The weekend niece. from the book, Searching for treasures

     Gabriel asked genuinely interested. It was quite clear that he couldn’t grasp why Oscar would leave such a good life behind. He was trying to understand his friend’s motivation and reasons. What could drive a person that worked for himself to search for a job among strangers? Why would he even consider trading his own farm for some distant land and some unknown country? For what reason could Oscar, evidently sensible and intelligent, leave everything he had behind to start fresh from scratch?

    “Well, let me tell you, Gabriel. You really don’t know my folks, as you just called them. Especially, my mother. She’s the one that runs the house, back there in the nice town and good place to live. Before I left Barichara, she was intent, with her dark intentions, on finding a proper wife so I could settle down. I turned to look at my father and saw my future lie ahead of me. It seemed to be most dull and boring, lacking in any promise whatsoever. If that was what settling down meant, I decided to move around and unsettle myself.”

     “Besides, you should have seen the candidates that she had lined up for me! Witless and conceited to say the least. One of them, in her opinion, was undoubtedly the best. Why? Because her family was loaded with money. Another, of those aspiring to-be-wives, was highly appropriate (one of my mother’s favorite words); because the family had the right way of things…” Gabriel interrupted, “What do you mean by that expression… the right way of things, man?”

     “That… refers to the friendships or the political contacts her father kept in his pocket. He was a politician and well known in the area (and not precisely because of his honesty). Back home, they say that the only downside of the right way of things is not to be in the middle of them,” after which, they both laughed cheerfully and refilled the cups of wine.

Versión en español            Searching for treasures           Purchase the book