A Long Petal of the Sea Page 26
Venezuela received Victor with the same easygoing generosity with which it took in thousands of immigrants from many parts of the world, the most recent of whom were refugees from the dictatorship in Chile and the dirty wars in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as Colombians who crossed the frontier illegally, fleeing poverty. Venezuela was one of the few democracies left in a continent dominated by heartless regimes and thuggish military juntas. Thanks to the endless flow of oil from the ground, it was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and was also blessed with other minerals, an exuberant nature, and a privileged position on the map. There were so many natural resources that nobody killed themselves working; there was plenty of space and opportunity for whoever wanted to come and set themselves up. Life was one long party, with a great sense of freedom and a profound sense of equality. Any excuse was good enough to celebrate with music, dancing, and alcohol. Money seemed to pour out endlessly; everyone benefited from corruption.
“Don’t be deceived, there’s a great deal of poverty, especially in the provinces,” Valentin Sanchez warned Roser. “Every government has forgotten the poor. That creates violence, and sooner or later the country will pay for that oversight.” To Victor, who came from a sober, cautious, prissy Chile now repressed by the dictatorship, such exuberant joy seemed shocking. He thought people were superficial, that nothing was taken seriously; there was too much wastefulness and ostentation, everything was for the moment and fleeting. He complained that at his age it was impossible for him to adapt, that he wouldn’t live long enough, but Roser argued that if at sixty he could make love like a youngster, to adapt to this wonderful country would be easy. “Relax, Victor. Going around in a sulk will get you nowhere. Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.”
His fame as a doctor had reached Venezuela, because several surgeons who studied in Chile had been students of his. He didn’t have to earn a living driving taxis or waiting tables like so many other exiled professionals whose past was erased with a stroke. He was able to validate his qualifications, and very soon was operating in Caracas’s oldest hospital. He lacked for nothing, but felt himself irredeemably foreign and followed the news to see when he could return to Chile. Roser was having great success with her orchestra and concerts, and Marcel, who had completed his doctorate in Colorado, was working in the Venezuelan state oil company. Although they were content, they continued to think of Chile in hopes of going back there again one day.
* * *
—
VICTOR WAS STILL AWAITING their return to Chile when Franco died on November 20, 1975, after a long final illness. For the first time in many years, Victor was tempted to go back to Spain. “So the Caudillo was mortal after all” was the only comment made by Marcel, who had not the slightest curiosity about the land of his ancestors; he was a Chilean, heart and soul. Roser, though, decided to accompany Victor. Any separation, however brief, made them anxious. It was to tempt fate; they might never get together again. Entropy is the natural law of the universe, everything tends toward disorder, to break down, to disperse. People get lost: look how many vanished during the Retreat; feelings fade, and forgetfulness slips into lives like mist. It takes heroic willpower just to keep everything in place. Those are a refugee’s forebodings, said Roser. No, they’re the forebodings of someone in love, Victor corrected her.
They saw Franco’s funeral on television, his coffin escorted by a squadron of lancers from Madrid to the Valley of the Fallen. Crowds of people paid homage to the Caudillo: weeping women on their knees, the Catholic Church with its pomp and ceremony of bishops in their elaborate vestments for High Mass, politicians and dignitaries in strict mourning, with the exception of the Chilean dictator in his imperial cloak. An endless parade of the Spanish armed forces, with the question hanging in the air: what was going to happen to Spain after Franco?
Roser convinced Victor to wait a year before attempting a return to his native country. During the months that followed, they watched from afar the transition to freedom headed by a king who turned out not to be the Francoist puppet everyone had expected, but someone determined to lead the country peacefully toward democracy. To do that he had to avoid all the obstacles put in his path by an intransigent right wing that refused any change and was afraid of losing all their privileges once Franco was gone. The rest of the country was clamoring for the unavoidable reforms to be brought in as quickly as possible, so that Spain could take up its place in twentieth-century Europe.
In November of the following year, Victor and Roser Dalmau landed in their homeland for the first time since those desperate days of the Retreat. They spent little time in Madrid, which was still the beautiful imperial capital it had always been. Victor showed Roser the neighborhoods and buildings that had been destroyed by bombs but were now restored. He took her to the university city to see the bullet holes that were still visible in some walls. They went to the area near the River Ebro where they thought Guillem had fallen, but found no reminders of the bloodiest battle of the war. In Barcelona they looked for the house in the Raval district that had once belonged to the Dalmaus. The names of the streets had been changed, and they had some trouble finding their way. The house was still there, though by now it was a ruin, so dilapidated it barely stood upright. From outside it appeared uninhabited, but they knocked on the door and after a long while it was opened by a young woman with eyes edged with kohl and a filthy Indian skirt. She smelled of marijuana and patchouli, and had some difficulty understanding what this couple of strangers wanted because she was so high she was in some other dimension. Eventually, however, she asked them in. The house had recently been taken over by a commune of young squatters who had rather belatedly adopted hippie culture, which would not have been tolerated in the days of Franco. Victor and Roser looked around the rooms with an empty feeling in their stomachs. The walls were crumbling and daubed with graffiti. There were people smoking or dozing on the floors, garbage was everywhere, the toilet and bathroom were disgusting. Doors and shutters dangled precariously from their hinges, and everywhere there was the smell of dirt, stale air, and marijuana. “You see, Victor, you can’t bring back the past,” Roser commented as they left.
