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uring the so-called boom in culture, when there
had been an attempt to involve everyone in the
fiesta of knowledge and the vice
of information and more pages of print were
sold than loaves of bread, the
owners had decided to redecorate the building
to be in tune with the delirious enthusiasm rocking
the country. They had begun on the ground floor,
carpeting it wall-to-wall, adding exquisite
woodwork, replacing the shabby furnishings with
glass-and-aluminum desks, removing windows to open
up skylights, closing stairwells to provide niches
in which to embed safes, locating electronic eyes
that opened and closed doors by magic. The diagram
of the edifice was turning into a labyrinth when
suddenly the rules of the game were changed. The
redecorating never reached the fifth floor, which
had kept its furnishings of uncertain color,
prehistoric typewriters, archival filing cabinets,
and disconsolate stains on the ceiling.
Isabel Allende, Of Love And
Shadows
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
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