I have been distracted by the construction of a guest house next to my home in Chiang Mai and, as a result, have not dedicated as much time as I would like to writing. But I did promise to send weekly updates on my writing process along with an installment of The Epidemiology of Flight. So, here we are.
The Epidemiology of Flight is a book I have been working on since I was a medical student. It started as historical fiction and evolved into even more historical fiction. It is fun to see how the scenery around Santiago de Chile has changed since I started writing this.
In 1995, when I did a rotation at the University of Santiago de Chile, I don’t remember a single day when I could see the magnificent mountains encircling the city. When I returned in 2006, ten years of technocratic democratic governance cleaned up the air. These beautiful mountains can now be seen and fewer people die from heart and lung disease.
The presidents were mostly leftists who had taken flight when the Allende administration was overthrown by the US Government in 1973. It didn’t take long for the radical young leftists who fled in fear of their lives to develop a more nuanced political perspective. Some left for Cuba and were de-radicalized by what they saw as an unworkable ideology. Some left for the United States and were disillusioned by the bureaucracy and inequality. They came back once the dictatorship ended, bringing with them their politically nuanced ideas and a vision for governing with Enlightenment-era ideas.
All of them were interesting people. Michelle Bachelet was a single mom who is pro-choice, was one of a series of presidents elected to office in a strongly Catholic country who made major contributions to the air quality changes I observed since my first trip there. Health care was reformed by Ricardo Lagos, and the city was rebuilt with a modern transportation system across a series of administrations, including a second term by Bachelet.
This all happened in my lifetime, and I saw it both in the news and in person over the few times I visited Chile. As the novel leaps from Chile in the 1930s to Chile in the 1990s, I move from my imagination to what I observed at the time I began to write the novel. I love reading old books or watching old films that were written as contemporary fiction at the time because it reveals a truth that can’t be re-created with a Hollywood set and some old cars. Reading my old work gives me a similar feeling.
But process of writing historical fiction is very different than writing about contemporary characters. It is very much like doing academic research. It is thrilling to study another nation’s history and then imagine characters living that history. This is something I’m not at all qualified to do, of course, which makes it even more fun.
I did so much research for this novel that I prepared an academic paper on the history of health reform in Chile. This was the paper I used as my job talk at Columbia University, not because it represented what I was working on academically or because it was any good, but rather because it was the topic closest to the position that I was being hired for.
Somehow, I still got the job. (Having a non-governmental organization in Thailand helped, I suppose.) In defense of Columbia University, this was a teaching job. It was only later that I jumped into the tenure track with “serious” research. But reading history was a lot more fun than reading papers on the social determinants of health.
That’s about all I have to say about the writing process for this installment. Here is my weekly installment of text. As always, I’m eager to hear your feedback, particularly on the pace, which picks up a lot (too much?) as the book progresses through time, like the universe expanding at an exponential rate.
Santiago de Chile, 1928
Mapuches tend to live short and brutal lives. But Griselda’s family were almost all cut down long before they had seen their 20th birthday. Griselda’s mother was orphaned by smallpox when she was two. The disease struck Griselda’s grandfather the day after his 15th birthday, and her grandmother died a week later at 16. Her remaining grandfather died in a mine collapse at 14, and her grandmother died at the hands of the police as she protested his death, leaving their quiet son, Wilfredo, in the hands of their neighbors. Wilfredo found himself alone again when, after the birth of Griselda, his wife died from Chagas’ disease.
Workers at the Anglo-Chilean Nitrate & Railway Company tended to be diligent at their work, but railroad work required creativity. Rarely did switches run the way they were supposed to. Late trains were in the playbook, but frayed cable or a chipped piece of iron required both insight and ingenuity. Wilfredo noticed such details and did not let them slip onto the shoulders of the person who took the next shift. As a Mapuche, he could not be an inspector, let alone a manager. But he could work the most important lines.
By the late 1920s, there was more product to ship than there were cars, yet the company was losing the occasional train. Even as mineral prices soared, the trains could not ship them. The shareholders demanded accountability. One shareholder, Ernesto Levy, was already there.
. So much so, that when a shareholder in the railroad heard about Wilfredo’s situation, he offered Wilfredo a job at his ranch.
This was a lucky turn of events. A year later, the American stock market would crash, and the Anglo-Chilean Nitrate & Railway Company had little nitrate or copper to haul. His new boss was left with almost worthless shares in the company but couldn’t leave Wilfredo and his precocious daughter Griselda fend for themselves. To Levy, Griselda and Wilfredo were family, and he would do what he could with his relatively meager salary as a senator.