Just as they didn’t recognize the Dalmau family house, so they couldn’t recognize Spain. Forty years of Francoism had left a deep imprint noticeable in the way people related to one another, and in every aspect of culture. Catalonia, the last bastion of Republican Spain, had suffered the victors’ most savage revenge, the cruelest repression. They were surprised that Franco still cast such a long shadow. People complained about unemployment and inflation; the reforms being implemented and those that weren’t; the power the conservatives had, or the chaos of the socialists. Some advocated for Catalonia to separate from Spain; others that it should be more closely integrated. Many of those the war had forced into exile began to come back. Most of them were elderly and disillusioned, and there was no longer any place for them. Nobody remembered them.
Victor went to the Rocinante bar. It still existed on the same corner with the same name. He drank a beer in honor of his father and his domino pals, the old men who sang at his funeral. Over the years, the Rocinante had been modernized; instead of hams hanging from the ceiling and the smell of sour wine, it boasted acrylic tables and air-conditioning. The manager said Spain had gone to hell after Franco. It was nothing but chaos and rudeness, strikes, protests, demonstrations, whores and queers and communists. Nobody respected the values of family or fatherland, nobody remembered God; the king was a nincompoop, what a mistake the Caudillo had made appointing him as his successor.
They rented a small apartment in the Gracia district, where they lived for six seemingly endless months. This “dis-exile,” as they called the return to the land they had quit so many years earlier, was almost as hard as going into exile itself in 1939 when they crossed the border into France. It took them those six months to admit how alienated they were: him out of pride, a
nd her out of stoicism. Neither of them found work, partly because there was none for people their age, and partly due to a lack of contacts. They didn’t know anyone. Love saved them from depression, because they were like a newly married couple on their honeymoon rather than two mature, idle, and solitary people who spent the morning wandering round the city, and the evenings at the movies watching the same old films. They prolonged the illusion as long as possible until one boring Sunday that was no different from any other boring day, they had had enough. They were warming themselves up with thick hot chocolate and sugar cakes in a shop on Petritxol Street when Roser suddenly came out with a phrase that was to define their plans for years to come: “I’m fed up with being outsiders. Let’s go back to Chile. That’s where we’re from.” Victor exhaled as loudly as a dragon and bent forward to kiss her on the mouth. “We’ll do that as soon as we can, Roser, I promise. But for now we’re returning to Venezuela.”
Several years were to go by before he could keep his promise to return to Chile. They spent them in Venezuela, where Marcel was living and where they had work and friends. The Chilean colony grew daily because, in addition to political exiles, others arrived in search of economic opportunities. In their Palos Grandes neighborhood a Chilean accent was more common than a Venezuelan one. Most of those who came remained isolated within their own community, licking their wounds and concerned above all about the situation in Chile, which showed no signs of changing despite the promising snippets of news that passed from mouth to mouth but were never confirmed. The fact was that the dictatorship was still solid. Roser suggested to Victor that the only healthy way to grow old was to integrate into Venezuelan society. They had to live in the present, making the most of everything that agreeable country had to offer, grateful they were well received and had work, without wallowing in the past. The return to Chile was left pending for some future date. They didn’t allow it to spoil their present, as that future could be a long way off. Roser prevented him from living in nostalgia and hope, introducing him to the art of having a good time without feeling guilty. This, together with generosity, was the best lesson Venezuela had to give. In his sixties, Victor changed more than he had done in all his previous life. He attributed this to his continuing infatuation, Roser’s constant efforts to smooth the rough edges of his nature, as well as the positive influence of the Caribbean chaos. This was how he described the institutionalized indolence that undermined his serious attitude, at least for a few years. He learned to dance salsa and play the four-stringed guitar.
* * *
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IT WAS THEN THAT Victor Dalmau met Ofelia del Solar again. Over the years, he had sporadically had news of her, but had never seen her because they moved in very different circles and she had spent most of her life in other countries due to her husband’s profession. He had also done his best to avoid her, concerned that the ashes of that frustrated youthful love might still contain burning embers that could disrupt his orderly existence or his relationship with Roser. He had never understood why Ofelia had cut him out of her life so completely, with no explanation apart from a short letter written in the tone of a capricious young girl that he could not match with the woman who escaped from her art classes to make love with him in a seedy hotel. At first, when he had finished feeling sorry for himself and cursing her in secret, he came to detest her. He attributed to her all the worst defects of her class: lack of awareness, egotism, arrogance, pretentiousness. His loathing slowly subsided, leaving him with the fond memory of the most beautiful woman he had ever known, her infectious laughter and her seductiveness. As time went by, he seldom thought of Ofelia, and never felt the impulse to find out about her. Prior to the dictatorship in Chile, he had heard random scraps about her life, usually from some comment by Felipe del Solar, whom he saw a couple of times a year in order to artificially preserve a friendship based entirely on Victor’s sense of gratitude. He had seen some not-exactly-flattering images of her in newspaper social pages, but nothing in the Arts sections; her work was unknown in Chile. “Well, the same happens with other talented national artists, and more so if they’re women,” Roser remarked, when she once brought back a magazine from Miami that had four full-color pages showing Ofelia’s work. Victor studied the two photos of the artist that accompanied the article. The eyes were those of the Ofelia he knew, but the rest had changed a lot—although that could have been the camera’s fault.
