Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

by Isabel Allende

  The morning light was shining through the window, falling directly on the objects Kate was holding in the palms of her hands. An impossible brilliance blinded Isaac Rosenblat for an instant, making his heart leap. He came from a family of jewelers. Precious stones from the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs had passed through the hands of his grandfather; his father’s hands had fashioned diadems for empresses; his own had dismantled the ruby and emerald jewelry of Russian czars murdered during the Bolshevik Revolution. No one knew more about gems than he did, and very few stones had the power to move him, but what he had before him was something so wondrous that it made his head spin. Without a word, he took the eggs over to his desk and examined them through his loupe beneath a strong light. When he confirmed that his first impression was correct, he heaved a great sigh, took out a white linen handkerchief, and wiped his forehead.

  “Where did you steal these, my girl?” he asked, his voice trembling.

  “They came from a remote place called the City of the Beasts.”

  “Are you pulling my leg?” the jeweler asked.

  “Well, no. I swear. Are they worth anything, Isaac?”

  “They’re worth something, yes. Let’s say that with these stones you could buy a small country,” he murmured.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “These are the largest and the most perfect diamonds I have ever seen. Where were they? It isn’t possible that a treasure like this could have gone unnoticed. I know all the important stones in existence, but I have never heard of these, Kate.”

  “Ask them to bring us some coffee and a shot of vodka, Isaac. And get comfortable, because I’m going to tell you an interesting story,” Kate Cold replied.

  And so she informed her good friend about a teenage Brazilian girl who had climbed a mysterious mountain in the Upper Orinoco, led by a dream and by a naked witch man to the place where she found the eggs in an eagle’s nest. Kate told him how the girl had entrusted that fortune to Alexander, her grandson, charging him with the mission of using it to help a certain tribe of Indians, the People of the Mist, who were still living in the Stone Age. Isaac Rosenblat listened courteously, not believing a word of the preposterous story. Not even a blithering idiot would swallow a pack of fantasies like that, he thought. He felt sure that his old sweetheart had gotten mixed up in some shady business, or that she had discovered a fabulous mine. He knew that Kate would never tell him the straight story. And, well, that was her right. He sighed again.

  “I see you don’t believe me, Isaac,” the eccentric writer muttered, tossing back another shot of vodka to calm a fit of coughing.

  “I suppose you will admit that this is a rather unusual story, Kate?”

  “And I still haven’t told you about the Beasts, the giant, hairy, stinking . . .”

  “That’s all right, Kate, I don’t think I need further details,” the jeweler interrupted, defeated.

  “I need to turn these boulders into capital to set up a foundation. I promised my grandson that the money would be used to protect the People of the Mist, which is what those invisible Indians are called, and . . .”

  “Invisible?”

  “Well, they’re not exactly invisible, Isaac, but they seem to be. It’s like a magic trick. Nadia Santos says that . . .”

  “And who is Nadia Santos?”

  “The girl who found the diamonds. I already told you that. Will you help me, Isaac?”

  “I’ll help you, Kate, as long as it’s legal.”

  And that was how the respectable Isaac Rosenblat became guardian of the three awesome stones; how he was put in charge of turning them into hard cash; how he invested the capital wisely; and how he helped Kate Cold create the Diamond Foundation. He advised her to appoint the anthropologist Ludovic Leblanc president but to keep control of the money in her own hands. Which is how Isaac Rosenblat and Kate Cold renewed a friendship that lay dormant for forty years.

  “Did you know that I’m widowed too, Kate?” he confessed that same night as they went out to have dinner together.

  “I hope you’re not planning to propose, Isaac. I haven’t washed a husband’s socks for a long time, and I’m not going to start now.” Kate laughed.

  They toasted the diamonds.

