Isabel Allende was born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Chile. Following the 1973 coup and assassination of president Salvador Allende (her uncle), she moved to Venezuela, where she wrote her early novels, including The House of Spirits, 1982), which has been translated into twenty-seven languages and made into a major motion picture in the United States. She now lives in Marin County, California. Her work also includes a short-story collection, several stories and plays for children, a narrative cookbook, and a memoir, excerpted below, which was written to and named for her daughter as she lay in a coma before her death in 1992.

—Under the Fifth Sun, Latino Literature from California

I, LIKE THOUSANDS OF OTHER CHILEANS, have often asked myself whether I did the right thing in leaving my country during the dictatorship, whether I had the right to uproot my children and drag my husband on an uncertain future in a strange country, or whether it would have been better to stay where we were, trying to pass unnoticed—these are questions that cannot be answered. Events developed inexorably, as in Greek tragedies; disaster lay before my eyes, but I could not avoid taking the steps that led to it. [...]

It was a priest who showed me the safest routes to political asylum. Some of the people I helped leap over a wall ended up in France, Germany, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries, all of which accepted huindreds of Chilean refugees. Once I had started down that road, it was impossible to turn back, because one case led to another and then another...and there I was, committed to various underground activities, hiding or transporting people, passing on for publication in Germany information others had obtained about the tortured or disappeared, and taping interviews with victims in order to establish a record of everything that happened in Chile, a task more than one journalist took on in those days. I could not suspect then that eight years later I would use that material to write two novels. At first I had no sense of the danger, and moved about in broad daylight, in the hubbub of the center of Santiago, in the warm summer and golden autumn. It was not until the middle of 1974 that I truly recognized the risks involved. I knew so little about the workings of terror that I was slow to perceive the warning signs: nothing indicated that a parallel world existed in the shadows, a cruel dimension of reality. I felt invulnerable. My motivations were not heroic, not in the least, merely compassion for such desperate people and, I have to admit it, the irrestistable attraction of adventure. During moments of gretest danger I remembered the advice Tío Ramón gave me the night of my first party: Remember that all the others are more afraid than you.

In those uncertain times, people revealed their true faces. The most contentious political leaders were the first to subside into silence or to flee the country; in contrast, other people who had lived quiet, unassuming lives exhibited extraordinary valor. I had one good friend who was an out-of-work psychologist who earned his living as a photographer on our magazine, a gentle and somewhat naïve man with whom we shared family Sundays with the children and whom I had never heard utter a word about politics. I called him Francisco, although that was not his name, and nine years later he served as model for the protagonist of Of Love and Shadows. He had contacts with religious groups because his brother was a worker priest and, through him, he learned of the atrocities committed through the country; more than once he put himself in Danger to help others. During secret walks on San Cristobal Hill, where we believed no one could hear us, he used to pass on the news to me. Sometimes I worked with him, and other times I acted alone. I had devised a rather unimaginative system for the first meeting, generally the only meeting, with the person I was to help: we would agree on a time, I would drive very slowly around the Plaza Italia in my unmistakble vehicle until I picked up a quick signal, then slow down just long enough for someone to jump into the car. I never knew the names or stories behind those pale countenances and shaking hands because our instructions were to exchange a minimum of words. I would be left with a kiss on the cheek and whispered thanks, and never know anything more of that person. It was difficult when there were children. I know of one baby that, to get past the guard at the gate and be reunited with its parents, was smuggled into an embassy drugged with a sedative and hidden in the bottom of a basket of lettuce.

