking in visitors, but Nadia was a case apart. It seemed to Kate that this girl, at thirteen, was much wiser than she was at sixty-five. She wassure that Nadia had a very old soul.
    Of course Kate had not spoken a word of her plans to her grandson, Alexander; it wouldn’t do for the lad to think she was getting soft. There was not an ounce of sentiment in her plan, the writer reasoned, her motives were purely practical. She needed someone to organize her papers and files, and besides, she had an extra bed in her apartment. If Nadia came to live with her, Kate planned to work her like a slave—there would be no babying. Of course that would be later, when she came to her house to stay, not now, when the hard-headed César Santos had finally agreed to send his daughter to the States for a few weeks.
    Kate had never imagined that Nadia would arrive with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. Her luggage consisted of a sweater, two bananas, and a cardboard box with holes punched in the top. Inside was the tiny black monkey that was always with her, Borobá, as frightened as she. It had been a long trip. César Santos had driven his daughter to the plane, where a flight attendant took responsibility for Nadia until she landed in New York. In case she got lost, Santos had taped strips of adhesive with Kate’s telephone number and address to his daughter’s arms. Getting the tape off was not an easy job.
    Nadia had never flown except in her father’s old prop plane, and because of her fear of heights she didn’t like flying in general. Her heart had turned over when she saw the size of the commercial airplane in Manaos and realized that she would be on it for many hours. She was terrified as she boarded, and Borobá didn’t feel much better. The poor monkey, accustomed to fresh air and freedom, was tortured by the sound of the motors. When his owner lifted the lid of thebox in the New York airport, he shot out like an arrow, shrieking and leaping across people’s shoulders and sowing panic among the travelers. It took Nadia and Kate half an hour to catch him and calm him down.
    For the first few days, the experience of living in an apartment in New York was difficult for Borobá and his mistress, but soon they