Roser arrived with the news that there was an exhibit of the latest works by Ofelia del Solar in the Caracas Athenaeum. “Did you see she uses her maiden name?” she said. Victor pointed out this had always been the case, especially among Chilean women, and that Matias Eyzaguirre had died years earlier. If she hadn’t taken her husband’s name during his lifetime, why would she do so as a widow? “Well, whatever. Let’s go to the opening,” said Roser.
His automatic reaction was to say no, but curiosity got the better of him. There weren’t many works in the exhibit, but each was the size of a door, so they filled three rooms. Ofelia had not escaped the influence of Guayasamin, the great Ecuadorean painter under whom she had studied. Her canvases were of a similar style, with strong brushstrokes, dark lines, and abstract figures. They didn’t, though, have any of his humanitarian message; there was no denunciation of cruelty or exploitation, nothing of the historical or political conflicts of the time. Instead they were sensual images, some of them very explicit, couples entwined in twisted or violent embraces, women yielding to pleasure or suffering. They confused Victor, as they didn’t correspond to the idea he had of the artist. He remembered Ofelia in the first flush of womanhood, the pampered, naïve, and impulsive girl he had fallen in love with, who painted watercolor landscapes and bouquets of flowers. All he knew of her was that since those far-off days she had been the wife and then the widow of a diplomat; she was a traditional woman, accepting her role. But these paintings showed an ardent temperament and a surprisingly erotic imagination. It was as if the passion he had caught a glimpse of in the dingy hotel where they made love had remained suppressed inside her and its only means of escape was through brushes and paint. Her last canvas, displayed on its own on one wall of the gallery, made a strong impression on him. It was a naked man holding a rifle, painted in white, black, and gray. Victor studied it for several minutes, stirred without knowing why. He went closer to read the title: Militiaman, 1973. “It’s not for sale,” a voice next to him said. It was Ofelia. She looked different from how he remembered her, and from the few photographs he had seen: older, more faded.
“It’s the first of this series, and it marks the end of a stage for me. That’s why I’m not selling it.”
“That’s the year of the military coup in Chile,” Victor said.
“It has nothing to do with Chile. That was the year I liberated myself as an artist.”
Until that moment she hadn’t looked at Victor, but had been talking while staring at the canvas. When she turned to continue the conversation, she didn’t recognize him. More than forty years had passed since they had been together, and she was at a disadvantage, because in all that time she had never seen a photograph of him. Stretching out his hand, Victor introduced himself. It took Ofelia several seconds to remember the name, and when she did, she gave such a spontaneous little cry that Victor was convinced she had no idea who he was. What for him had been a stab to the heart had left no trace in her.
He invited her for a drink in the café and went in search of Roser. When he saw the two women together, he was struck by how time had treated them so differently. He would have thought that the beautiful, frivolous, rich, and refined Ofelia would have withstood the passage of the years more easily, and yet she appeared older than Roser. Her gray hair looked singed, her hands were gnarled, and the demands of her profession had left her stooped. She was wearing a brick-colored linen tunic that hung loosely to disguise the extra pounds, carried a huge multicolored woven Guatemalan bag, and wore Franciscan sand
als.
She was still beautiful. Her blue eyes shone as they had done when she was twenty, but in a face tanned by too much sun and crisscrossed by wrinkles. Roser, who was not vain and had never appeared particularly attractive, dyed her gray hairs and wore lipstick. She took care of her pianist’s hands, her posture, and her weight, and that night was wearing a pair of black pants and a white blouse with the discreet elegance that was her trademark. She greeted Ofelia warmly, but made excuses for not accompanying them: she had to rush off for an orchestra rehearsal. Victor looked at her quizzically, guessing she wanted to leave him alone with Ofelia. He felt a moment’s panic.
* * *
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AT A TABLE ON the Athenaeum patio, surrounded by modern sculptures and tropical plants, Ofelia and Victor caught up on all the most significant events of those forty years. They made no mention of the passion that had once engulfed them. Victor didn’t dare refer to it, much less ask why she had vanished, as this seemed to him humiliating. Nor did she bring it up, because the only man who had counted in her life was Matias Eyzaguirre. Compared to the immense love she had with him, the brief adventure with Victor was a childish folly that would have been forgotten were it not for that tiny grave in a rural cemetery in Chile. She didn’t mention that to Victor either, because she had shared the secret only with her husband. She bore the responsibility for her mistake without broadcasting it, as Father Vicente Urbina had instructed her.