What happened in Chile on the ‘other’ 9/11? A novel weighs a quasi-fictional scenario
In ‘The Suicide Museum,’ Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman pens an alternate history with himself and his family, along with a driven Holocaust survivor, as protagonists
Reporter at The Times of Israel
Over sandwiches stuffed with fried pork and onions, Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman and a youthful street vendor named Arquimedes discussed their country’s late president, Salvador Allende. It was September 4, 1990, in the Chilean capital of Santiago, and the South American country was making an uneasy peace with its past by returning to democracy after over a decade of military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet.
The coup that triggered the dictatorship culminated on September 11, 1973. Hawker Hunter planes bombarded the presidential palace, nicknamed La Moneda. The country’s socialist president, Salvador Allende, died in the attack under disputed circumstances.
Dorfman, a Jewish Chilean who held a position in Allende’s government, was still haunted by his absence from the palace that day. He had gone into exile in the US and become a prominent author, but had now returned to Chile as it belatedly honored its slain president. It was a momentous occasion. Allende’s coffin had even been made available for the public to pay tribute. Dorfman knelt beside it for so long that an usher politely asked him to let others take their turn.
When he saw the impoverished Arquimedes hawking copies of Allende’s final speech, Dorfman was moved to purchase several, at inflated prices, along with those greasy pork-and-onion sandwiches from a food cart. He listened to Arquimedes’ take on Allende: “He was a good man. What my mother says, and she met him once, touched his hand, she really did, and voted for him twice. Or maybe it was three times, she’s not sure.”
This is a scene from “The Suicide Museum,” a remarkable new novel by Dorfman about the events that befell Chile 50 years ago, along with the country’s attempts to reckon with its history in subsequent decades. It is an ambitious book, both in its nearly 700-page length and in its complex plot, in which the author has included himself and his actual family as characters wrestling with the historical mystery of Allende’s death.
In an email interview, when The Times of Israel characterized such an approach as “bold,” the author replied, “Bold is the right word. Risky is another one.”
“It could have been (and I hope it isn’t) a disaster,” he added. “It meant taking my real life and chronology and grafting onto this factual history a series of inventions, playing with falsehood and truth, which accompanied the doubts about what happened to Allende whose death is open to many divergent interpretations.”
What did happen to Allende on Chile’s own September 11 tragedy, which occurred 28 years before the trauma of 9/11 in the United States? It’s a mystery that continues to vex Chileans, Dorfman included: Was Allende killed when the military attacked La Moneda, or did he commit suicide?
(Editor’s note: On September 11, 2012, a Chilean court ruled Allende’s death a suicide after his body was exhumed and forensic testing performed.)
The novel’s plot hinges upon Joseph Hortha, a Holocaust survivor turned plastics magnate who needs an answer to this question. Hortha aims to realize an unconventional project — the Suicide Museum of the book’s title. After catching a magnificent tuna, only to find an array of garbage within the fish, Hortha becomes convinced that humanity is on a suicidal course through its impact on the environment.
His museum would represent the idea of suicide across history — in Hortha’s words, “the vortex and ambiguity of self-annihilation throughout the ages” — and connect it to the environment, with Allende’s narrative the final display for visitors. To complete the picture, Hortha seeks conclusive information about how Allende died, and for this he recruits Dorfman. It is a task that will eventually send the writer back to Chile.
“I create here an alternative world: what could have happened in Chile upon my return, but did not,” Dorfman told The Times of Israel.
Within this world, he included not only himself, but also his wife Angelica and their sons Rodrigo and Joaquin.
Calling the trio his favorite characters, he added that they “were generous enough to trust that I would not betray them when I built their alter egos in the novel.” He shares memories of an early date with his future wife, and her mastery of the celebrated Chilean dish called cazuela, which she makes with chicken. She also provides invaluable support to her husband during his many dealings with Hortha.
The novel refers to many well-known personages, past and present, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Jackson Browne. Allende’s daughter Beatriz Allende appears in the narrative. Nicknamed Tati, Beatriz had a tragic life.
“She gives me occasion (as do others in the book) to explore the many ways in which women have mostly bad choices, especially in times of crisis and war,” Dorfman said.
Dorfman explained that Beatriz Allende was at La Moneda on the day of the coup. She was pregnant; while she wished to use her military training to defend her father, he urged her to go. Although she left, her life ultimately ended in suicide. In the novel, her character is convinced that Dorfman was indeed at La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and joined the last stand of Allende’s supporters.
“That mirage of hers had even helped to open doors, create an aura for me, entice the Horthas of the solidarity movement to treat me with added respect,” the fictional Dorfman marvels.
As Dorfman learns, Hortha has lost numerous loved ones to suicide, and his family has been scarred by the Holocaust. Hortha himself escaped the Nazis by sheltering with a Dutch Christian family who passed him off as a fellow church-goer. Yet he has traumatic memories related to that time.
“This is the first novel where I deal directly with a Holocaust survivor, so it is safe to say that Judaism has not loomed gigantically in my life, though now I wonder if it has not been shadowing me forever,” Dorfman said.
In the book, his character invokes Jewish family roots — his grandparents escaped European pogroms and antisemitism for South America — as a partial explanation of his distaste for exclusion.
Ironically, when the fictional Dorfman finally comes back home to Chile, the protagonist doesn’t feel universally welcomed. The usher who interrupts his grief before Allende’s coffin assumes Dorfman is an English-speaking tourist. Arquimedes the street vendor considers him just another rich person attending the memorial – at least until Dorfman shares his background with Allende, inflating it a bit. Then, a host of people at the food cart start sharing their views on their late president and the exile finally feels more at home — conveyed in one glorious 217-word-long sentence that comprises an entire paragraph.
Its concluding words: “[W]hat is truth without justice, better some truth than silence, a country can die from too much truth, a country can die from too much silence, Allende is turning in his grave, Allende is celebrating from his grave, Allende is alive, Allende is dead, Allende, Allende, Allende, solo Allende.”