Michael knew about my activities and never objected, even when it came to hiding someone in the house. Serenely, he warned me of the dangers, somewhat amazed that so many assignments fell into my hands while he rarely knew anything that was going on. I dont know, I suppose my being a journalist had smoething to do with it; I was out in the streets talking to people, while he was always in the company of executives, the caste that benefitted most from the dictatorship. I showed up one day at the restaurant where Michael always lunched with his associates in the contruction company, to point out to them that they spent enough money on a single meal to feed twenty children for a month in the kitchen run by the priests, and then suggested that once a week they eat a sandwich in their office and give me the money they saved. My words were met with a stony silence, even the waiter stood frozen witih his tray in his hand, and all eyes turned toward Michael; I expect they were wondering what kind of man this was who was unable to control his insolent wife. The president of the company removed his eyeglasses, slowly cleaned them with his napkin, and then wrote me a check for ten times the amount I had asked. Michael did not eat with them agaqin and with that gesture made his position clear. It was difficult for him, brought up as he was by strict and noble ideals, to believe the horror stories I told him or to conceive that we could all die, including our children, if any of the poor wretches who passed through our lives was arrested and confessed under torture to having been beanath our roof. We heard the most bloodcurdling rumors, but through some mysterious mechanism of the brain, which at times refuses to see the obvious, we dismissed them as exaggerations—until it was no longer possible to deny them. At night we would wake up sweating because a car had stopped outside during curfew, or because the telephone rang and no one was there, but the next morning the sun would rise, the children and the dog would crawl into our bed, we would get up and make coffee, and life would start all over again, as if everything were enormal. Months went by before the evidence was irrefutable and we were parlyzed by fear. How could everything change so suddenly and so completely? How could reality be so distorted? We were all accomplices, the entire society was mad. The devil in the mirror....Sometimes, when I was alone in some secret place on the hill with time to think, I again saw the black waters of the mirrors of my childhood where Satan peered out at night, and as I leaned toward the glass, I realized, with horror, that the Evil One had my face. I was not unsullied, no one was: a monster crouched in each of us, everyone had a dark and fiendish side. Given the conditions, could I torture and kill? Let us say, for example, that someone harmed my children.... What cruelty would I be capable of in that situation? The demons had escaped the mirrors and were running loose in the world.

The demons had escaped the mirrors and were running loose in the world.

By the end of next year, when the country was completely subjugated, a system of pure capitalism was initiated; because it favored only the executive class and workers lost all their rights, it had to be imposed by force. It did not follow the law of supply and demand, as the young idealogues of the Right claimed, because the work force was repressed and at the mercy of their employers. The social benefits people had obtained decades before were terminated, the right to hold meetings or strike was abolished, and labor leaders disappeared or were murdered with impunity. Businesses, caught up in a mad course of inhuman competition, demanded maximum productivity from their workers for minimum compensation. There were so many unemployed lining up at factory doors to find work that labor was available at near slave wages. No one dared protest, because in the best of circumstances, a man could lose his job, but worse, he could be accused of being a Communist or a subversive and wind up in a cell tortured by the political police. An apparent economic miracle was created at great social cost; never before had Chile witnessed such a shameless exhibition of wealth, nor so many people living in extreme poverty. As an administrator, Michael had to dismiss hundreds of workers; he called them to his office by list to tell them that beginning the next day they were not to report to work, and to explain to them that in accord with the new rules they had lost their severance pay. He knew that each of those men had family, and that it would be impossible for them to find another job; this dismissal was tantamount to an irrevocable sentence of misery. He started coming home demoralized and dejected; after a few months his shoulders sagged and his hair turned gray. One day he called a meeting of his associates to tell them that the situation was becoming obscene, that his foremen were earning the equivalent of three liters of milk per day. With laughter, they replied, "What's the matter? Those people don't drink milk, anyway." By that time, I had lost my position on both magazines and was taping my program in a studio under the surveillance of a guard with a machine gun. Censorship was not all that affected my work; I became aware that it was to the liking of the dictatorship that a member of the Allende family had a light comedy program on television—what better proof of normality in the nation? I resigned. I felt I was being watched, fear kept me awake nights, and I broke out in hives that I scratched till they bled. Many of my friends were leaving the country; some disappeared and were never mentioned again, as if they had never existed. One afternoon, an artist friend I hadn't seen in months visited me; once we were alone, he took off his shirt to show me scars that were nto completely healed: his torturers had carved an "A" for Allende on his back. From Argentina, my mother implored me to be cautious and not do anything to provoke trouble. I could not forget the prophecies of María Teresa Juárez, the seer, and feared that, just as with the bloodbath she had foreseen, her prediction for me of immobility or paralysis might also come true. Didn't that in fact mean years in prison? I began to contemplate the possibility of leaving Chile, but did not dare speak of it aloud because it seemed that putting the thought into words could set in motion the gears of an irreversible mechanism of death and destruction. I went often to walk the paths on San Cristobnal where I hd played so many years ago on family picnics: I did among the trees and screamed, with pain like a spear piercing my breast. Sometimes I packed food and a bottle fo wine in a basket and went there with Francisco, who using his knowledge of psychology, tried vainly to help me. Only with him could I talk about my dlandestine acdtivities my fears, my unconfessable desire to escape. "You're crazy," he would tell me. "Anything is better than exile. How can you leave your home, your friends? your country?"

