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