Isabel Allende, the passionate expatriate queen of Latin American fiction writers, lives just as you might imagine - in a film-starrish, peach-coloured, faux Spanish castle, on a wooded hilltop.
Aptly named La Casa de los Esp%26iacute;ritus (The House of The Spirits) after her phenomenal best-seller first novel, it%26#39;s an hour north of San Francisco, with an expansive view of the bay.
Allende fled the Pinochet terror regime in Chile aged 40, then wrote her first highly political, magic realism novel on her grandmother%26#39;s wooden s%26eacute;ance table, in a crammed kitchen in Venezuela.
Still black-haired and glamorous at 65, she%26#39;s written her latest laid-bare memoir, The Sum Of Our Days - in her poolside author%26#39;s cuchitril [den], on her one-hectare Californian estate.
It%26#39;s a short, voluptuous figure with a commanding presence who opens the front door and shakes my hand. %26quot;You%26#39;re tall,%26quot; Allende remarks abruptly. %26quot;I%26#39;m short,%26quot; she continues, %26quot;but let me warn you, my height is deceptive. I%26#39;m a bulldozer,%26quot; she says, as she sweeps me through the high-arched rooms.
Indeed this sharp, fiery, bossy, yet warm and generous benefactor is mobbed like a rock star when she returns to Latin America. She%26#39;s thronged, wherever she tours anywhere in the world, by adoring fans who%26#39;ve bought more than 30 million copies of her books, printed in 28 languages. %26quot;The crowds are for what I represent, as much as for my books; and because my name is Allende,%26quot; she says frankly. %26quot;People see me as a symbol for The Disappeared, the torture victims. I%26#39;ve written so much about politics, people know I%26#39;m never afraid to speak out about oppression and injustice.%26quot;
Allende%26#39;s own life story reads like a plotline from her many novels. It%26#39;s her life experience, and the daily dramas in her extended family, the tribe, who she%26#39;s enticed to live around her hilltop, that she openly mines to fill her pages. Daughter of a Chilean diplomat, and niece and goddaughter of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, she survived %26quot;one coup, a military regime, three revolutions, censorship of my work as a journalist, assisting political subversives, death threats, then fleeing into exile in Venezuela%26quot;. The democratically elected, Marxist idealist President Allende died during the 1973 CIA-backed military coup.
On the personal front, Isabel Allende survived %26quot;eccentric relatives, divorce; then remarriage to Willie Gordon, an American social justice lawyer with plentiful baggage, including three drug-addicted children, and one functional stepson%26quot;. Then came the death from porphyria of her daughter Paula, after Allende%26#39;s bedside vigil throughout her year in a coma; and the drug-related death of Gordon%26#39;s daughter Jennifer. Then Celia, the wife of Allende%26#39;s son Nico, and mother of his three children, turned lesbian, with Sally, the fianc%26eacute;e of Gordon%26#39;s stepson Jason. Celia and Sally co-parent the three children, with Nico and new wife, the gorgeous Lori Barra, who Allende %26quot;sought out, road-tested and snagged for Nico%26quot;.
Confused? This is only the start. It all becomes clear in her memoir. Readers who love Allende%26#39;s outpouring honesty about her passion-led decisions, failings, stubbornness and meddling obsessions, along with her wit and spiritualism, will find this in buckets in The Sum Of Our Days. %26quot;I have more than enough dramas and melodramas in my life to make a three-ringed circus,%26quot; Allende admits. Nonetheless she%26#39;s determined that all the above characters, and more, remain members of the tribe she began gathering when she married Gordon 20 years ago, and moved to America knowing no one else.
%26quot;What I would like is a big compound, with a high fence and bodyguards, so I could lock them all in, then no one could escape my constant interfering in their lives.%26quot; Allende rocks with laughter. %26quot;Willie spends his days telling me, %26lsquo;Keep your nose out of it Isabel,%26#39; but I%26#39;m a control freak so I take no notice.%26quot;
We%26#39;ve been talking all morning in her correspondence study inside the main house, a room lined with books and silver-framed family photographs. It%26#39;s in total contrast to her spartan cuchitril, where only material relating to the current book is allowed. In the correspondence study are stored the thousands of letters that Allende and her mother, Francisca , 87, living in Chile, still write to each other daily. The correspondence began when Allende was 15, at school in Chile and living with grandparents, whilst her parents were posted abroad. Neatly bundled, tied with ribbon and dated year by year, the letters provide crucial source material for Allende%26#39;s books.
