Ines of My Soul
Authors: Isabel Allende
for Isabel Allende's Inés of My Soul
“Vivid. . . . In Margaret Sayers Peden's translation of
Inés of My Soul
, Allende's reach is broad, scooping up politics, history, romance, and the supernatural. . . . Allende succeeds in resurrecting a woman from history and endowing her with the gravitas of a hero.”
âMaggie Galehouse,
New York Times Book Review
“Historical fiction is always dangerous territory . . . but Allende has made this her métier. . . .
Inés of My Soul
is a complex and truly rich tale. . . . A compelling narrative, at turns lusty and wistful, with a sprinkling of braggadocio.”
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Baltimore Sun
“No contemporary author sows words together as deliberately or as beautifully as Allende. . . . [She] writes lyrically. . . . Surely the ghost of Inés Suárez is smiling broadly now that Allende has brought her back to life.”
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A thorough and unflinching account of the conquest of Chile. . . . Allende's talent (and ever-moving plot) keeps the pages turning. It's a joy to see Inés triumph.”
âRocky Mountain News
“Allende infuses this story with the emotional and sensual language that has characterized her novels going back to
The House of the Spirits. . . . Inés of My Soul
will gratify all Allende readers. They will find a story well told, a character deserving of a higher historical standing, and a vivid account of a fascinating historical episode that rarely makes the history books.”
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San Antonio Express-Ne
ws
“Allende's sweeping tale, conjured out of the mists of the past, recalls a fiery era that is tough to revisit. Yet
Inés of My Soul
makes it impossible to forget again.”
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Allende excels at immersing her readers in the sights, sounds, smells, and even flavors of an era. . . . [She] is a voluptuously visceral novelist. . . . Inés Suárez was a woman of great power, and Isabel Allende has honored her with an equally powerful novel.”
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Sunday Oregonian
“[An] image-rich journey through time. . . . [An] unforgettable tale of a powerful woman from Chilean history.”
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Allende creates a riveting journey through a disturbing chapter of South American history. . . . Suárez's story is so fabulous and life-affirming . . . that it simply captivates . . . a colorful and clear-eyed portrait of a woman and a country.”
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Chicago Sun-Times
Three: Journey to Chile, 1540â1541
Four: Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura, 1541â1543
Five: The Tragic Years 1542â1549
Six: The Chilean War, 1549â1553
P.S. Insights, interviews & More ⦠*
Europe, 1500â1537
I AM INÃS SUÃREZ
, a townswoman of the loyal city of Santiago de Nueva Extremadura in the kingdom of Chile, writing in the year of Our Lord 1580. I am not sure of the exact date of my birth, but according to my mother, I was born following the famine and deadly plague that ravaged Spain upon the death of Philip the Handsome. I do not believe that the death of the king provoked the plague, as people said as they watched the progress of the funeral cortège, which left the odor of bitter almonds floating in the air for days, but one never knows. Queen Juana, still young and beautiful, traveled across Castile for more than two years, carrying her husband's catafalque from one side of the country to the other, opening it from time to time to kiss her husband's lips, hoping that he would revive.
Despite the embalmer's emollients, the Handsome stank. When I came into the world, the unlucky queen, by then royally insane, was secluded in the palace at Tordesillas with the corpse of her consort. That means that my heart has beaten for at least seventy winters, and that I am destined to die before this Christmas. I could say that a Gypsy on the shores of the RÃo Jerte divined the date of my death, but that would be one of those untruths one reads in a book and then, because it is in print, appears to be true. All the Gypsy did was predict a long life for me, which they always do in return for a coin. It is my reckless heart that tells me the end is near.
I always knew that I would die an old woman, in peace and in my bed, like all the women of my family. That is why I never hesitated to confront danger, since no one is carried off to the other world before the appointed hour. “You will be dying a little old woman, I tell you,
señorayyy
,” Catalina would reassure meâher pleasant Peruvian Spanish trailing out the wordâwhen the obstinate galloping hoofbeats I felt in my chest drove me to the ground. I have forgotten Catalina's Quechua name, and now it is too late to ask because I buried her in the patio of my house many years ago, but I have absolute faith in the precision and veracity of her prophecies. Catalina entered my service in the ancient city of Cuzco, the jewel of the Incas, during the era of Francisco Pizarro, that fearless bastard who, if one listens to loose tongues, once herded pigs in Spain and ended up as the marqués gobernador of Peru, but was crushed by his ambition and multiple betrayals.
