She wanted to put her daguerreotype in a fine gilt and red velvet frame for Miss Rose’s desk. She had brought Joaquín Andieta’s letters to immortalize them in the photograph before she destroyed them. Inside the shop were enough backdrops for a small theater: canvases of flowery pergolas and lakes with herons, cardboard Greek columns garlanded with roses, even a stuffed bear. The photographer was a small, hurried man whose words tumbled out and who leapt about like a toad among the implements in his studio. Once they had agreed on the details, he sat Eliza at a table with the love letters in her hand and fitted a metal bar behind her with a support for her neck, not unlike the rod Miss Rose had insisted on during Eliza’s piano lessons.
“This is to keep you from moving. Look at the camera and don’t breathe.”
The gnome disappeared behind a black cloth; an instant later a white flash blinded Eliza and a scorched smell made her sneeze. For the second portrait she put the letters aside and asked Tao Chi’en to help her fasten the pearl necklace.
The next day Tao Chi’en went out early to buy a newspaper, as he always did before opening the office, and was met with a six-column headline: Joaquín Murieta had been killed. He returned home with the paper pressed to his chest, wondering how to tell Eliza, and how she would receive the news.
At dawn on July 24, after three months of riding through California in a game of blindman’s bluff, Captain Harry Love and his twenty mercenaries had come to the Tulare valley. By then they were sick and tired of chasing ghosts and following false trails; the heat and mosquitoes had put them in a foul mood and they were beginning to despise one another. Three summer months of forced march through these dry hills with the sun beating down on their heads was a lot of sacrifice for what they were being paid. They had seen the posters in the towns offering a thousand dollars’ reward for the capture of the bandit. On more than one they had seen a scrawled, “I will pay five thousand,” and signed Joaquín Murieta. They were looking foolish, and there were only three days left before time ran out: if they returned empty-handed they wouldn’t see a cent of the governor’s thousand dollars. But this must have been their lucky day because just when they were losing hope they had come across a group of seven unguarded Mexicans camping under some trees.
Later the captain would say that they were wearing the finest clothes and had only purebred horses, reasons enough to awaken their suspicion, and that was why they rode over to ask for identification. Instead of complying, the suspicious characters made a run for their horses but before they could mount they were surrounded by Love’s guard. The one person who olympically ignored the attackers and walked on toward his mount as if he had not heard any warning was the one who seemed to be the leader. He was unarmed except for a hunting knife at his belt; his guns were strapped to his saddle, but he never fired a shot because by then the captain had his pistol to the man’s forehead. A few steps away the other Mexicans watched, transfixed, Love would write in his report, ready to come to their leader’s aid at the first careless move by the guards. Suddenly they all made a desperate attempt to escape, perhaps with the purpose of distracting the guards, while their leader, with one formidable leap, was on his restless stallion and bursting through their lines. He did not get far, however, because a blast from a shotgun caught his horse, which rolled to the ground vomiting blood. Then the outlaw, who was none other than the famous Joaquín Murieta, Captain Love claimed, took off like an antelope, and they had no choice but to empty their pistols into his chest.
“Don’t shoot anymore, you’ve done your job,” the man said before he slowly sank to the ground, dead.
That was the story dramatized in the press, and no Mexican was left alive to tell his version of events. The heroic Captain Harry Love proceeded to cut off the head of the supposed Murieta with one slash of his sword. Someone noticed that one of the victims had a mutilated hand, and it was immediately assumed that this was Three-Finger Jack, so they cut off his head, too, and for good measure added the hand. The twenty guards went galloping toward the nearest town, some miles away, but the heat was hellish and Three-Finger Jack’s head was so full of bullet holes it began to disintegrate, so they threw it by the side of the road. Pursued by flies and a terrible stench, Captain Harry Love realized that he would have to preserve the remains or he would never get them to San Francisco to collect the deserved reward, so he immersed them in great jars of gin. He was welcomed as a hero: he had liberated California from the worst outlaw in its history. But as Jacob Freemont reported, the matter was not entirely cleared up; the story smelled of fabrication. To begin with, no one could prove that events had happened as portrayed by Harry Love and his men, and it was somewhat suspicious that after three months of fruitless searching they would find seven Mexicans just when the captain most needed them. Nor had anyone been able to identify Joaquín Murieta: Freemont himself went to see the head and could not be sure it was the bandit he knew, although it certainly resembled him, he said.
