Daughter of Fortune Page 4

  “I am Eliza Sommers. Do you remember me?” the child murmured.

  Knowing that Miss Rose was in Santiago posing for her portrait and that Jeremy Sommers had scarcely been home because his warehouse was flooded, Eliza had seized the moment and nagged Mama Fresia to take her to the procession until the woman finally gave in. Her patrones had forbidden her to mention any Catholic or Indian rituals in front of the girl, much less expose her to them, but she herself was dying to see the Cristo de Mayo at least once in her life. The Sommers would never find out, she concluded. So the two stole out of the house, walked down the hill, and climbed onto a cart that took them close to the plaza, where they joined a column of Indian penitents. Everything would have worked out fine if in the tumult and fervor of the day Eliza had not let loose of Mama Fresia’s hand, Mama Fresia being so caught up in the collective hysteria that she failed to notice. Eliza shouted to her, but her voice was lost in the clamor of the prayers and the mournful drums of the brotherhoods. She began running around, calling for her nana, but all the women looked the same beneath their dark mantles, and she kept slipping on cobbles slick with mud, candle wax, and blood. Eventually the many columns blended together into a single mass that dragged along like a wounded animal as bells pealed madly and the horns of the ships in the port blared. Eliza had no way of knowing how long she was paralyzed with terror until gradually she began to think clearly. In the meantime, the procession itself had grown quiet, everyone was kneeling, and on a platform in front of the church the bishop, in person, was celebrating mass. Eliza thought of just starting off toward Cerro Alegre, but she was afraid that she would be overtaken by darkness before she found her house; she had never been out alone and did not know which way to go. She decided not to move until the crowd thinned out; maybe then Mama Fresia would find her. That was when she spied the tall red-haired man clinging to the monument in the plaza and recognized the sick man she had helped her nana take care of. Without a moment’s hesitation, she made a beeline straight for him.

  “What are you doing here! Are you hurt?” he exclaimed.

  “I’m lost. Can you take me to my house?”

  Jacob Todd wiped Eliza’s face with his handkerchief and checked her over quickly, satisfying himself that there was no visible harm. He concluded that the blood must have come from one of the flagellants.

  “I will take you to Mr. Sommers’ office.”

  She begged him not to do that, because if her guardian found out she had come to see the procession he would send Mama Fresia away. Todd set out to find a carriage for hire, not an easy task at that moment, while the girl trotted along, saying nothing but also not letting go of his hand. For the first time in his life, the Englishman felt a quiver of tenderness as he felt that tiny warm hand grasping his. Occasionally he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, moved by the childish face with its almond-shaped black eyes. Finally they came upon a small cart pulled by two mules and the driver agreed to carry them up the hill for double the usual fare. They made the journey in silence, and an hour later Todd dropped Eliza in front of her house. She thanked him as she said good-bye but did not invite him in. He watched her walk away, small and unbearably fragile, covered from head to toe in her black mantle. Suddenly she turned, ran back to him, threw her arms around his neck, and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you,” she said again. Jacob Todd returned to his hotel in the same cart. Occasionally he touched his cheek, surprised by the sweet yet sad feelings the child had aroused in him.

  The processions had the effect of heightening collective repentance, but also, as Jacob Todd himself had witnessed, of ending the rains, justifying once again the splendid reputation of the Cristo de Mayo. In less than forty-eight hours the skies cleared and a timid sun peeked out, playing an optimistic note in the concert of current catastrophes. Owing to the storms and epidemics, nine whole weeks passed before the Wednesday gatherings in the Sommers’ home were resumed, and several more before Jacob Todd dared hint to Miss Rose of his romantic feelings. When finally he did so, she pretended not to hear him, but when he persisted she came out with a crushing response.

  “The only good thing about marriage is becoming a widow,” she said.

  “A husband, no matter how stupid, always makes a woman look good,” he replied without losing his good humor.

  “Not me. A husband would be an impediment, and he could not give me anything I do not already have.”

  “What about children?”

  “But how old do you think I am, Mr. Todd?”

  “No more than seventeen!”

  “Do not tease me. It is my good fortune that I have Eliza.”

  “I am stubborn, Miss Rose, I will never give up.”

  “I am grateful to you, Mr. Todd. However, it isn’t a husband who makes a woman look good, but many suitors.”

