My mother has a tape containing juicy anecdotes and family scandals, but she won’t let me listen to it because she’s afraid I’ll divulge the contents. She has promised me that at her death, when she is absolutely safe from the apocalyptic vengeance of her blood kin, I will inherit that recording. I grew up surrounded with secrets, mysteries, whispers, prohibitions, matters that must never be mentioned. I owe a debt of gratitude to the countless skeletons hidden in our armoire because they planted the seeds of literature in my life. In every story I write I try to exorcise one of them.
In my family no one spread gossip, and in that we were somewhat different from the ordinary homo chilensis because the national sport is to talk about the person who just left the room. In this, too, we are different from our idols, the English, whose principles forbid them from making personal remarks. (I know a former soldier in the British army, married, the father of four children and grandfather of several, who decided to change gender. Overnight he appeared dressed as a woman and no one, absolutely no one, in the English village where he had lived for forty years made the least comment.) In Chile we even have a term for talking about our friends and neighbors—plucking—the etymology of which surely comes from plucking chickens, or denuding the out-of-earshot victim of his feathers. This habit is so prevalent that no one wants to be the first to leave, which is why farewells take an eternity at the door. In our family, in contrast, the norm of not speaking ill of others, a rule imposed by my grandfather, reached such an extreme that he never told my mother the reasons why he opposed her marriage to the man who would become my father. He refused to repeat the rumors that were circulating about his conduct and his character because he didn’t have proof, and rather than defame my mother’s suitor, he preferred to risk the future of his daughter, who in blissful ignorance ended up marrying a man who didn’t deserve her. Over the years I have freed myself from this family trait. I have no scruples about repeating gossip, talking behind others’ backs, or spreading their secrets in my books, the reason why half my relatives don’t speak to me.
Relatives who don’t speak to you are a common occurrence. The renowned novelist José Donoso found himself forced by family pressure to eliminate from his memoirs a chapter about an extraordinary great-grandmother, who when widowed opened a clandestine gaming house with attractive female croupiers. It’s said that the stain on the family name prevented her son from becoming president, and a century later her descendants are still trying to hide her story. I regret that that great-granny didn’t belong to my tribe. If she had, I would have taken justifiable pride in exploring her story. With an ancestor like her, think of all the delicious novels I could have written.
OF VICES AND VIRTUES
In my family nearly all the men studied law, although I don’t remember a single one who passed the bar. The Chilean loves laws, the more complicated the better. Nothing fascinates us as much as red tape and multiple forms. When some minor negotiation seems simple, we immediately suspect that it’s illegal. (I, for example, have always doubted that my marriage to Willie is valid, since it took place in fewer than five minutes, simply by writing our signatures in a book. In Chile it would have meant wading through several weeks of bureaucracy.) The Chilean is a legal animal. There’s no better job in the country than being a notary public: we want everything on paper, sealed, with multiple copies and stamps on every page. We are so legalistic that General Pinochet wanted to pass into history as a president, not a usurper of power, and to do that he had to change the constitution. Through one of those ironies that are so abundant in history, he later found himself trapped in the laws he himself had created in order to perpetuate his tenure in office. According to the terms of his constitution, he was to fulfill his role for eight additional years—he had already been in power for several—that is, until 1988, when he would call a referendum so the people could decide whether he was to continue or to call an election. He lost that referendum and the following year lost the election and had to turn over the presidential sash to his opponent, the democratic candidate. It’s difficult to explain to anyone outside of Chile how the dictatorship could be brought down when it could count on the unconditional support of the armed forces, the right, and a large part of the population. Political parties had been suspended, Congress disbanded, and the press was censored. As the general had often boasted: “Not a leaf stirs in this country without my consent.” How, then, could he have been defeated in a democratic vote? This could happen only in Chile. In similar fashion, using a loophole in the law, an attempt is currently underway to try him along with other military men, even though he had appointed the Supreme Court and an amnesty protects the military from bearing responsibility for illegal acts committed during the years of his government. It turns out that there are hundreds of persons who were arrested but whom the military denies having killed; since they haven’t appeared, it is assumed that they were kidnapped. In such cases the crime remains on record, so the accused cannot take shelter behind the amnesty.
Love for regulations, however unworkable they may be, finds its best exponents in the enormous bureaucracy of our suffering country. That bureaucracy is the paradise of the people in their uniform gray suits. There such a person can vegetate to his pleasure, completely safe from the traps of imagination, perfectly secure in his post to the day he retires—unless he is imprudent enough to try to change things, an observation made by the author-sociologist Pablo Huneeus (who is, I might add in passing, one of the few eccentric Chileans who isn’t related to my family). A public official must understand from his first day in office that any show of initiative will signal the end of his career because he isn’t there to be meritorious but to reach his level of incompetence with dignity. The point of moving papers with seals and stamps from one perusal to the next is not to resolve problems, but to obstruct solutions. If the problems were resolved, the bureaucracy would lose power and many honest people would be left without employment; on the other hand, if things get worse, the state increases the budget and hires more people, and thus lowers the index of the unemployed. Everyone is happy. The official abuses every smidgen of his power, starting from the premise that the public is his enemy, a sentiment that is fully reciprocated. It was a shock to find that in the United States all that’s needed to move about the country is a driver’s license, and that most transactions can be accomplished by mail. In Chile, the clerk on duty demands that the poor petitioner produce proof that he was born, that he isn’t a criminal, that he paid his taxes, that he registered to vote, and that he’s still alive, because even if he throws a tantrum to prove that he hasn’t died, he is obliged to present a “certificate of survival.” The problem has reached such proportions that the government itself has created an office to combat bureaucracy. Citizens may now complain of being shabbily treated and may file charges against incompetent officials . . . on a form requiring a seal and three copies, of course. Recently, a busload of us tourists crossing the border between Chile and Argentina had to wait an hour and a half while our documents were checked. Getting through the Berlin Wall was easier. Kafka was Chilean.
