The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende Page A

trivialities. Seth always looked for ways to challenge or scandalize his parents; Pauline brought to the table yet another cause she had embraced, which she explained in great detail, from genital mutilation to animal slaughterhouses; Doris took great pains to offer her most exquisite culinary experiments, which were veritable banquets, yet regularly ended up weeping in her room because nobody appreciated them; good old Larry meanwhile performed a constant balancing act to avoid quarrels. The grandmother took advantage of Irina to dissipate tension, because the Belascos always behaved in a civilized fashion in front of strangers, even if it was only a humble employee from Lark House. To Irina, the Sea Cliff mansion seemed an extravagant luxury, with its six bedrooms, two living rooms, book-lined library, twin marble staircase, and garden fit for a palace. She was oblivious to the slow deterioration that almost a century’s existence had wrought, which Doris’s determined vigilance barely managed to keep at bay: the rust on the ornamental railings, the uneven floors and walls as a result of two earthquakes, the cracks in the floor tiles, and the termites’ trails in the woodwork. The house stood in a privileged position on top of a promontory between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. At first light, the thick mist rolling in from the sea like an avalanche of cotton wool often obscured the Golden Gate Bridge altogether, but in the course of the morning it would lift and the elegant red iron structure would gradually emerge against a sky dotted with gulls, so close to the Belascos’ garden that it seemed possible to reach out and touch it.
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    Just as Alma became Irina’s adoptive aunt, so Seth played the role of cousin, since he was having no success in that of lover. Over the three years of their acquaintance, the relationship between the two young people, born of Irina’s solitude, Seth’s poorly disguised passion, and the curiosity they both felt for Alma, grew increasingly close. Any man less stubborn and infatuated than Seth would have thrown in the towel long ago, but he learned to control his impetuosity and adapted to the tortoiselike progress imposed by Irina. It was no use trying to hasten things along, because at the slightest sign of intrusion she withdrew into her shell, and it took weeks for him to make up the lost ground. If they happened to touch each other, she pulled away at once; and if he did it on purpose, she grew alarmed. Seth searched in vain for something that might justify this mistrust, but her past remained a closed book. On the surface, no one would have suspected Irina’s true nature, because she had already won the title of Lark House’s most popular employee thanks to her open, friendly attitude, and yet Seth knew that this façade hid a wary squirrel.
    In those three years, Seth’s book began to come to life without any great effort on his part, thanks to the material his grandmother provided and Irina’s insistence. Alma took it on herself to compile the Belasco family history, as they were the only family she had left after the war had swept away the Mendels in Poland and before her brother, Samuel, was resurrected. The Belascos were not part of the San Francisco aristocracy, simply among the most well-off, but they could trace their origins back to the Gold Rush. Isaac Belasco liked to say that there was only one aristocracy, that of decency, and that this was not inherited or bought with money or titles, but was only gained through good deeds. Their most famous ancestor was David Belasco, a theatrical director and producer, an impresario and author of more than a hundred works, who left the city in 1882 to go and triumph on Broadway. Seth’s great-grandfather Isaac belonged to the branch of the family that stayed on in San Francisco, put down roots, and made a fortune thanks to a prosperous law firm and a good eye for