  In any case, Rose was the reason why Jacob Todd remained in Chile much longer than the three months designated for selling his Bibles. The Sommers were the perfect social contact; thanks to them, the doors of the prosperous foreign colony were thrown wide open to him, and all the English were ready to help him in his proposed religious mission in Tierra del Fuego. He set himself the task of learning something about the Patagonian Indians, but after a few halfhearted sweeps through some heavy tomes in the library, he understood that it made little matter what he knew or didn’t know, since ignorance on the subject was universal. All he had to do was say what people wanted to hear, and for that he could rely on his golden tongue. To unload his Bibles among Chilean clients, however, he would have to improve his rudimentary Spanish. With the two months he had lived in Spain, and his good ear, he learned more quickly, certainly, and also more comprehensively than many of the British who had come to the country twenty years before him. At first, he concealed his too liberal political ideas, but soon he noticed that in every social gathering he was besieged with questions and always surrounded by a group of astonished listeners. His abolitionist, egalitarian, and democratic discourses shook those good people from their fog; they were the source of endless discussion among the men and horrified exclamations among the mature ladies, though inevitably they attracted the younger ones. He was catalogued in general opinion as a kind of harmless lunatic, and his incendiary ideas were considered entertaining; on the other hand, his mockery of the British royal family was badly received among members of the English colony for whom Queen Victoria, like God and Empire, was untouchable. His income—modest, though not to be sneezed at—allowed him to live with a certain ease without ever really having to work for a living, and that classified him as a gentleman. As soon as it was established that he was unattached there was no shortage of marriageable girls intent on capturing him, but after he met Rose Sommers he had no eyes for other women. He asked himself a thousand times why she had never married and all that occurred to that rationalist agnostic was that heaven intended her for him.

  “How long are you going to go on tormenting me, Miss Rose? Aren’t you afraid I may get tired of chasing you?” he teased her.

  “You won’t tire, Mr. Todd. Pursuing the cat is much more entertaining than catching it,” she replied.

  The bogus missionary’s eloquence was a novelty in those surroundings, and as soon as it was learned that he had conscientiously studied Holy Scripture, he was invited to speak. There was a small Anglican church, frowned upon by the Catholic powers-that-be, but the Protestant community also met in private homes. “Whoever heard of a church without virgins and devils? Those English folks are all heretics; they don’t believe in the Pope, they don’t know how to pray, they spend most of their time singing, and they don’t even take communion,” a scandalized Mama Fresia would grumble when it was the Sommers’ turn to hold Sunday service in their home. Todd planned to read briefly about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and then refer to the situation of immigrants who, like the biblical Jews, had to adapt to a strange land, but Jeremy Sommers introduced him to the congregation as a missionary and asked him to speak about the
Indians in Tierra del Fuego. Jacob Todd could not have found Tierra del Fuego on the map, or told why it had the intriguing name Land of Fire, but he succeeded in moving his audience to tears with the story of three savages captured by a British captain and taken to England. In less than three years those unfortunate individuals, who lived naked in glacial cold and from time to time practiced cannibalism, he said, went about properly dressed, had become good Christians and learned civilized customs, including a tolerance for English food. He failed to mention, however, that as soon as they were repatriated they had returned to their old ways, as if they had never been touched by England or the word of Jesus. At Jeremy Sommers’ suggestion, a collection was taken up right there for Todd’s plan to spread the faith, with such fine results that the following day Jacob Todd opened an account in the Valparaíso branch of the Bank of London. The account was nourished weekly with contributions from the Protestants and grew despite the frequent drafts Todd drew to finance personal expenses when his income did not stretch to cover them. The more money that came in, the more the obstacles and pretexts for postponing the evangelical mission multiplied. And in that manner two years went by.

  Jacob Todd came to feel as comfortable in Valparaíso as if he had been born there. Chileans and English shared a number of character traits: they resolved everything with solicitors and barristers; they had an absurd fondness for tradition, patriotic symbols, and routine; they prided themselves on being individualists and enemies of ostentation, which they scorned as a sin of social climbing; they seemed amiable and self-controlled but were capable of great cruelty. However, unlike the English, Chileans were horrified by eccentricity and feared nothing so much as ridicule. If only I spoke Spanish well, thought Jacob Todd, I would feel entirely at home. He had moved into the boarding-house of an English widow woman who took in stray cats and baked the most famous pastries in the port. He slept with four felines on his bed, better company than he had ever had, and breakfasted daily on his hostess’s tempting tarts. He connected with Chileans of every class, from the most humble, whom he met in his wanderings through the poor neighborhoods of the port, to the high-and-mightiest. Jeremy Sommers introduced him into the Club de la Unión, where he was accepted as an invited member. Only foreigners of recognized social status could boast of such privilege, since the club was an enclave of landowners and political conservatives whose members’ worth was determined by family name. Doors opened to him because of his skill with cards and dice; he lost with such grace that very few realized how much he won. It was there that he became a friend of Agustín del Valle, the owner of agricultural holdings in that area and flocks of sheep in the south, where del Valle had never thought of going since that was precisely why he had imported stewards from Scotland. That new friendship gave Todd occasion to visit the austere mansions of aristocratic Chilean families, dark, square edifices with huge, nearly empty rooms decorated with little refinement: heavy furniture, funereal candelabra, and a court of bloody, crucified Christs, plaster virgins, and saints dressed in the mode of ancient Spanish noblemen. These were houses that turned inward, closed to the street by tall iron railings, graceless and uncomfortable but relieved by cool colonnades and interior patios filled with jasmine, orange trees, and roses.

