When she was young, Paula – daughter Isabel Allende To which the author will dedicate one of her most famous works after her death in 1992 – She had to go to the dentist. Her mother warned her that she would go pick her up from school and she wouldn’t … He took the school bus, but Allende I forgot Exactly because I was working. There was no landline phone in his house, and of course no mobile phones.
“The teacher called everywhere. Until Paula said to him: Call my grandfather who he is The prince lives in the palace‘. She only knew three phone numbers by heart, and that was one. The teacher did so and they replied: “Good evening, Moneda Palace.” He was shocked, but my stepfather worked there at the State Department. He went looking for her in glory and majesty, in an official limousine flanked by two Chilean flags. “Paula never forgot it, but she forgot that I didn’t go to pick her up,” the writer told ABC from her home in California.
Like an inverted mirror, Nico – His other son – starred in the corresponding scene. “When he was young, he left school to walk home Lost. Fortunately at that time we lived in a residential neighborhood and people more or less knew each other. I’ve found it in some home builders. The workers entertained him until I found him about an hour and a half later. “It was terrifying,” the “House of Spirits” author recalls.
These two fears, so different and so familiar, are two sides of the coin that drives… “The Pearl and the Pirates” (Penguin Kids), the second part of her children’s series starring Nico and the literary version of her dog Perla, which she inherited from her ex-husband Willie. Fear is precisely what prompted her to write these books.
“I wanted to deal with those things that scare kids or are very strong feelings that they don’t talk about. Because everyone talks about being afraid of the dark. Or the monster under the bed. But they don’t talk when They die of jealousy For something. Not even when they get abused at school (argument from the first batch), because it’s embarrassing. “Even if they fall in love, they suffer terribly,” explains Allende, reviewing the plots of the next two titles and the tales that inspired them.
“I bit off the ear of the boy I fell in love with when I was a teenager. “It was an exciting moment… I should have stayed in a masochistic phase.”
The first is about Nico and will be the next book. “My son was crazy He loves When he was mine Six years. I didn’t know the girl, but one Christmas she told me she wanted to buy her a present. I bought him a doll. The next day the girl came to thank me. “Her name was Heather and she was 17,” she says with amusement. At the same age as her son, she realized she had also fallen for the first time. “I was already a witch at the time. There’s a picture with a poor little boy sitting with me on top of him. I totally get it.” Dominated, crushed, terrified…, poor”.
History repeated itself years later, already in a co-ed school in Bolivia. “The way I fell in love then was by fighting. We got into a terrible fight in the yard because he said I was an unlucky Chilean. As a result of the War of the Pacific, Chileans gained a bad reputation in Peru and Bolivia. I hit him and he hit me and we rolled on the ground. I still remember biting his ear. It was an exciting moment… I should have stayed in a masochistic, sadomasochistic phase, but I somehow overcame it,” he explains, laughing.
Insecure and alone
Despite the humor with which he tells these stories, Allende is clear: “I do not want to relive a single minute of my childhood or early youth.” The reasons are many, and she is convinced that most children understand when she says she was very insecure and felt lonely. “Since we were always changing countries, there was no continuity. We had a difficult family situation. There was a lot of fighting in the house. I was the only girl because I had two brothers. I think so I felt constantly displaced. At school I was always the youngest. For her age, she was small because she was always one row ahead, but she was also very short. “It was the last one they would choose to play volleyball of course.”
“If my husband was sleeping with a leggy blonde, I wouldn’t even know it. “I don’t get into his computer, I don’t spy on his phone, I don’t care what he does.”
Despite everything She never felt jealousPerhaps that is why I have not addressed this feeling in literature yet. “The truth is, I don’t care. I think if my husband was sleeping with a long-legged blonde, I wouldn’t notice it. I don’t have access to his computer, I don’t spy on his phone, and I don’t care what he does. Plus, the poor guy is 83 years old, so he doesn’t even know what to do with a leggy blonde,” he says, laughing.
Jealousy will attack Perla in Part 4, when the house cat, Lucy, has kittens. “My dog is small and I can’t even tell you how ordinary she is, but she thinks she’s beautiful. actually It’s getting oldShe is 10 years old and will be 11 years old. She’s grown a white mustache, white eyebrows and I feel sorry for her… She’s so wonderful and smart… and so brave.
New memories
Allende, 83, also lives with the passage of time. He has just returned from a tour of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay to present “My Name is Emilia del Valle” as a farewell treat. “In all three parts, they received me like kings. People treated me so well, with so much love, that when I got home I said: “I’ve reached the limit I can go and now I’m leaving.” No more walking around, no more anything. Because anything I do next will be less. In addition, there is age, Traveling costs me a lot And I travel in a hurry: You are in public all day, in interviews, on TV… You do not stop. You go to bed and can’t sleep. You have to take the pills. The next day you can’t wake up and drink coffee…I’m not old enough to do that anymore. I think I’ve done a lot already. Now I want to write.
“I see the United States as bad. But there is already a resistance that I hope will grow. “The abuse and corruption is unbelievable.”
In keeping with the tradition of starting a new book every January 8, the author has just submitted her agent with an autobiography covering her last ten years. “I still don’t have any answers. feel Highly unsafe. It always happens to me when I’m finishing a book because I’ve massaged it so much that I can’t see it anymore. I don’t know what it’s like. Moreover, there is everything The intimate part. There are other people involved too. How much can I say that this is none of my business? That line, which must be carefully followed in order to be as honest and enjoyable a work as possible but without hurting others, is difficult. There’s my ex-husband who died, Willie. “There are my stepchildren and his children, and they are all drug addicts and they are all dead,” he explains.
Not getting on a plane again means not leaving the United States. However, on his last visit to Madrid last May, he warned that “if… Things turn ant-coloured» There with Trump, he will leave. Now he confirms that this is the direction things have taken, but he sees things differently. “I think it’s terrible. But there is already a resistance that I hope will grow. he Abuse and corruption They are amazing. I’m watching. I also think that at my age and with Roger, it’s difficult to start from scratch somewhere else. When I left Chile I was in my 30s and had two young children. “It’s very different.”