...but the next morning the sun would rise, the children and the dog would crawl into our bed, we would get up and make coffee, and life would start all over again, as if everything were enormal. Months went by before the evidence was irrefutable and we were parlyzed by fear. How could everything change so suddenly and so completely? How could reality be so distorted? We were all accomplices, the entire society was mad.

My children and Granny were the first to notice my state of mind. Paula, who was then a wise little girl of eleven, and Nicolás, who was three years younger, understood that all about them fear and poverty were spreading like a river overrunning its banks. They became silent and cautious. They had learned that the husband of one of their school-teachers, a scultpor who before the coup had made a bust of Salvador Allende, had been arrested by three unidentified men who suddenly burst into his studio and hauled him away. No one knew where he was, and his wife didn't dare mention he trouble for fear of losing her job—we were still in the period where everyone thought that if someone disappeared, surely he was guilty. I don't know how my children learned of it, but that night they told me. They had gone to see their teacher, who lived a few blocks from our house, and found her bundled in shawls and sitting in the dark because she couldn't pay the electric bill or buy paraffin for the stoves. Her salary barely fed her three children, and she had had to take them out of school. "We want to give them our bicycles because they don't have the money to take the bus," Paula informed me. They did and, from that day, Paula's mysterious activities increased; now she not only hid her grandmother's bottles and took gifts to her friends in the old people's home nearby; she also stowed jars of preserves and packages of rice in her book bag for her teacher. Months later, when the sculptor returned home after surviving torture and prison, he created a Christ on the Cross in iron and bronze and gave it to our children. Ever since, it has hung beside Nicolás's bed.

My children never repeated what we talked about in the family or mentioned the strangers who sometimes passed through the house. Nicolás began to wet his bed at night; he would wake up, humiliated, and come to my room with his head hanging and hug me, shivering. We should have given him more affection than ever, but Michael was depressed by the problems with his workers and I was running from one job to another, visiting the poor neighborhoods, and hiding people, all with my nerves rubbed raw. I do'nt think either of us provided the chjildren the security or consolation they needed. In the meantime, Granny was being torn apart by opposing forces; on one side, her husband was boasting about the feats of the dictatorship and, on the other, we were telling her stories of repression. Her uneasiness turned into panic as her small world was threatened by hurricane-force winds. "Be careful," she would say from time to time, not sure herself what she meant, because her mind refused to accept the dangers her grandmotherly heart could sense. Granny's entire existence revolved around those two grandchildren. "Lies, it's all a pack of lies made up by the Soviets to run down Chile," my father-in-law told her any time she mentioned the terrible rumors contaminating the atmosphere. Just like my children, she learned not to voice her doubts and to avoid comments that might attract misfortune. [...]

No one dared protest, because in the best of circumstances, a man could lose his job, but worse, he could be accused of being a Communist or a subversive and wind up in a cell tortured by the political police.

By midyear of 1975, repression had been refined to perfection, and I fell victim to my own terror. I was afraid to use the telephone, I censored letters to my mother in case they were opened at the post office, and was careful about what I said even in the bosom of the family. Friends who had contact with the military had warned me that my name was on the blacklists, and soon after we received two death threats by telephone. I was aware that there were people who took pleasure from spreading panic, and perhaps I should not have listened to those anonymous voices, but [...] I didn't feel safe. One April afternoon, Michael and the children and I went to the airportto say goodbye to friends who, like so many others, had opted to leave. They had learned that Australia was offering land to new immigrants and had decided to test their luck as farmers. We were watching the departing plane when a woman who was a total stranger to me came up and asked wasn't I the person on television? She insisted I go with her because she had something to tell me in private. Without giving me time to react, she pulled me into the restroom and once we were alone removed an envelope her purse and handed it to me.

