The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

or persecution complexes some of them suffered from out of loneliness. She tried to understand what it meant to carry winter on your back, to hesitate over every step, to confuse words you don’t hear properly, to have the impression that the rest of the world is going about in a great rush; the emptiness, frailty, fatigue, and indifference toward everything not directly related to you, even children and grandchildren, whose absence was not felt as it once had been, and whose names you had to struggle to remember. She felt tender toward their wrinkles, arthritic fingers, and poor sight. She imagined how she herself would be as an elderly and then ancient woman.
    But Alma Belasco never fit into that category; she didn’t need looking after. On the contrary, Irina felt taken care of by her and enjoyed the role of helpless niece that had been allotted to her. Alma, who was pragmatic, agnostic, and fundamentally skeptical, wanted nothing to do with crystals, zodiacs, or talking trees; keeping her company, Irina found relief from her own uncertainties. She wanted to be like Alma and live in a manageable reality, where problems had definite causes and solutions, where there were no dreadful creatures lurking in her dreams, no lecherous enemies spying from every street corner. Hours with her were precious and Irina would willingly have worked for free. Once she had gone so far as to suggest it.
    â€œI have more than enough money, and you don’t have enough. Don’t ever mention it again,” said Alma in that imperious tone she almost never used with her.

SETH BELASCO
    A lma Belasco enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, watched the news on TV, and then went to her yoga class or for an hour’s walk. On her return, she showered, got dressed, and at the time when she calculated a cleaner sent by Lupita was due to arrive, she would escape to the clinic to help her friend Cathy. The best treatment for pain was to keep the patients busy and mobile. Cathy always needed volunteers in the clinic and had asked Alma to give silk-screen classes, but that required space and materials that no one there could afford. Cathy refused to have Alma pay for everything, because as she said, it would not be good for the participants’ morale, as nobody wants to be the object of charity. As a result, Alma reached back to her former experience in the Sea Cliff attic with Nathaniel and Ichimei and improvised theatrical skits that were not only free but provoked gales of laughter. She went to her workshop three times a week to paint with Kirsten. She rarely frequented the Lark House dining room, preferring to eat out at local restaurants where the owners knew her, or in her apartment, when her daughter-in-law sent the chauffeur around with one of her favorite dishes. Irina kept only basic necessities in her kitchen: fresh fruit, oatmeal, whole-grain bread, honey.
    Alma and Seth often invited Irina to their ritual Sunday lunch at Sea Cliff, where the family paid the matriarch homage. To Seth, who had previously used any pretext not to arrive before dessert—for even he was unable to consider not putting in an appearance at all—Irina’s presence made the occasion infinitely more appealing. He was still stubbornly pursuing her, but since he was meeting with little success he also went out with previous girlfriends willing to put up with his fickleness. He was bored with them and did not succeed in making Irina jealous. As his grandmother often said and the family often repeated, why waste ammunition on vultures? It was yet another enigmatic saying often used by the Belascos. To Alma, these family reunions began with a pleasant sense of anticipation at seeing her loved ones, particularly her granddaughter, Pauline (she saw Seth frequently enough), but often ended up being a bore, since every topic of conversation became a pretext for getting angry, not from any lack of affection, but out of the bad habit of arguing over