Paula (42 page)

I bound up the pages in the same ribbon I had used for a year and shyly handed it to my mother, who returned it after a few days, horrified, asking me how I dared reveal our family secrets and describe my father as a degenerate—even naming him by name. Actually, I had given the French count in my story a name chosen at random: Bilbaire. I suppose I had heard it somewhere, stored it in some forgotten compartment, and when I created the character bestowed it on him without the least awareness of having used my paternal grandmother's surname. With that reaction from my mother came certain suspicions about my father that had tormented my childhood. To please her, though, I agreed to the change and, after much searching, found a French patronymic with one fewer letter that would fit easily into the same space: I could paint over “Bilbaire” with the correction fluid and type in “Satigny,” a task that took several days, revising page by page, rolling each page into the portable and consoling myself as I did this dog work with the thought that Cervantes wrote
Don Quijote
with a quill pen, by candlelight, in prison, and with his one remaining hand. After I changed the name, my mother enthusiastically entered into the game of fiction, participated in choosing the title
The House of the Spirits,
and offered stupendous ideas, including some for the controversial count. It was my mother, who has a morbid imagination, who had the idea that among the scabrous photographs the count collected was one of “a stuffed llama riding atop the lame servant girl.” Ever since, my mother has been my editor, the only person who corrects my books, because someone with the capacity to create something so twisted deserves all my confidence. It was also she who insisted I publish the book; she contacted Argentine, Chilean, and Venezuelan publishers, sent letters right and left, and never lost hope, even though no one offered to read the manuscript, or even replied. One day we were given the name of a person in Spain who might help us. I didn't know such people as literary agents existed, in fact, like most normal human beings, I had never read a page of literary criticism, and could not have imagined that books are analyzed in universities with the same intensity accorded stars in the firmament. Had I known, it would never have occurred to me to try to publish that pile of pages defaced with soup and correction fluid that the mailman dutifully placed on the desk of Carmen Balcells in Barcelona. That magnificent Catalan, doting mother to nearly all the great Latin American writers of the last three decades, took the trouble to read my book and within a few weeks called to tell me that she would like to be my agent, and also to warn me that even though my novel wasn't bad, that didn't mean very much—anyone can succeed with a first book, only the second would prove I was a writer. Six months later, I was invited to Spain for the publication of the novel. The day before I left, my mother entertained the family with a dinner to celebrate the occasion. As dessert was served, Tío Ramón handed me a package; I opened it, and there before my awestruck eyes was the first copy of my book, straight from the presses, which he had obtained with the sleight of hand of a veteran dealmaker, importuning editors, mobilizing ambassadors on two continents, and utilizing the diplomatic pouch to get it to me in time. It is impossible to describe my feelings at that moment; all I can say is that I have never experienced it with any of my other books, or their translations into languages I thought were dead, or adaptations to film or stage: that copy of
The House of the Spirits,
with its rose-colored border and image of a woman with green hair, touched my deepest emotions. I left for Madrid with the book in my arms, easily visible to any who might wish to look, and accompanied by Michael, who was as proud of my feat as my mother was. They went into bookstores to ask if they had my book, and created a scene if they said “no” and another if they said “yes,” but this time because they had not sold them all. Carmen Balcells had met us at the airport enveloped in a purple fur coat and, around her neck, a mauve silk muffler that dragged the ground behind her like the fading tail of a comet; she opened her arms wide and at that instant became my guardian angel. She threw a party to present me to the Spanish intelligentsia, but I was so frightened I spent a good part of the evening hiding in the bathroom. That night in her house I saw for the first and last time two pounds of Iranian caviar with soup spoons at the disposal of the guests, a pharaonic extravagance totally unjustified since, however you looked at it, I was a flea, and she had no way to foresee the providential trajectory that novel would trace—she must have been swayed by the illustrious name of Allende, along with my provincial appearance. I still remember the first question I was asked in an interview conducted by the most renowned literary critic of the moment: “Can you explain the cyclical structure of your novel?” My expression must have been totally bovine, because I hadn't any idea what he was talking about. In my vocabulary, only buildings had “structure,” and the only “cyclical” I was familiar with referred to the moon or menstruation. Shortly thereafter, the best publishing houses in Europe, from Finland to Greece, bought the translation rights and the book shot off on its meteoric career. One of those rare miracles had happened that every author dreams of, but I did not absorb the scandalous success until a year and a half later when I was about to finish a second novel, just to prove to Carmen Balcells that I was a writer and demonstrate that the caviar had not been a total waste.

