The Sum of Our Days (42 page)

About midnight, when the candles had nearly burned down, we took off our clothes and sank into the warm water of the Jacuzzi. Willie is no longer the same man who years before had attracted me at first sight. He still radiates strength, and his smile hasn't changed, but he is a man who has suffered; his skin is too white, his head shaved to disguise baldness, his eyes a paler blue. And on my face I carry the marks of past duels and losses. I had shrunk an inch and the body lolling in the water was that of a mature woman who had never been a beauty. But neither of us judged or compared; we didn't even look back to how we'd been in our youth. We have reached that stage of perfect invisibility that living together accords. We have slept together for so long that we no longer can see each other. Like two blind people, we touch, smell, sense the other's presence, the way you sense air.

Willie told me that I was his soul, that he had waited for me and looked for me the first fifty years of his life, sure that before he died he would find me. Willie is not a man to toss around pretty speeches; in fact he can be a little brusque, and he abhors sentimentality, and for that reason every one of his measured, carefully considered words fell over me like drops of rain. I realized that he, too, had entered that mysterious zone of the most secret surrender; he, too, had divested himself of his armor and, like me, opened his heart. I told him, in a thin voice, because he had taken my breath away, that without knowing it, I, too, had been feeling my way toward him. I have described romantic love in my novels, the love that gives everything, holding nothing back, because I always knew such love existed, though maybe it wasn't meant for me. The only taste I'd had of that total giving of self, that unconditional love, had been for you and your brother when you were very young. Only with you had I felt that we were a single spirit in barely separated bodies. Now I feel that with Willie. I have loved other men, as you know, but even in the most irrational passion I had guarded my back. From the time I was a little girl, I had looked after myself. In those games in the cellar of my grandparents' house where I grew up, I had never been the maiden rescued by the prince, only the Amazon who battled the dragon to save the town. But now, I told Willie, all I wanted was to lay my head on his shoulder and beg him to take care of me, as it seems men do with women when they love them.

“You don't think I take care of you?” Willie asked, startled.

“You do, Willie. You take care of all the practical things, but I'm talking about something more romantic. I don't even know exactly what. I guess I want to be the damsel in the fairy tale, and you to be the prince who saves me. I'm tired of slaying dragons.”

“I've been your prince for almost twenty years, but you, my damsel, haven't noticed.”

“That wasn't our agreement when we met; our deal was that I would look after myself.”

“Did we say that?”

“Not in those words, but it was understood; we'd be comrades. But now the word
comrade
makes me think of guerrillas. I'd like to see how it feels to be your fragile wife for a change.”

“Aha! Our Scandinavian instructor at the ballroom was right.” He laughed. “The man leads.”

My answer was to try to duck him; he pushed me and we both ended up under water. Willie knows me better than I know myself, and even so he loves me. We have each other, and that's something to celebrate.

“My God!” he exclaimed as he came up. “I was waiting in my corner, impatient because you didn't come, and you were waiting for me to invite you to dance! Is this why we had all that therapy?”

“Without the therapy I never would have admitted wanting you to look after me and protect me, my wanting to belong to you. How tacky! Think of it, Willie, this goes against a lifetime of feminism.”

“It doesn't have anything to do with feminism. We need more private time, calm, time for just us. There's too much squabbling in our lives. Come with me to some quiet place,” Willie murmured, pulling me to him.

“Some quiet place . . . I like that.”

With my nose in his neck, I gave thanks for the good fortune of accidentally having found a love that so many years later has not lost its luster. Arms around each other, floating in the hot tub, bathed in the amber light of the candles, I felt that I was melting into this man with whom I had traveled a long, steep road, tripping, falling, getting up again, through fights and reconciliations, but never betraying each other. The sum of our days, our shared pains and joys, was now our destiny.

Born in Peru and raised in Chile,
ISABEL ALLENDE
is the author of eight novels, most recently the
New York Times
bestseller
Inés of My Soul
. She has also written a collection of stories, four memoirs, and a trilogy of children's novels. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have become bestsellers across four continents. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in California.

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T
HE SUM OF OUR DAYS
. Copyright © 2008 by Isabel Allende. English-language translation copyright © 2008 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allende, Isabel.

[Suma de los dias. English]

The sum of our days / Isabel Allende ; translated from the Spanish by

Margaret Sayers Peden.

p.
   
cm.

ISBN
-13: 978-0-06-155183-3 (englishhardcover : alk. paper)

EPub Edition March 2014 ISBN 9780062254467

1. Allende, Isabel.
   
2. Authors, Chilean—20th century—Biography.

3. Authors, Chilean—20th century—Family relationships.
   
I. Peden, Margaret

Sayers.
   
II. Title.

PQ
8098.I.L54z46
   
2007

863'.64—dc22

08 09 10 11 12
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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