Senator Levy’s biggest financial problem was his honesty. Most senators, even his colleagues in the Communist Party, worked for the benefits that the power and prestige of a government office offered. Though mining collapsed along with the American stock market, there were plenty of scraps for elected officials to eat. Even though workers could now be had for little more than a hot meal, his Communist colleagues were not below selling votes to the Nationals, Conservatives, or even to the Nazis.
When he was young, Levy worked as a tailor, putting his savings into stocks whenever he could. Soon, he found himself sitting on a small fortune. Other than cashing out some stocks to buy his ranch, he grew his railroad stock holdings into a significant portion of the company. But rather than spending his social capital on soft power, he advocated for the railroad workers.
His advocacy for the workers earned him a few political enemies, but his reputation as an honest man also brought him close to the core management of the railroad company. When he decided to run for political office, his enemies quickly sought his friendship. When money turns to power, the wealthy become pragmatic.
The Communist party, like most of the political parties in Chile, was divided into two factions by a palimpsest of a line. The radical Communists sought power, working to make a name the international party. The liberal Communists were happy enough with financial support provided by the mines every time a tunnel collapsed, and children lost their fathers. They spat rhetoric, promising change when the workers assumed control of the mines. But when it came to a vote, the Nationals and Conservatives often found enough support to prevent nationalization of their interests.
Levy could not be fit into either category. He was happy to trade horses, so long as the trading happened in daylight. Unlike on the railroad, an honest person had few admirers. Without recognition in the international party and little by way of outside income, he struggled to feed his wife, his daughter, Griselda, and Wilfredo. Slowly, the family sold their jewelry and furniture. A good crop could stave off a sale, but good crops were rare, and their fortunes slowly eroded.
Levy’s own daughter was a year older than Griselda, but Griselda held a bigger part of his heart than his own kin. She was warm, funny, and charming. Her admiration was hard, if not impossible, to win.
Before The Depression, the two girls went to the same tutorial sessions and the same private school. Griselda deeply interrogated anything that she found interesting and seemed to have a natural command over her classes. She preferred to read her own books to those assigned her, and she had a habit of keeping Levy’s daughter up late chatting before an exam. This was a source of immense frustration for her adopted sister, who struggled to get good grades.
As she grew older, Griselda had acquired a stunning breadth of knowledge despite not taking anything seriously. In discussions, she played with others as a cat does an injured mouse, curiously batting it until it gives up life. She wasn’t threatening, even when being sarcastic. Levy was “dad,” until they were in a discussion.
“What do you hope to achieve under a Communist Chile, Senator Levy,” Griselda prodded. “Total equality in society?”
“No, just a better life for workers. Shareholders and bosses like me take the chips while the workers get black lung.”
“And you think the workers’ lives will be better off if they are controlling the means of production?”
“It’s more efficient to cut out the boss. That’s a lot of extra money on the table”
“Efficient, if they are good managers. Is there a worker you know who can do a good job managing a factory?”
“The management at the mining company doesn’t care if the worker dies with coal in his lungs or buried under 200 tons of earth.”
“So, the worker who cares about workers is going to get more copper ore out of the ground because there will be fewer collapsed mines. And who is going to provide the capital to fix all those tunnels without stocks.”
“Right. That’s why I’m investing and advocating. What else can be done?”
“Not much, Senator Levy, not much,” Griselda said, guiding Levy into her trap. Thanks to the railroad worker’s daughter, Levy’s ideology drifted slowly to the center.
When the depression found its way to Chile, the Communist Party grew in strength, but not wealth. Honest Communists like Levy, even those in power, were poorly positioned to survive a capitalist crisis. His Nationalist and Conservative colleagues had broadened their wealth by investing in the railroads, but unlike him, they owned things that people could not do without—communications, cattle, clothing, funerals, and food. The rich became rich on the railroads and mines, but stayed rich because they also controlled the means of survival and death; when someone died, telegrams had to be sent, food had to be bought, and a casket had to be lowered into the ground no matter how little money the family had.
When the mines closed and the railroads went bust, the Levy’s returned to tailoring, grew food, and collected the senator’s paycheck. It took them a while to realize that their new poverty wasn’t going to end anytime soon, and they let two semesters of tuition for the girls go by before moving them to public school.
Some of Levy’s relatives had settled into the Lower East Side of New York City and urged him to come north, where at least the government was providing food and jobs. America caught a cold, but Chile had the flu and wasn’t checking out of the hospital anytime soon.
