Исабель Альенде - A Long Petal of the Sea

“What’s most impressive are the women,” Victor told Roser. “They’re steadfast, long-suffering, more combative than the men, mothers of their own children as well as the relatives they take in. They put up with the alcoholism, violence, and abandonment of their transient partners. But they don’t give in.”

“Do they at least get some help?”

“Yes, from churches, especially the evangelical ones, from charities, and volunteers. But it’s the children I’m worried about, Roser. They grow up out of control, often go to bed hungry, attend school when they can, not always, and reach adolescence with no more prospects than gangs, drugs, or the street.”

“I know you, Victor. I know you’re happier there than anywhere else,” was Roser’s reply.

It was true. By the third day of serving in this community together with a couple of nurses and other idealistic doctors who worked shifts, Victor rediscovered his youthful enthusiastic flame. He would return home weary as a dog, heavyhearted and with many tragic stories, yet impatient to return to the consulting room the next day. His life had a meaning as clear as during the Civil War, when his role in this world had been beyond question.

“If you could only see how they organize themselves, Roser. Those who are able contribute something to the common pot cooked in giant cauldrons on braziers in the open air. The idea is to give everyone a hot meal, although sometimes there’s not enough to go around.”

“Now I know where your salary goes.”

“It’s not just food that’s needed, Roser. We also need everything in the consulting room.”

He explained that the shantytown dwellers kept order themselves to avoid raids by the police, who usually came in heavily armed. Their impossible dream was to have their own houses and plots of land to live on. In the past they had simply taken over land and stubbornly resisted being thrown off. These “takeovers” began with a few people arriving surreptitiously. Then more and more would appear, in a stealthy, uncontainable procession that advanced with their few possessions on carts and wheelbarrows, in sacks slung over their shoulders, and what little material they had for a roof, pieces of cardboard, blankets, carrying their children and followed by their dogs. By the time the authorities came to see what was going on, there were thousands of people installed, ready to defend themselves. But in the current climate, that sort of thing would have been rash to the point of suicide: the forces of law and order could come in with tanks and open fire without a second thought.

“Just suggesting a protest is all it takes for someone to disappear. If they’re seen again, it’s as a dead body that appears in the entrance to the shanty as a warning to the others. That was where they dumped the maimed body of the singer Victor Jara, with more than forty bullet wounds. Or so I’ve been told.”

In the consulting room they dealt with emergencies, cases of burns, broken bones, wounds from knife or bottle fights, domestic violence. None of this was any great challenge to Victor, but simply by being there he gave the shanty dwellers a sense of security. He dispatched the most serious cases to the nearest hospital and since there was no ambulance, often took them there himself in his car. He had been warned about robberies, and was told it was unwise to arrive there in a vehicle, because it could be dismantled and the parts sold at the Persian Market, but one of the female leaders, a still-young grandmother with the character of an amazon, warned the inhabitants, especially the wayward youngsters, that the first one who touched the doctor’s car would be in deep trouble. That was enough: Victor never had any problems.

The Dalmaus ended up living off their savings and what Roser earned, because Victor’s salary from the clinic was devoted entirely to buying essential items for the consulting room. Roser saw he was so happy she decided to accompany him. She bought instruments with money from Valentin Sanchez, who sent a substantial check and a shipment from Venezuela, and went to the shantytown on the same days as her husband, to teach music. She discovered this brought them closer together than making love, but didn’t tell him so. She gave reports and photographs to Valentin Sanchez. “In a year we’ll have a children’s choir and a youth orchestra, you’ll have to come and see it with your own eyes. But for now we need good recording equipment and loudspeakers for our open-air concerts,” she explained, knowing her friend would find a way to come up with more funds.

—

SOMEWHAT ENVIOUS OF OFELIA del Solar’s bucolic description of life in the countryside, Victor convinced Roser they should find somewhere to live on the outskirts of Santiago. The city was a nightmare of traffic and scurrying, bad-tempered pedestrians, and in the early morning was often covered by a cloud of toxic fog. They found what they were looking for: a stone and wood rustic dwelling that the architect had capriciously adorned with a thatched roof that was intended to camouflage it in the rural landscape. Three decades earlier, when it was built, access was along a snaking track that zigzagged between steep precipices, but the capital gradually had spread up the mountainsides, and by the time they bought the property, this area of small plots of lands and vegetable gardens was part of the city. There was no public transport or mail, but they could sleep in the deep silence of nature, and wake to a bird chorus. On weekdays they got up at five in the morning to go to work, and didn’t return until after dark, but the time they spent in their new house gave them the strength to take on any challenge.

The property was empty during the day, and in the first two years burglars broke in eleven times. These were such unimportant thefts there was no point getting angry or calling the police: the garden hose and hens, kitchen utensils, a transistor radio, and other insignificant items. Their first television set was also taken, as were another two replacements, so they decided to do without—there was hardly anything worth watching anyway. They were considering the possibility of always leaving the door open to avoid having their windows smashed by the thieves, when Marcel brought two big dogs rescued from the municipal dog pound that barked loudly but were gentle, and a small one that did bite. That solved the problem.

Marcel lived and worked among people Victor loosely called “privileged” for want of a more precise definition, because compared to his patients in the shantytown, that’s what they were. Marcel resented this description, which couldn’t be applied generally to all his friends, but didn’t want to get into any tangled argument with his parents. “You two are relics from the past. You’re stuck in the seventies and need to get up to date.” He called them daily and visited them every Sunday to share the obligatory barbecue Victor insisted on. He came accompanied by different women of a similar style—tall and slender, with long straight hair, laid-back and almost always vegetarian—completely different from the passionate Jamaican girl who had first taught him to love. His father could never manage to distinguish the latest of them from the previous ones, or learn their names before Marcel changed to another, almost exactly similar one. When he arrived, Marcel would whisper in Victor’s ear for him not to mention exile or his consulting room in the shantytown, because he had only just met the girl and wasn’t certain about her political tendencies, if she had any. “You only need to look at her, Marcel. She lives in a bubble, with no idea of the past, or of what’s going on now. Your generation has no ideals,” Victor would retort. They would end up arguing in the pantry while Roser tried to entertain the visitor. Later, their differences forgotten, Marcel would barbecue bloody steaks while Victor boiled spinach for the long-haired girlfriend.