At first, communication with Lili was amusing: I left drawings fastened to the refrigerator, but Willie’s method was to shout at her in English, to which she answered “No!” with an adorable smile. Once Roberta came to visit; she is a transsexual friend who before she was a woman had been an officer in the Marines named Robert. He fought in Vietnam, was decorated for courage, was horrified at the death of innocents, and left the military service. For thirty years he lived with his wife, whom he loved and who was his companion during the process of his becoming a woman, and they stayed together until she died of breast cancer. To judge by the photographs, Roberta had been a hefty, hairy man with a broken nose and the chin of a corsair. He had gone through hormone treatments, plastic surgery, electrolysis to remove his facial hair, and finally an operation on his genitals, but I suppose the result still was not convincing, because Lili stood staring at Roberta openmouthed, and then took Willie behind a door to ask him something in Chinese. My husband deduced that it was about our friend’s gender, and began to explain to Lili in a whisper that kept getting louder and louder until he ended up yelling at the top of his lungs that Roberta was a man with the soul of a woman, or something like that. I nearly died of embarrassment, but Roberta kept drinking tea and eating little pastries with her beautiful manners, ignoring the shouting behind the door.
My grandchildren and Olivia, the dog, adopted Lili. Our house had never been so clean; she disinfected it as if planning open heart surgery in the dining room. Gradually she was incorporated into our tribe. When she married, her shyness vanished; she took a deep breath, stuck out her chest, got a driver’s license, and bought a car. She brightened Tong’s life. He is even better looking because Lili dresses him with style and cuts his hair, though that doesn’t mean there aren’t sparring matches; he is a despotic husband. I tried to mime to her that the next time he raised his voice to her, she should crack him over the head with a skillet, but I don’t think she understood. All that’s missing is children, which don’t come along because she has fertility problems and he isn’t young anymore. I suggested they adopt in China, but they don’t give away boys there, and “Who wants a girl?” The same words I heard in India.
Magic for the Grandchildren
WHEN I FINISHED Portrait in Sepia, I was troubled by a promise that I could not keep postponing, which was to write three adventure novels for Alejandro, Andrea, and Nicole, one for each of them. As I had done with my children, I told my grandchildren stories from the time they were born, following a system we had refined to perfection: they would give me three words, or three subjects, and I had ten seconds to invent a story that would use all three. They plotted together to give me the most nonsensical cues possible, and bet that I wouldn’t be able to weave them together, but my training—it had begun in 1963 with you, Paula—was as formidable as their innocence, and I never failed them. The problem would come when, for example, they asked me to repeat word for word the story about a restless ant that fell into an inkwell and accidentally discovered Egyptian writing. I didn’t have the slightest recollection of that erudite insect and found myself in trouble when they suggested that I consult my mental computer. “The life of ants is a bore, nothing but work and serving the queen; I’d rather tell you the story of a murderous scorpion,” and I launched into that tale before they had time to react. But a day came when not even that dodge worked, and that was when I promised I would write three books on subjects they proposed, just as we had done with the improvised-in-ten-seconds bedtime stories.