I continued to work twelve hours a day at the school, not daring to resign because Michael's million-dollar contract, won in part through the cleaning woman's liquid magic, had gone up in smoke. Through one of those coincidences so precise that they seem metaphors, his job had crashed to the ground the very day my book was launched in Madrid. When we got off the airplane in the Caracas airport, Michael's associate met us with the bad news; the joy of my triumph was erased, replaced by the dark clouds of his misfortune. Accusations of corruption and bribes in the bank financing the job had forced legal intervention; payments were frozen and the project was paralyzed. The most prudent course would have been to close the office immediately and try to liquidate what we could, but Michael believed the bank was too powerful, and, because political interests were involved, the legal battle would go on forever; he thought that if he could keep his head above water for a while, everything would settle down and the contract would come back to him. In the meantime, his associate, a little more shrewd about how the game was played, disappeared with his own part of the money, leaving Michael without work and up to his neck in a sinkhole of debts. Problems finally consumed Michael, but he refused to admit his downfall or his depression until the day he fainted. Paula and Nicolás carried him to his bed and I tried to revive him by slapping his face and pouring water over him, as I had seen in the movies. Later, the doctor diagnosed high blood sugar and commented, amused, that diabetes is not usually cured with buckets of cold water. Michael fainted so frequently that we all became accustomed to it. We had never heard the word porphyria, and no one attributed his symptoms to that rare metabolic disorder; three years would go by before a niece fell ill and after months of exhaustive tests doctors in a North American clinic diagnosed the illness and said the whole family should be tested. That was how we discovered that Michael, Paula, and Nicolás all were affected by that condition. By then, our marriage was like a glass bubble we were taking great precautions not to shatter; we treated each other with ceremonious courtesy and made obstinate efforts to stay together, despite the fact that every day our paths grew farther apart. We had respect and affection for one another, but the relationship weighed on me like lead; in my nightmares, I walked across a desert pulling a cart, and with every step my feet and the wheels sank into the sand. In that loveless period, I found escape in writing. While my first novel was making its way through Europe, I was still typing every night in the kitchen of our house in Caracas, but I had updated myself, now I worked on an electric typewriter. I began
Of Love and Shadows
on January 8, 1983, because that day had brought me luck with
The House of the Spirits,
thus initiating a tradition I honor to this day and don't dare change; I always write the first line of my books on that date. When that time comes, I try to be alone and silent for several hours; I need a lot of time to rid my mind of the noise outside and to cleanse my memory of life's confusion. I light candles to summon the muses and guardian spirits, I place flowers on my desk to intimidate tedium and the complete works of Pablo Neruda beneath the computer with the hope they will inspire me by osmosis—if computers can be infected with a virus, there's no reason they shouldn't be refreshed by a breath of poetry. In a secret ceremony, I prepare my mind and soul to receive the first sentence in a trance, so the door may open slightly and allow me to peer through and perceive the hazy outlines of the story waiting for me. In the following months, I will cross that threshold to explore those spaces and, little by little, if I am lucky, the characters will come alive, become more precise and more real, and reveal the narrative to me as we go along. I don't know how or why I write; my books are not born in my mind, they gestate in my womb and are capricious creatures with their own lives, always ready to subvert me. I do not determine the subject, the subject chooses me, my work consists simply of providing enough time, solitude, and discipline for the book to write itself. That is what happened with my second novel. In 1978, in the area of Lonquén, some fifty kilometers from Santiago, they found the bodies of fifteen campesinos murdered by the government and hidden in abandoned lime kilns. The Catholic Church reported the discovery and the scandal exploded before authorities could muffle it; it was the first time the bodies of
desaparecidos
had been found, and the wavering finger of Chilean justice had no choice but to point to the armed forces. Several
carabineros
