“When the helicopter went up in fire, exploded, Golden Dragon melted. Very serious. Our people believe golden statue keeps borders safe for us. Many years it defends our borders and keeps our nation prosperous,” said General Kunglung.
“Perhaps it isn’t the statue but the wisdom and prudence of your rulers that has kept the nation safe,” Kate replied. She surreptitiously offered her chocolate cake to the leopard, who sniffed it, wrinkled its muzzle with distaste, and went back to lie beside Nadia.
“How can we make people understand that young King Dil Bahadur is good man—is honorable man, strong even without the sacred dragon?” asked the general.
“With all respect, honorable General, possibly your people will have another statue before long,” said the writer, who finally had learned to speak as the courtesy of the country required.
“Does the honorable Little Grandmother wish to explain what she is saying?” Dil Bahadur interrupted.
“Possibly a friend of mine can resolve the problem,” said Kate, and went on to explain her plan.
After a few hours’ battle with the primitive telephone company of the Forbidden Kingdom, the writer had succeeded in speaking directly to Isaac Rosenblat in New York City, and had asked him if it would be possible for him to craft a dragon similar to the one that was destroyed, based on four Polaroid photographs, some rather fuzzy video film, and a detailed description given by the bandits of the scorpion sect, who were hoping to please the nation’s authorities.
“Are you asking me to make a statue out of gold?” Isaac Rosenblat shouted from the other side of the planet.
“Yes, Isaac. More or less the size of a dog. Plus, set it with several hundred precious stones, including diamonds, sapphires, emeralds—and, of course, a pair of identical star rubies for the eyes.”
“And who, for God’s sake, is going to pay for all this?”
“A certain collector who has an office very near yours, Isaac,” replied Kate, howling with laughter.
The writer was very proud of her plan. She had had a special recorder sent from the United States, one that was not sold commercially but that she had obtained thanks to her contacts with a CIA agent with whom she had become friends while reporting in Bosnia. With that gadget she had been able to listen to the miniaturized tapes Judit Kinski had hidden in her handbag. They contained the information needed to identify the client called the Collector. Kate intended to use that evidence to trap him. She would leave him alone only if he replaced the lost statue; it was the least he could do to repair the harm that had been done. The Collector had taken precautions to prevent his telephone calls from being intercepted, but he didn’t suspect that each of the agents the Specialist had sent to close their deal had taped the negotiations. For Judit, those tapes were life insurance she could use if things became ugly. That was why she carried them with her at all times—until she had lost her handbag in the struggle with Tex Armadillo. Kate Cold knew that the second wealthiest man in the world would not allow his connection with a criminal organization, which included kidnapping the monarch of a peaceful nation, to appear in the press, and that he would have to give in to her demands.
Kate’s plan caught the court of the Forbidden Kingdom off guard.
“Perhaps it would be wise for the honorable Little Grandmother to discuss the matter with the lamas. Her plan is well intentioned, but possibly the course she means to follow is slightly illegal,” Dil Bahadur suggested amiably.
“Perhaps it is not, shall we say, legal, but the Collector deserves no better. Leave the matter to me, Majesty. In this case I am fully prepared to darken my karma with a little blackmail. And by the way, if it is not inappropriate, may I ask Your Majesty what will happen to Judit Kinski?” Kate asked.
The woman had been found, unconscious and stiff with cold, by one of the parties of soldiers General Kunglung had sent to search for her. She had wandered through the mountains for days, lost and hungry, until her feet were frostbitten and she could go no farther. The cold made her sleepy, and she had rapidly lost her desire to live. Judit had abandoned herself to her fate with a kind of secret relief. After so much danger and greed in her life, the temptation of death seemed sweet. In her brief moments of lucidity it was not her past triumphs that came to mind but the serene face of Dorji, the king. What was the reason for his stubborn presence in her memory? She had never loved him. She had pretended to because she needed him to give her the code to the golden dragon, nothing more. She did, she admitted to herself, admire him. That gentle man had made a profound impression on her. She thought that under different circumstances, or if she had been a different woman, she would have inevitably fallen in love with him. But that hadn’t happened, she was sure. Which was why she was surprised that the king’s spirit stayed with her in that icy place where she awaited death. The sovereign’s placid, caring eyes were the last thing she saw before she slipped into darkness.
The patrol found her just in time to save her life. As they spoke, Judit was in the hospital, where they were keeping her sedated after amputating several fingers and toes that had been badly frostbitten.
“Before he died, my father told me not to sentence Judit Kinski to prison. I want to offer the woman the chance to improve her karma, and evolve spiritually. I will send her to spend the rest of her life in a Buddhist monastery on the border with Tibet. The climate is harsh, and the place is isolated, but the nuns are, as you say, saintly. I’ve been told that they get up before sunrise, spend the day meditating, and eat nothing but a few grains of rice.”
“And you think that Judit will gain wisdom there?” asked Kate, smiling sarcastically and exchanging glances with General Myar Kunglung.
“That depends on her alone, honorable Grandmother,” the prince replied.