My grandchildren gave me the theme for the first book, which I had already sensed in many of the stories they had asked me for: ecology. The adventure of The City of the Beasts evolved from the trip to the Amazon. Now I know that when my well of inspiration dries up, as happened following your death, Paula, I can refill it by taking trips. My imagination awakens when I leave my familiar surroundings and confront other ways of life, different people, languages I don’t command, when I’m exposed to unforeseen vicissitudes. I can tell that the well is filling because my dreams become more active. The images and stories I accumulate on the trip are transformed into vivid dreams, sometimes into violent nightmares, that announce the arrival of the muses. In the Amazon I sank into a voracious nature, green on green, water on water; I saw caimans the size of a rowboat, pink dolphins, manta rays floating like carpets in the tea-colored waters of the Río Negro, piranhas, monkeys, unbelievable birds, and snakes of assorted varieties, including an anaconda—dead, but an anaconda nevertheless. I thought I’d never use any of that because it didn’t fit into the kinds of books I write, but it all turned out to be useful when it was time to plot the first juvenile novel. Alejandro was the model for Alexander Cold, the protagonist; his friend Nadia Santos is a blend of Andrea and Nicole. In the novel, Alexander accompanies his grandmother Kate, a travel writer, to the Amazon, where he meets Nadia. The young people get lost in the jungle, live with a tribe of “invisible Indians,” and discover some prehistoric beasts that live inside a tepuy, the strange geological formation of the region. The idea of the beasts emerged from a conversation I overheard in a restaurant in Manaus among a group of scientists who were commenting on the find in the jungle of a gigantic fossil that had human aspects. They were wondering what animal family it corresponded to; maybe it belonged to the family of the monkeys or was a kind of tropical yeti. With those facts it was easy to imagine the beasts. Invisible Indians really do exist; they are tribes that live in the Stone Age and that in order to blend into their surroundings paint their bodies, imitating the vegetation around them, and move so stealthily that they can be ten feet away and not be seen. Many of the stories I heard in the Amazon about corruption, greed, illegal trafficking, violence, and smuggling were raw material for the plot. What was essential, however, was the jungle, which became the setting and determined the tone of the book.
A few weeks after beginning the first volume of the trilogy, I realized that I was incapable of the flights of imagination the project required. It was very difficult for me to crawl into the skin of those two teenagers who would live a wondrous adventure aided by their “spirit animals,” as is the tradition of some indigenous tribes. I recall the terrors of my own childhood, when I had no control over my life or the world around me. I was afraid of very specific things: that my father, who had disappeared so many years ago that even his name had been lost, would come to reclaim me, or that my mother would die and I would end up in some gloomy orphanage eating cabbage soup; but most of all I was frightened by the creatures that peopled my own mind. I thought that the devil appeared at night in the mirrors; that the dead came out of the cemetery during earthquakes, which in Chile are very common; that there were vampires in the attic, large evil toads in the armoires, and souls in pain in the sitting room curtains; that our neighbor was a witch and the rust in the pipes was the blood of human sacrifice. I was sure that the ghost of my grandmother sent me cryptic messages in the bread crumbs or in the shapes of clouds, but that didn’t frighten me, it was one of my few calming fantasies. The memory of that ethereal and entertaining grandmother has always been a consolation, even now that I am twenty-five years older than she was when she died. Why wasn’t I encircled by fairies with dragon-fly wings or sirens with bejeweled tails? Why was everything so horrible? I wouldn’t know; maybe most children live with one foot in those nightmarish universes. To write my novels for youthful readers I couldn’t call upon the macabre fantasies of those years, since that wasn’t so much a case of evoking them as it was of feeling them in my bones, the way you do in childhood, with all their emotional charge. I needed to be again the little girl I once was, that silent girl tortured by her own imagination, who wandered like a shadow through her grandfather’s house. I had to demolish my rational defenses and open my mind and heart. And to do that I decided to subject myself to the shamanic experience of ayahuasca, a brew the Amazon Indians prepare from the climbing plant Banisteriopsis to produce visions.
Willie did not want me to t
ake that trip alone, and as on so many occasions of our shared lives, he blindly accompanied me. We drank the dark, foul-tasting tea, barely a third of a cup but so bitter and fetid it was nearly impossible to get down. It may be that I have a flawed cerebral cortex—I am always a little off the ground—because the ayahuasca, which gives others a push toward the world of the spirits, catapulted me so far that I didn’t come back till a couple of days later. Within fifteen minutes of taking it, I lost my balance and curled up on the floor, unable to move from there. I was panicked, and called to Willie, who was able to drag himself to my side, and I clung to his hand as I would to a life buoy in the worst storm imaginable. I couldn’t talk or open my eyes. I was lost in a whirlpool of geometric figures and brilliant colors, which at first were fascinating and then exhausting. I felt that I was leaving my body, that my heart was bursting, and I was filled with a terrible anguish.