  A few months later Kate sat at her computer, wearing nothing over her lean body but a ragged T-shirt that stopped at mid-thigh, revealing her bony knees, her vein- and scar-traced legs, and her strong walker’s feet. Above her head the blades of a ceiling fan buzzed like a swarm of flies, doing little to relieve the suffocating heat of New York in the summer. For some time—at least sixteen or seventeen years—the writer had contemplated the possibility of installing air conditioning in her apartment but hadn’t yet found the time to do it. Sweat soaked her hair and trickled down her back as her fingers furiously attacked the keyboard. She knew she had only to brush the computer keys, but she was a creature of habit and so she pounded them, as she had once pounded her now-antiquated typewriter.

  On one side of her computer stood a pitcher of iced tea spiked with vodka, an explosive mixture she was very proud of having invented. On the other side lay her sailor’s pipe, cold. She was resigned to smoking less because her cough was a constant annoyance, but she kept the filled pipe for company: The smell of black tobacco soothed her soul. “At sixty-five there are not many vices an old witch like myself can indulge in,” she thought. She was not inclined to give up any of her vices, but if she didn’t stop smoking, her lungs were going to explode.

  Kate had been working for six months to organize the Diamond Foundation, which she had created with the famous anthropologist Ludovic Leblanc, whom, it should be mentioned in passing, she considered her personal enemy. She detested that kind of work, but if she didn’t do it, her grandson, Alexander, would never forgive her. “I’m a professional who likes action, I report on travels and adventure, I’m not a bureaucrat,” she sighed between sips of her vodka-spiked tea—or, more accurately, her tea-spiked vodka.

  Besides struggling with the matter of the foundation, she had had to fly twice to Caracas to testify in the trial against Mauro Carías and Dr. Omayra Torres, the persons responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Indians infected with smallpox. Mauro Carías was not present at the trial because he was on life support in a private clinic. It would have been better for him had the Indian who clubbed him finished the job.

  Things were getting complicated for Kate Cold; International Geographic had commissioned her to write an article on the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon. It was not wise for her to keep postponing the trip, because they might give the assignment to another reporter; she knew, however, that she couldn’t leave before she cured her cough. That small country was set amid the peaks of the Himalayas, where the climate was very treacherous; the temperature could drop thirty degrees within a few hours. The idea of consulting a physician never entered her mind, of course. She had never gone to a doctor in her life and she wasn’t about to start now; she had a terrible opinion of professionals who charge by the hour. (She charged by the word.) It seemed obvious to her that no doctor was in a hurry to have his patient get well, and for that reason she preferred home remedies. She had placed her faith in some tree bark she’d brought back from the Amazon. A hundred-year-old shaman by the name of Walimai had assured her that the bark was good for disorders of the nose and mouth and would leave her lungs like new. Kate had ground this natural remedy in the blender, and then, to disguise the bitter taste, had added it to her iced tea and vodka, drinking the concoction all day with great determination. The medicine had not yet given results, which was what she was explaining that very moment to Professor Ludovic Leblanc by e-mail.

  Nothing made Cold and Leblanc as happy as mutually detesting one another—and never losing an opportunity to show it. They had no shortage of excuses, because they were inescapably united by the Diamond Foundation: he being the president and she the money manager. Their common effort for the foundation forced them to communicate almost daily, and they d
id that by e-mail in order not to hear the other’s voice on the telephone. They were determined to see each other as little as possible.

  The Diamond Foundation had been created to protect the Amazon tribes in general and the People of the Mist in particular, as Alexander had decreed. Professor Ludovic Leblanc was writing a heavy academic tome on that tribe—and on his own role in that adventure, although the truth was that the Indians had been miraculously saved from genocide by Alexander and his Brazilian friend Nadia Santos, not by Leblanc.

  As she looked back on those weeks in the jungle, Kate had to smile. When they had left for their trip to the Amazon, her grandson had been a coddled little boy—or a spoiled brat, as she called him—but by the time they returned, he had become a man. Alexander—or Jaguar as he had got it in his head he wanted to be called—had been very brave; in all fairness she had to admit that. She was proud of him. The foundation existed only because of Alex and Nadia; without them the project would have been nothing but an idea, because the two young people had provided the financing.