“May I ask Your Majesty please to call me Kate? That’s my name.”
“It will be a privilege to call you by name. Perhaps our honorable grandmother Kate, her valiant photographers, and my friends Nadia and Alexander will want to return to this humble kingdom where Pema and I will always welcome you,” said the young king.
“You bet!” exclaimed Alexander, but an elbow from Nadia reminded him of his manners, and he added; “Although possibly we do not deserve the generosity of Your Majesty and his worthy bride, perhaps we will be sufficiently bold to accept such an honorable invitation.”
Everyone burst out laughing, unable to help themselves, even the nuns who were ceremoniously serving tea, and little Borobá, who started excitedly leaping around, tossing pieces of chocolate cake into the air.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .
About the author
Interview with Isabel Allende by Eithne Farry
About the book
A Conversation with Isabel Allende
Alex and Nadia’s Adventures Continue: An Excerpt from Forest of the Pygmies
Read on
Have You Read? More by Isabel Allende
About the author
Interview with Isabel Allende by Eithne Farry
Author Photograph © William Gordon
JANUARY 8TH is always an auspicious day for Isabel Allende. She confides: “I get up very early and I meditate, and then I do a little ceremony that’s becoming more and more complicated. I burn sage, light a candle.” There is a delicate pause and then the highly acclaimed author, whose work has been translated into at least twenty-seven languages, lets out a bark of laughter. “You know, that kind of New Age bull!”
And that’s the way the interview goes. Moments of seriousness and introspection are undone with a brash statement, a flash of self-deprecating humor, a quick-fire bit of emotional honesty to help the conversation along. Isabel talks about her love of words, her family, her “outsiderness,” and her fondness for makeup and “very high heels”: “They make me feel four inches taller, which is good when you are only five feet tall.” And she talks very seriously and very intensely about her work, about the need “to be alone, for sometimes ten or fourteen hou
rs a day. I need to be aware of memory, to sit in the quiet and recall all the details and see how they connect.”
For Isabel, writing is an almost magical process, and January 8th is always the day she chooses to sit down to work on a new book. “I’m always a little scared that maybe it won’t work, that this time it won’t happen. But I’ve been writing for twenty-five years now, and I’ve learned that if you have patience the words will come.” This tradition started with The House of the Spirits—the debut that catapulted Isabel into the literary limelight and which began as a letter to her dying Chilean grandfather. “I started writing a spiritual letter to him on the 8th January, 1981, to tell him that people only die when you forget them and that I would never forget him. But I soon realized that he would never read it, and that somehow it was turning itself into a book.”
It was a particularly poignant time for Isabel. She was living in exile in Venezuela following the 1973 coup in Chile and was unable to return home. “You know, because of all that, it is very hard for me to write a story about normal people who have normal lives sheltered by the establishment. My characters are marginal—people who have either come to a new place and don’t know the rules, or they are different and therefore they are not accepted. So that’s the kind of people I am interested in—the people on the fringes of society—and those are the stories I write.” She adds: “I always write from the perspective of the outsider because that is what I feel I am. Even when I write about Chile, I am an outsider because I have not lived there for many years. I am different now, I have changed, the country has changed, and I don’t fit in. But I don’t really fit in anywhere so it’s fine, I’m used to it.”
She has lived in America for twenty years and has fallen in love with Marin County, California, though she still holds on tightly to her Chilean roots. “I look Chilean. I cook, dream, write, and make love in Spanish. My books have an unmistakable Latin American flavor.” She continues: “When I speak English, I am a different person. In Spanish I am funny. I’m smarter too.” She regrets leaving her homeland, relatives, and friends, but believes that being an exile made her the writer she is today. “It forced me to do things that I would never have done. I had to develop strengths that I didn’t know I was capable of. It was traumatic, but it made me strong.”
This strength was severely tested in 1992 when Isabel’s daughter became critically ill with the rare blood disorder porphyria and fell into a coma. Isabel stayed by her bedside and wrote her a letter, in an attempt to express her love and grief and bewilderment, but her daughter never regained consciousness. The letter became Isabel’s soul-baring memoir Paula, a literary tour de force which Isabel describes as “the most important book that I will ever write. It is the event that marked me the most, that changed me the most. It is something that I remember every single day.” She continues: “After Paula’s death I thought I was never going to write again. I had to pull myself out of a very dark place.”
She didn’t write again for three years. “I would sit in front of my computer and nothing would come out. And then I remembered that I was a journalist—sure, I was a lousy journalist—but I could research a subject. So I gave myself a theme that would be as far removed from death as possible. I decided to write about food and sex.” The result was Aphrodite, a celebration of the senses. She recalls the research gleefully: “I just started asking people what turns them on, wonderful stuff came up, fantastic stories.”
