“The wind knows my name”: Read here an excerpt from the new novel by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende, one of the most widely read Spanish-language writers in history, returns to literature with a novel entitled “The wind knows my name.” Set in Vienna in 1938 and in the state of Arizona in 2019, the new narrative by the Chilean novelist links the past and present with a story about the sacrifices that parents make and the journeys that children suffer in extreme situations of uprooting and violence, all in service to show how people can find redemption through solidarity, compassion and love.

“The Wind Knows My Name” will be published by Penguin Random House and will be available in bookstores beginning Tuesday, June 6. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter:

The Adlers

Vienna, November-December 1938

There was a foretaste of misfortune in the air. Since early morning, a wind of uncertainty swept the streets, whistling between the buildings, entering through the cracks in the doors and windows. “Winter is already here,” Rudolf Adler murmured to encourage himself, but he could not attribute the tightness in his chest for several months to the weather or the calendar.

Fear was a stench of rust and rubbish stuck to Adler’s nose; neither the tobacco from his pipe nor the citrus fragrance of his aftershave could dampen it.

That afternoon the smell of fear agitated by the blizzard prevented him from breathing, he felt dizzy and nauseated. He decided to send off the patients waiting for his turn and close the office early. Surprised, his assistant asked him if he was sick.

He had worked with him for eleven years and in all that time the doctor had never neglected his duties; he was a methodical and punctual man. Nothing serious, just a cold, Frau Goldberg. I’ll go home,” he replied. They finished tidying up the office and disinfecting the instruments and said goodbye at the door, as they do every day, without suspecting that they would not see each other again. Frau Goldberg headed for the tram stop, and Rudolf Adler hurried the few blocks to the pharmacy, head buried on his shoulders, holding his hat tightly.

one hand and his briefcase with the other. The pavement was wet and the sky overcast; He calculated that it had drizzled and that later one of those autumn downpours would fall that always caught him without an umbrella. He had walked those streets thousands of times, he knew them by heart and he never stopped appreciating his city, one of the most beautiful in the world, the harmony of the Baroque and Art Nouveau buildings, the majestic trees from which the leaves were already beginning to fall. , the square of his neighborhood, the equestrian statue, the pastry shop window with its display of sweets and the antique dealer’s window, full of curiosities; but this time he did not look up from the ground. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. That day the threatening rumors began with the news of an attack in Paris: a German diplomat killed by five shots by a Polish Jewish boy. The loudspeakers of the Third Reich clamored for revenge.

Since March, when Germany had annexed Austria and the Wehrmacht paraded its military pride through the center of Vienna to the cheers of an enthusiastic crowd, Rudolf Adler had lived in anguish. Fears of him had begun a few years earlier and increased as the power of the Nazis was strengthened by Hitler’s funding and weapons. They resorted to terrorism as a political weapon, taking advantage of the discontent, especially among the youth, due to the economic problems that had dragged on since the Great Depression of 1929, and the feeling of humiliation caused by the defeat of the First World War. In 1934 they murdered the head of government, Dollfuss, in a failed coup, and since then they have killed eight hundred people in various attacks. They intimidated their opponents, provoked riots and threatened civil war. At the beginning of 1938, the situation of internal violence was unsustainable, while on the other side of the border, Germany pressed to make Austria one of its provinces. Despite the concessions the government made to German demands, Hitler ordered the invasion. The Austrian Nazi party had prepared the ground and the invading troops not only met no resistance, but were acclaimed by the majority of the population. The government gave in and two days later Hitler himself entered Vienna triumphantly. The Nazis established absolute control in the territory. All opposition was declared illegal. German laws, the repressive apparatus of the Gestapo and the SS, and anti-Semitic fanaticism came into force immediately.

Rudolf knew that his wife, Rachel, who had once been rational and practical, with no tendency to imagine misfortunes, was now almost paralyzed with anxiety and functioned only with the help of drugs. Both tried to protect the innocence of their son Samuel, but the boy, who was going to be six years old, had the maturity of an adult; he watched, listened, and understood without asking questions. At first Rudolf medicated his wife with the same tranquilizers that he prescribed to some of her patients, but as they had less and less effect on him, he reinforced the treatment with some powerful drops, which he obtained in dark, unlabeled bottles. He needed them as much as she did, but he couldn’t take them because they would have interfered with her professional ability. The drops were secretly delivered to him by Peter Steiner, the owner of the pharmacy, who had been his friend for many years. Adler was the only doctor Steiner trusted with his health and that of his family; no decree of the authorities that prohibited relations between Aryans and Jews could alter the esteem that united them. In recent months, however, Steiner had to avoid him in public, because he couldn’t afford to get in trouble with the neighborhood Nazi committee. In the past they had played thousands of games of poker and chess, shared books and newspapers, and often went hiking in the mountains or fishing to get away from their wives, as they laughed, and in Steiner’s case, get away from his pack of children. Now Adler was not participating in the poker games in Steiner’s back room. The pharmacist received Adler through the back door and gave him the drug without noting it in his accounting.

