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because the wool had to dry in the sun and then be combed by hand before being stuffed back into the ticking. It was rumored that Gervasio Lonquimay had been in jail for slitting a rival’s throat, gossip that lent him an aura of unquestionable prestige. The maids always offered him a cool drink for his thirst and towels for his sweat.
    An organ grinder, always the same one, was a fixture in the streets of our barrio until one of my uncles bought his hurdy-gurdy and pathetic parrot, and went around cranking out music as the bird distributed little papers that brought good luck, to the horror of my grandfather and the rest of the family. I understand that my uncle’s intention was to seduce a cousin with this display, but that the plan did not achieve the desired result: the girl married in a whirlwind and ran as far away as possible. Finally my uncle gave away the instrument but kept the parrot. It was very ill-humored, and at the first sign of inattention would nip a piece from the finger of anyone who came too close, butmy uncle liked it because it swore like a corsair. It lived with him for thirty years, and who knows how many it had lived before: a Methuselah with feathers. Gypsy women, too, passed through the barrio, bamboozling the unwary with their mangled Spanish and those irresistible eyes that had seen so much of the world; they came always in twos or threes, with a half dozen runny-nosed brats clinging to their skirts. We were terrified of them because people said they stole little children, locked them in cages so they would grow up deformed, and then sold them to the circuses as freaks. They cast the evil eye on anyone who didn’t give them money. They were thought to have magical powers: they could make jewels disappear without touching them, and unleash plagues of lice, warts, baldness, and rotted teeth. Even so, we couldn’t resist the temptation to have them read the future in our palms. They always told me the same thing: a dark, mustached man would take me far away. Since I don’t remember a single lover who fit that description, I have to assume they were referring to my stepfather, who had a mustache like a walrus and took me to many countries in his journeys as a diplomat.

AN OLD ENCHANTED HOUSE
    M y first memory of Chile is of a house I never knew, the protagonist of my first novel, The House of theSpirits, where it appears as the large home that shelters the issue of the Truebas. That fictional family bears an alarming resemblance to my mother’s; I could never have invented such a clan. Actually, I had no need to, with a family like mine you don’t need imagination. The idea of the “large old house on the corner,” so much a part of the novel, evolved from the home on Calle Cueto where my mother was born, and so frequently evoked by my grandfather that it seems I have lived there. There are no houses like that left in Santiago, they’ve been devoured by progress and demographic growth, but they still exist in the provinces. I can see it: vast and drowsy, worn by use and abuse, with high ceilings and narrow windows and three patios, the first with orange trees and jasmine and a singing fountain, the second with a weed-choked garden, and the third a clutter of laundry utensils, dog houses, chicken coops, and unhealthful quarters for the maids, like cells in a dungeon. To go to the bathroom at night, you had to make an excursion with a flashlight, defying cold air and spiders and turning a deaf ear to the sounds of creaking wood and scurrying mice. That huge old house, which had an entrance on two streets, was one-story tall with a mansard roof, and it harbored a tribe of great-grandparents, maiden aunts, cousins, servants, poor relatives, and guests who became permanent residents; no one tried to throw them out because in Chile “visitors” are protected by the sacred code of hospitality. There was also an occasional ghost of dubious authenticity, always