In the next room is the well-travelled, heavy carved wooden s%26eacute;ance table, which her clairvoyant grandmother%26#39;s supernatural powers shake and move in her turbulent family saga The House Of The Spirits. %26quot;Of course I exaggerate, but it could have happened in real life - that%26#39;s magic realism,%26quot; Allende says pertly. %26quot;The table moves even further in the film version of my book. Did you see it? All those great actors, Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave, Jeremy Irons, and Antonio Banderas. Oooh, I could eat him on a tortilla, with guacamole.%26quot; Allende grasps a photograph of herself with Banderas, and peering closely remarks: %26quot;I look weird because I%26#39;d just had a facelift, and it was too tight.
%26quot;Of course I had cosmetic surgery!%26quot; she says. %26quot;Why would I want grey hair, sagging wrinkles, and warts with whiskers growing out of them? I will always fight the ugliness of old age. But as my mother says, there comes a point where you have to give up, and just be happy that you don%26#39;t smell!%26quot;
She stands erect, straightens her silk skirt and announces: %26quot;I think I should feed us; I have something I prepared.%26quot; She disappears to the kitchen to fetch what I imagine will be a simple sandwich lunch. Instead she sets out spiced lentil soup, beef fillet, spinach and pumpkin with pine nuts, chocolate and butterscotch ice-cream, Chilean white wine. %26quot;Gluttony and lust are the only deadly sins worth the trouble, my dear,%26quot; she says, raising her glass. %26quot;Please eat more.%26quot;
Are any of these recipes from her book Aphrodite? %26quot;I can%26#39;t even remember. When I wrote that book, my mind and heart were still in a giant blur of grief.%26quot;
It%26#39;s typical of Allende%26#39;s uninhibited individualism that the last thing anyone would have expected her to write at that wretched time was a bawdy Rabelaisian book about food and sex: aphrodisiac sauces, soups, souffl%26eacute;s, sensual culinary delights and orgies. In 1995 she%26#39;d published Paula, about the slow death of her daughter from a metabolic disorder, porphyria, aged just 28 and newlywed. People still approach her, weeping over the book. %26quot;I still cry about her; you never get over it,%26quot; she says, stroking a photograph of Paula.
The book began as a long letter that she wrote, sitting at her daughter%26#39;s bedside, waiting in hospital corridors: %26lsquo;Listen Paula, I am going to tell you a story, so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost.%26#39;
Allende recorded the daily happenings, but as it became apparent that her daughter was unlikely to wake from her coma, she began delving back inside her own childhood. With reckless honesty she recalls bitter and sweet moments: memories of her racy diplomat father disappearing in scandalous circumstances when she was three and her mother re-marrying another kindly diplomat; of living with her austere patriarchal grandfather, and her furious desire to break free from the male-dominated Latin world. Secrets that she wanted to tell Paula, including an eerie incident of sexual abuse by a fisherman when Allende was eight.
Exhausted on completing Paula, Allende was unable to summon the enthusiasm for another novel. So she reverted to the techniques of her former career as a journalist, and set herself a task to investigate the most far-fetched topic to jolt her out of her gloom - aphrodisiacs and orgies.
More works of popular fiction followed. Her books are often historical fiction with a romantic, political, feminist bent, along with some trademark Latin American magical realism: Of Love And Shadows, Eva Luna, The Stories of Eva Luna, Daughter of Fortune, In%26eacute;s Of My Soul. Nearly all her narratives feature defiant women, born poor or vulnerable, destined to a life of subjection, who rebel. %26quot;My female protagonists throw themselves into adventure without measuring the risks or looking back, because to remain paralysed in the place society holds for them is much worse.%26quot;
Like their author, her female characters %26quot;make crazy passionate decisions, driven by love, ahead of personal ambition%26quot;, she says. %26quot;But in those crazy things we do for passion, therein lies the story. If we always acted in a reasonable way, there would be no story - and I%26#39;m a story junkie. I hunt stories everywhere.%26quot;
Allende, superstitiously, always begins a new book on January 8, the date she began writing The House of the Spirits. On her most recent start, she ritually lit a candle in her cuchitril, stared at her blank computer screen, then the phone rang. %26quot;It was my longtime agent, Carmen Balcells, my larger-than-life mother figure, who now lives in semi-retirement in Santa Fe, a tiny town of crazed goats near Barcelona,%26quot; Allende relates. %26quot;%26#39;Read me the first sentence,%26#39; Carmen demands. %26#39;I don%26#39;t have one,%26#39; I reply. %26#39;Then write a memoir. It%26#39;s 13 years since you wrote Paula.%26#39;%26quot; So Allende began The Sum of Our Days, picking up from where Paula left off.