For weeks the remains of the presumed Joaquín Murieta and the hand of his abominable sidekick Three-Finger Jack were exhibited in San Francisco before being taken on a triumphal tour through the remainder of California. The lines of the curious stretched around the block and there was no one who hadn’t taken a close look at the sinister trophies. Eliza was one of the first to go, and Tao Chi’en accompanied her because he did not want her to undergo such a test alone, even though she had received the news with amazing calm. After an eternal wait in the sun, it was finally their turn and they went inside. Eliza clung to Tao Chi’en’s fingers but moved forward with determination, indifferent to the river of sweat staining her dress and the trembling that shook her bones. They found themselves in a dark room badly lighted by yellow candles emitting a breath from the tomb. Black cloth covered the walls and in one corner a valiant pianist was thumping out funereal chords with more resignation than real feeling. On a table draped like a catafalque sat the two glass jars. Eliza closed her eyes and let Tao Chi’en guide her, sure that the beating of her heart was drowning out the chords from the piano. They stopped; she felt her friend’s grip grow stronger on hers; she gulped a mouthful of air and opened her eyes. She stared at the head for a few seconds and then let herself be led outside.
“Was it him?” asked Tao Chi’en.
“I am free,” she replied, holding tightly to Tao’s hand.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . . *
About the author
2Life at a Glance
4Isabel Allende on Destiny, Personal Tragedy, and Writing
About the book
8A Conversation with Isabel Allende
Read on
11Have You Read? More by Isabel Allende
About the author
Author photograph © Willam Gordon
Life at a Glance
“Asked how she begins a book, she replies, ‘With a first sentence that comes from the womb, not the mind.’”
ISABEL ALLENDE was born in Lima, Peru, in 1942, and raised in Chile. She fled Chile after the 1974 assassination of her uncle, President Salvador Allende. She worked in Venezuela from 1975 to 1984 and then moved to America. She now lives in California with her husband, Willie Gordon.
She has worked as a television presenter, journalist, playwright, and children’s author. Her first book for adults, the acclaimed House of the Spirits, was published in Spanish in 1982 and was later translated into twenty-seven languages.
Isabel holds to a very methodical, some would say menacing, literary routine. She writes using a computer, working Monday through Saturday, 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. She sits in what she refers to as a “small cabin off my garden.” Her routine shuns music in favor of silence and includes at least one superstition: “I always start on January 8.” Asked how she begins a book, she replies, “With a first sentence that comes from the womb, not the mind.”
Her favorite reads include One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, La Lumière
des Justes by Henri Troyat, The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa, and the poetry of Neruda.
She has written seven novels, among them Portrait in Sepia and Daughter of Fortune. She has also published a celebration of the senses entitled Aphrodite. My Invented Country is 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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Isabel Allende on Destiny, Personal Tragedy, and Writing
“The really important events in my life happened in spite of me. I had no control over them.”
“Life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.” Can you describe that noise, what it is, and 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. Since childhood, however, 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 into a conservative Catholic 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: the fact that my father left the family when I was three; the 1973 military coup in Chile that forced me into exile; meeting my husband Willie; 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? Do you have a favorite genre of writing as a reader or writer?
I don’t know if I will write for kids again. It is not an easy genre. I feel more comfortable writing for adults. I love to write novels with strong plots and characters. I am not a minimalist writer! But as a reader I like many kinds of books, mainly literary fiction. I don’t read romance novels or thrillers. They bore me.
Do you think that fiction has a moral purpose? Or can it simply be entertainment?
It can be just entertainment, but when fiction makes you think it is much more exciting. However, beware of authors who pound their “moral messages” into you.
You have written letters all your life, most notably a daily letter to your mother. You’ve also worked as a journalist. Which form or experience of writing helped you most when you started writing books?
The training of writing daily is very useful. As a journalist I learned to research, to be disciplined, to meet deadlines, to be precise and direct, and to keep in mind the reader and try to grab his or her attention from the very beginning.
Does writing each book change you?
Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul. Why do I write only about certain themes and certain characters? Because they are part of my life, part of myself, they are aspects of me that I need to explore and understand.
You loved science fiction as an adolescent. Do you think it inspired your love of creating other worlds?
Science fiction reinforced the idea—planted by my grandmother—that the universe is very strange and complex. Everything is possible and we know very little. My mind and my heart are open to the mystery.
