A Long Petal of the Sea Read online

  They were able to talk a long while as if they were good friends. Ofelia told him she had two children and had lived happily for thirty-five years alongside Matias Eyzaguirre, who loved her in the same steadfast way as he had pursued her hand in marriage. He loved her so much and so exclusively that their children felt excluded.

  “He changed very little. He was always a tranquil, generous man who was unconditionally loyal to me. Over the years, his virtues only became more pronounced. I assisted him as best I could in his profession. Diplomacy is difficult. We changed countries every two or three years—we had to uproot ourselves, leave friends, and start again somewhere else. It wasn’t easy for the children either. What was worse was the social life: I’m no good at cocktail parties or lengthy meals.”

  “Were you able to paint?”

  “I tried, but it was only part-time: there was always something more important or urgent to do. When my children went to university I told Matias I was retiring from my job as mother and spouse, and was going to devote myself to serious painting. That seemed fair to him. He gave me a free hand and no longer asked me to accompany him on the social engagements that were what I found most irksome.”

  “Goodness, one man in a million.”

  “A shame you never knew him.”

  “I saw him only once. He stamped my entry visa for Chile on board the Winnipeg in 1939. I’ve never forgotten it. Your Matias was an honorable man, Ofelia.”

  “He rejoiced in everything I did. For example, he took classes in order to appreciate my paintings because he said he didn’t understand art, and then he financed my first exhibit. He was taken by a sudden heart attack six years ago. I still cry when I go to sleep every night because he isn’t with me,” Ofelia confessed in an outpouring of emotion that left Victor flushing.

  She added that ever since then she had freed herself of the chores that had kept her from her vocation. She lived a rural life on a piece of land two hundred kilometers from Santiago, where she grew fruit trees and reared dwarf long-eared goats to sell as pets. Above all, she painted and painted. Apart from traveling to visit her son and daughter, one in Brazil and the other in Argentina, or for an exhibit, or to visit her mother once a month, she didn’t move from her studio.

  “You knew my father died, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, it was in the press. Chilean newspapers take some time to get here, but they do arrive. He was prominent in the Pinochet government, wasn’t he?”

  “That was at the beginning. He died in 1975. After his death, my mother flourished. My father was a despot.”

  She told him that Doña Laura became less devoted to compulsive praying and good works, and more interested in games of canasta and spiritualism with a group of esoteric old ladies who communicated with the souls of people in the Great Beyond. This was how she kept in touch with Leonardo, her adored Baby. Father Vicente Urbina was unaware of this fresh sin staining the del Solar family, because Doña Laura was careful not to tell him. She knew summoning the dead was a demonic practice roundly condemned by the Church. Ofelia spoke of the priest with sarcasm. She said that at eighty-something years old, Urbina was a bishop and an eloquent defender of the dictatorship’s methods, which he saw as fully justified in their protection of Western Christian civilization against the perversity of Marxism. The Chilean cardinal, who had set up an organization to protect the persecuted and keep a record of the disappeared, had to call him to order when in his enthusiasm he defended torture and summary executions. The bishop was tireless in his mission to save souls, especially those of the well-to-do faithful. He continued as the spiritual adviser to the del Solar family, in a much more powerful position since the death of the patriarch. Doña Laura, her daughters, sons-in-law, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all depended on his wisdom for both big and small decisions.

  “I escaped his influence because I loathe him. He’s a sinister man. Fortunately, I’ve nearly always lived far from Chile. Felipe also escaped, because he’s the most intelligent one in the family, and because he lives half his life in England.”

  “What’s become of him?”

  “He endured the three years of Allende’s government, certain it wasn’t going to last. But he couldn’t stand the junta’s barracks mentality, because he foresaw they could remain in power forever. You know how he admires everything English. He detests Chilean hypocrisy and sanctimony. He goes back on regular visits to see my mother and look after the family finances.”

  “Didn’t you have another brother? One who measured typhoons and hurricanes?”

  “He settled in Hawaii. He came back to Chile only once to claim his share of the inheritance after my father’s death. Do you remember Juana, our housekeeper, who adored your son, Marcel? She’s exactly the same. No one, not even she herself, knows how old she is, but she still looks after the house and cares for my mother, who’s over ninety and quite mad. There are a lot of lunatics in my family. Well, I’ve brought you up to date about us. Now tell me about you.”

  Victor summed up his life in five minutes. He mentioned only briefly the year he had been a prisoner, and skipped over the worst moments, partly because it seemed to him in bad taste to mention them, and also because he thought Ofelia would prefer not to know. If she guessed at any of it she refrained from asking him, merely commenting that Matias had been conservative in his political ideas, but had served Chile as a diplomat throughout the three years of socialism without questioning his duty. On the other hand, he had felt ashamed to be representing the military regime because of the bad reputation it had throughout the world. She added that she had never been interested in politics, that art was her thing, and that she lived in peace in Chile, with her trees and animals, never reading the press. Her life was the same, with or without the dictatorship.

