Ines of My Soul (45 page)

At an order from the
ñidoltoqui
, the inflamed Mapuche filed before Pedro de Valdivia with sharpened clamshells, gouging out pieces of flesh from his body. They built a fire, and with the same shells cut the muscles from his arms and legs, roasted them, and ate them before him. That macabre orgy lasted three nights and two days before Mother Death took pity on the miserable prisoner. At last, on the morning of the third day, when Lautaro saw that Valdivia was dying, he poured molten gold into his mouth so he would have his fill of the metal he loved so much, and that had caused the Indians so much suffering in the mines.

What pain, what pain! These memories are like a lance here in my own breast. What time is it, daughter? Where has the light gone? The hours have flown backward, it must be dawn again. I believe it will be dawn forever . . .

The remains of Pedro de Valdivia were never found. They say that the Mapuche devoured his body in an improvised ritual, that they made flutes from his bones, and that his skull is used to this day as a vessel for the
muday
of the
toquis
. You ask me, daughter, why I hold to the terrible version of Cecilia's serving girl instead of the other, more merciful one: that, as the poet wrote, Valdivia's skull was crushed in; after all, that is a custom among the Indians of the south. I will tell you why. During those three ominous days in December 1553, I was very ill. It was as if my soul knew what my mind still did not. Horrendous images passed before my eyes like a nightmare I could not wake from. I thought I saw baskets filled with amputated hands and noses in my house, and in my patio impaled and chained Indians. The air reeked of burned human flesh, and the night breeze carried the sound of cracking whips. This conquest has cost enormous suffering. No one can forgive such cruelty, least of all the Mapuche, who never forget an injustice, just as they do not forget favors received. I was tortured by memories; it was as if I were possessed by a demon. You know already, Isabel, that except for an occasional flurry with my heart I have always been a healthy woman, thanks to God's grace, so I have no other explanation for the illness that afflicted me those three days. While Pedro was suffering his gruesome death, my soul accompanied him from afar, and wept for him and for all the other victims of those years. I lay prostrate, with such violent vomiting and burning fever that they feared for my life. In my delirium I clearly heard Pedro de Valdivia's screams, and his voice telling me good-bye for the last time.

“Farewell, Inés of my soul . . .”

THIS NOVEL
is a work of intuition, but any similarity to events and persons relating to the conquest of Chile is not coincidental.

The feats of Inés Suárez noted by the chroniclers of her era were nearly ignored by historians for more than four hundred years. In these pages I narrate events as they were documented. My hand merely strung them together with a fine thread of imagination.

MY FRIENDS
Josefina Rossetti, Vittorio Cintolesi, Rolando Hamilton, and Diana Huidobro aided me in researching the period of the conquest of Chile, especially in regard to Inés Suárez. Malú Sierra reviewed the material related to the Mapuche. Juan Allende, Jorge Manzanilla, and Gloria Gutiérrez copyedited the manuscript. William Gordon cared for me and fed me during the silent months of writing.

I am grateful to those few historians who mention the importance of Inés Suárez; their works allowed me to write this novel.

THE RESEARCH
for this novel took four years of avid reading. I did not keep a record of each of the history texts, works of fiction, and articles I read to saturate myself in the period and in the characters because the idea of adding a bibliography came only at the end. When Gloria Gutiérrez, my agent, read the manuscript, she told me that without a bibliography this account would appear to be the product of a pathological imagination (something I am often accused of). Many episodes from the life of Inés Suárez and from the conquest of Chile seem beyond belief, and I want to demonstrate that they are historical fact. The following are some of the books I consulted, a number of which are still piled in my studio at the back of the garden, where I write.

For the general history of Chile, I was able to call upon two classic studies:
Crónicas del reino de Chile
(El Ferrocarril, 1865) by Pedro Mariño de Lovera, and Diego Barros Arana's essential
Historia general de Chile
(1884); the first volume of Barros Arana's study records episodes from the period of the conquest. A more contemporary account is found in
Historia general de Chile
(Planeta, Santiago de Chile, 2000) by Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt Letelier.

Among a sizeable number of works about the Conquest, I found helpful
Estudio sobre la conquista de América
(Universitaria, Santiago de Chile, 1992) by Néstor Meza;
La era colonial
(Nascimento, Santiago de Chile, 1974) written by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, a name closely associated with Chilean history and historiography; and also
El imperio hispánico de América
(Peuser, Buenos Aires, 1958) by C. H. Harina. To assure the authenticity of the Spanish background, I consulted histories of Spain by Miguel Ángel Artola (Alianza Editorial Madrid, 1988; vol. 3) and Fernando García de Cortázar (Planeta, Barcelona, 2002), among others. And to learn more about the conquistadors, I turned to, among others,
Conquistadores españoles del siglo XVI
(Aguilar, Madrid, 1963) by Ricardo Majó Framis;
Los últimos conquistadores
(2001) and
Diego de Almagro
(third edition, 2001) by Gerado Larraín Valdés; and
Pedro de Valdivia, capitán conquistador
(Instituto de Cultura Hispánica, Madrid, 1961) by Santiago del Campo.