  In the beginning, the professor tried to have the organization named after him: the Ludovic Leblanc Foundation. He was convinced that his name would attract the press and possible benefactors who would contribute to the project with grants. Kate, however, did not allow him to finish the sentence. “You will have to walk over my dead body before you put the capital furnished by my grandson in your own name, Leblanc,” she interrupted.

  The anthropologist had to give in because she had the three fabulous diamonds from the Amazon. Like the jeweler Rosenblat, Ludovic Leblanc did not believe a word of the story about those extraordinary stones. Diamonds in an eagle’s nest? Leblanc suspected that the guide, César Santos, Nadia’s father, had access to a secret mine deep in the jungle, and that was where the girl had obtained the stones. He cherished the fantasy of returning to the Amazon and convincing the guide to share the riches with him. It was a harebrained dream; he was getting old, his joints hurt, and he no longer had energy to travel to places that didn’t have air conditioning. Besides, he was very busy writing his masterwork.

  It was impossible to devote himself properly to his important mission on his measly salary as a professor. His office was a hole, dangerous to his health. And it was on the fourth floor of a decrepit building that had no elevator. Disgraceful. If only Kate Cold were a little more generous with the budget. What a disagreeable woman! the anthropologist thought. She was impossible to deal with. The president of the Diamond Foundation should work in style. He needed a secretary and a decent office, but that tightwad Kate would not let loose one penny more than was strictly needed for the tribes. They were arguing by e-mail over the question of an automobile, which to him seemed indispensable. Getting around by the metro was a waste of precious time that would be better utilized in protecting the Indians and the forest, he explained. Leblanc’s words were running across Kate’s screen: I’m not asking for anything special, Cold. We’re not talking about a chauffeured limousine, only a modest little convertible. . . .

  The telephone rang and Kate ignored it. She didn’t want to lose the thread of the heated arguments she was planning to use to nail Leblanc, but the ringing continued until it got under her skin. Furious, she picked up the receiver, growling about the dastardly person who was interrupting her intellectual labors.

  “Hi, Grandmother,” came the happy voice of her oldest grandchild from California.

  “Alexander!” she exclaimed, enchanted to hear his voice. However, she immediately controlled her enthusiasm, as she didn’t want her grandson to suspect that she missed him. “Haven’t I told you a thousand times not to call me Grandmother?”

  “We also agreed that you would call me Jaguar,” Alex replied, unfazed.

  “Jaguar! You can’t even sprout whiskers, you’re more like a Chihuahua than a big cat.”

  “You, on the other hand, are my father’s mother, so I have the legal right to call you grandmother.”

  “Did you get my gift?” she asked to divert him.

  “It’s wonderful, Kate!”

  And in fact it was. Alexander had just turned sixteen, and through the mail he had received an enormous box from New York containing his grandmother’s present. Kate had given up one of her most precious possessions: the skin of a ten-foot-long python, the same one that had swallowed her camera in Malaysia several years before. Now the trophy was hanging in Alexander’s room, the only adornment. Months earlier, he had destroyed everything in his room in a fit of worry about his mother’s grave illness. The only things he had left were a gutted mattress to sleep on and a flashlight for reading at night.

  “How are your sisters?”

  “Andrea won’t come into my room because she’s freaked out by the snakeskin, but Nicole is my slave if I let her touch it. She’s offered to trade me everything she has in the world for that python, but I will never give it to anyone.”

  “I hope not. And how’s your mother doing?”

  “Much better. You can tell because she’s gone back to her painting. You know what? Walimai, the shaman, told me I have the power to heal, and that I must use it well. I’ve about decided that I’m not going to be a musician, the way I’d planned; I’m going to be a doctor instead. How does that sound to you?” Alex asked.

  “I suppose you think you cured your mother,” his grandmother laughed.

