Исабель Альенде - A Long Petal of the Sea

Ofelia enjoyed this period of waiting and anticipation by laying out her trousseau in trunks, wrapped with tissue paper and sprigs of lavender, sending tablecloths, sheets, and towels to her aunt Teresa’s convent to be embroidered with her initials and those of Matias intertwined, being invited by her female friends to tea at the Hotel Crillon, repeatedly trying on her wedding dress and going-away outfit, and learning the rudiments of household management from her sisters. She showed a surprising aptitude for this, given her reputation as a lazy, disorganized young woman. There were nine months to go before the wedding, but she was already thinking up ways of lengthening this period of truce. She was afraid of taking the irrevocable step of marrying for the rest of her life, living with Matias in another country where she didn’t know a soul, far from her family and surrounded by Guarani Indians, and of having children and ending up repressed and frustrated like her mother and sisters. And yet the alternative was worse. To stay a spinster meant depending on the generosity of her father and Felipe, and becoming a social pariah. The possibility of working to earn a living was a dream as absurd as that of going to Paris to paint in a Montmartre attic.

She was planning a whole rosary of excuses for postponing the wedding, without ever imagining that heaven would send her the only true one: Victor Dalmau. When she bumped into him two months after becoming engaged and seven before the date fixed for the wedding, she discovered the love she had read about in novels, the kind of love she had never felt for Matias despite all his stubborn faithfulness. At the end of Santiago’s hot, dry summer, when all those who could migrated en masse to the beach or countryside, Victor and Ofelia met in the street. The encounter paralyzed them both, as if they had been caught out; an eternal minute went by before she took the lead and greeted him with a smothered, barely audible “hello” that he took as a sign of encouragement. A whole year believing he was in love with her without the slightest hope, and it turned out she had been thinking of him as well, as was plain from the way she reacted like a nervous foal.

She was prettier than he recalled, with light-colored eyes and tanned skin, a low-cut dress and curls escaping from her schoolgirl’s straw hat. He recovered sufficiently to begin an innocuous conversation, learning that the del Solar family had been spending the three summer months between their country property and their beach house in Viña del Mar; Ofelia had come to Santiago to get her hair cut and visit the dentist. He in turn told her in four sentences about Roser, the boy, the university, and the tavern. They soon ran out of things to say and stood there in silence, sweating in the scorching sun, only too aware that when they separated they would be passing up a wonderful opportunity. As she turned to go, Victor took her by the arm, dragged her into the nearest patch of shade under a pharmacy awning, and begged her breathlessly to spend the evening with him.

“I have to get back to Viña. The chauffeur is waiting for me,” she said, without conviction.

“Tell him to wait. We need to talk.”

“I’m going to get married, Victor.”

“When?”

“What does that matter? You’re married.”

“That’s exactly what we have to talk about. It’s not what you think. Let me explain.”

He took her to a cheap hotel even though he couldn’t afford it, and she returned to Viña del Mar close to midnight, just as her parents were about to inform the police she was missing. Thanks to a generous bribe, the chauffeur told them a tire had burst on the way back.

—

EVER SINCE HER FIFTEENTH birthday, when she had reached her full height and developed feminine curves, Ofelia had attracted men with completely unintentional powers of seduction. She wasn’t even aware of the broken hearts she sowed in her wake, except for the few occasions when the lovelorn youth became a threat and her father had to intervene. She was pampered and protected in her tranquil existence: this was a double-edged sword, because even though on the one hand the risks were reduced, on the other, so much protection prevented her from acquiring any astuteness or intuitive sense. Concealed beneath her flirtatious attitude was an astonishing naïveté.

Over the following years as she came into womanhood, she discovered that her looks opened doors and made almost everything easy for her. This was the first, and sometimes the only, thing that others saw; she didn’t need to make any effort, as her ideas and opinions went unnoticed. In the four hundred years since the days of the rough colonial conquistador who had founded their dynasty, the Vizcarra family refined their genetic heritage with pure European blood (although Felipe del Solar maintained that everyone in Chile, however white they appeared, had some indigenous blood in them, apart from newly arrived immigrants). Ofelia was part of a clan of pretty women, but she was the only one to inherit her English grandmother’s spectacular blue eyes. Laura del Solar was convinced the devil bestows beauty with the sole aim of leading souls to perdition, both the person so endowed and those whom it attracts. As a result, physical attributes were never mentioned in her house: that was in bad taste, pure vanity. Her husband appreciated beauty in other women, but considered it a problem in his own daughters, because he was the guardian of their virtue, especially Ofelia’s.

For her part, Ofelia came to accept the family theory that good looks were contrary to intelligence: one could possess one or the other, but not both together. This would explain the difficulties she had at school, her laziness in pursuing her talent for painting, and her inability to keep to the path of righteousness preached by Father Urbina. Her sensuality, which she was unable to identify, was a torment to her. Urbina’s insistent query as to what she wanted to do with her life went round and round in her head without finding any answer. Her destiny of marriage and having children seemed to her as stifling as entering a convent, and yet she accepted it as inevitable: all she could do was postpone it awhile. And, as everyone constantly told her, she ought to be thankful Matias Eyzaguirre existed: such a good, noble, and handsome young man. She was to be envied.

Matias had been in love with her from childhood. She discovered and explored desire with him as far as her strict Catholic upbringing and his natural chivalry allowed, even though she often tried to push beyond those limits: after all, what was the difference between petting and fondling until they almost fainted while keeping their clothes on, and committing a sin naked? The divine punishment would be the same. In view of her weakness, Matias assumed the responsibility for their abstinence. He respected her in the same way that he demanded others respect his sisters, and was convinced he would never betray the trust deposited in him by the del Solar family. He believed the desires of the flesh could only be satisfied in a union sanctified by the Church in order to have children. He would not have admitted even in the deepest reaches of his heart that the main reason for abstinence was not to avoid a sin, but the fear of pregnancy. Ofelia never talked of this with her mother or sisters, but was convinced this kind of transgression, however slight, could only be erased through matrimony. The sacrament of confession absolves the sin, but society does not pardon or forget; the reputation of a decent young woman is made of white silk, and any stain ruins it, as the nuns insisted. Who knew how many stains she had accumulated with Matias.

That hot evening Ofelia went to the hotel with Victor Dalmau, she was well aware this would be very different from the exhausting skirmishes with Matias that left her puzzled and angry. She was amazed at the decisive way she agreed in an instant and the lack of inhibition with which she took the initiative once alone in the room with Victor. She found she possessed knowledge she had had no possibility of acquiring, and a lack of shame that normally comes from long experience. With the nuns she had learned how to undress gradually: first she put on a long-sleeved nightdress that covered her from head to toe, then fumbled to remove her clothes beneath it—but that evening with Dalmau her modesty simply evaporated. She let her dress, petticoat, and all her undergarments fall to the floor and stepped out of them naked and Olympian, with a mixture of curiosity about what was going to happen and continuing irritation at Matias for being so sanctimonious. Serves him right that I’m unfaithful, she decided enthusiastically.