Soon colors vanished and the black rock appeared that normally lay nearly forgotten in my chest, as threatening as some Bolivian mountains. I knew that I had to remove it from my path or I would die. I tried to climb over it but it was slippery; I wanted to go around it but it was too large; I began to tear pieces from it but the task was unending; and all the while my certainty was growing stronger that the rock contained all the world’s evil; it was filled with demons. I can’t guess how long I was there; in that state time had nothing to do with the time we’re accustomed to. Suddenly I was shaken by an electric charge of energy. I gave a formidable kick and leaped atop the rock. For a moment I returned to my body, doubled over with nausea. I felt for the basin I had left within reach and vomited bile. Nausea, thirst, sand in my mouth, paralysis. I perceived, or understood, what my grandmother used to tell me, that space is filled with presences and that everything happens simultaneously. Images were superimposed on images, transparent, like those illustrations on clear pages in science texts. I wandered through gardens where threatening plants with flesh-eating leaves were growing, large mushrooms that were oozing poison, malevolent flowers. I saw a little four-year-old girl, shrinking back, terrified; I held out my hand to pull her up, and it was me. Different periods and persons passed from one illustrated page to another. I found myself with myself in different moments and in other lives. I met an old gray-haired woman, small but erect, with gleaming eyes; she, too, could have been me, a few years into the future, but I’m not sure because she was surrounded by a milling multitude.
Soon that populated universe vanished and I entered a white, silent space. I was floating on air; I was an eagle with its great wings outspread, riding the wind, seeing the world from above, free, powerful, solitary, strong, unbound. That great bird was there for a long time, and then suddenly it soared to a different, still more glorious place where form disappeared and there was nothing but spirit. There was no eagle, no memories, no emotions, there was no “I,” I had dissolved in the silence. If I’d had the slightest awareness or desire, I would have looked for you, Paula. Much later, I saw a small circle like a silver coin, and shot toward it like an arrow; I crossed through the opening and effortlessly plunged into an absolute void, a deep translucent gray. There was no sensation, no spirit, not a trace of individual consciousness; instead I felt a divine, absolute presence. I was inside the Goddess. It was the death or glory the prophets speak of. If that was dying, Paula, you are in a dimension beyond reach, and it is absurd to imagine that you are with me in everyday life, or that you are helping me in my tasks and ambitions, my fears and vanities.
A thousand years later I returned, like an exhausted pilgrim, to a familiar reality, following the same road I had taken there, but in reverse: I went through the small silver moon, floated in the eagle’s space, descended to the white sky, sank into psychedelic images, and finally reentered my poor body, which for two days had been very ill, cared for by Willie, who was beginning to believe he had lost his wife to the world of the spirits. In Willie’s reaction to the ayahuasca, he did not ascend to glory nor enter death, he was trapped in a bureaucratic purgatory, shuffling papers, and a few hours later the effects of the drug had passed. In the meantime, I was lying on the floor, where he later made me comfortable with pillows and blankets, shivering, muttering incomprehensible words, and vomiting a foam that was whiter with each retching. At first I was agitated, but later I lay relaxed and motionless; I didn’t seem to be suffering, Willie tells me. The third day, by then conscious, I spent in bed reliving each instant of that extraordinary journey. I knew now that I could write the trilogy, because to counteract a stumbling imagination I had the opportunity to perceive the universe, once again, with an intensity provided by the ayahuasca, similar to the fervor of my childhood. The adventure with the drug bound me with something I can only define as love, an impression of oneness: I dissolved into the divine, I felt that there was no separation between me and the rest of all that exists, all that was light and silence. I was left with the certainty that we are spirits, and all that is material is illusory, something that cannot be proved rationally but at times I have briefly experienced in moments of exaltation before nature, of intimacy with a beloved, or in meditation. I accepted that in this human life my totemic animal is the eagle, the bird that glided through my visions viewing everything from a great distance. That distance is what allows me to tell stories, because I can see angles and horizons. It seems that I was born to tell and tell and tell. My body ached, but I have never been more lucid. Of all the adventures in a lifetime of upheaval, the only thing I can compare to that visit to the dimension of the shamans was your death, daughter. On both occasions something inexplicable and profound happened that transformed me. I was never the same after your last night in this world, or after I drank that powerful potion: I lost my fear of death and experienced the eternity of the spirit.
