★★★★☆ Deniably magic fun from Allende

Los amantes del Guggenheim

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is, I think, my favorite Spanish-language author, and one of my favorite authors full-stop. La casa de los espíritus is a great work of Magical Realism, better even than Cien Anos De Soledad in my personal opinion. Thus I was delighted to learn of the existence of this story. I was taken aback to find that it is not for sale in Spanish anywhere that I could find, although Amazon will sell you an English translation by Allende herself under the title Lovers at the Museum. However, it was easy to find free downloads of the Spanish booklet, e.g. here.

The Museum referred to in the title is the Guggenheim Bilbao. One morning when the museum opens two lovers are found inside, a naked young man, Pedro Berastegui, and a young woman, Elena Etxebarría, in a bridal gown. (The names in the English version are different.) She is questioned by Detective Larramendi

—¿ Por qué ibas vestida de novia? —la interrogó Aitor Larramendi.
—Porque no tuve tiempo de cambiarme.
—¿ Dónde se casaron?
—¿ Quiénes?

—Why are you wearing a wedding dress? Aitor Larramendi asked her.
—Because I didn't have time to change.
—Where was the wedding?
—Whose wedding?

It transpires that Elena and Pedro spent the night in the museum doing you-know-what, and that no one noticed. Even the security cameras have no record of them. It is just barely possible, if you really really want, to imagine that nothing magical happened -- that the guards were negligent and that there were unexplained electronic faults. But of course you're not going to believe that. This was a lot of fun.

The Spanish booklet but not the English translation follows the story with an essay called "El oficio de contar", which Google translate will tell you means "The job of counting". That is a mistranslation. The Spanish verb "contar" does mean "count", but it is also the verb used for telling a story. (The English verb "tell" also means "count" -- it is rarely used in that sense now, but that is why the person who counts out money at the bank is called a teller.) The essay tells how Allende became an author and what story-telling means to her.

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