Free Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

his bedroom, steaming in the sweat of his paralysis, and with no company but the man with the Bible, and me. I lost my last fear of him when his thundering voice changed to the unrelieved shallow breathing of the dying.
    I wandered freely through that house closed to the outside world, headquarters to death ever since the doctor had begun his experiments. The servants’ discipline collapsed the minute the Professor could no longer leave his room to threaten them from his wheelchair and harass them with contradictory orders. I watched them, every time they left the house, carrying off silverware, rugs, paintings, even the crystal flasks containing the Professor’s formulas. The master’s table with its starched tablecloth and spotless china stood unattended; no one lighted the crystal chandeliers or brought the Professor his pipe. My madrina lost interest in the kitchen and served up fried bananas, rice, and fish every meal. The other servants gave up on the cleaning, and grime and mildew advanced along the floors and walls. No one had tended the garden since the incident of the surucucú several years before, and the consequence of this neglect was an aggressive vegetation threatening to devour the house and overrun the sidewalk. The servants slept through the siesta, went out at any hour of the day, drank too much rum, and played a radio all day long, blaring boleros, cumbias, and rancheras. The miserable Professor, who in good health had tolerated nothing but classical records, suffered inexpressible torment from all the racket, and tugged unceasingly at his bellpull to summon a servant, but none came. When he was asleep, my madrina climbed the stairs to sprinkle him with holy water she had filched from the church; it seemed asin to let the man die without the sacrament, like a common beggar.
    The morning the Protestant pastor was shown in by a maid dressed only in underpants and brassière because of the sweltering heat, I suspected that order had sunk to its lowest point and I had nothing left to fear from the Professor. I began to visit him often, at first peering in from the threshold, then going farther and farther into the room, until finally I was playing on the bed. I spent hours with the old man, trying to communicate with him, until I was able to understand the mumbling blurred by both his stroke and his foreign accent. When I was with him, the Professor seemed temporarily to forget the humiliation of his decline and the frustration of his paralysis. I brought books from the sacred bookshelves and held them for him so he could read. Some were written in Latin, but he translated them for me, apparently delighted to have me for a student, loudly lamenting the fact that he had not realized sooner I lived in his house. I may have been the first child he had known, and he discovered too late his vocation as a grandfather.
    â€œWhere did this girl come from?” he would ask, his gums chewing air. “Is she my daughter? My granddaughter? A figment of my sick mind? She has dark skin, but her eyes are like mine. Come here, child. Come close so I can see you.”
    He was unable to connect me with Consuelo, although he remembered very well the woman who had served him loyally for more than twenty years and once had swelled up like a zeppelin following a bad attack of indigestion. He often talked about her, certain that his last days would have been different if she had been there to care for him. She would not have betrayed me, he used to say.
    It was I who put wads of cotton in his ears so the songsand dramas on the radio would not drive him mad. I washed him, and slipped folded towels beneath his body to prevent his mattress from being soaked with urine; I aired his room, and spooned pap into his mouth. The old man with the silver beard was my doll. One day I heard him tell the pastor that I was more important to him than all his scientific discoveries. I told the old man a few lies: that he had a