  With the first signs of spring, Agustín del Valle invited the Sommers and Jacob Todd to one of his country estates. The road was a nightmare: a lone horseman could make it in four or five hours, but the caravan of family and guests started at dawn and did not arrive until late at night. The del Valles traveled in oxcarts laden with tables and plush sofas. Behind them came a mule team with the luggage, along with peasants on horseback armed with primitive blunderbusses to defend against the highwaymen who all too often awaited around the curve of the hill. Added to the maddening pace of the animals were the washed-out track where carts sank to their axles and the frequent rest stops during which the servants served refreshments amid clouds of flies. Todd knew nothing about agriculture, but he needed only a look to realize how abundantly things grew in that fertile soil: fruit fell from the trees and rotted on the ground because no one made the effort to gather it. At the hacienda he encountered the same style of life he had observed years before in Spain: a large family united by intricate bloodlines and an inflexible code of honor. His host was a powerful and feudal patriarch who held the destinies of his descendants in his iron fist and made much of a family tree he could trace back to the first Spanish conquistadors. My ancestors, he would say, walked more than a thousand kilometers weighed down in heavy iron armor; they crossed mountains, rivers, and the world’s most arid desert to found the city of Santiago. Among his peers del Valle was a symbol of authority and decency, but outside his class he was known as a rake. He had untold bastards and a reputation for having killed more than one of his tenants in a legendary fit of temper, but those deaths, along with many other sins, were never mentioned. His wife was in her forties but she looked like an old woman, tremulous and hangdog, always dressed in mourning for the children who died in infancy and squeezed breathless by the pressure of her corset, her religion, and the husband fate had dealt her. Male offspring idled away the days in masses, outings, siestas, gambling, and carousing, while the girls floated like mysterious nymphs through the house and gardens in whispering petticoats, always beneath the vigilant eye of their chaperones. They had been trained since early childhood for a life of virtue, faith, and abnegation; their fate was a marriage of convenience and motherhood.

  In the country, the party attended a bullfight that did not even remotely resemble the brilliant Spanish spectacle of courage and death: no suit of lights, no fanfare, no passion or glory, only a handful of reckless drunks tormenting an animal with spears and insults, then tossed into the dust to the tune of curses and guffaws. The most dangerous part of the fight was getting the enraged and ill-treated, but still unharmed, beast from the ring. Todd was grateful that they spared it the ultimate indignity of public execution, for in his good English heart he would rather have seen the bullfighter die than the bull. In the afternoons the men played ombre and rocambor, waited on like princes by a true army of humble, dark-skinned servants who never lifted their eyes from the ground or their voices above a murmur. They weren’t slaves but may as well have been. They worked in exchange for protection, a roof over their heads, and a portion of the harvest; in theory they were free but they stayed with the patron, however despotic he might be or however harsh their conditions, since they had nowhere else to go. Slavery had been quietly abolished ten years before. The African slave trade had never been profitable in these lands because there were no large plantations—although no one mentioned the fate of the Indians who had been deprived of their lands and reduced to penury, or the tenants in the fields who were sold or inherited with the property, like the animals. Neither was there any reference to the shiploads of Chinese and Polynesian slaves destined for the guano deposits of the Chincha Islands. As long as they didn’t leave the ship there was no problem: the law prohibited slavery on dry land but said nothing about the sea. While the men played cards, Miss Rose grew discreetly bored in the company of Señora del Valle and her many daughters. Eliza, in contrast, raced through the open fields with Paulina, the one daughter of Agustín del Valle who had escaped the languid pattern of the women of that family. She was several years older than Eliza, but that day she romped and played as if they were the same age, faces bare to the sun, their hair blowing loose in the wind as they whipped their horses on.