Violeta

by Isabel Allende

You now live in a community that was no more than a trash heap before you got there. I was moved when you took me to see it, so clean and orderly, with modest but decent homes, a school, workshops for different trades, and even a library. I was moved most of all by the shack with a pressed dirt floor where you live with the dog and cat who’ve adopted you. You know what, Camilo? I felt a pang of envy, a desire to be young again and start over, to throw all the superfluous things I have out the window and keep only the essential, to share and to serve. I know that you are completely happy among those people. You’ve accepted that you can’t change the country much less the world, but you can help some individuals. You’ve been guided by the spirit of Albert Benoit. You don’t know how many times I’ve thanked heaven that you were young during the dictatorship and that, despite so much reckless behavior, you were able to escape the claws of repression. The bishop may pull on your ears, and there are people who accuse you of being a Communist because of your work with the poor; but during the dictatorship you’d have been exterminated like a cockroach.