Maya’s Notebook. Isabel Allende

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      I’ve been on this island for a month now. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the snail’s pace of life on Chiloé, to this idleness, this permanent threat of rain, this immutable landscape of water and clouds and green pastures. Everything’s the same, everything’s calm. Chilotes have no concept of punctuality; plans depend on the weather and people’s moods, things happen when they happen, why do today what can be done tomorrow? Manuel Arias makes fun of my lists and projects, futile in this timeless culture; an hour can last as long as a week here. He still keeps regular working hours, though, and progresses with his book at the pace he’s set for himself.

      Chiloé has its own voice. I never used to take my headphones off my ears—music was my oxygen—but now I walk around attentive to the twisted Spanish they speak here. Juanito Corrales left my iPod in the same pocket of my backpack he took it from, and we’ve never mentioned the matter, but during the week it took him to return it, I realized that I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I would. Without my iPod I can hear the island’s voice: birds, wind, rain, crackling wood fires, cart wheels, and sometimes the distant fiddles of the Caleuche, a ghost ship that sails in the fog and is recognized by the music and the rattling bones of its shipwrecked crew, singing and dancing on the deck. The ship is accompanied by a dolphin called Cahuilla, the name Manuel gave his boat.

      Sometimes I wish I could have a shot of vodka for old times’ sake; though the old times were awful, they were at least a bit more exciting than these. It’s just a fleeting whim, not the panic of enforced abstinence I’ve experienced before. I’m determined to fulfill my promise—no alcohol, drugs, telephone, or e-mail—and the truth is, it’s been easier than I expected. Once we cleared up that point, Manuel stopped hiding the bottles of wine. I explained that he shouldn’t have to change his habits for my sake—there’s alcohol everywhere, and I’m the only one responsible for my own sobriety. He understood, and now he doesn’t get so worried if I go into the Tavern of the Dead to see some TV program or watch them play truco, an Argentinean card game, played using a Spanish deck, in which the participants improvise lines of verse in rhyme along with every bid.

      I love some of the island’s customs, like truco, but there are others that bug me. If a chucao, a tiny little loudmouthed bird, chirps to the left of me, it’s bad luck, so I should take off a piece of clothing and put it back on inside out before going any farther; if I’m walking at night, I’m supposed to carry a clean knife and salt, because if I cross paths with a black dog with one ear lopped off, that’s a brujo, and in order to get away I have to trace a cross in the air with the knife and scatter salt. The diarrhea that almost did me in when I first arrived in Chiloé wasn’t dysentery, because that would have gone away with the doctor’s antibiotics, but a curse, as Eduvigis demonstrated by curing me with prayer, her infusion of myrtle, linseed, and lemon balm, and her belly rubs with silver polish.

      Chiloé’s traditional dish is curanto, and our island’s is the best. The idea of offering curanto to tourists was one of Manuel’s initiatives to break the isolation of this little village, where visitors rarely venture, because the Jesuits didn’t leave one of their churches here, and we don’t have any penguins or whales, only swans, flamingos, and toninas, the white-bellied dolphins that are so common around here. First Manuel spread the rumor that La Pincoya’s cave was here, and nobody had the authority to refute it; the exact site of the grotto is up for discussion, and several islands claim it. The grotto and curanto are now our tourist attractions.

      The northeast shore of the island is wild and rocky, dangerous for boats, but excellent for fishing. A submerged cavern over there, only visible at low tide, is perfect for the kingdom of La Pincoya, one of the few benevolent beings in the frightening mythology of Chiloé, because she helps fishermen and sailors in trouble. She’s a beautiful young woman with long hair draped in kelp, and if she dances facing the sea, the fishing will be abundant, but if she faces the beach as she dances, there will be scarcity and the fishermen must look for another place to cast their nets. But since almost nobody’s ever seen her, this information is useless. If La Pincoya appears, you have to close your eyes and run in the opposite direction, because she seduces the lustful and takes them to the bottom of the sea.

      It’s just a twenty-minute walk along a steep uphill path from the village to the grotto, as long as you’re in decent shoes and good spirits. On the top of the hill are a few solitary monkey-puzzle trees dominating the landscape, and from up there you can appreciate the bucolic panorama of the sea, sky, and nearby uninhabited small islands. Some of these are separated by such narrow channels that at low tide you can shout from one shore to the other. From the hilltop the grotto looks like a big toothless mouth. You can scramble down the seagull-shit-covered rocks, at the risk of breaking your neck, or you can get there by kayak, skirting along the coast of the island, as long as you know the waters and the rocks. You need a bit of imagination to appreciate La Pincoya’s underwater palace, because beyond the witch’s mouth of the cave, you can’t see anything. In the past some German tourists tried to swim inside, but the carabineros have banned it because of the treacherous currents. It would be very inconvenient for us if foreigners started drowning here.