The Bridge

Tonight I am toasting my brother, who died five years ago on August 21st of complications to Addison's disease, and who had never been out of the country. He was sixteen, and will remain so in my memory for the rest of my life, however long that might turn out to be.

Outside, the pavement is still crackling the last droplets of moisture away. The bloodsucking militia are roaming the thick air tonight, and I am all alone in my boyfriend's parents' house with Servapan, Molotov and Bonnie, their old and majestic collie. The family is in Florida. It is so quiet on this suburban street that I can hear my thoughts rattling in their chains of self-doubt. Trapped by the heat and humidity, and by my own need to sit still, I will briefly describe Chile, in the short impression we were allowed.

Piscola, jars of it. A soccor game under frigid cloudbursts with Pancha and Joaco, which we heard later on the news ended in, what else, a riot with people from the opposing teams (well, men) pulling up the benches and throwing them at each other.

Being around Joaquin during what is probably his most mature and happy period to date, I was filled with slightly depressing questions, such as "Was I ever that young?" "Did the four months of our close friendship happen at all? What was that international studies house?" Nonetheless, it is always hopeful to see someone you care about so happy.

The results of a terrible motorcycle accident in the lobby of Pancha's apartment. Icy rain and ice cream, strange but amiable companions--lecuma fruit, sweet and with the texture of an avocado, and green tea with mango. More delicious than anything I have tasted in the world.

Listening to Pancha and Joaco extol the virtues of Chilean wine, the intoxicating dream, filling ourselves in Vacas Grandes on lomo vetado and choclo a la crema, nothing compared to the delicious, fresh choclo that elderly women offered wrapped in its husk with a hunk of goat cheese on the side in Peru.

John and I took a nervous promendade through La Moneda, feeling guilt emenating from every pore as we surveyed government headquarters and the site of Allende's assassination, now open for large herds of schoolchildren to gawk through and snap pictures.

Pablo Neruda's house. The one built for his third and final wife, named "La Chascona" (both the house and the woman), for her crazy wild mane of red hair.

Neruda, as might be evident from his passionate poems, was obsessed with el mar, and designed every house to look and feel like a ship, with incredibly low ceilings, portholes for windows, and using his extensive collections to decorate the place. Bottles, shells, objects one would expect to wash up on shore, that remind me of the old woman in one of my favorite childhood stories--the one about the woman who unleashed a bad genie and then tricked into turning himself into a mouse, which her brave cat then eats.

In Neruda's study, humbly shining in its case, is his Nobel Prize, awarded in 1971, two years before Pinochet and bad health (the two being synonymous) would finish him off two weeks after the "first September 11th." His study, designed as the lighthouse, brims with Diego Rivera and Picasso gifts, hung casually along the walls.

Neruda's home is so completely his own, it was almost like meeting the charismatic icon himself. Little cut outs of eyes dangling from the staircase. More bars than bedrooms.

Out guide was like one of the kookier roles that Johnny Depp might have, his goatee and owlish eyeglasses and sarcastic grin, as he noted ironically that Pinochet loved the UK because "they respect the rules," exactly why he couldn't live there. Lamenting the cold Chilean personality, versus the boisterous, ceaselessly patriotic Argentinians, their rivals.

Santiago was very much like many European cities I have been to, more prosperous than other South American cities, and full of very white looking people.

We headed to Vina del Mar, where Pancha and Joaquin grew up, a neighboring city to the carnival-esque Valparaiso, relatively calm due to the freezing temperatures. Valparaiso is that strange international fusion so often seen in port towns, with its colorful houses speckling the hillside, its miniature Big Ben, its German district. The oldest newspaper still running in Latin America, El Mercurio, littering the sidewalks.

Joaquin's parents were lovely, gracious, extremely well-educated. His little nephews snuck upstairs the next morning, whispering and cackling and trying to glimpse us as we slept, the strangers always.

John and I caught an exhibit in the museum Bellas Artes that really struck a chord. Called "Cautivas," by Sergio Rojas, giant photos of female convicts lined the wall, all staring without moving. A spectacular range of emotion--proud, defiant, scared, inquisitive, imploring, defeated. The exhibit seemed to suggest both a captivity in their portraits and a captivity of those who were in the room, nailed down by these prisoners' stares.

It is hard to tell what expression will be on my face over the next few weeks, but it is now a mixture of happiness to be back, fortifying myself with comfort food and sleep, and the impatience to see what's next.

"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
- Thornton Wilder