Free Eva Luna by Isabel Allende Page A

large family waiting for him in his country; that he had several grandchildren, and a lovely flower garden. In the library there was a stuffed puma, one of the Professor’s earliest experiments with his miraculous embalming fluid. I dragged it to his room, put it on the foot of his bed, and told him it was his pet dog—didn’t he remember? The poor animal was pining for him.
    â€œWrite in my will, Pastor. I want this little girl to be my sole heir. Everything is to go to her when I die.” I heard him say this in his half-language to the minister who visited him almost every day, ruining the pleasure of his death with threats of eternity.
    My madrina set up a cot for me beside the dying man’s bed. One morning the invalid awoke more pale and tired than usual; he would not accept the café con leche I tried to give him, but did allow me to wash him, comb his beard, change his nightshirt, and sprinkle him with cologne. Propped up on his pillows, he lay absolutely silent until midday, his eyes on the window. He refused his strained food for lunch, and when I settled him for his siesta, he asked me to lie down beside him. We were both sleeping peacefully when he stopped living.
    The pastor arrived at dusk and took charge of all the arrangements. Sending the body back to Professor Jones’s homeland was not at all practical, especially since no one there wanted it, so he ignored those instructions and buriedthe Professor without fanfare. Only we servants were present at the dismal service; Professor Jones’s reputation had been eclipsed by new advances in science, and no one bothered to accompany him to the cemetery, even though the notice had been published in the newspaper. After so many years of seclusion, few remembered who he was, and if some medical student referred to him it was to mock his head-thumping for stimulating intelligence, his insects for combating cancer, and his fluid for preserving cadavers.
    After the patrón was gone my world crumbled. The pastor inventoried and disposed of the Professor’s goods, using the excuse that he had lost his reason in his last years and was not competent to make decisions. Everything went to the pastor’s church, except the puma, which I did not want to lose; I had ridden horseback on it since I was a baby and had so many times told the sick man it was a dog that I ended up believing it. When the movers tried to put it on the truck, I kicked up a fearful row, and when the minister saw me foaming at the mouth and screaming, he chose to yield. I suppose, besides, that it was no use to anyone, so I was allowed to keep it. It was impossible to sell the house; no one wanted to buy it. It was marked by the stigma of Professor Jones’s experiments, and it sits abandoned to this day. As the years went by, it was said to be haunted, and boys went there to prove their manliness by spending a night among scurrying mice, creaking doors, and moaning ghosts. The mummies in the laboratory were transferred to the Medical School, where they lay piled in a cellar for a long time. Then, one day, there was a sudden resurgence of interest in the doctor’s secret formula, and three generations of students industriously hacked off pieces and ran them through different machines, until they were reduced to a kind of unsavory mincemeat.
    The pastor dismissed the servants and closed the house. That is how I came to leave the place where I was born—I carrying the puma by its hind legs and my madrina carrying the front.
    â€œYou’re grown up now, and I can’t keep you. You’ll have to go to work and earn your living and be strong, the way it should be,” said my madrina. I was seven years old.
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    My madrina and I waited in the kitchen; she sat ramrod straight in a rush chair, her bead-embroidered plastic handbag in her lap, her breasts swelling majestically above the neckline of her blouse, her thighs overflowing the seat