Maya's Notebook: A Novel by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online Page A

formed by the brujos from firstborn male babies, kidnapped before baptism. The method for transforming the baby into an invunche is as macabre as it is improbable: they break one of his legs, twist it, and stick it under the skin of his back, so he’ll only be able to get around on three limbs and won’t escape; then they apply an ointment that makes him grow a thick hide, like a billy goat’s; they split his tongue like a snake’s and feed him on the rotted flesh of a female corpse and the milk of an Indian woman. In comparison, a zombie can consider itself lucky. I wonder what kind of depraved mind comes up with horrific ideas like that.
    Manuel’s theory is that the Recta Provincia had its origins as a political system. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the indigenous people of the region, the Huilliche, rebelled against Spanish rule and later against the Chilean authorities; they supposedly formed a clandestine government copied from the Spanish and Jesuit administrative style, divided the territory into kingdoms, and appointed presidents, scribes, judges, and so on. There were thirteen principal sorcerers, who obeyed the King of the Recta Provincia, the Above Ground King, and the Below Ground King. Since it was indispensable to keep it secret and control the population, the Mayoría created a climate of superstitious fear, and that’s how a political strategy eventually turned into a tradition of magic.
    In 1880 several people were arrested on charges ofwitchcraft, tried in Ancud, and executed. The aim was to break the back of the Mayoría, but nobody is sure whether the objective was achieved.
    “Do you believe in witches?” I asked Manuel.
    “No, but it’s irrational to rule out the irrational.”
    “Tell me! Yes or no?”
    “It’s impossible to prove a negative, Maya, but calm down—I’ve lived here for many years, and the only witch I know is Blanca.”
    Blanca doesn’t believe in any of this. She told me invunches were invented by the missionaries to convince the families of Chiloé to baptize their children, but that strikes me as going too far, even for Jesuits.
    “Who is this Mike O’Kelly? I received an incomprehensible message from him,” Manuel told me.
    “Oh, Snow White wrote to you! He’s a good old completely trustworthy Irish friend of the family. It must be my Nini’s idea to communicate with us through him, for safety’s sake. Can I answer him?”
    “Not directly, but I can send him a message on your behalf.”
    “These precautions are exaggerated, Manuel, what can I say?”
    “Your grandmother must have good reason to be so cautious.”
    “My grandma and Mike O’Kelly are members of the Club of Criminals, and they’d pay gold to be mixed up in areal crime, but they have to content themselves with playing at bandits.”
    “What kind of club is that?” he asked me, looking worried.
    I explained it starting from the beginning. The Berkeley county library hired my Nini, eleven years before my birth, to tell stories to children, as a way of keeping them busy after school until their parents finished work. A little while later she proposed to the library the idea of sessions of detective stories for adults, and it was accepted. Then she and Mike O’Kelly founded the Club of Criminals, as it’s called, although the library promotes it as the Noir Novels Club. During the children’s stories hour, I used to be just one of the kids hanging on my grandma’s every word, and sometimes, when she had no one to leave me with, she’d also take me to the library for the adults’ hour. Sitting on a cushion, with her legs crossed like a fakir, my Nini asked the children what they wanted to hear, someone suggested a theme, and she improvised something in less than ten seconds. My Nini has always been annoyed by the contrived need for a happy ending to stories for children; she believes that in life there are no endings, just thresholds, people wandering here and there, stumbling and