Исабель Альенде - A Long Petal of the Sea

“I had no difficulty finding her once I remembered the name of your friend the nurse. Roser was here, in this same camp, but she got out thanks to Elisabeth Eidenbenz. She’s living in Perpignan with a family who took her in, working as a seamstress and giving piano lessons. She had a healthy baby boy, who’s a month old already and is a fine-looking fellow.”

Aitor had got by as ever, buying and selling. During the war he got hold of the most saleable items, from cigarettes and sugar to shoes and morphine, and bartered them for other things in an exchange that was laborious but always left him with a profit. He also picked up real treasures, similar to the German pistol and the American penknife that had impressed Roser so much. He would never have relinquished them, and was still angry when he remembered how they were taken from him. Eventually he had managed to get in touch with some distant cousins who had emigrated to Venezuela several years earlier, and they were going to sponsor him and find him work in that country. Thanks to his innate talent he had already saved enough money for the passage and visa.

“I’m leaving in a week, Victor. We have to get out of Europe as quickly as possible: another war is on the horizon, and it will be far worse than the last one. As soon as I get to Venezuela I’ll sort out the paperwork so that you can emigrate, and I’ll send you the boat ticket.”

“I can’t leave Roser and her child.”

“For them as well, of course.”

Aitor’s visit left Victor speechless for several days. He was convinced he was trapped yet again, stuck in limbo, unable to control his fate. After hours walking on the beach, weighing up his responsibility to the sick in the camp, he decided that the moment had come to give priority to his responsibility toward Roser, her child, and his own destiny. On April 1, Franco, as Caudillo of Spain (a title he had bestowed on himself in December 1936), had declared an end to the war that had lasted nine hundred and eighty-four days. France and Great Britain had recognized his government. Victor’s homeland was lost; there was no hope of returning.

He bathed in the sea, rubbing himself clean with sand because he had no soap, had his hair cut by a comrade, shaved carefully, and asked for a pass to go and fetch the medical supplies provided by a local hospital, something he did every week. At first a guard had always accompanied him, but after several months of coming and going he was allowed to go alone. He left the camp without a problem, and simply didn’t return. Aitor had given him some money, which he spent on his first decent meal since January, a gray suit, two shirts, and a hat, all of them secondhand but in good condition, as well as a pair of new shoes. As his mother used to say: good shoes, warm welcome. A truck driver gave him a lift, and so he reached Perpignan and the Red Cross office, where he asked for his friend the nurse.

—

ELISABETH EIDENBENZ RECEIVED VICTOR in her makeshift maternity home with a baby on each arm. She was so busy she didn’t even remember the romance that had never happened between them. Victor had not forgotten it, though. Seeing her calm, clear-eyed, and in her spotless uniform, he concluded she was perfect and that he must have been an idiot ever to think she would notice him: Elisabeth had the soul of a missionary, not a lover. When she finally recognized him, she handed the children to another woman and embraced him with genuine affection.

“How changed you are, Victor! You must have suffered a lot, my friend.”

“Less than others. I’ve been lucky, all things considered. You, on the other hand, look as well as you always did.”

“You think so?”

“How do you manage to stay looking so impeccable, so tranquil, and keeping a smile on your face? You were like that when I met you in the midst of battle, and you’re still the same, as if the evil times we’re living through didn’t affect you at all.”

“These evil times force me to be strong and to work hard, Victor. You came to see me about Roser, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done for her, Elisabeth.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for. We’re going to have to wait until eight o’clock, though; that’s when she finishes her last piano class. She doesn’t live here. She’s with some Quaker friends.”

While they were waiting, Elisabeth introduced him to the mothers living in the house, and then they sat to have tea and biscuits while they talked about everything that had happened to them since they last saw each other at Teruel. At eight, Elisabeth drove him in her car, paying more attention to their conversation than to the road. Victor thought how ironic it would be to have survived the war and the concentration camp only to die squashed like a cockroach in his improbable girlfriend’s vehicle.

The Quakers’ house was twenty minutes away; Roser herself opened the door to them. When she saw Victor she gave a loud cry and buried her face in her hands, as though having a hallucination; he folded her in his arms. He remembered her as being skinny, with narrow hips and a flat chest, thick eyebrows and strong features: the kind of woman who has no false pride about her looks, and who, with age, would become lean or masculine. The last time he had seen her was in December, with a bulging belly and a face covered in acne. Becoming a mother had softened her, giving her curves where before she had only angles. She was breastfeeding her baby, and had large breasts, clear skin, and lustrous hair.

Their meeting was so charged with emotion that even Elisabeth, who was more than accustomed to heartrending scenes, was moved. Victor’s nephew was plump and bald: all babies that age looked like Winston Churchill to him. A closer look, though, showed he had some familiar traits, including the deep black eyes of the Dalmaus.

“What’s his name?” he asked Roser.

“For now we call him ‘little one.’ I’m waiting for Guillem to appear so we can name him at the Registry Office.”

This was the moment to give her the bad news, but yet again Victor’s courage failed him.

“Why not call him Guillem?”

“Because Guillem warned me that none of his children were to be called that. He didn’t like his name. We agreed that if it was a boy he’d be Marcel, and if it was a girl, Carme, in honor of your mother and father.”

“Well, there you are then.”

“I’m going to wait for Guillem.”

The Quaker family, consisting of the father, mother, and two children, invited Victor and Elisabeth for dinner. Despite being English, they served an edible meal. They spoke Spanish well since they had spent the war years in Spain helping children’s organizations and, since the Retreat, had been working with refugees. That is what they would always do, they said: as Elisabeth had insisted, there’s always a war somewhere.

“We’re truly grateful to you,” Victor told them. “It’s thanks to you the child is alive. He would never have survived in the Argeles-sur-Mer camp. And I don’t think Roser would have either. We hope not to have to abuse your hospitality for very long.”

“There’s nothing to thank us for. Roser and the boy are already part of the family. What’s the rush to leave?”

Victor explained about his friend Aitor Ibarra and the plan to emigrate to Venezuela once he had succeeded in helping them. It seemed to be the only viable solution.

“If you want to emigrate, maybe you could consider going to Chile,” suggested Elisabeth. “I saw an item in the newspaper about a boat taking Spaniards to Chile.”

“Chile? Where’s that?” Roser wanted to know.

“At the far end of the earth, I think,” said Victor.

The next day, Elisabeth found the article and sent it to Victor. On the Chilean government’s instructions, the poet Pablo Neruda was fitting out a boat called the Winnipeg to transport Spanish exiles to his country. Elisabeth gave Victor money to take the train to Paris and try his luck with the poet, whose work he didn’t know.