Such are the ironies of this new world of the Americas, where traditional laws have no bearing and society is completely scrambled: saints and sinners, whites, blacks, browns, Indians, mestizos, nobles, and peasants. Any one among us can find himself in chains, branded with red-hot iron, and the next day be elevated by a turn of fortune. I have lived more than forty years in the New World and still I am not accustomed to the lack of order, though I myself have benefited from it. Had I stayed in the town of my birth, I would today be an old, old woman, poor, and blind from tatting so much lace by the light of a candle. There I would be Inés, the seamstress on the street of the aqueduct. Here I am Doña Inés Suárez, a highly placed señora, widow of the Most Excellent Gobernador don Rodrigo de Quiroga, conquistador and founder of the kingdom of Chile.
So, I am at least seventy years old, as I was saying, years well lived, but my soul and my heart, still caught in a fissure of my youth, wonder what devilish thing has happened to my body. When I look at myself in my silver mirror, Rodrigo's first gift to me when we were wed, I do not recognize the grandmother with a crown of white hair who looks back at me. Who is that person mocking the true Inés? I look more closely, with the hope of finding in the depths of the mirror the girl with braids and scraped knees I once was, the young girl who escaped to the back gardens to make love, the mature and passionate woman who slept wrapped in Rodrigo de Quiroga's arms. They are all crouching back there, I am sure, but I cannot seem to see them. I do not ride my mare any longer, or wear my coat of mail and my sword, but it is not for lack of spiritâthat I have always had more than enough ofâit is only because my body has betrayed me. I have very little strength, my joints hurt, my bones are icy, and my sight is hazy. Without my scribe's spectacles, which I had sent from Peru, I would not be able to write these pages. I wanted to go with Rodrigoâmay God hold him in His holy bosomâin his last battle against the Mapuche nation, but he would not let me. He laughed. “You are very old for that, Inés.” “No more than you,” I replied, although that wasn't true, he was several years younger than I. We believed we would never see each other again but we made our good-byes without tears, certain that we would be reunited in the next life. I had known for some time that Rodrigo's days were numbered, even though he did everything he could to hide it. He never complained, but bore the pain with clenched teeth, and only the cold sweat on his brow betrayed his suffering.
He was feverish when he set off, and he had a suppurating pustule on one leg that all my remedies and prayers had not cured. He was going to fulfill his desire to die like a soldier, in the heat of combat, not flat on his back in bed like an old man. I, on the other hand, wanted to be with him, to hold his head at that last instant, and to tell him how much I cherished the love he had lavished on me throughout our long lives.
“Look, Inés,” he told me, gesturing toward our lands, which spread out to the foothills of the cordillera. “All this, and the souls of hundreds of Indians, God has placed in our care. And as it is my obligation to fight the savages in the AraucanÃa, it is yours to protect the land and the Indians granted us to work it.”
His real reason for leaving was that he did not want me to witness the sad spectacle of his illness. He wanted to be remembered on horseback, in command of his brave men, fighting in the sacred region to the south of the BÃo-BÃo river, where the ferocious Mapuche have gathered to build up their forces. He was within his authority as captain, which is why I accepted his orders as the submissive wife I had never been. They had to carry him to the field of battle on a litter, and there his son-in-law, MartÃn RuÃz de Gamboa, tied him onto his horse, as they had the Cid, to terrify the enemy with his mere presence. He rode in the lead of his soldiers like a man crazed, defying danger and with my name on his lips, but he did not find the death he was seeking. They brought him back to me on an improvised palanquin, mortally ill. The poison of the tumor had spread through his body. Another man would have succumbed long before, but Rodrigo was strong, despite the ravages of illness and exhaustion of war. “I loved you from the first moment I saw you, Inés, and I will love you through all eternity,” he told me as he was dying, and added that he wanted to be buried without any fuss, though he did want thirty masses celebrated for the rest of his soul.