Before the annexation Peter Steiner had never questioned the origin of the Adlers, he supposed them to be as Austrian as he was. He was not unaware that they were Jews, like one hundred and ninety thousand other inhabitants of the country, but that meant nothing. He was an agnostic; the Christianity in which he had been raised seemed as irrational to him as all other religions, and he knew that Rudolf Adler was, too, although he practiced some rituals out of consideration for his wife. It was important to Rachel that her son Samuel be supported by tradition and the Jewish community. On Friday afternoons the Steiners were often invited to Shabbat at the Adlers’. Rachel and Leah, her sister-in-law, took care of the details: the best tablecloth, the new candles, the fish recipe passed down from Grandma, the loaves of bread, and the wine. Rachel and her sister-in-law were very close. Leah had been widowed young and childless, so she had become attached to her brother Rudolf’s small family. She insisted on living alone, even though Rachel had begged her to move in with them, but she visited often. She was very outgoing, and she collaborated in various synagogue programs to help the most needy members of the community. Rudolf was the only brother she had left, since her youngest had emigrated to a kibbutz in Palestine, and Samuel was her only nephew. Rudolf presided over the Shabbat table, as is expected of the head of the family. With his hands on Samuel’s head he asked God to bless him and protect him, to give him grace and grant him peace. On more than one occasion, Rachel caught a wink between her husband and Peter Steiner. She let it pass thinking that it was not a gesture of mockery, but only complicity between that pair of disbelievers.

The Adlers belonged to the secular and educated bourgeoisie that characterized Viennese good society in general and Jewish society in particular. Rudolf had explained to Peter that his people had been discriminated against, persecuted and expelled from everywhere for centuries, which is why he valued education much more than material goods. They could be stripped of all their possessions, as had happened constantly throughout history, but no one could take away their intellectual preparation. A doctor’s degree was much more highly regarded than a fortune in the bank. Rudolf came from a family of craftsmen who were proud that one of them was a doctor. The profession conferred prestige and authority, but in his case it did not translate into money. Rudolf Adler was not one of the fashionable surgeons or a professor at the old Universität Wien, he was a neighborhood doctor, studious and generous, who treated half of his patients for free.

Adler and Steiner’s friendship was based on deep affinities and values: both had the same voracious curiosity about science, were lovers of classical music, unrepentant readers, and underground sympathizers of the communist party, which had been banned since 1933. They were also united by a visceral revulsion for National Socialism. Ever since Adolf Hitler had gone from being chancellor to proclaiming himself a dictator with absolute powers, they had gathered in the back room of the pharmacy to lament the world and the century in which they had to live and console themselves with a brandy capable of corroding metals, which the pharmacist It distilled in the basement, a multi-purpose sinkhole, where he kept everything necessary to prepare and package many of the medicines he sold in perfect order. Sometimes Adler would take his son Samuel to that basement to “work” with Steiner. The boy amused himself for hours mixing and bottling colored powders and liquids that the pharmacist gave him. None of his own children enjoyed that privilege.

Steiner ached in his own soul for each law designed to crush the dignity of his friend. He had nominally bought his office space and his apartment, to prevent them from being confiscated. The office was very well located on the ground floor of a stately building and Adler lived with his family on the first floor; All of the doctor’s capital was invested in those properties, transferring them to someone else’s name, even if it was his friend’s Peter’s, was an extreme measure that he took without consulting his wife. Rachel would never have accepted it.

Rudolf Adler tried to convince himself that the anti-Semitic hysteria would soon calm down, since it had no place in Vienna, the most refined city in Europe, the birthplace of great musicians, philosophers and scientists, many of them Jews.

Hitler’s incendiary rhetoric, which had escalated in recent years, was yet another manifestation of the racism his ancestors had endured, but

that did not prevent them from living together and prospering. As a precaution he had removed his name from the office door, which was a minor inconvenience, since he had occupied the premises for many years and was well known. His clientele dwindled, because the Aryan patients had to leave him, but he supposed that when things cooled down in the city, they would return. He trusted his professional skill and his well-earned reputation; However, as the days passed and the climate of tension worsened, Adler began to consider the idea of ​​emigrating elsewhere to escape the storm unleashed by the Nazis.