Then came the Nazis. As an elected Jew, Levy caught their attention. When he voted against a bill restricting immigration to Chile, he received threats against his daughter (“larvae”) and Griselda (“brown larvae”). Chile began to feel less like home. His cousin managed to get him a tenement apartment on Clinton Street (“not too much light, but warm enough in the winter.”)
So, in the hot December summer of 1936, Levy crossed the metaphorical carpet in the lunch hall, and approached Senator Garcia sitting alone with a rump of steak and half of a baked potato, split in two pieces by a fork. As Levy approached, Garcia warmly stretched out a hand the size of a bear paw, enveloping Levy’s bony hand. Garcia pulled Levy, still standing, down toward him and, from this close vantage, quickly looked him up and down. He seemed more academic than political—too frumpy for a man from a family of tailors—and a bit underdressed for the occasion. Levy’s knee socks showed under his trousers, like a graduate student who never managed to complete his dissertation.
“The woman I love most was a Jew,” Garcia said softly into Levy’s face. Garcia’s pristine suit smelled vaguely of moth ball naphthalene. Levy was also presented with the starchy, buttery smell of Garcia’s potato. But Garcia’s breath was so restrained, Levy could neither smell his lunch nor feel the puff of Garcia’s consonants on his face.
Processing the content of Garcia’s sentence, Levy’s eyebrows shot up, and he involuntarily dropped Garcia’s hand.
“Mary,” Garcia said, quietly laughing before placing his paw on Levy’s back, and act of warmth and power.
Levy laughed lightly. Garcia was confidently soft, but also bearish. Levy had the sense that Garcia could land any deal he wanted. But today it was Levy who had the proposition.
“The recession has caught up with me, Senator, as you know.”
Garcia raised an eyebrow. Levy was not a man who was likely to ask for political favors, but he certainly was not one to ask for financial support. He guessed Levy would be asking him to take on his house staff.
“I have a ranch hand…”
Garcia smiled gently. “Capable?”
“You finished the sentence for me. He does the work of two men and an Ox besides.”
As he mulled the proposition, Garcia looked as if he were deciding where to move a pawn on a chessboard. “What is his weak spot?”
Garcia looked down at Levy’s socks, and imagined the white, bony shins underneath. He allowed his mind to drift to the child-like ignorance of those who were educating Chile’s youth.
Levy stepped back and pulled up a chair to bring himself down to Garcia’s level. An act of humility designed to imbue power. “He has a daughter he needs to feed. And educate.”
This time Garcia was surprised. “Educate?”
“She is like my daughter. She could be…is my daughter. As an additional favor to a colleague in the senate. One that I can repay with the only currency at my disposal.”
Garcia leaned back in his chair. He wanted to ask if she was Mapuche. But with the Nazis rising in the senate, everyone felt reserved when it came to race, religion, or place of birth. “I might be able to use some extra help,” he said, now patting Levy on the shoulder.
Now, it was Levy who seemed confident that a deal had been done.
“The mining tax bill?”
“The mining tax bill,” Garcia repeated as they shook hands.
Levy re-extended his hand, this time grabbing Garcia’s hand sideways, the web between his forefinger and thumb leading the way and landed it squarely so that it could not be made into a sandwich.
“Insisting that the peasant girl receive an education!” His internal dialog came out of his mouth. “One does tire of the same dish every night,” Senator Gumucio said.
“Rafael, where did you come from?” Garcia said, looking up briefly from his steak.
“I was here since you sat down.”
“One more vote against the mining tax. Our mines are in bad enough shape without another tax.”
“The girl is 15. She used to study with my daughter at Catholic. Levy put her in public school this year. Probably trying to squeeze some blood out deal.”
“Fifteen? Can you imagine what it would look like if I put her in school?”
“A looker, too. And smart. But not very Christian. Warm with the girls.”
Griselda’s straight hair neatly framed a full face covered with a dark, flawless skin. Her well-distributed plumpness tapered off perfectly at the wrists and ankles. Her hands were proportioned, but delicate and untethered. She had a vaguely sarcastic tone. Garcia couldn’t tell whether she was being defiant or deferent.
“Why didn’t Levy use your tailor?” He asked.
“He has his own style,” she said. “Frumpy smart, not smooth smart.”
Griselda used the old machines that Levy’s wife salvaged from their former tailoring business to make her own clothes. Fit flawlessly around the waist and coupled with olive green wool draped at the breast and hip, it bypassed the school uniform, revealing just enough to keep the imagination active.