  They said goodbye, promising they would stay in touch, although they knew this was a mere formality. Victor felt relieved: if one lives long enough, circles close. The Ofelia del Solar circle closed neatly for him in that Athenaeum café, without leaving any ashes. The embers had died long ago. He decided he didn’t like her character or her painting. The only thing memorable about her was her sky-blue eyes.

  Roser was waiting at home for him rather anxiously, but she only had to glance at him to burst out laughing. Her husband looked several years younger. Victor gave her the news of the del Solar family, and in conclusion commented that Ofelia smelled of withered gardenias. He was convinced Roser had foreseen his disappointment: that was why she took him to the exhibit and left him alone with his former love. His wife had taken too big a risk: it could have happened that rather than being disenchanted with Ofelia, he would fall in love with her again. Evidently that possibility didn’t worry Roser at all. The problem with us, he reflected, is that she takes me for granted, whereas I keep thinking she might run off with somebody else.

  CHAPTER 12

  1983–1991

  I live now in a country as soft

  As the autumn skin of grapes.

  —PABLO NERUDA

  “Country”

  BARREN TERRAIN

  THE NEWS THAT IN CHILE there was a new list of eighteen hundred exiles authorized to return was published in the Sunday edition of El Universal, the only day that the Dalmaus read the newspaper from start to finish. Roser went to the Chilean consulate to see the list posted in the window. Victor Dalmau’s name was on it. The earth opened beneath her feet. They had been waiting for this moment for nine years, but when it finally happened she couldn’t rejoice, because it meant leaving everything they had, including Marcel, to return to the country they had left because they couldn’t bear the repression. She wondered what sense there was in going back if nothing had changed, but talking it over that night with Victor, he argued that if they didn’t do it soon, they never would.

  “We’ve started from nothing several times, Roser. We can do it one more time. I’m sixty-nin
e, and I want to die in Chile.” A line from Neruda came into his mind: How can I live so far from what I loved, from what I love?

  Marcel not only agreed, he offered to go and scout out the terrain, and within a week was in Santiago. He called to tell them that on the surface the country was modern and prosperous, but that one only had to dig down a little to see the damage underneath. The degree of inequality was staggering: three-quarters of the wealth was in the hands of twenty families. The middle class survived on credit; there was poverty for the many and opulence for the few: shantytowns contrasting with glass skyscrapers and mansions behind walls. Well-being and security for some, unemployment and repression for others. The economic miracle of recent years, based on absolute freedom for capital and a lack of basic rights for workers, had burst like a bubble. Marcel told them there was a feeling in the air that things were going to change. People were less afraid, and there were massive protests against the government. He thought the dictatorship would collapse; it was the right moment to return.

  He added that soon after he arrived, he was offered a job at the same copper corporation where he had first worked after graduating. Nobody asked him about his political ideas; the only things that counted were his U.S. doctorate and his professional experience. “I’m going to stay here. I’m Chilean.” This was the clincher, because despite everything they had been through, they too were Chilean. Besides, there was no way they were going to be apart from their son.

  In less than three months, the Dalmaus sold their possessions and said goodbye to their Venezuelan friends and colleagues. Valentin Sanchez suggested that Roser go back in triumph, head held high, as she had never been on a blacklist or in the sights of the security forces as her husband had. She was to return with the entire Ancient Music Orchestra and give a series of free concerts in parks, churches, and high schools. When she wanted to know how all this would be financed, he told her it was a gift from the people of Venezuela to the people of Chile. The Venezuelan budget for culture was generous, and in Chile they wouldn’t dare refuse—that would cause an international scandal.

  The return was harder for Victor than for Roser. He left his post at the Caracas hospital with its economic security for the uncertainty of a place where exiles were regarded with suspicion. Many on the Left blamed them for leaving rather than staying to fight the regime from inside, while the right wing labeled them Marxists and terrorists, claiming there must have been some reason for them to be expelled.

  When he turned up at the San Juan de Dios hospital where he had worked for almost thirty years, he was received with hugs and even tears by nurses and some doctors from before, who remembered him and had escaped the purges of the first years when hundreds of medical personnel with progressive ideas were dismissed, arrested, or killed. The hospital director, a military man, greeted him in person and invited him into his office.

  “I know you saved the life of Commandant Osorio. That was a praiseworthy act for someone in your situation,” he said.

  “You mean as a prisoner in a concentration camp? I’m a doctor, I attend whoever needs me, whatever the circumstances. How is the commandant?”

  “Long since retired, but well.”

  “I worked many years in this hospital and I’d like to return,” said Victor.

  “I understand, but you have to consider your age…”

  “I’m not seventy yet. Until two weeks ago, I was in charge of the cardiology department at the Vargas hospital in Caracas.”