And, Isabel insists, it is the stories that count. “If I can hear a story, if I can tell a story, that is the most important thing.” This love affair with words goes back to her childhood in Chile. “I was greedy for stories. I would read anything. I was always enchanted by the poetry of Pablo Neruda because he could say things in a way that would amaze me. He would describe olive oil as liquid gold, and suddenly I could see it that way. It was a revelation.” Even now, after several novels, a collection of short stories, three memoirs, and a trilogy for children, the process of writing still excites her. “I jump out of bed very early, put on my makeup and high heels, and run to my little casita at the back of the house and work all day. I am totally immersed in the story. I go through the threshold and I enter a space that is mysterious. Inside is the story, and my job is to show up in front of the computer every day and illuminate that space word by word until the characters come to life.”
About the book
A Conversation with Isabel Allende
Your adventure trilogy—City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and Forest of the Pygmies—has been published for both young adults and adults. How do you explain its crossover appeal?
Most books for young adults are also read by adults. I am very careful with style, language, and research. I do not underestimate my young readers; I treat them as if they were experienced readers. Maybe that’s why adults are also reading this trilogy.
What are the differences between writing for adults and children?
I think that writing for young adults requires more action, velocity, dialogue, and humor than for adults. A strong plot and memorable characters are important. Less description is probably better. But in either case—for adults or for teenagers—I am very careful with language. I want quality and, if possible, beauty in the writing. I write the kind of book I would like to read, so I expected this trilogy to appeal to adults as well as to a younger readership, and in fact it has happened. I get good feedback from adult readers who are young at heart and enjoy adventure.
Did you enjoy the challenge?
I enjoyed the challenge very much! And I learned a new genre. My hardest critics are my grandchildren. They always teach me a lot.
What is your most vivid memory of childhood?
Stories. I was a great reader and I invented stories for my brothers. I read with a candle in the cellar of my grandfather’s house, I read inside my stepfather’s armoire, I read in bed with a flashlight under the covers. My head was full of stories and it still is.
You’ve dedicated the book “to my friend Tabra Tunoa, tireless traveler, who took me to the Himalayas and told me about the Golden Dragon.”
My friend Tabra Tunoa took me to India and Nepal. We trekked in the Himalayas (not too high, though). She told me about Tibet and Bhutan. I was impressed by the landscape of tall mountains and beautiful valleys. The people are unforgettable. Their culture and religion are based on tolerance and compassion.
Did you eat the monks’ diet of tsampa, as well as local delicacies? What did each taste like?
I ate the local food. Tsampa and tea with yak butter had a slightly stale and smoky taste, but you soon get used to it. Mainly we ate simple vegetarian food; there is very little meat available.
Is the Hidden Kingdom a real place, like Mustang, or imagined?
The model for the kingdom of my book is Bhutan, but it is an imaginary place.
Do you think writing about it could be harmful in that more people will want to visit and therefore begin to destroy the harmonious balance?
Only a few tourists a year are allowed in Bhutan. I didn’t feel the need to protect the country from visitors because the government and the people do it fiercely.
Did you do a great deal of research?
Yes, I had to do much research for each one of the books. But I am used to it because I have written numerous historical novels and even a book about aphrodisiacs that required research. Usually I work alone, but often I wish I had a good team of researchers; it would help a lot.
What would you suggest people read to find out more?
I read dozens of books. The best ways to start are a good travel book or the Internet. Research is not difficult. Once you get started, one thing leads to the other. As you peel the layers, you go deeper and deeper into the subject.
Do you have a totemic animal?
I had a very important dream in which I discovered that my totemic animal is the eagle. I do not particularly like eagles. I have seldom seen one, and I do not know why this bird is my spir
it animal. When I meditate, often I feel that I can see from above and can fly great distances. The eagle is solitary and fierce. Am I that way? I have no idea
Why that particular one? What does it say about you as a person?
The fact that the eagle is always in the air, far above everything else, gives it distance to see what others do not see. Maybe that is why I am a storyteller. I observe quietly from a distance and thus I get the stories.
Is Buddhism important to you?
Buddhism is very attractive to me, but I am not a religious person. I have a private spiritual practice, but I do not belong to any church.
Is there a special skill from any of the three books that you wish you had, for example, being invisible, reading auras, fighting in the Tao-shu style, talking with and understanding animals?
I would like to have all the skills that I mention in the trilogy! I would love to be able to fly or to transform myself into an eagle—wouldn’t you? But what I envy the most is the innocence and courage of Nadia and Alex.
Do you believe in yetis?
I believe that the world is a very mysterious place. Anything is possible, including yetis.
Are the Blue Warriors based on a real gang?
The Blue Warriors are based on a tribe of nomads in northern India who worship the scorpion. They have that name because the dye used in their clothes tints their skin a dark blue color.
What is your most treasured memory of that trip?
My best memory is trying to communicate in broken English and sign language with the sherpas, the monks, and the people in the remote villages. They are beautiful people. Their faces are soft, they are polite and calm, and they always smile.
Did you bring back any souvenirs?
I brought back some old beads and thousands of photographs, but I am not a collector of souvenirs. I collect stories, images, sounds, and smells. I store them in my head and my heart, and sooner or later I use them in my writing.