Исабель Альенде - A Long Petal of the Sea

The possibility of getting married again sent a shiver down his spine; he was happy with the company of his animals. It wasn’t true that he talked to himself; he was talking to the dogs, the parrot, and the cat. The hens didn’t count, because they didn’t have their own names; they came and went as they liked, and they hid their eggs. He would arrive home at night to tell his pets all that had happened during the day. They were his audience on those rare occasions he became sentimental, and listened to him when he closed his eyes and named objects in the house or the flora and fauna in the garden. That was his way of focusing his memory and his attention, the way other old people did crossword puzzles.

When he had time during the long evenings to reflect on his life, he would go over the short list of his loves. The first had been Elisabeth Eidenbenz, whom he had known long ago, in 1936. Whenever he thought of her, he imagined her white and sweet, like an almond cake. Back then he had promised himself that after all the battles, when the rubble and dust had settled on the earth, he would look for her; but that was not how things had turned out. When the wars were over, he was far away, married, and with a child. Much later on, he did try to find her, out of simple curiosity. He discovered Elisabeth was living in an Austrian village, watering her plants and oblivious to tales of her heroism. When he had found her address, Victor sent her a letter she never answered. Perhaps now that he was on his own it was time to write her another one. There would be no risk in it, because there was no way they would see each other again: Austria and Chile were a thousand light-years away. He preferred not to dwell on Ofelia del Solar, his second brief but passionate love. There had been few others. More than loves, they had been flashes of emotion. Yet he liked to think of them, and magnify their importance, if only to ward off unbearable memories. The only woman who counted was Roser.

He would celebrate his eightieth birthday with his animals, sharing the meal he always made on that date in homage to the happiest moments of his childhood and youth. His mother, Carme, had always been less of a cook and more of a teacher, which kept her busy during the week. On Sundays and holidays she didn’t go into the kitchen either, because she would go to dance sardanas outside the cathedral in Barcelona’s Gothic quarter, and from there to a bar to enjoy a glass of red wine with her women friends. Victor, his brother, and his father dined each day on bread smeared with tomato, sardines, and milky coffee, but every so often his mother woke up inspired and surprised her family with the only traditional Catalan dish she knew how to prepare: arròs negre . In Victor’s mind, the memory of its fragrance was forever associated with a celebration. In honor of this sentimental legacy, the day before his birthday he would go down to the Mercado Central in search of the ingredients for the fumet, and fresh squid for the rice. Catalan through and through, Roser used to say. She herself never collaborated in the homespun creation of this festive dinner, instead contributing a piano recital from the living room or sitting on a kitchen stool to read Victor verses from Neruda, often an ode with a marine flavor, such as in Chile’s tempestuous sea lives the pink conger, that giant eel with snow-white flesh . It was pointless for Victor to inform her time and again that the dish in question didn’t contain conger, the king of aristocratic dinner tables, but the humble fish heads and tails of a proletarian soup. Or while Victor fried the onion and pepper in olive oil, then added the peeled and sliced squid, cloves of garlic, a few chopped tomatoes, and the rice, ending with hot stock that was black with squid ink and the obligatory fresh bay leaf, she would share gossip with him in Catalan in order to refresh their mother tongue, grown rusty from all their wanderings.

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THE RICE COOKED SLOWLY in a big pan. He prepared three times the stated amount, even if he had to eat the same meal for the rest of the week. The legendary aroma invaded the house and his soul, while Victor waited with a small plate of Spanish anchovies and olives, available everywhere in Chile. As Marcel said to provoke him, that was one of the advantages of capitalism. Victor preferred to buy Chilean products, because it was patriotic to support national industry, but his idealism wavered when it came to such sacred items as olives and anchovies. A bottle of rosé wine was chilling in the fridge for a toast with Roser once dinner was ready. He had laid the linen tablecloth and bought half a dozen greenhouse roses and two candles to decorate the table. Ever impatient, Roser would have opened the bottle a long while earlier, but in her present state she would have to wait. There was also a Catalan custard dessert in the fridge. He wasn’t fond of sweet things, and that would end up in the dogs’ mouths. The telephone startled him.

“Happy birthday, Papa. What are you doing?”

“Remembering and repenting.”

“For what?”

“For the sins I didn’t commit.”

“And apart from that?”

“I’m cooking, son. Where are you?”

“In Peru. At a conference.”

“Another one? That’s all you ever do.”

“Are you cooking the usual?”

“Yes, the house smells of Barcelona.”

“I suppose you’ve invited Meche.”

“Mmm.”

Meche…Meche, the enchanting neighbor his son was forcing on him, determined to resolve the problem of his widowhood with drastic measures. Victor admitted that her liveliness and happy disposition were attractive: alongside her, he felt like a pachyderm. Meche, with her open and positive mind, her exuberant sculptures of women with impressive buttocks, and her vegetable patch, would be forever young. With the tendency he had to cut himself off, he, on the other hand, was aging rapidly. Marcel had adored his mother, and Victor suspected he still shed tears for her in secret, but he was convinced that without a wife his father would turn into a tramp. To distract him, Victor had spoken of his intention to get in touch with a nurse he had known in his youth, but once he got an idea in his mind, Marcel would never let go. Meche lived three hundred meters away. Between them were two plots of land separated by rows of poplars, but Victor thought of her as his only neighbor, because he hardly said a word to the others, who accused him of being a communist for having been exiled and working in a hospital catering to the poor. As a rule, he avoided the company of others because he had sufficient contact with colleagues and patients, but he had not managed to keep Meche away. Marcel saw her as an ideal partner: she was no longer young, she was widowed, had children and grandchildren, and no obvious vices. She was eight years his junior, cheerful and creative. Last but not least, she loved animals.

“You promised me, Papa. You owe her lots of favors.”

“She gave me the cat because she was tired of having to come here to fetch it back. And I don’t know why you imagine any normal woman would be interested in a lame, unsociable, and badly dressed old man like me. Unless she was desperate, and in that case why would I want her?”

“Don’t be silly.”

This perfect woman also baked biscuits and grew tomatoes. She brought them over discreetly and left them in a basket she hung from a hook in the doorway. She wasn’t offended when he forgot to thank her. To him, her boundless enthusiasm seemed suspect. Quite often, she would turn up with strange dishes like cold zucchini soup or chicken with cinnamon and peaches. Victor saw these offerings as bribes. To him it seemed only wise to keep her at bay: he was planning to spend his old age in peace and quiet.