A Long Petal of the Sea(30)

Behind the back of his wife and daughter, Isidro visited a ladies’ finishing school that dated from the seventeenth century, based in a magnificent mansion opposite Kensington Palace and Gardens. There Ofelia would learn etiquette, the art of social relations, how to deal correctly with invitations and selecting a menu, good manners, comportment, grooming, and household management, among other virtues of which she was greatly in need. What a shame his wife had not learned any of that, thought Isidro; it would be a good business opportunity to found a similar establishment in Chile, to refine all the uncouth young women down there. He would look into the possibility. For the moment, though, he hid his plans from Ofelia: she would only kick up a fuss and ruin the rest of their trip. He would tell her at the very end, when there was no time for tantrums.

They were in the hotel salon with its glass-domed ceiling (a symphony in white, gold, and ivory) enjoying the customary five o’clock tea served on floral porcelain, when the bellboy in his admiral’s uniform came up bearing Felipe’s telegram. “Poet exiles need rooms STOP Juana refuses keys STOP Send instructions STOP.” Isidro read it three times, and passed it to Laura and Ofelia.

“What is this crap about?”

“Please, Isidro, don’t talk like that in front of the child.”

“I hope Felipe hasn’t started drinking,” he growled.

“What are you going to answer?” asked Laura.



“Tell him to go to hell.”

“Don’t get angry, Isidro. Better not to answer anything; these things always sort themselves out.”

“But what does my brother mean?” Ofelia wanted to know.

“I’ve no idea. Nothing that concerns us,” her father retorted.



* * *



—

ANOTHER IDENTICAL TELEGRAM REACHED them at their Paris hotel. Isidro could only with great difficulty scan Le Figaro because he had learned some French at school, but since he understood even less English, he had not caught up with the news in England. He now read that the French Communist Party and the Spanish Refugee Evacuation Service had chartered a cargo boat, the Winnipeg, and were fitting it out to send almost two thousand exiles to Chile. He nearly had a fit. This was all that was needed in this time of disasters, he grunted, first a Radical Party president, then the apocalyptic earthquake, and now they were going to pack Chile with communists. The sinister meaning of the telegram became clear: his son intended to install this rabble in his own house, no less. Thank God for Juana, who refused to hand over the keys.

“Explain to me what exiles are, Papa,” Ofelia insisted.

“Listen, sweetheart, in Spain there was a revolution of bad people. It was a catastrophe. The military rose against it and fought for the values of the fatherland and morality. Naturally, they won.”

“What did they win?”

“The Civil War. They saved Spain. The exiles Felipe talks of are the cowards who escaped and are in France.”

“Why did they escape?”

“Because they lost and had to face the consequences.”

“I think there are lots of women and children among the refugees, Isidro. The newspaper says there are hundreds of thousands of them…” Laura commented timidly.



“That may be. But what does Chile have to do with all of it? Neruda’s the one to blame! That communist! Felipe has no common sense, it’s as if he weren’t my son. I’m going to have to set him straight when we get back.”

Laura seized on this to suggest it might be better to return to Santiago before Felipe did anything crazy, but the newspaper said the Winnipeg would be leaving in August. They had more than enough time to go to the spa at Evian, visit Lourdes, as well as the shrine of San Antonio of Padua in Italy to fulfill Laura’s many vows, as well as the Vatican to receive a private blessing from the new Pope Pius XII, which had cost Isidro a lot of pulling of strings and money, before they came back to England. There they would leave Ofelia at the finishing school, by force if need be, and then he would embark with his wife for the journey back to Chile on board the Reina del Pacifico. In other words, a perfect trip.





CHAPTER 5

1939

Let’s keep anger, pain, and tears,

Let’s fill the desolate void

And may the nightly bonfire recall

The light of the deceased stars.

—PABLO NERUDA

“José Miguel Carrera, 1810”

CANTO GENERAL

VICTOR DALMAU SPENT SEVERAL MONTHS in the concentration camp at Argeles-sur-Mer, never once suspecting that Roser had been there as well. He had not heard any news of Aitor, but supposed he had kept his promise to get his mother and Roser out of Spain. At this point the inhabitants of the camp were almost exclusively male, tens of thousands of Republican soldiers, who suffered hunger and deprivation, as well as blows and constant humiliation from their jailers. Although the conditions were still inhuman, at least the harshest days of winter were behind them.

In order to survive without going mad, the prisoners organized themselves. The different political parties held revolutionary meetings separately, just as they had during the war. They sang, read whatever they could lay their hands on, taught those who needed it to read and write, published a newspaper of sorts—a handwritten sheet of paper that was passed from reader to reader—and sought to preserve their dignity cutting one another’s hair and checking each other for lice and washing their clothes in the freezing seawater. They divided the camp into streets with poetic names, outlined absurd squares and ramblas like those in Barcelona in the sand and mud, created the illusion of an orchestra without instruments to perform classical and popular music, and restaurants with invisible food that the cooks described in great detail while the others savored the tastes with their eyes closed. With what little building supplies they had, they managed to construct sheds, barracks, and huts. They were constantly alert for news from the outside world, which was on the brink of another war, and for the possibility of being set free. The more skilled among them were often employed in the countryside or in industry, but the majority had been farm laborers, woodcutters, shepherds, or fishermen, and so had no skills usable in France. They came under constant pressure from the authorities to be repatriated to Spain, and were sometimes fooled into being taken to the Spanish border.