I met Clarisa when I was an adolescent working as a servant in the house of La Señora, a lady of the night, as Clarisa called women of her occupation. Even then she was distilled almost to pure spirit; I thought at any minute she might rise from the floor and fly out the window. She had the hands of a healer, and people who could not pay a doctor, or were disillusioned with traditional science, waited in line for her to relieve the pain or console them in their bad fortune. My patrona used to call her to come lay her hands on her back. In the process, Clarisa would rummage about in La Señora's soul, with the hope of turning her life around and leading her along the paths of righteousness - paths my employer was in no hurry to travel, since that direction would have unalterably affected her commercial enterprise. Clarisa would apply the curative warmth of the palms of her hands for ten or fifteen minutes, depending on the intensity of the pain, and then accept a glass of fruit juice as payment for her services. Sitting face to face in the kitchen, the two women would have their chat about human and divine topics, my patrona more on the humble side and Clarisa more on the divine, never straining tolerance nor abusing good manners. Later, when I found a different job, I lost sight of Clarisa until we met once again some twenty years later and re-established a friendship that has lasted to this day, overcoming many obstacles that lay in our way, including death, which caused a slight hiccup in the case of our communications.
"The Stories of Eva Luna", Isabelle Allende, 1989, translated Margaret Sayers Peden
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Also considered this excerpt, the opening lines of the prologue:
"You untied your skirt, kicked off your sandals, tossed your full skirt into the corner - it was cotton, if I remember - and loosened the clasp that held your hair in a ponytail. Your skin was shivering, and laughing. We were too close to see one another, each absorbed in our urgent rite, enveloped in our shared warmth and scent. You opened to me, my hands on your twisting waist, your hands impatient. You pressed against me, you explored me, you scaled me, you fastened me with your invincible legs, you said a thousand times, come, your lips on mine. In the final instant we glimpsed absolute solitude, each lost in a blazing chasm, but soon we returned from the far side of that fire to find ourselves embraced amid a riot of pillows beneath the white mosquito netting. I brushed your hair back to look into your eyes. Sometimes you sat beside me, your legs pulled up to your chin and your silk shawl over one shoulder in the silence of the night that had barely begun. That is how I remember you, in stillness."
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