  “Unfortunately, with your record as a political prisoner and an exile, it’s impossible to employ you in any public hospital. Officially, you’re suspended until further notice.”

  “Does that mean I won’t be able to work in Chile?”

  “Believe me, I’m truly sorry. It’s not my decision. I suggest you apply at a private clinic,” the director said by way of farewell, giving him a firm handshake.

  The military government had decided public services should be in private hands. Health was not a right, but a consumer good to be bought and sold. In those years when everything that could be privatized had been, from electricity to airlines, a plethora of private clinics had sprung up, with state-of-the-art buildings and facilities for those who could afford them. After years of absence, Victor’s professional prestige was still high, and he immediately secured a position in Santiago’s most exclusive clinic, at a salary far higher than the one he would have accepted in a public hospital.

  On one of his frequent visits to Chile, Felipe del Solar went to visit Victor. It had been a long time since they had last seen each other, and though they had never been close friends or had a great deal in common, they hugged each other with real affection.

  “I heard you had returned, Victor. I’m really pleased. This country needs good people like you to come back and work.”

  “Are you back in Chile as well?” asked Victor.

  “Nobody needs me here. I live in London: can’t you tell?”

  “Yes, I can. You look like an English lord.”

  “I have to come quite often for family reasons, even though I can’t stand any of them except for Juana Nancucheo, who brought me up. But you can’t choose your family.”

  They sat on a bench in the garden opposite a modern fountain that spouted jets of water like a whale, and caught up with the news from their respective families. Felipe spoke of Ofelia, shut away in the countryside, working on paintings nobody bought. Laura del Solar had senile dementia and was in a wheelchair, while Felipe’s sisters had turned into unbearable snobs.

  “My brothers-in-law have made fortunes in recent years, Victor. My father looked down on them: he said my sisters had married well-dressed idiots. If he could see his sons-in-law now, he’d have to eat his words,” Felipe added.

  “This is a paradise for business and businessmen,” said Victor.

  “There’s nothing wrong with making money if the system and laws permit it. But you, Victor, how are you?”

  “Trying to adapt and understand what’s happened here. Chile is unrecognizable.”

  “You have to admit it’s much better. The military putsch saved the country from Allende’s chaos and a Marxist dictatorship.”

  “And to prevent that imagined left-wing dictatorship, an implacable right-wing one has been imposed, Felipe.”

  “Listen, Victor, keep those views to yourself. They don’t go down well here. You can’t deny we’re much better off, we have a prosperous country.”

  “But at a very high social cost. You live abroad, you know about the atrocities that are never mentioned here.”

  “Don’t start with that refrain about human rights. That’s such a bore, Victor,” Felipe interrupted him. “They are excesses committed by a few stupid military men. Nobody can condemn the governing junta, much less President Pinochet, for those exceptions to the rule. The important thing is that the country is calm and we have an impeccable economy. We were always a country of layabouts, but now people have to work and make an effort. The free market system favors competition and promotes wealth.”

  “This isn’t a free market, because the labor force is repressed, with their most basic human rights suspended. Do you think this system could be implanted in a democracy?”

  “This is an authoritarian, protected democracy.”

  “You’ve changed a lot, Felipe.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I remembered you as more open, iconoclastic, quite cynical and critical. Against everything and everyone, sarcastic and brilliant.”

  “I still am in some respects, Victor. But as you grow older you have to take up a position. I’ve always been a monarchist,” Felipe said with a smile. “At any rate, my friend, be careful with your opinions.”

  “I am careful, Felipe, but not with my friends.”

  * * *

  —

  TO ALLEVIATE THE
EMBARRASSMENT he felt at treating medicine as a commodity, Victor worked as a volunteer in a makeshift consulting room in one of the Santiago shantytowns. They had sprung up with the migration of workers from the countryside and the saltpeter industry half a century earlier, and had since multiplied. About six thousand people lived crammed into the one where Victor worked. There he could assess the repression, the discontent, and the courage of the poorest people. His patients lived in shacks made of cardboard and wooden planks with beaten earth floors, and had no running water, electricity, or latrines. They had to endure summer dust and winter mud surrounded by garbage, packs of stray dogs, rats, and flies. Most of them had no proper work, earning a minimum for survival in desperate jobs such as scavenging in the garbage heaps for plastic, glass, and paper to sell, or doing heavy manual work for the day in anything that came along, trafficking or stealing. The government had plans to eradicate the problem of the shanties, but the solutions kept being delayed, and in the meantime they raised walls to hide this wretched spectacle that made the city look ugly.

  “What’s most impressive are the women,” Victor told Roser. “They’re steadfast, long-suffering, more combative than the men, mothers of their own children as well as the relatives they take in. They put up with the alcoholism, violence, and abandonment of their transient partners. But they don’t give in.”