March 2006. The day I arrive, Michelle Bachelet is inaugurated as socialist President of the Republic. Her father, a general shot dead by the coup leaders. She herself in exile for years. Today, downtown a huge crowd, democracy back on track. Flags all over the city.
Do you pick me up? Yes, she had e-mailed, I will be there. My daughter, her little son, uncle A. He drives us up the Santa Maria hill in town. Up the curves of an asphalt road and many bikers on their way to the top. At a small roundabout, a viewpoint and a big statue of the Holy Mary. Downhill we see the urban sprawl, yellow streets, innumerable houses, small and large squares, the river and its banks, we do not see the city. Air pollution has no substance, I think, it has a strange structure and a light brown color, almost ogre. It seems to be a filter of city light from heaven, Topsy Turfy view. It is a beautiful day, a lightly trodden day. We are happy to see each other.
Chile on the map. A long model, a Brancusi model of a young woman made of copper or bronze. A lean model with a swollen belly. Not just a woman, but a sword too. A long sword piercing the heart, the mind, the capital. A sword modeled by the ocean. A sword that hangs down into the fires of ice, moved invisible by itself, loses pieces of metal, white frozen islands in the deep south of Patagonia, thousands of islands, crystals of ice I have never seen. A frozen world close to the forests of the poet Neruda.
The city in the valley, vital and fit, is a booming trench. Wherever you look,old houses are tore down, new ‘departementos’ built. Needles, towers, pointing fingers, flashes reach to the sky. Day and night, work goes on, cannot be stopped. The sound of ramming is on all sides, hoisting cranes turn around, pulley-blocks come down, sounding hammers. The sound and the fury of progress, expansion, growth and wealth being piled up. Echos all over the place, intermingling and never dying echos.
Silence is smothered in sounds around the clock. Dust rises high up in the sky. The silent river winds through its loud beating heart, the sunny banks shimmer,the small park of sculptures pops up as a surprise. Small, white pebbles in the broad riverbed, maybe small fishes between the blue shining stones. The bridge is a wide, modern bridge, a showpiece between sophisticated banks.
Santiago, I walk your streets in the shade of your tall trees. The clean swept sidewalks I walk, along the lawns around the apartment towers. The lawns with the sprinklers, the rakes, the trash bags filled with autumnal leaves. And I see the old man in his wheel chair, the gray haired woman on the bench, the tall man in the opening of the door, who looks exactly like my best friend for years already dead. He nods, I smile, he is my friend, again forever.
Santiago, the capital. Flashes of the city on my retina. Fountain and fashion. Mall and metro. Design and decollete. Brass wire and brassiere. Women made of wires. Dance and desire. Heat and fire. Love. It is early in the afternoon. Downtown, small streets and shops and all of a sudden a square. The building from 1857 is (neo)classicist. We climb the steps. A lady hands out the tickets we buy and says ‘your Spanish is excellent,’ and she looks proud, my daughter. That evening, we attend the opera Tosca of Puccini. The seats in the auditorium are covered with red plush, the balconies are carried by half naked goddesses. The people are old and young and well dressed. My daughter a fragile flower. In the interval, the waiters in white dress have wings, serve coffee.
Valparaiso, a drive of two hours or more from Santiago. The commercial port of the country full of warships and containers. A cool breeze and fresh air, people hanging around. In a small alley uphill, in the English section a mural shows its bright colors, two women, two ostriches. I love the colors painted on the wall. A mural is not a woman, a woman is not an ostrich. I love the colors and the women - not the ostriches. I love the eggs of the ostrich. Sometimes a woman is an egg, a giant and vulnerable egg to love and cherish.
Pablo Neruda died some months before Allende was murdered. He still is the national poet, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature as was Gabriela Mistral years earlier. In his memoirs, he writes ‘Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest doesn’t know this planet.’ He is right, he is not right. He is Pablo Neruda. Read his poems. We visit his house at Isla Negra, it is a house at the beach, it is not an island. Black boulders and rocks rinsed by the surf. Far off, two apartments. He collected ships in bottles,ugly glassware and - as an old man - a portrait of an ugly woman. He loved the sea, the ocean. Waves are unique the way they heave and die out. The people still know his name, his verses by heart. The bell near his grave doesn’t toll anymore.
The mountains of Chile, the Chile of mountains. The Andes is everywhere, nearing the coast, approaching the vineyards, protecting the people, providing nitrates and minerals. The Andes, backbone of Chile, stone and dust, empty and dry, blossoming meadows at its feet and snow at the top. The Andes - a sleeping giant of volcanoes, a trembling giant of the earth. Copper mines. Trucks and dust, clouds of dust. Dirt roads. Copper veins. Mineral blood, mountain ore.
Umbilical cord of the economy, veins of life. Copper, change and collar. Coin of wealth, harsh happiness.
We follow the river and the river follows us. Sometimes, the river stops and we stop by the river. We pick up the pebbles, we taste their shape, smooth and sweet. The river is our snake in the grass, hiding and moving. And the snake is lean till it eats a big pig and the river has a belly swollen like a snake that has eaten a pig. She has a big thirst and glides through the high grasses, slips out of sight, rests satisfied under the red bridge. One day we get lost in the mountains. Not too far from the city, the world. Dirt roads split every second, they weave a network of roads on the slopes. They never make a mistake, they continue to weave a pattern we cannot discover. Invisible hands guide the thread, one left and the other right. And the pattern becomes full woven and dense, the roads broaden into barren ground, rocks and stones. Where the plain stops and jumps up the mountain, water falls down, the place of the waterfall.
Not the sea but the ocean roars along the shore of Chile. From close by, it isn’t the ocean nor the sea, but the surf that comes ashore. In a whirl of sand it storms the coast. In a flash it whitens its face. In a split moment it loses its vigor. And from far, the sea sends its cold looks to the coast and shivers and stirs its waves into a cold, shivering fever. It showers the boulders on the beach, their blackness. It rinses the rocks, their smoothness. It stumbles ashore like a wild, wounded beast. And the sea never stops to roar, its surf a never dying force. And not far from the shore lies his grave, not far from the surf is the tombstone of Pablo Neruda, the late poet of the roaring ocean.
After all, we find the nineteenth century hotel, a Spa center and a park. In the lobby, the telephonist is on the phone, the doors to the patio are open. We wander freely around in the hotel. The dining rooms are empty. Long tables and many chairs. Dried flowers on the tables and old fashioned lights hanging from the ceiling. Paneled walls. All doors are ajar. Nobody at the counter, in the bar. Outside the garden, a lawn bordered by flowers, a vine clad ramada around it. The grapes are dark and ripe. Servants walk around and greet. At the other side of the patio, we climb down steep stairs and enter a long hall, high pillars, color full stained glass high up in the walls, on both sides rooms with tubs. All doors open. Every room has a name above the door and the portrait of the original guest, the owner or a famous student. At the end of the hall again huge stairs, a door to a balcony, outside tall trees nearby, at hand. In the park we walk through the autumnal leaves on the path, we make pictures, we turn the wooden peddle wheel with rusted tins of coca cola placed in the brook.
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