Read Online My Invented Country by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online

sure to be floods in the south. And when I say floods, I am talking Biblical deluges that leave hundreds dead, thousands injured, and the economy in ruins; they do, however, trigger that solidarity that tends to bog down in normal times. We Chileans are enchanted by states of emergency. In Santiago the temperatures are worse than in Madrid; in summer we die of the heat and in winter of the cold, but no one has air conditioning ordecent heating, because that would be tantamount to admitting that the climate isn’t as good as they say it is. When the air gets too agreeable, it’s a sure sign that there’s going to be an earthquake. We have more than six hundred volcanoes, some where the petrified lava of former eruptions is still hot, others with poetic Mapuche names: Pirepillán, demon of the snow; Petrohué, land of the mists. From time to time these sleeping giants rouse themselves from their dreams with a long bellow, and then it seems as if the end of the world has come. Experts on earthquakes say that sooner or later Chile will disappear, buried in lava or dragged to the bottom of the sea by one of those gigantic waves that tend to rise up in fury in the Pacific, but I hope this doesn’t discourage potential tourists, because the probability that it will happen precisely during their visit is rather remote.
    The matter of female beauty requires a separate comment. It’s outrageous flattery raised to a national level. The truth is that I have never heard it said outside the country that Chilean women are quite as spectacular as my amiable compatriots assert. Our women are no more alluring than Venezuela’s, who win all the international beauty contests, or Brazil’s, who sashay along the beaches parading their café au lait curves, to mention only two of our rivals. But according to popular Chilean mythology, from time immemorial sailors have deserted their ships, entranced by the longhaired sirens who wait, scanning the sea, on our beaches. This monumental approbation on the part of our men is so gratifying that we women are inclined to forgive them many things. How can we deny them when they find us beautiful? If there is a thread of truth in all this, perhapsit is that a Chilean woman’s attraction lies in a blend of strength and flirtatiousness that few men can resist—that’s according to what I hear, for it hasn’t been a hundred percent true in my case. My male friends tell me that the amorous game of glances, of suggestion, of giving a man his head and then reining him in, is what captivates them, but I suppose that wasn’t invented in Chile, we imported it from Andalusia.
    For several years I worked for a women’s magazine where we were constantly surrounded with the most sought-after models and the latest candidates for the Miss Chile competition. The models, in general, were so anorexic that most of the time they sat perfectly motionless, staring straight ahead, like turtles, which made them very attractive since any man passing by could imagine that they were stupefied by the sight of him. In any case, these beauties all looked like tourists. Without exception, the blood flowing through their veins was European: they were tall, slim, and had light hair and eyes. That is not the typical Chilean woman, the one you see in public: a mestizo, brunette and rather short—although I can’t deny that recent generations are taller. Today’s young people seem gigantic to me (admittedly, I am barely five feet tall . . .). Nearly all the female characters in my novels are inspired by Chilean women whom I know very well because I worked with them and for them for several years. More than by upper-class señoritas, with their long legs and blond manes, I’ve been impressed by the women of the people: mature, strong, hard-working, earthy. In their youth they are passionate lovers, and afterward they are the pillars of their family good mothers and