The redoubtable Willie Gordon is a significant player in this book. I meet him briefly, when his tall, impressive figure darts into the study and in the broadest Oz accent says: %26quot;Gidday! My father was Australian, born in Grenfell.%26quot; He disappears to another part of the house for his writers%26#39; group meeting. Now 70 and retired from law, Gordon pens detective novels. %26quot;I%26#39;m not competing with Isabel - I%26#39;m the mere fly on the queen%26#39;s skirt,%26quot; he chuckles.
Allende and Willie met in Los Angeles 20 years ago, when a somewhat disastrous one-night stand strangely charmed the impulsive author. %26quot;Willie came to a literary lunch, and then invited me to dinner,%26quot; Allende recalls. %26quot;I was newly divorced, I liked him, my hormones were raging, so I decided to go home with him for a lusty fling, as I was leaving town the next day.%26quot;
But the trial lawyer who ran a busy practice representing illegal immigrant accident compensation victims lived in utter dysfunctional chaos. %26quot;Willie was divorced, with custody of three children, all then drug addicts (two now recovered, one dead), and only his stepson Jason was functional. He was trying to look after all of them,%26quot; Allende says. %26quot;Willie%26#39;s house was on a waterfront, but the water was stagnant and smelly. He had a boat, but it was rotten. Inside the house was disgusting, like a zoo full of pets that nobody looked after. A golden retriever dragged worm-ridden bird corpses over the floor, dead fish floated in an aquarium, half-starved rats and guinea pigs squealed in cages. Burned Christmas decorations, from a fire the previous year, had never been cleaned up.
%26quot;Poor Willie, who never complains, would run home exhausted from his office to do the shopping, cooking, laundry, supervise homework, try and care for these crazy kids. I was deeply moved when I saw this, because I had never seen a man doing what women do all the time.%26quot;
The hyperactive youngest son started yelling he didn%26#39;t want Allende in the house. %26quot;So Willie shut me inside his bedroom, and tried to calm his screaming son and howling dogs, while I wondered what on earth I%26#39;d got myself into.%26quot;
Allende delayed her departure, stayed a week and learned more of Gordon%26#39;s own amazing backstory. His Australian-born father, William Lindsay Gordon, was an alcoholic charismatic preacher, who moved to America to peddle a religion he invented, The Infinite Plan. He died when Gordon was six, leaving a depressed wife to raise three children on cleaner%26#39;s wages, in a rough Spanish-speaking part of LA. Gordon found solace in public libraries, which led to his law degree.
Allende returned to Venezuela, where she then lived. Within weeks she sent Gordon a proposal contract that she move into his life, and in good humour he signed it. %26quot;I arrived, with my peasant Chilean mentality, and a project,%26quot; recalls Allende. %26quot;I%26#39;d never seen drugs before, so I thought I%26#39;d clean up this messy household. [That it was] just a matter of giving everyone clear rules, good organisation, a lot of love, and it will be fine. It took me years to learn that addiction is a serious illness, beyond my capacity to cure.%26quot;
Allende and Gordon wed, but their relationship was sorely tested in the next years, as each lost a daughter. %26quot;There was so much sadness in our lives, we were on the brink of divorce,%26quot; she admits.
They got through it. %26quot;In the morning, when Willie is shaving,%26quot; Allende writes, %26quot;and I see him in the mirror, I often ask myself who the devil that large, too white, North American man is, and what we are doing in the same bathroom… From the beginning, he adopted my family and respected my work… he gently laughs at my manias, and doesn%26#39;t let me run over him; he doesn%26#39;t compete with me, and even in the fights we%26#39;ve had, he acts with honour.%26quot;
Late afternoon Allende drives me across to the Isabel Allende Foundation, housed in Sausalito, in a former brothel which was converted into Gordon%26#39;s legal offices until he retired. Allende directs $US250,000 a year to the Foundation, in memory of her daughter, who was a social worker in Spain, to fund health, education and legal programmes for disadvantaged women and girls.