  “I didn’t do it, it was the ‘water of health’ and the medicinal plants I brought back from the Amazon.”

  “And the chemotherapy, and the radiation . . .” she interrupted.

  “We won’t ever know what cured her, Kate. Other patients who received the same treatment in the same hospital have died, but my mother is in full remission. I know cancer is very treacherous, and can come back at any moment, but I think that the plants the shaman Walimai gave me, and also the miraculous water, will keep her well.”

  “You paid a big price to get them,” Kate commented.

  “I did come close to getting killed when . . .”

  “Oh that was nothing, I was talking about leaving your grandfather’s flute behind,” she cut in.

  “Your concern for me is very moving, Kate,” Alexander joked.

  “Oh, well! Too late now. I suppose I should ask about your family.”

  “It’s your family, too, and as far as I know, you don’t have any other. But if you’re interested, I am pleased to inform you that we are gradually getting back to a normal family life. Mother’s hair is growing back—curly and gray. Although she looked prettier when she was bald,” Kate’s grandson said.

  “I’m happy that Lisa is getting well. I like her. She’s a good painter,” Kate Cold admitted.

  “And a good mother . . .”

  There was a pause of several seconds on the line before Alexander could gather the courage to mention the reason for his call. He explained that he had saved some money; for several months he had given music lessons and worked in a pizzeria. His intention had been to replace the things he’d destroyed in his room, but he’d changed his mind.

  “I don’t have time to listen to your financial plans. Get to the point. What do you want from me?” his grandmother said gruffly.

  “My vacation starts tomorrow . . .”

  “And?”

  “I was thinking that if I paid my way, maybe you’d take me with you on your next trip. Didn’t you tell me you were going to the Himalayas?”

  Another glacial silence followed the question. Kate Cold was making an enormous effort to contain the satisfaction that swept over her: everything was going according to plan. If she had invited her grandson, he would have offered a list of objections, as he had when the trip to the Amazon had come up, but this way the idea came from him. She was so sure that Alexander would be going that she had prepared a surprise for him.

  “Are you there, Kate?” Alexander asked timidly.

  “Of course. Where would I be?”

  “Will you think about it, at least?”

  “So. I
thought that young people today were devoted to smoking grass and looking for dates over the Internet . . .” she grumbled.

  “That comes a little later, Kate. I’m sixteen, and my budget won’t stretch far enough even for a virtual date.” Alexander laughed, and added, “I think I proved to you that I’m a good travel companion. I won’t get in your way, and I can be of help. You’re getting a little old to go by yourself. . . .”

  “Watch what you’re saying, pipsqueak!”

  “I meant, well . . . I can carry your luggage, for example. And I can take photos.”

  “You think that International Geographic would publish your snapshots? Timothy Bruce and Joel González will be coming, the same photographers who went with us to the Amazon.”

  “Is González all right?”

  “His broken ribs healed, but he’s jumpy about everything and anything. Timothy looks after him like a mother.”

  “And I’ll look after you like a mother, Kate. You might get trampled by a herd of yaks in the Himalayas. And the air’s very thin, you could have a heart attack,” her grandson pleaded.

  “I do not intend to give Leblanc the pleasure of seeing me die before he does.” Kate gritted her teeth, and added, “But I see that you know a little about the region.”

  “You can’t imagine how much I’ve been reading about it. Can I go with you? Please!”

  “All right, but I’m not going to sit and wait for you. We’ll meet at John F. Kennedy Airport next Thursday, where we’ll take a night flight to London and fly from there to New Delhi. Do you have that?”

  “I’ll be there, I promise!”

  “Bring warm clothing. The higher we climb, the colder it will get. I’m sure you’ll have occasion to do a little mountaineering, so you can also bring your climbing gear.”

  “Thanks, thank you, Grandmother!” Alex exclaimed, jubilant.

  “If you call me Grandmother one more time, I’m not going to take you anywhere!” Kate replied. She hung up the phone and brayed with laughter like a hyena.