Summary
During her eighteenth year, Alba enrolls in the university
and falls in love with Miguel. Miguel is also a student and a revolutionary.
They do not know that their families are already intertwined and
that Miguel was present at Alba's birth. Out of love for Miguel,
Alba becomes involved in revolutionary politics. She joins Miguel,
Professor Sebastian Gomez, and a group of students in an occupation
of the university. Just when Alba begins to doubt her interest in
the cause, she becomes quite ill and is forced to leave before the
end of the protest. The policeman who escorts her out is Esteban
Garcia. He reveals to Miguel that Alba is Senator Trueba's granddaughter. Esteban
Garcia also reminds Alba of her fourteenth birthday when he came
to the house on business with her father and molested her a second
time, simultaneously kissing and strangling her.
Miguel quickly decides that it is pointless to be upset
at Alba for her grandfather's politics. They become consumed by
their love for one another and spend an entire year devoted to making
love as often as possible. After that, they return to their other
occupations and continue their relationship. They do not move in
together because Miguel realizes that he will some day have to devote
himself to the revolution much more deeply than Alba will be ready
for.
Years before, Jaime accidentally met the Candidate for
the Socialist party, on a medical call. Over the years, when the
Candidate ran for president unsuccessfully every year, they developed
a deep friendship. Now the Candidate tells Jaime that this year
the socialists will win the elections. No one aside from Jaime believes him.
Miguel adds that even if the socialists come to power, little will change.
The campaign is particularly nasty, and in protest of the Conservative
parties' tactics, Jaime moves out of the family house and into the
hospital where he works.
Jaime is the only person Alba tells of her relationship
with Miguel. Jaime experiences some paternal jealousy over the relationship
but keeps Alba's relationship a secret. Then Alba and Miguel come
to Jaime to ask him as a doctor to look at Miguel's sick sister. When
he arrives to examine her, Jaime recognizes Amanda. He only tells
Miguel and Alba that they knew each other long ago; it has in fact
been twenty years. Amanda is so strung out that she is almost dead.
She does not recognize Jaime. Jaime prescribes hospitalization and
detoxification.
Analysis
Each chapter up until now has picked up fairly close in
time to when the previous chapter ended. It is not clear exactly
how many years chapter ten covers, but at least several years elapse
between the end of chapter ten and the beginning of chapter eleven.
The chapter itself spans 2–3 years.
It is one of the few in which Esteban's first person narrative voice
is not present.
Chance or strange twists of fate recur repeatedly in The
House of the Spirits. Alba's encounter with Miguel is no
different. The two meet in the university cafeteria. Although neither
one remembers the first encounter, on the day of Alba's birth, something
immediately draws them to one another. Like her mother and her grandmother
before her, Alba seems fated from a very young age to be with this
particular man.
