Maya’s Notebook. Isabel Allende

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      I attended a curanto, the typical abundant and generous feast of Chiloé, a community ceremony. The preparations started early, because the ecotourism boats arrive before noon. The women chopped tomatoes, onions, garlic, and cilantro for the seasoning and, using a tedious method, made milcao and chapalele, a sort of dough of potato, flour, lard, and pork crackling—disgusting, in my opinion—while the men dug a big pit, put a whole bunch of stones at the bottom, and lit a bonfire on top of them. By the time the wood had burned down, the stones were red-hot, coinciding with the arrival of the boats. The guides showed the tourists the village and gave them opportunities to buy knits, necklaces made of shells, myrtle-berry jam, licor de oro, wood carvings, snail-slime cream for age spots, lavender twigs—in short, the few things there are here—and soon they were gathered around the steaming pit on the beach. The curanto chefs set out clay pots on the stones to collect the broth, which is an aphrodisiac, as everyone knows, and piled on layers of the chapalele and milcao, pork, lamb, fish, chicken, shellfish, vegetables, and other delicacies I didn’t write down. Then they covered it with damp white cloths, huge nalca leaves, a big sack, which hung over the edges of the hole like a skirt, and finally sand. The cooking took a little over an hour, and while the ingredients were transforming in the secret heat, in their intimate juices and fragrances, the visitors entertained themselves by taking photographs of the smoke, drinking pisco, and listening to Manuel Arias.

      The tourists fit into several categories: Chilean senior citizens, Europeans on vacation, a range of Argentineans and backpackers of vague origins. Sometimes a group of Asians would arrive, or Americans with maps, guides, and books of flora and fauna they consulted terribly seriously. All of them, except the backpackers, who preferred to smoke marijuana behind the bushes, appreciated the opportunity to listen to a published author, someone able to clarify the mysteries of the archipelago in either English or Spanish. Manuel is not always annoying; in small doses, he can be entertaining on his subject. He tells the visitors about the history, legends, and customs of Chiloé and warns them that the islanders are cautious, and must be won over bit by bit, with respect, just as you have to adapt gradually and respectfully to the wilderness, the implacable winters, and the whims of the sea. Slowly. Very slowly. Chiloé is not for people in a hurry.

      People travel to Chiloé with the idea of going back in time, and they can be disappointed by the cities on Isla Grande, but on our little island they find what they’re looking for. There is no intention to deceive them on our part, of course; nevertheless, on curanto days oxen and sheep appear by chance near the beach, there are more than the usual number of nets and boats drying on the sand, people wear their coarsest hats and ponchos, and nobody would think of using their cell phone in public.

      The experts knew exactly when the culinary treasures buried in the hole were cooked and shoveled off the sand, delicately lifted the sack, the nalca leaves, and the white cloths; then a cloud of steam with the delicious aromas of the curanto rose up to the sky. There was an expectant silence, and then a burst of applause. The women took out the pieces and served them on paper plates with more rounds of pisco sours, the most popular cocktail in Chile, strong enough to fell a Cossack. At the end we had to prop up several tourists on their way back to the boats.

      My Popo would have liked this life, this landscape, this abundance of seafood, this lazy pace. He’d never heard of Chiloé, or he would have included it on his list of places to visit before he died. My Popo … how I miss him! He was a big, strong, slow and sweet bear, warm as an oven, with the scent of tobacco and cologne, a deep voice and quaking laugh, with enormous hands to hold me. He took me to soccer games and to the opera, answered my endless questions, brushed my hair and applauded my interminable epic poems, inspired by the Kurosawa films we used to watch together. We’d go up to the tower to peer through his telescope and scrutinize the black dome of the sky, searching for his elusive planet, a green star we were never able to find. “Promise me you’ll always love yourself as much as I love you, Maya,” he told me repeatedly, and I’d promise without knowing what that strange phrase meant. He loved me unconditionally, accepted me just as I am, with my limitations, peculiarities, and defects, he applauded even when I didn’t deserve it, as opposed to my Nini, who believes you shouldn’t celebrate children’s efforts, because they get used to it and then have a terrible time with real life, when no one praises them. My Popo forgave me for everything, consoled me, laughed when I laughed, was my best friend, my accomplice and confidant. I was his only granddaughter and the daughter he never had. “Tell me I’m the love of your life, Popo,” I’d ask him, to bug my Nini. “You’re the love of our lives, Maya,” he’d answer diplomatically, but I was his favorite, I’m sure of it; my grandma couldn’t compete with me. My Popo was incapable of choosing his own clothes—my Nini did that for him—but when I turned thirteen he took me to buy my first bra, because he noticed I was wrapped up in scarves and hunched over to hide my chest. I was too shy to talk about it to my Nini or Susan, but it seemed perfectly normal to try on bras in front of my Popo.

      The house in Berkeley was my world: afternoons with my grandparents watching television, Sundays in the summertime having breakfast on the patio, the occasions when my dad arrived and we’d all have dinner together, while María Callas sang on old vinyl records, the desk, the books, the aromas in the kitchen. With this little family the first part of my existence went by without any problems worth mentioning, but at the age of sixteen the catastrophic forces of nature, as my Nini called them, agitated my blood and clouded my understanding.

      I have the year my Popo died tattooed on my left wrist: 2005. In February we found out he was ill, in August we said good-bye, in September I turned sixteen and my family crumbled away.

      The unforgettable day my Popo began to die, I’d stayed at school for the rehearsal of a play—Waiting for Godot no less, the drama teacher was ambitious—and then walked home to my grandparents’ house. It was dark by the time I got there. I walked in, calling them and turning on lights, surprised at the silence and the cold, because that was the house’s most welcoming time of day, when it was warm, there was music and the aromas from my Nini’s saucepans floated through the air. At that hour my Popo would be reading in the easy chair in his study and my Nini would be cooking while listening to the news on the radio, but I found none of that this evening. My grandparents were in the living room, sitting very close together on the sofa, which my Nini had upholstered following instructions from a magazine. They’d shrunk, and for the first time I noticed their age; until that moment they’d remained untouched by the rigors of time. I’d been with them day after day, year after year, without noticing the changes; my grandparents were immutable and eternal as the mountains. I don’t know if I’d only seen them through the eyes of my soul, or maybe they aged in those hours. I hadn’t noticed that my grandpa had lost weight over the last few months either; his clothes were too big for him, and my Nini didn’t look as tiny as she used to by his side.

      “What’s up, folks?” and my heart leaped into empty space, because before they managed to answer me, I’d guessed. СКАЧАТЬ