Исабель Альенде - A Long Petal of the Sea

Isidro del Solar was another one who didn’t appreciate his son’s generosity, which went beyond his charitable impulses and affected the clarity of his ideas. “One of these days he’s going to surprise us with the news that he’s become a communist,” he would sigh. The arguments between father and son were a sight to behold. They ended with slammed doors over matters that had nothing to do with the family, such as the state of the country and of the world—which according to Juana was none of their business. After one of these clashes, Felipe chose to go and live in a house he rented six blocks away. Juana was up in arms because a proper son only leaves the family home when he is married, and not before, but the rest of the family accepted it without a fuss. This didn’t mean, though, that Felipe disappeared completely: he came for lunch every day, expected his meals prepared and his clothes washed and ironed how he liked them. Juana would go to his house and supervise the work done by his two servants—a couple of lazy, dirty Indians in her view. More work for her when all was said and done: it would have been better for him to stay in his bachelor’s bed, she muttered. The feud between Felipe and his father seemed likely to go on forever, until Doña Laura suffered a serious bout of hepatitis that forced them to make up.

Juana could well recall the reason for the split between the two men: it was impossible to forget, because it shook the entire country, and was still talked about on the radio. It had happened in spring the previous year, when there had been a presidential election. There were three candidates: Isidro del Solar’s favorite, a conservative millionaire with the reputation of being a speculator; a man from the Radical Party, an educator, lawyer, and senator, whom Felipe was going to vote for; and a general who in the past had occupied the presidency as a dictator, and was running this time with the support of, among others, the Nazi Party. Nobody in the family liked him. As a boy, Felipe had a collection of lead soldiers from the Prussian Army, but he lost all sympathy for the Germans when Hitler came to power. “Have you seen the Nazis marching through the center of Santiago saluting with an arm raised in the air, Juana? How ridiculous!” Yes, she had seen them, and also knew of somebody called Hitler, because Felipe had told her about him.

“Your father was sure his candidate was going to win.”

“Yes, because here the right wing always wins. The general’s supporters wanted to stop him winning, and tried to carry out a coup. They didn’t succeed.”

“They said on the radio that some youngsters were shot down like dogs.”

“It was a handful of hotheaded Nazis, Juana. They stormed the University of Chile building and another one opposite the presidential palace. The military police and army quickly cornered them. They surrendered with their hands up, and they were unarmed, but they were shot down all the same. The authorities had given orders that none of them was to be left alive.”

“Your father says they deserved it for being such idiots.”

“No one deserves that, Juana. My father ought to be more careful in his opinions. It was a massacre unworthy of Chile. The whole country is furious, and that’s what cost the right wing the election. So Pedro Aguirre Cerda won, as you know, Juana, and now we’ve got a Radical president.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s a man with progressive ideas. According to my father, he’s a man of the Left. Anybody who doesn’t think like my father is of the Left.”

For Juana, left and right meant directions in the street, not people, and the president’s name meant nothing to her. He wasn’t from any well-known family.

“Pedro Aguirre Cerda represents the Popular Front, made up of center and left-wing parties, similar to what they had in Spain and France. Do you remember I explained the Spanish Civil War to you?”

“In other words, the same thing could happen here.”

“I hope not, Juana. If you could vote, you would have voted for Aguirre Cerda. Someday, I promise you, women will be able to vote in elections.”

“And who did you vote for, niño Felipe?”

“For Aguirre Cerda. He was the best candidate.”

“Your father doesn’t like him.”

“But I do, and so do you.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“It’s bad you don’t know, Juana. The Popular Front represents the workers, peasants, the miners in the north, people like you.”

“I’m none of those, and neither are you. I’m a domestic servant.”

“You belong to the working class, Juana.”

“As I see it, you’re my master, so I don’t see why you voted for the working class.”

“What you need is education. The president says that to govern is to educate. Free, compulsory education for all Chilean children. Public health for everyone. Better wages. Making the trade unions stronger. What do you think of all that?”

“It’s all the same to me.”

“Juana! How can it all be the same to you? You really should have gone to school.”

“And you may have a lot of education, niño Felipe, but you can’t even blow your own nose. And while we’re at it, let me tell you you’re not to bring guests into the house without warning. The cook gets angry, and I don’t want any trouble, or having visitors leave here saying we don’t know how to treat them properly. Those pals of yours may have a lot of education as well, but they drink your father’s liquor without asking permission. Just wait till he gets back, and we’ll see what he says when he discovers all that’s missing from the wine cellar.”

—

IT WAS THE SECOND to last Saturday of the month, the day of the informal meeting of the Club of the Enraged, as Juana Nancucheo called the group of Felipe’s pals. Usually they met at Felipe’s place, but since his parents had been away, he received them in the family’s house on Calle Mar del Plata, where the food was excellent. Despite the trouble these people caused her, Juana did her best to get fresh oysters and to serve them the finest stews prepared by the cook, a formidable woman whose temper was as foul as her cooking was superb. Like all young men of their class, Felipe’s friends were members of the Club de la Union, where they discussed personal matters as much as the country’s financial and political affairs; but those big, gloomy rooms with dark wood paneling, chandeliers, and plush armchairs were not exactly suitable for the animated philosophical discussions the Enraged held. Besides, the Club de la Union was for men only, and what would their gatherings be like without the refreshing presence of a few unmarried women: free spirits, artists, writers, and stylish adventuresses, including one amazon with a Croatian surname who traveled alone to places that didn’t figure on any map. The most frequently recurring topic over the past three years had been the situation in Spain, and in recent months the fate of the Republican refugees who, since that January, had been left to rot and die in French concentration camps.

The massive exodus of people from Catalonia toward the border with France had coincided with the worst earthquake ever to hit Chile. Even though Felipe boasted that he was an incurable rationalist, he saw in this coincidence a call for compassion and solidarity. The earthquake left a total of twenty thousand or more dead and whole towns flattened, but the Spanish Civil War, with hundreds of thousands dead, wounded, or refugees, was by comparison a far greater tragedy.

That evening the Salon had a special guest: Pablo Neruda, who at the age of thirty-four was considered the best poet of his generation, which was some feat as in Chile poets flourished like weeds. Some of his Twenty Love Poems had already become part of Chilean folklore, and even those who couldn’t read or write recited them. Neruda was a man from the south, from rain and timber, the son of a railway worker, who recited his verses in a booming voice and described himself as having a hard nose and minimal eyes. A polemical figure because of his fame and left-wing sympathies, especially for the Communist Party, in which he would later become a militant, he had been a consul in Argentina, Burma, Ceylon, Spain, and most recently France, because, according to his political and literary enemies, the successive governments in Chile preferred to keep him as far away as possible. In Madrid, where he had been consul shortly before the war broke out, he had made friends with numerous intellectuals and poets, among them Federico Garcia Lorca—murdered by the Francoists—and Antonio Machado, who died in a town close to the French border during the Retreat. Neruda had published a hymn to the glory of the Republican fighters called “Spain in the Heart,” five hundred numbered copies of which were printed while war was raging by the militiamen of the Eastern Army in Montserrat Abbey. Copies were done on paper made from anything they could lay their hands on, from bloody shirts to an enemy flag. The poem was also published in Chile in an ordinary edition, but Felipe had one of the original copies. And along the streets the blood of the children flowed simply, like the blood of children…Come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets.