By Night in Chile

any more, but she was still there and she wasn’t scared to laugh out loud. I asked about the Mapuche maid. She went back to the south, she said, absently. And your novel, María, did you finish it? I whispered. I still haven’t, Father, she said, lowering her voice like me. I rested my chin on my hand and thought for a while.
    I tried to think clearly, but couldn’t. Meanwhile she was talking about the journalists who occasionally came to visit her, foreigners mostly. I want to talk about literature, she said, but they always get on to politics, Jimmy’s work, my feelings at the time, the basement. I shut my eyes. Forgive her, I implored in silence, forgive her. Occasionally there are some Chilean or
    Argentine journalists, but not often. I make them pay for the interviews now. If they don’t pay, I don’t talk. But for all the gold in the world, I wouldn’t tell them who used to come to my soirées. I promise you. Did you know about
    everything Jimmy was doing? Yes, Father. And do you repent? Like everyone else, Father. I felt I could hardly breathe. I got up and opened a window. The cuffs of my jacket got all dusty. Then she started telling me about the house.
    Apparently she didn’t own the land, and the owners, Jews who had been in exile for over twenty years, were taking her to court. Since she had no money to hire a good lawyer, she was sure she would lose the case. The Jews were planning to demolish the house and build another from scratch. It’s my house, said María Canales, and there’ll be nothing left to remember it by. I looked at her sadly and said perhaps that was for the best, she was still young, she wasn’t involved in any criminal proceedings, she could start over, with her children, somewhere else. And what about my literary career? she said with a defiant look. Use a nom de plume, a pseudonym, a nickname, for God’s sake. She looked at me as if I had insulted her. Then she smiled: Do you want to see the basement? she said. I could have slapped her face, instead of which I sat there and shook my head several times. I shut my eyes. In a few months’ time it will be too late, she said to me. By the tone of her voice and the warmth of her breath, I could tell she had brought her face very close to mine. I shook my head again. They’re go ing to knock the house down. They’ll rip out the basement. It’s where one of Jimmy’s men killed the Spanish UNESCO official. It’s where Jimmy killed that Cecilia Sánchez Poblete woman. Sometimes I’d be watching television with the children, and the lights would go out for a while. We never heard anyone yell, the electricity just cut out and then came back. Do you want to go and see the basement? I stood up, took a few steps in that sitting room where our writers and painters, the artisans of our national culture, once used to gather, and shook my head. I must be off, María, I really have to go, I said to her. She burst out laughing uncontrollably. Or maybe I just imagined that.
    When we were standing on the porch (night was slowly beginning to fall), she took my hand, as if the thought of being left alone in that condemned house had suddenly scared her. I squeezed her hand and advised her to pray. I was very tired and didn’t manage to put much conviction into my advice. I’m already praying as much as I can, she replied. Try, María, try, do it for your sons. She breathed in the air of outer Santiago, air that is the quintessence of dusk.
    Then she looked around, calm, serene, courageous in her own way, she looked at her house, her porch, the place where the cars used to park, the red bicycle, the trees, the garden path, the fence, the windows all shut except for the one I had opened, the stars twinkling far away, and she said, That’s how literature is made in Chile. I nodded and left. While I was driving back into Santiago, I thought about what she had said. That is how literature is made in Chile, but not just in Chile, in Argentina and Mexico too, in Guatemala and Uruguay, in Spain and France and Germany, in green England and carefree Italy. That is how literature is made. Or at least what we call literature, to keep ourselves from falling into the rubbish dump. Then I started singing to myself again: The Judas Tree, the Judas Tree, and my car went back into the tunnel of time, back into time’s giant meat grinder. And I remembered the day Farewell died. His funeral was discreet and orderly, as he would have wished. When I was left