Исабель Альенде - A Long Petal of the Sea

Ofelia managed to send Victor Dalmau a letter via the family chauffeur, before he was spectacularly sacked and she was sent off as a prisoner to the countryside. Juana, who detested the chauffeur, accused him without proof that she had seen him whispering with Ofelia. “I did tell you, patron, but you won’t listen. That oaf is the reason. It’s his fault niña Ofelia is pregnant.” The blood rushed to Isidro del Solar’s head so swiftly he thought his brain would explode. It was only natural that the boys in the family took advantage of the maids occasionally, but he couldn’t imagine his daughter doing the same with his pockmarked servant. He had a fleeting vision of his naked daughter in the arms of the chauffeur, that lowborn son of a bitch, in the room above the garage, and he almost passed out. He was enormously relieved when Juana explained that he was merely the go-between. Isidro summoned him to the library and shouted questions to get him to reveal the name of the man to blame; he threatened to have him arrested so that the police could beat and kick the truth out of him; when that had no effect, he tried to buy him off, but the man couldn’t tell him anything, because he had never seen Victor. All he could tell him were the times he’d left and picked up Ofelia from the art school. Isidro realized that his daughter had never been to her classes; she had always gone from the school on foot or in a taxi to her lover’s arms. The blasted girl was less stupid than he had imagined, or lust had made her cunning.

Ofelia’s letter contained the explanation she should have given Victor personally, but in the rare moments when she was able to call him, he didn’t answer at either his house or the Winnipeg. At their country estate she would be cut off from the outside world: the closest telephone was fifteen kilometers away. She wrote him the truth: that her passion had been like a drunken spree that had clouded her reason; that she now understood what he had always maintained—the obstacles keeping them apart were insurmountable. She admitted in a business-like fashion that in reality what she had felt was a loss of control of her feelings, rather than love; she had been swept away by the novelty of it, but couldn’t sacrifice her reputation and her life for him. She told him she would be going away on a trip with her mother for some time, and after that, when her mind had cleared, she would consider the possibility of going back to Matias. She ended the letter with a categorical farewell, and warned him not to try to communicate with her ever again.

Victor received Ofelia’s letter with the resignation of someone expecting it, and prepared for it. He had never believed their love would prosper, because as Roser indicated from the start, it was a plant without roots that was bound to wither. Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish. Victor read the letter twice and handed it to Roser. “You were right, as ever,” he told her.

Roser had only to glance at it rapidly to read between the lines and grasp that Ofelia’s deathly cold tone only barely concealed an immense anger. She thought she understood the reason, which was not merely the lack of a future with Victor or a capricious young woman’s reaction. She guessed Ofelia had been kidnapped by her family to hide the shame of a pregnancy, but decided not to share her suspicion with Victor, because it seemed too cruel. What need was there to torment him with yet more doubts? She saw Ofelia as very vulnerable and naïve, and felt a mixture of sympathy and pity for her; she was a Juliet swept up in the whirlwind of an adolescent passion, but instead of a youthful Romeo, she had become involved with a battle-hardened man.

She left the letter on the kitchen table, took Victor by the hand, and led him to the couch, the one piece of comfortable furniture in their modest house. “Lie down, I’ll scratch your head.” As Victor lay on the couch with his head in Roser’s lap and surrendered to the gentle touch of her pianist’s fingers in his hair, he felt certain that as long as she existed, he wouldn’t be alone in this world of misfortune. If with Roser the worst memories were bearable, so too would be the hole Ofelia had left in the center of his chest. He would have liked to unburden himself of the pain choking him, but he didn’t have the words to describe what he had experienced with her, or how at a certain point she had wanted them to run away together, how she had sworn they would always be lovers. He couldn’t tell her, but Roser knew him only too well and, doubtless, was already aware of it. They were interrupted when Marcel woke from his siesta and screamed for them.

Roser’s intuition had not failed her regarding Ofelia’s emotions. As the days went by after her condition became known to her family, her passion was gradually transformed into a smoldering anger raging inside her. She spent hours analyzing her behavior and examining her conscience as Father Urbina demanded, but instead of repenting for her alleged sin, it was her obvious stupidity she repented of. It had never occurred to her to ask Victor what they should do to avoid a pregnancy, because she assumed he had it under control and that, anyway, they met so infrequently it wouldn’t happen. Magical thinking. Since he was older and more experienced, Victor was to blame for this unforgivable accident; and yet as the victim, she had to pay for both of them. That was a monumental injustice.

She could scarcely recall why she had clung so tightly to that hopeless love for a man with whom she had so little in common. After being in bed with him, always in some sordid room, rushed and uncomfortable, she was as frustrated as with Matias’s clumsy fumbling. She supposed it would have been different if they had been more trusting and had more time to get to know each other, but she didn’t have that with Victor. She had fallen in love with the idea of love, romance, and the heroic past of her warrior, as she would often call him. She had lived an opera whose outcome had to be tragic. She knew Victor was in love with her—at least, as much in love as a heart full of scars can be, but on her side it was nothing more than an impulse, a fantasy, another of her whims. She felt so nervous, trapped, and ill that the details of her adventure with Victor, even the happiest ones, were distorted by her terror that she had ruined her life. For him it had been pleasure with no risk; for her there was risk with little pleasure. And now finally she was suffering the consequences, while he could carry on with his life as if nothing had happened.

She hated him. She hid from him the fact that she was pregnant, fearing that if he knew it, Victor would claim his position as father and refuse to leave her in peace. She was the one who had to make all the decisions concerning her pregnancy; no one else had any right to give their opinion, least of all that man who had already caused her enough harm. None of this was in the letter, but Roser sensed it.

At the end of three months, Ofelia was no longer sick, and was filled with an upsurge of energy she had never before experienced. By sending her letter to Victor she had closed that chapter, and within a few weeks no longer tormented herself with memories or speculation over what might have been. She felt liberated from her lover, strong, healthy, with the appetite of an adolescent. She strode out for long walks in the countryside followed by her dogs; went into the kitchen to bake an endless supply of biscuits and buns to be handed out to the children on the estate; and enjoyed herself painting daubs with Leonardo, huge colored splotches that seemed to her more interesting than the landscapes and still lifes she had painted in the past; to the laundry maid’s consternation, she took to doing the ironing, and spent hours surrounded by heavy flat irons, perspiring and happy. “Let her be, she’ll soon get over it,” Juana predicted. Doña Laura was shocked by Ofelia’s sunny disposition: she was expecting to see her bathed in tears as she knitted baby clothes, but Juana reminded her that she herself had experienced several months of euphoria during her pregnancies before the weight of her belly became unbearable.