were accused, tried, and found guilty of murder in the first degree—and immediately set free by General Pinochet under a decree of amnesty. The news was published around the world, which was how I learned of it in Caracas. By then, thousands of people had disappeared in many parts of the continent, Chile was not an exception. In Argentina, the mothers of the
desaparecidos
marched in the Plaza de Mayo carrying photographs of their missing children and grandchildren; in Uruguay, the names of prisoners far exceeded physical bodies that could be counted. What happened in Lonquén was like a knife in my belly, I felt the pain for years. Five men from the same family, the Maureiras, had died, murdered by
carabineros
. Sometimes I would be driving down the highway and suddenly be assaulted by the disturbing vision of the Maureira women searching for their men, years of asking their futile questions in prisons and concentration camps and hospitals and barracks, like the thousands and thousands of other persons in other places trying to find their loved ones. In Lonquén, the women were more fortunate than most; at least they knew their men had been murdered, and they could cry and pray for them—although not bury them, because the military later scattered the remains and dynamited the lime kilns to prevent their becoming a site for pilgrimages and worship. One day those women walked up and down a row of rough-hewn tables, sorting through a pitiful array—keys, a comb, a shred of blue sweater, a lock of hair, or a few teeth—and said, This is my husband, This is my brother, This is my son. Every time I thought of them, I was transported with implacable clarity to the times I lived in Chile under the heavy mantle of terror: censorship and self-censorship, denunciations, curfew, soldiers with faces camouflaged so they couldn't be recognized, political police cars with tinted glass windows, arrests in the street, homes, offices, my racing to help fugitives find asylum in some embassy, sleepless nights when we had someone hidden in our home, the clumsy schemes to slip information out of the country or bring money in to aid families of the imprisoned. For my second novel, I didn't have to think of a subject, the women of the Maureira family, the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and millions of other victims pursued me, obliging me to write. The story of the deaths at Lonquén had lain in my heart since 1978; I had kept every press clipping that came into my hands without knowing exactly why, since at that time I had no inkling that my steps were leading toward literature. So by 1983, I had at my disposal a thick folder of information, and knew where to find other facts; my job consisted of weaving those threads into a single cord. I was relying on my friend Francisco in Chile, whom I meant to use as model for the protagonist, a family of Spanish Republican refugees on whom to pattern the Leals, and a couple of women I had worked with on the women's magazine in Santiago as inspiration for the character of Irene. I drew Gustavo Morante, Irene's fiancé, from a Chilean army officer who followed me to San Cristobal Hill one noontime in the autumn of 1974. I was sitting under a tree with my mother's Swiss dog, which I used to take for walks, looking down on Santiago from the heights, when an automobile stopped a few meters away and a man in uniform got out and walked toward me. I froze with panic; for a split second I considered running, but instantly knew the futility of trying to escape and simply waited, shivering and speechless. To my surprise, the officer did not bark an order to me but removed his cap, apologized for disturbing me, and asked if he could sit down. I still was unable to speak a word, but since arrests were always made by several men it calmed me to see that he was alone. He was about thirty, tall and handsome, with a rather naive, unlined face. I noticed his distress as soon as he spoke. He told me he knew who I was; he had read some of my articles, and hadn't liked them, but he enjoyed my programs on television. He had often watched me climb the hill and had followed me that day because he had something he wanted to tell me. He said that he came from a very religious family; he was a devout Catholic and as a young man had contemplated entering the seminary, but had gone to the military academy to please his father. He soon discovered he liked that profession, and with time the army had become his true home. “I am prepared to die for my country,” he said, “but I didn't know how difficult it is to kill for it.” And then, after a very long pause, he described the first detail he had commanded, how he was assigned to execute a political prisoner who had been so badly tortured he couldn't stand and had to be tied in a chair, how in a frosty courtyard at five in the morning he gave the order to fire, and how when the sound of the shots faded he realized the man was still alive and staring tranquilly into his eyes, because he was beyond fear.