Исабель Альенде - A Long Petal of the Sea

CHAPTER 8

1941–1942

Take note:

If little by little you stop loving me,

I’ll stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly you forget me

Don’t come looking for me,

I’ll already have forgotten you.

—PABLO NERUDA

“If you forget me”

THE CAPTAIN’S VERSES

WHEN OFELIA WAS CONFINED TO the house on Calle Mar del Plata, her amorous encounters with Victor in the hotel became increasingly sporadic and brief. In this new life where he could not see Ofelia so often, Victor Dalmau found he occasionally had time to accept Salvador Allende’s invitation to play chess. The young woman was imprinted on his soul, but he no longer suffered from the permanent anxiety to escape to her clandestine embrace, and didn’t need to spend all hours of the night studying to make up for the hours with her. At medical school, he skipped the classes in theory where no one took attendance, because he could study that material on his own from books and notes. He concentrated on the lab work, autopsies, and hospital practice, where he had to conceal his knowledge so as not to humiliate his professors. He never missed his hours at the tavern, using the slack periods to study, and meanwhile keeping an eye on Marcel in his pen.

Jordi Moline, the Catalan shoemaker, turned out to be the ideal business partner, always happy with the Winnipeg’s modest earnings and pleased to have somewhere of his own to go that was more welcoming than his widower’s home. He talked with his friends, drank a mixture of Nescafé and brandy, enjoyed dishes from his home country, and played tunes on the accordion. Victor had offered to teach him chess, but Moline could never see the point of moving pieces here and there on a board without any money being at stake. On those nights when he saw how tired Victor was, Jordi sent him off to sleep and was delighted to replace him, although he only served customers wine, beer, and brandy. He knew nothing about cocktails, regarding them as a fashion brought in by queers. His respect for Roser was matched by his affection for Marcel. He could spend hours crouched behind the counter playing with him; the little boy had become the grandson he never had.

When one day Roser asked him if he still had any family in Catalonia, he told her he had left his village to seek fame and fortune more than thirty years earlier. He had been a seaman in Southeast Asia, a lumberjack in Oregon, a train driver and builder in Argentina; in short, he had many trades before coming to Chile and becoming well off thanks to his shoe factory.

“Let’s just say that, in principle, I still have family over there, but God knows what has happened to them. In the war they were divided: some of them were Republican, others supported Franco; there were communist militiamen on one side, and priests and nuns on the other.”

“Are you in contact with any of them?”

“Yes, with a couple of relatives. In fact, I have a cousin who was in hiding until the end of the war and is now the town mayor. He’s a Fascist, but he’s a good man.”

“One of these days I’m going to ask you a favor…”

“Ask away, Roser.”

“The thing is, during the Retreat my mother-in-law, Victor’s mother, went missing, and we don’t know what happened to her. We looked for her in the French concentration camps, we’ve made inquiries on both sides of the border, but have heard nothing.”

“That happened to lots of people. So many dead, so many exiled or displaced, so many living clandestinely! The prisons are full to overflowing: every night they choose prisoners at random and take them out and shoot them on the spot, without a trial or anything. That’s Franco’s justice for you. I don’t want to be pessimistic, Roser, but your mother-in-law could have died…”

“I know. Carme preferred death to exile. She was separated from us during the Retreat to France. She disappeared one night without saying goodbye or leaving any trace. If you have any contacts in Catalonia, maybe they could ask around after her.”

“Give me her details and I’ll make sure to do it. But I don’t hold out much hope, Roser. War is a hurricane that destroys a lot in its path.”

“Tell me about it, Don Jordi.”

Carme Dalmau wasn’t the only person Roser was looking for. One of her occasional but regular recitals was at the Venezuelan embassy, a mansion buried among the trees of a leafy garden, where a single peacock strutted. The ambassador, Valentin Sanchez, was a sybarite who loved good food, fine liquor, and above all, music. He came from a line of musicians, poets, and dreamers. He had made several journeys to Europe to rescue forgotten musical scores, and in his music room had an extraordinary collection of instruments, from a harpsichord said to have belonged to Mozart to his most precious treasure: a prehistoric flute that, according to its owner, was carved from a mammoth’s tooth. Roser said nothing about her doubts concerning the authenticity of the harpsichord or the flute, but was grateful for the books Valentin Sanchez lent her on art history and music, as well as the honor of being the only person he allowed to play some of the instruments in his collection.

On one of those nights she stayed behind with her host after all the guests had left, sharing a drink and talking of the extravagant project that had occurred to her, inspired by the ambassador’s collection: to create an orchestra of ancient instruments in Chile. It was an idea that both of them were passionate about: she wanted to conduct the orchestra, and he wanted to be its patron. Before saying good night, Roser plucked up her courage and asked if he could help her find somebody she had lost in exile. “His name is Aitor Ibarra, and he went to Venezuela because he had relatives there in the construction industry,” she told him.

Two months later, a secretary called her from the embassy with details of Iñaki Ibarra and Sons, a building supplies firm in Maracaibo. Roser wrote several letters, convinced she was throwing a bottle into the sea. She never received any reply.

—

THE PRETEXT OF OFELIA’S ill health that her family used for several months to explain the postponement of her marriage to Matias Eyzaguirre worked perfectly at the start of the following year, when Juana Nancucheo realized the girl was pregnant. First came the morning sickness, which Juana treated unsuccessfully with infusions of fennel, ginger, and cumin; soon afterward, she calculated that nine weeks had gone by without her seeing any sanitary towels in the laundry. One day when she saw Ofelia throwing up in the bathroom, she confronted her, arms akimbo. “Either you’re going to tell me who you’ve been with, or else you will have to tell your father,” she challenged her. Ofelia was almost completely ignorant about her own body; until the moment Juana asked her who she had been with, she hadn’t linked Victor Dalmau to the cause of her sickness. She had thought it was a stomach virus. She now understood what was happening to her, and the sense of panic left her speechless.

“Who is the fellow?” Juana insisted.

“I’d rather die than tell you,” Ofelia replied, once she could speak again. That was to be her only answer for the next fifty years.

Juana took matters into her own hands, believing that prayers and homemade remedies could solve the problem without arousing the family’s suspicions. She offered a bunch of aromatic candles to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, gave Ofelia rue tea, and pushed parsley stalks into her vagina. She gave her the rue knowing it was poisonous, but thought a perforated stomach was less serious than a huacho, a bastard. After a week this only brought an increase in the vomiting and an insurmountable tiredness; then Juana decided to turn to Felipe, the person she had always trusted. First she made him promise he wouldn’t tell a soul, but when she explained to him what was happening, Felipe convinced her it was too great a secret for the two of them to bear on their own.