Empire of Terror
ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, I was in the shower when the telephone rang early in the morning. It was my mother, from Chile, horrified at the news we hadn’t as yet heard because it was three hours earlier in California than on the other coast and we’d just got out of bed. When I heard her voice I thought she was talking about the anniversary of the military coup in Chile; it, too, was a terrorist attack against a democracy, which we remember every year as a day of mourning: Tuesday, September 11, 1973. We turned on the television and watched over and over the same images of the planes crashing into the towers of the World Trade Center that reminded me of the bombardment the military launched against La Moneda palace in Chile, the place where President Salvador Allende died that day. We ran to our banks to withdraw cash and to get in a supply of water, gasoline, and food. Flights were canceled, thousands of passengers were trapped, hotels were booked beyond capacity and had to put beds in the hallways. Telephone lines were so overloaded that communication was nearly impossible. Lori couldn’t reach her parents for two days, and I wasn’t able to talk with mine in Chile. Nico and Lori moved over to our house with the children, who were with them that week; they didn’t go to school because classes were canceled. Together we felt more safe.
For days, no one could go back to work in Manhattan; a cloud of dust floated in the sky and toxic gases escaped from broken pipes. In the midst of the still reigning confusion, we had news from Jason. He told us that in New York the situation was slowly beginning to improve. He walked at night to the area of the disaster with a spade and helmet to help the rescue teams, which were exhausted. He passed dozens of volunteers returning from hours of labor in the ruins with white cloths tied around their necks in honor of the victims trapped in the towers, who had waved handkerchiefs out the windows to say good-bye. From a long way away you could see smoke rising from the ruins. New Yorkers felt as if they’d been clubbed. Sirens sounded and ambulances rolled by empty because there were no further survivors, while dozens of television cameras lined up around the area marked out by the firemen. Everyone was anticipating another strike, but no one seriously considered leaving the city; New York had not lost its ambitious, strong, visionary c
haracter. When Jason reached the site of the disaster, he met hundreds of volunteers like himself; for each victim that disappeared in the ruins there were several persons ready to look for him. Every time a truckload of workers drove by, the crowd greeted them with shouts of encouragement. Other volunteers brought water and food. Where once proud towers had stood there was a black, smoking hole. It’s like a terrible dream, Jason told us.
It wasn’t long until the bombing of Afghanistan began. Missiles rained over the mountains where the handful of terrorists were hiding—no one wanted to confront them face to face—their concussions leveling the earth, while winter fell over Afghanistan and women and children in the refugee camps began to die of the cold: collateral damage. In the meantime paranoia was growing in the United States; people were wearing gloves and masks to open mail, fearing the possibility of a smallpox virus or anthrax, supposed weapons of mass destruction. As terrified as anyone, I went out and bought Cipro, a powerful antibiotic that could save my grandchildren in case of biological warfare, but Nico told me that if we gave the pill to the children at the first symptom of a cold, it wouldn’t be effective for a real illness. It was like killing flies with a cannon. “Be calm, Mamá, you can’t prevent everything,” he told me. And then I remembered you, daughter, and the military coup in Chile, and many other moments in my life when I was powerless. I have no control over crucial events, those that determine the course of life, so it makes more sense to relax. The collective hysteria had made me forget that essential lesson for several weeks, but Nico’s comment restored my sense of reality.
The Sum of Our Days Page 23