"Deliver this, it's a matter of life and death. I have to leave on the next plane; my contact didn't appear and I can't wait any longer," she said. She made me repeat the address twice, to be sure I had memorized it, and then ran away.

"Who was that?" Michael asked when he saw me come out of the restroom.

"I don't have any idea. She asked me to deliver this; she said it's very important."

"What is it? Why did you take it? It could be a trap..."

All those questions, and others that occurred to us later, resulted in very little sleep that night. We didn't want to open the envelope because it was better not to know its contents, we were afraid to take it to the address the woman had given me, and neither could we bring ourselves to destroy it. During that long night I think that Michael realized that I didn't seek out problems, they found me. We could see finally how twisted reality had become when a request as simple as delivering a letter could cost us our lives, and when the subject of torture and death was now a part of our everyday conversation, something fully accepted. At dawn the next morning, we spread a map of the world on the dining-room table to look for somewhere we mght go. By then, thalf the population of Latin America was living under military dictatorships; using the pretext of combating communism, the armed forces of several countries had been transformed into mercenaries for the privileged class and instruments of repression for the poor. In the next decade, military governments waged all-out war against thier own peoples; millions of persons died, disappeared and were exiled; never before on our continent had such a vast movement of human masses poured across our own borders. That morning, we discovered that there were very few democracies left in which to seek refuge, and that several of those—like Mexico, Costa Rica, and Colombia—were no longer issuing visas for Chileans because too many had emigrated there in the last year and a half. As soon as the curfew was lifted, we left the children with Granny, gave instructions in case we did not return, and went to deliver the envelope to the indicated address. We rang the bell of an old house in the middle of town; a man dressed in blue jeans came to the door and, with great relief, we saw that he was wearing a clerical collar. We recognized his Belgian accent because we had lived in that country.

After fleeing Argentina, Tió Ramón and my mother found themselves with nowhere to go, and for months had to accept the hospitality of friends in foreign countries, unable to unpack their suitcases once and for all in a place of their own. About this time, my mother recalled the Venezuelan she had met in the geriatric clinic in Romania; following a hunch she looked for the card she had kept all those years and called her firnd in Caracas to tell him briefly wat had happened. "Come on here, my dear, there's room for everyone," was Valentín Hernández's immediate response. That gave Michael and me the idea that we might move to Venezuela; from what we knew, it was a green and generous country where we could count on one friend and stay a while until te situation in Chile improved. We began to make plans: we would have to rent the house, sell the furniture, and find new jobs, but we rushed everything through in less than a week. That Wednesday, the children came home from school in abject terror; two strangers had cornered them in the street and then, after threatening them, gave them a message for me: "Tell that bitch your mother that her days are numbered."

...using the pretext of combating communism, the armed forces of several countries had been transformed into mercenaries for the privileged class and instruments of repression for the poor. In the next decade, military governments waged all-out war against thier own peoples; millions of persons died, disappeared and were exiled;never before on our continent had such a vast movement of human masses poured across our own borders.

The next day I flew to Venezuela, alone. I did not know I would never see my grandfather again. I went through the formalities at the airport with Memé's relics clutched to my chest. The biscuit tin contained the remnants of a crown of wax orange blossoms; a pair of child-size kid gloves the color of time, and a well-thumbed prayer book with mother-of-pearl covers. I also took with me a plastic bag witihy a handful of dirt from our garden, with the idea of planting forget-me-nots in another land. The official who checked my passport saw teh frequent Argentine entrance and exit stamps and my newspaper pass and, as I assume he did not find my name on his list, let me leave. The plane climbed through a feather bed of clouds, and minutes later we crossed the snow-covered heights of the Andes. Those white peaks thrusting through winter clouds were like the last image I had of my country. "I'll be back, I'll be back," I repeated like a prayer.