I believe that this obsession of ours with legality is a kind of safeguard against the aggression we carry inside; without the nightstick of the law we would go after one another tooth and claw. Experience has taught us that when we lose control we are capable of the worst barbarism, and for that reason we try to move cautiously, barricading ourselves behind bulwarks of paper bearing seals. Whenever possible, we try to avoid confrontation; we seek a consensus and, at the first opportunity, we put any decision to a vote. We love to vote. If a dozen kids get together in the schoolyard to play soccer, the first thing they do is write a set of rules and vote for a president, a board of directors, and a treasurer. This doesn’t mean that we’re tolerant, far from it: we cling to our ideas like maniacs (I am a typical case). You see intolerance everywhere, in religion, in politics, in the culture. Anyone who dares dissent is squelched with insults or ridicule, in the even
t that he can’t be made to shut up using more drastic methods.
In customs we are conservatives and traditionalists; we prefer the known evil to good yet to be learned, but in everything else we are always on the lookout for something new. We have the idea that anything that comes to us from outside the country is by nature better than ours and should be tried, from the latest electronic gadget to economic and political systems. We spent a good part of the twentieth century trying out various forms of revolution, from Marxism to savage capitalism, ranging through each and every intermediate shading. Our hope that a change in government can improve our luck is like hoping to win the lottery: totally without rational foundation. At heart we know very well that life isn’t easy. Ours is a land of earthquakes, why wouldn’t we be fatalists? Given the circumstances, we have no choice but to be also a little stoic—though there’s no reason to be too dignified about it; we are free to complain all we want.
In my family’s case, I believe we were easily as spartan as stoic. According to my grandfather, cancer is caused by easy living, whereas discomfort is good for the health. He recommended cold showers, food difficult to chew, lumpy mattresses, third-class seats on trains, and clunky shoes. His theory of healthful discomfort was reinforced by several English schools for young girls in which it was my destiny to spend the greater part of my childhood. If you survive this kind of education, you are forever after grateful for the most trivial pleasures. I’m a person who murmurs a silent prayer of thanks when warm water comes out of the tap. I expect life to be problematic, and when for several days I haven’t suffered anguish or pain, I get worried because I am sure that means the heavens are preparing a worse misfortune for me. Even so, I am not totally neurotic, quite the opposite; in fact, I’m quite easy to be with. . . . It doesn’t take much to make me happy; you know now that ordinary warm water in the faucet will do the trick.
It has often been said that we Chileans are envious, that we are bothered by others’ success. It’s true, but the explanation is that what we’re feeling isn’t envy, it’s common sense. Success isn’t normal. The human being is biologically constituted for failure, the proof of which being that we have legs instead of wheels, elbows instead of wings, and metabolism instead of batteries. Why dream of success if we can calmly vegetate in our failures? Why do today what we can put off till tomorrow? Or do well what we can do halfway? We detest it when a countryman rises above the rest of us, except when it happens in another country, in which case the lucky fellow (or female equivalent) becomes a kind of national hero. The person who triumphs locally, however, is less than adored; soon there is tacit accord that he should be taken down a peg or two. We call this sport chaqueteo, “jacketing”: grabbing the offender by his coattails and pulling him down. Despite the chaqueteo and an ambience of mediocrity, from time to time someone does manage to raise his head above the crowd. Our country has produced exceptional men and women: two Nobel laureates—Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral—the singers/composers Víctor Jara and Violeta Parra, the pianist Claudio Arrau, the painter Roberto Matta, and the novelist José Donoso, to mention a few who come to mind.
We Chileans enjoy funerals because the dead person is no longer a rival, and now he can’t backstab us. Not only do we go to burials en masse, where we have to stand for hours listening to at least fifteen speeches, we also celebrate the anniversaries of the deceased’s death. One of our entertainments is telling and listening to stories, the more macabre and tragic the better; in that, and in our taste for “the drink,” we resemble the Irish. We’re addicts of radio and television soaps; the misadventures of the protagonists offer us a good excuse to weep for our own sorrows. I grew up listening to dramas in the kitchen, despite my grandfather’s having outlawed the radio because he considered it an instrument of the devil used to propagate gossip and vulgarity. We children and servants suffered through the endless ordeals of the serial Right to Live for several years, as I remember.