You always start writing on January 8, but when do you finish? How long does it take you to write your books?
I write approximately a book per year. It takes me three or four months to write the first draft, then I have to correct and edit. I write in Spanish, so I also have to work closely with my English translator Margaret Sayers Peden. And then I have to spend time on book tours, interviews, traveling, etc.
Do you have a favorite among your books?
I don’t read my own books. As soon as I finish one I am already thinking of the next. I can hardly remember each book. I don’t have a favorite but I am grateful to my first novel The House of the Spirits, which paved the way for all the others, and to Paula, because it saved me from depression.
You grew up in Chile but now live in the United States. Which country has had the most influence on your writing and why?
It is very easy for me to write about Chile. I don’t have to think about it. The stories just flow. My roots are in Chile and most of my books have a Latin American flavor. However, I have lived in the United States for many years, I read mainly English fiction, I live in English, and certainly that influences my writing.
The United States was, to a Chilean, an enemy country in the seventies. How did you overcome that and learn to love it?
I know that most Americans are not responsible for the evil that their government has done or does today abroad. Most people in this country have good intentions. They think of themselves as decent citizens and moral human beings. They want to do good. But there is great ignorance and indifference. The United States has supported in other countries the kind of brutal tyranny that it would never tolerate in its own territory. If Americans were better aware of the atrocities that have been committed in their name and with their tax money they would be horrified.
Emigrants “lose their crutches” and their past is “erased.” Is that both positive and negative?
When one moves to another country as an immigrant one loses everything that is familiar. To survive one needs to draw strength from within and make double the effort of the locals to get half the results. I think that it is important to remember the past and be proud of one’s roots.
About the book
A Conversation with Isabel Allende
“It was easy to become someone different in the upheaval of the Gold Rush. As an immigrant and as a writer, the idea of creating a new version of oneself is very appealing to me.”
The characters in Daughter of Fortune invent and reinvent identities to accommodate their changing situations. The protagonist pretends to be a deaf-mute Chinese boy at one point and the brother of her Chilean lover at another. There’s also an English bon vivant pretending to be a missionary, an intimidating giant who calls himself Babalu the Bad but turns out to be Babalu the Good, and many others. What is all the pretending about?
The California Gold Rush was a strange and chaotic time. Men from all over the world traveled to that region for a very simple reason: greed. Yet many of them were also running away from their pasts, from religious or political persecution, or from the law. Many reinvented themselves. It was easy to become someone different in the upheaval of the Gold Rush. Nobody really cared who you were or from where you came. As an immigrant and as a writer, the idea of creating a new version of oneself is very appealing to me.
The story begins in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso, where apparently in the mid-1800s there was a large expatriate English community. Is there still a distinguishable English community?
The descendants of the British community in Chile are still there, although totally integrated with
the local population. There are still some English clubs and schools but they are no longer exclusively for the British. My former husband’s mother descended from a British family and although she never traveled abroad she felt that England was her home. The British influence in Chile was so strong that Chileans like to call themselves “the British of Latin America.”
Chileans, British, Chinese—you cover considerable ethnic ground here. To what extent do your personal interests—your desire to explore various cultures—determine your plot?
Daughter of Fortune had to be a story about diversity because California, especially San Francisco, was founded by people of many races. The region was first inhabited by Native American tribes, then by Spanish colonizers. There were Russian settlers in the north. It was a part of Mexico until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, when Mexico ceded it after losing the war with the United States. For a short while California became independent and finally it joined the Union. During that time it had immigrants from many places, especially Hispanics and Chinese. Mexicans, Chinese, Peruvians, and Chileans were digging for gold a year before the arrival of white Americans, who had to travel by land and took longer to reach California. When thousands of American settlers arrived in the fall of 1849 they imposed racist and abusive laws on the rest of the population and took away the land, the gold, and the rights of the people of color. The official story of the Gold Rush is always told by the winners, that is, by white males. I wanted to tell the story from another angle.
How did you come to incorporate acupuncture into this novel?
Acupuncture is a very old healing science used in China for thousands of years and used only recently in the Western world. I could not have a Chinese doctor in the novel who didn’t practice it. I have a very good friend, Dr. Miki Shima, who specializes in Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and herbs. He was the model for the character of Tao Chi’en and he helped with the research of Oriental medicine.