"Lovers at the Museum" by Isabel Allende

A night watchman at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, makes a startling discovery – a young man and woman are asleep in one of the galleries. They’re discovered in front of a metal sculpture entitled “Rising Sea” by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. The young man is naked; the young woman is wearing an elaborate bridal gown.  

Inspector Larramendi of the Bilbao police is one the case, except he’s not sure exactly what the case is about. No one knows how the lovers got through the locked doors; the couple say the door was open. They claim they were in the museum throughout the night and never saw a guard. The would-be bride had fled her wedding ceremony, sobbing. She found a young stranger, and the got exceedingly drunk. They both independently claim the museum had suddenly appeared in front of them, like a magician’s trick. 

 

They suspect the museum might be enchanted. Inspector Larramedi, the “Hound of Bilbao,” is inclined to agree. 

 

Isabel Allende

Lovers at the Museum is a new short story by the acclaimed writer Isabel Allende, and the reader will be forgiven for thinking he or she has taken a step into magic realism. This might happen in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo or the Lima of Mario Vargas Llosa (in fact, I was reminded of the telenovelas of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter). The Guggenheim in Bilbao is a real museum, whose architectural style might be called “anti-architecture” or “melted metal.” The sculpture cited in the story is a real metal sculpture, and the inspector can be forgiven for at first thinking it’s a large curtain. 

 

Allende has previously published The House of the Spirits and some 25 other books. Born in Peru, raised in Chile, and now living in California, she founded a charitable foundation after her daughter died in 1996. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014, and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2018. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

What’s American Fiction Without the Short Story? – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

The Farm Woman Speaks – Gracy Olmstead at Plough Quarterly on the novels of George Eliot.

 

Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? – Emma Green at The New Yorker.

 

The Prophets: D.A. Henderson – Joe Nocera at The Free Press on how not to fight pandemics.