The lives of the characters in TV soaps are much more important than those of family, even though the plot isn’t always easy to follow. For example, the handsome lead seduces a woman and leaves her in an interesting condition, then for revenge he marries a girl who is lame, and leaves her, too, “baby waiting,” as we say in Chile, but right away he runs off to Italy to join his first wife. I think this is called trigamy In the meantime, the second girl has her lame leg operated on, goes to the beauty shop, inherits a fortune, becomes an executive in a large corporation, and attracts new suitors. When the lead returns from Italy and sees that rich young female with two legs the same length, he repents of his felony. And then begin the writer’s problems in untangling the mare’s nest the story has become. The first seduced woman gets an abortion, so there won’t be any bastards running around that TV channel, and he kills off the luckless Italian, thus the lead—who apparently is the good guy in the series—is opportunely widowed. This allows the formerly lame heroine to marry in white, despite the enormous belly she’s sporting, and within a short time she gives birth to . . . a baby boy, of course. No one works; they live on their passions, and the women all go around wearing false eyelashes and cocktail dresses from early morning on. In the course of this tragedy nearly all the actors end up hospitalized; there are births, accidents, rapes, drugs, teenagers who run away from home or from prison, blind men, madmen, rich who become poor and poor who become rich. There’s a lot of suffering. The day after a particularly dramatic chapter, telephones all across the country are buzzing with the details: my friends call collect from Santiago to California to keep me up to date. The only thing that can compete with the last chapter of a TV series is a visit from the pope, and that has happened only one time in our history, and likely won’t happen again.
Besides funerals, morbid stories, and soaps, we count on crimes, always an interesting subject for conversation. We are fascinated with psychopaths and murderers; if they’re upper class, so much the better. “We have a bad memory for crimes of state, but we never forget the peccadilloes of the man next door,” commented a famous journalist. One of the best-known murders in our history was committed by a Señor Barceló, who killed his wife after having abused her all during the years they shared together and then alleged it had been an accident. I was embracing her, he said, and my gun misfired and a bullet penetrated her brain. He couldn’t explain why he had a loaded pistol in his hand, pointed at the nape of her neck. Given that information, his mother-in-law initiated a crusade to avenge her unfortunate daughter; I don’t blame her, I would have done the same. This woman came from the highest level of Santiago society, and was used to getting her way. She published a book denouncing her son-in-law, and after he was sentenced to death she installed herself in the office of the president of the republic to prevent him from granting a pardon. The villain was executed. He was the first, and one of the few, upper-class prisoners to receive the death penalty because that punishment was reserved for those who had no connections or good lawyers. Today the death penalty has been eliminated, as it has in any decent country.
I also grew up with the family anecdotes told to me by my grandparents, my uncles, and my mother—very handy when it comes to writing novels. How many of them are true? Doesn’t matter. At the hour of remembering, no one wants verification of facts, the legend is enough, like the sad tale of the ghost that during a séance told my grandmother the location of a treasure hidden beneath the stairs. Due to an error in the plan of the property, not because of any malevolence on the part of the spirit, the treasure was never found, even though they tore down half the house. I’ve tried to verify the how and the when of these lamentable events, but no one in my family is interested in documenting them, and if I ask a lot of questions, my relatives get offended.
I don’t want to give the impression that we are all bad, we also have our virtues. Let me see, I’ll try to think of one. . . . Well, we’re a people with poetic souls. It isn’t our fault; that one we can blame on the landscape. No one who is born and lives in a nat
ural world like ours can resist writing poetry. In Chile, you lift up a rock, and instead of a lizard out crawls a poet or a balladeer. We admire our writers, we respect them, and we put up with their manias. Years ago at political meetings people would shout aloud the poems of Pablo Neruda, which we all knew by heart. We liked his love poems best because we have a weakness for romance. We are also moved by misfortune: dejection, nostalgia, disillusion, grief. Our evenings are very long, which may explain our preference for melancholy themes. If poetry isn’t your thing, there are always other forms of art. All the women I know write, paint, sculpt, or do crafts in their leisure time—which is very scarce. Art has replaced knitting. I’ve been given so many paintings and ceramics that I can no longer get my car in the garage.
I can add about our character that we’re affectionate; we go around bestowing kisses right and left. We greet each other with a sincere kiss on the right cheek. Children kiss adults as they arrive and as they leave, and as an additional sign of respect they call them uncle or aunt, as they do in China, and that includes schoolteachers. Older people are kissed mercilessly, even against their will. Women kiss, even if they hate each other, and they kiss any male within reach, and neither age nor social class nor hygiene can dissuade them. Only males in their reproductive years, let’s say between fourteen and seventy, do not kiss each other—with the exception of father and son—but they clap each other on the back and heartily embrace. This affection has many other manifestations, from opening the doors of your house to receive anyone who shows up unexpectedly to sharing everything you have. It never crosses your mind to praise something another person is wearing, because they’re certain to whip it off and give it to you. If there is food left from a meal, the genteel thing is to give it to the guests to take home, just as you never arrive at someone’s house with empty hands.