The bibliography of the Mapuche universe is impressive; among many titles, I want to make special mention of
Los araucanos
(Universitaria, Santiago, 1914) by Edmond Reuel Smith; the more recent
Mapuche, gente de la Tierra
(Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 2000) by Malú Sierra; José Bengoa's
Historia de los antiguos mapuche del sur
(Catalonia, Barcelona, 2003); along with a more specialized work,
Folklore médico chileno
(Nascimento, Santiago de Chile, 1981) by Oreste Plath.

Among these readings, two excellent historical novels should not be overlooked:
Butamalón
(Anaya-Mario Muchnik, Madrid, 1994) by Eduardo Labarca, and
Ay Mamá Inés
(Andrés Bello Santiago de Chile, 1993), the work of Jorge Guzmán. To my knowledge, it is the only previous novel about my protagonist.

And last, a special mention for two works from the period:
La Araucana
(1578), an epic poem published in countless editions (I used the Santillana), including the very beautiful 1842 volume from which the illustrations for this book have been taken, and
Cartas
, the letters of Pedro de Valdivia. Two editions of the latter are particularly noteworthy: the Spanish version by the Editorial Lumen and the Junta de Extremadura (1991), under the direction of the Chilean Miguel Rojas Mix, and the 1998 Chilean volume published by the Compañía Minera Doña Inés de Collahuasi.

About the author

2 Life at a Glance

4 Isabel Allende on Destiny, Personal Tragedy, and Writing

About the book

8 A Conversation with Isabel Allende

Read on

12 Have You Read? More by Isabel Allende

Life at a Glance

William Gordon

I
SABEL
A
LLENDE
was born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, and raised in Chile. She fled Chile after 1973 assassination of her uncle, President Salvador Allende. She worked in Venezuela from 1975 to 1984 and then moved to the United States. She now lives in California with her husband, Willie Gordon.

She has worked as a TV presenter, journalist, playwright, and children's author. Her first book for adults, the acclaimed
The House of the Spirits
, was published in Spanish in 1982 and was translated into twenty-seven languages.

Isabel holds to a very methodical, some would say menacing, literary routine, working Mondays through Saturdays, 9:00
A.M.
to 7:00
P.M.
She writes using a computer, seated in what she refers to as a “small cabin off my garden.” Her routine shuns music in favor of silence and stands by at least one superstition: “I always start on January 8.”

Her favorite reads include
One Hundred Years of Solitude
(Gabriel García Márquez),
The Female Eunuch
(Germaine Greer),
La Lumière des Justes
(Henri Troyat),
The Aleph
(Jorge Luis Borges), and
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
(Mario Vargas Llosa), and the poetry of Neruda.

She has written
Paula: A Memoir
, as well as eight novels, among them
Zorro, Portrait in Sepia
, and
Daughter of Fortune.
She has also published a celebration of the senses entitled
Aphrodite
, and
My Invented Country
, an account of her life in Chile. Her adventure trilogy for children—
City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
, and
Forest of the Pygmies
—takes as its themes the environment and ecology.

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www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

“Life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences”—can you describe that noise, what it is, what it means to you?

We have very busy lives—or we make them very busy. There is noise and activity everywhere. Few people know how to be still and find a quiet place inside themselves. From that place of silence and stillness the creative forces emerge; there we find faith, hope, strength, and wisdom. However, since childhood we are taught to
do
things. Our heads are full of noise. Silence and solitude scare most of us.

You often talk and write about destiny—what is destiny for you?

We are born with a set of cards and we have the freedom to play them the best we can, but we cannot change them. I was born female, in the forties, from a Catholic and conservative family in Chile. I was born healthy, I had my shots as a child, I received love and a proper education. All that determines who I am. The really important events in my life happened in spite of me, I had no control over them, like the fact that my father left the family when I was three; the military coup in Chile (1973) that forced me into exile; meeting Willie, my husband; the success of my books; the death of my daughter; and so forth. That is destiny.

Just before your daughter Paula went into a coma, she said, “I look everywhere for God but can't find him.” Do you, can you, have faith in God after such a tragedy?

Faith has nothing to do with being happy or not. Faith is a gift. Some people receive it and some don't. I imagine that a tragedy like losing a child is more bearable if you believe in God because you can imagine that your child is in heaven.

There is a lot of autobiographical writing in your books but no actual autobiography. Do you imagine ever writing an autobiography?

Yes, I suppose that one day I will write another memoir. I think that my book
Paula
has a lot about me. It is a kind of personal memoir, is it not?

After finishing the Jaguar and Eagle trilogy, you returned to writing adult fiction. Do you think you will write for children again and do you have a favorite genre of writing, as a reader or writer?