Free The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende Page A

the grass in many different forms, including delicious biscuits and sweets. Voigt did not intervene—why deprive them of innocuous relief?—and only demanded they refrain from smoking in the corridors or common spaces, because smoking tobacco was forbidden, and it would be unfair if the same did not apply to marijuana. Even so, some of the smoke escaped through the heating or air-conditioning systems, and occasionally even the residents’ pets were as high as kites.
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    After her three years at Lark House, Irina had finally begun to feel safe. She had not spent so long in one place since her arrival in the United States fourteen years earlier; she knew this tranquility could not last and savored every moment of this truce in her life. Not everything was idyllic, but compared to her past problems, those of the present were trivial. She had to have her wisdom teeth out, but her medical insurance did not cover dental treatment. She knew Seth Belasco was in love with her and that it would be increasingly difficult to keep him in check without losing his valuable friendship. Voigt, who had always been relaxed and friendly, had in recent months become so bad tempered that some of the residents were meeting secretly to find a tactful way to get rid of him, although Catherine Hope thought he should be given time, and for the moment her opinion prevailed. The director had twice been operated on for hemorrhoids, only partially successfully, and this had embittered him.
    Irina’s most urgent problem was an invasion of mice in the old Berkeley house where she rented a room. She could hear them scratching behind the cracked walls and underneath the wooden floorboards. At her neighbor Tim’s insistence, the other tenants decided to lay traps, because it seemed inhumane to poison the creatures. Irina argued that the traps were just as cruel, and had the added disadvantage that somebody had to dispose of the corpses, but no one listened to her. Once, one of the tiny animals survived in a trap and was rescued by Tim, who passed it on to Irina, tears in his eyes. He was someone who ate only vegetables and nuts, because he could not bear the idea of harming any living thing, much less cooking it. Irina had to bandage up the mouse’s broken foot, keep it in a cage with cotton wool, and take care of it until it had recovered from the shock and could walk properly and be released back with the others.
    Some of Irina’s duties at Lark House irritated her, such as the bureaucratic paperwork for the insurance companies or fighting with residents’ relatives, who would complain over anything in order to assuage their sense of guilt at having abandoned their loved ones. Worst of all for Irina were the compulsory computer lessons, because no sooner had she learned something than the technology made another leap forward and she was left behind yet again. She had no complaints about the residents in her care. As Cathy had predicted on her first day at Lark House, she was never bored.
    â€œThere’s a difference between being old and being ancient. It doesn’t have to do with age, but physical and mental health,” Cathy explained. “Those who are old can remain independent, but those who are ancient need help and supervision; there comes a moment when they’re like children again.”
    Irina learned a lot from both the elderly and the ancient. Nearly all of them were sentimental, amusing, and had no fear of seeming ridiculous; Irina laughed with them and sometimes cried for them. Many had led interesting lives, or invented them. In general if they seemed very lost it was because they were hard of hearing. Irina made sure their hearing-aid batteries never ran out.
    â€œWhat’s the worst thing about growing old?” she would ask them.
    They never thought about their age, was a common reply; they had once been adolescents, then they were thirty, fifty, sixty, and never gave it a thought, so why