Lori Barra, a striking beautiful, intelligent woman, runs the Foundation. Barra, a former graphic designer, says she had no idea she was being auditioned and road-tested for the role of Allende%26#39;s new daughter-in-law when Allende invited her to join her and a photographer on a two-week magazine assignment to Brazil. %26quot;Nico%26#39;s wife had turned lesbian,%26quot; Allende explains, %26quot;and my son was so reserved and vulnerable that any bitch could snap him up; and I didn%26#39;t want a bitch.%26quot; Allende also arranged a lunch to road-test Barra as a stepmother; she brought along Nico%26#39;s most challenging child, Andrea, %26quot;who came dressed like a beggar, with pink rags tied around different parts of her body, and her Save The Tuna doll%26quot;. Allende%26#39;s scheming worked, Nico and Lori proving such a brilliant match that it says something for arranged marriages.
Also working at the office as Allende%26#39;s PA is Juliette Ambatzidis, another member of the tribe recruited in incorrigible Allende fashion. Lori wanted to have a baby, but was in her 40s. So did Giulia, the new wife of Ernesto (Paula%26#39;s widower, who Allende treats as a son. He lives in her old house at the edge of her garden.) Allende bowled in, paying for IVF, which was successful for Giulia, but not Lori. Undefeated, Allende found Ambatzidis, who%26#39;d borne surrogate twins, and persuaded her to bear a surrogate baby for Lori and Nico. Sadly, this was not successful, but in the meantime Ambatzidis and her own two sons had firmly bonded with the tribe .
The next evening I%26#39;m invited to a dinner at La Casa de los Esp%26iacute;ritus to meet the tribe, and we%26#39;ve also planned a photo shoot. The shoot proves tricky, as Allende wants to pose stiffly. %26quot;I%26#39;ve been caught out before with shots that show big wrinkles and rolls in my chin and neck,%26quot; she argues. C%26#39;est la vie, she wins.
Talking to the family tribe, it%26#39;s clear that they all both adore her and stand up to her, which is what she wants.
She loves big family dinners, but some have ended up soap opera disasters, like a Thanksgiving celebration mentioned in the new book, where Nico and Jason learned that their partners Celia and Sally were lovers. %26quot;Nico and Celia were in one bedroom, crying; Jason was in another bedroom with Sally, threatening to run around with a machete,%26quot; Allende begins. %26quot;I was dealing with a disaster in the kitchen. I%26#39;d cooked the turkey with a new recipe, injecting green herbs under the skin, and it looked like a bloated green corpse.
%26quot;Willie was indignant because his two other sons had not shown up. He was hungry, the Thanksgiving banquet was a catastrophe, so Willie picked up the green turkey and hurled it into the garbage.%26quot;
Amidst this tragicomedy Allende%26#39;s elderly parents arrived from Chile. %26quot;Soon the whole family is in therapy,%26quot; says Allende. %26quot;An army of psychologists is getting rich off us.%26quot;
For a family of such power talkers, it%26#39;s surprising how much therapy they%26#39;ve had - Isabel and Willie, Isabel and Nico in particular.
Nico explains it%26#39;s mostly about trying to set boundaries with his adored but overbearing mother. %26quot;It%26#39;s very helpful to have an outside voice looking at the situation, because we tend to get so bound up with our own way of telling the story, or the quarrel, that we can%26#39;t see a way out.%26quot;
In the midst of dinner, our photographer%26#39;s assistant knocks a large glass of red wine onto the plush Moroccan carpet. He diligently scrubs away at the winespill but Allende, the perfect hostess, makes light of it. %26quot;Don%26#39;t worry, my dog pisses on the carpet. Come and get drunk and enjoy yourself!%26quot;
Gordon, laughing loudly, joins in with his carpet story. %26quot;Isabel and I bought all these carpets back from Morocco, thinking we were very clever. I thought I%26#39;d bargained the carpet dealer down to within an inch of his life on the price, using my best courtroom techniques, then found we could have bought the same damned things at Macy%26#39;s here for half the price.%26quot;
At 65, with a status of literary royalty, the most widely read and widely translated Latin American woman writer, and plentiful wealth, you wonder what motivates her to keep writing? Just as I ask the question, the large dining table we%26#39;re sitting at starts shuddering. With much hilarity Allende swears it%26#39;s not her psychic powers, rather it%26#39;s one of San Francisco%26#39;s famous earthquakes.
Gordon answers my question for her: %26quot;Isabel needs to write, or she%26#39;ll go demented.%26quot; While hugging his wife, he adds: %26quot;And to keep Isabel%26#39;s nose out of everyone%26#39;s business, so we don%26#39;t all go demented, we all need her to write.%26quot; n
* The Sum of Our Days (HarperCollins NZ) goes on sale later this month
Tags:
ambition,
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Food,
journalist,
melodrama,
pets,
soap opera,
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