my ancestors often comes to mind when I think of my destiny as an expatriate. It is my fate to wander from place to place, and to adapt to new soils. I believe I will be able to do that because handfuls of Chilean soil are caught in my roots; I carry them with me always. In any case, the Japanese newspaperman who traveled to the end of the world to photograph a house from a novel returned home with empty hands.
My grandfatherâs house was like my uncleâs, and like the house of any family of similar circumstances. Chileans are not noted for originality: inside, their houses are all more or less the same. Iâm told that now the wealthy contract decoratorsbuy the hardware for their bathrooms abroad, but in those days no one had ever heard of interior decoration. In the living room, which was swept by inexplicable drafts, there were heavy, plush, oxblood-colored drapes, teardrop chandeliers, an out-of-tune grand piano, and a large grandfather clock, black as a coffin, which struck the hours with funereal sonority. There were also two horrific French porcelain figurines of damsels with powdered wigs and gentlemen in high heels. My uncles used them to tune their reflexes: they threw them headfirst at each other in the vain hope they would be dropped and would shatter into a thousand pieces. This dwelling was inhabited by eccentric humans, half-wild pets, and my grandmotherâs ghostly friends, who had followed her from the house on Calle Cueto and who, even after she died, continued to wander through the rooms.
My grandfather AgustÃn was as solid and strong as a warrior, even though he was born with one leg shorter than the other. It never occurred to him to consult a doctor about this problem, he preferred to go to a âbonesetter.â This was a blind man who treated the legs of injured horses at the Riding Club, and who knew more about bones than any orthopedic surgeon. Over time, my grandfatherâs lameness worsened, it caused arthritis, and threw his vertebral column out of line, so that every movement was torture, but I never heard him complain about his pains or his problemsâthough like any respectable Chilean he complained about everything else. He bore the torment of his poor skeleton with the help of aspirin and long draughts of water. Later I learned that this wasnât innocent water but gin, which hedrank neat, like a pirate, with no effect on his behavior or his health. He lived nearly a century with never a sign of a single loose screw. His pain did not excuse him from his duties as a gentleman, and to the end of his days, when he was nothing but a bundle of old bones and leather, he laboriously got up from his chair to greet and bid farewell to a woman.
On my desk I have a photograph of my grandfather. He looks like a Basque peasant. Heâs in profile, wearing a black beret that accentuates his aquiline nose and the firm expression of a face marked by deep furrows. He grew old strengthened by intelligence and reinforced by experience. He died with a full head of white hair and blue eyes as piercing as those of his youth. âHow hard it is to die,â he told me one day when he was already very weary of pain. He spoke in proverbs, he knew hundreds of folk tales, and recited long poems from memory. This formidable man gave me the gift of discipline and love for language; without them I could not devote myself to writing today. He also taught me to observe nature and to love the landscape of Chile. He always said that just as Romans live among ruins and fountains without seeing them, we Chileans live in the most dazzling country on the planet without appreciating it. We donât notice the quiet presence of the snowy mountains, the sleeping volcanoes, and the unending hills that wrap us in their monumental embrace; we are not amazed by the frothing fury of the Pacific bursting upon our coasts, or the quiet lakes of the south and their musical waterfalls; we donât, like