A Long Petal of the Sea(38)

The officials had heard that Pupin had undertaken this journey against his will and that he detested his human cargo, but he surprised them. It turned out that after sharing his vessel with the Spaniards for a month, Pupin had gradually altered his opinion of them, even though his political convictions were still intact. “These people have suffered a great deal, gentlemen. They are upright, disciplined, and respectful, and are coming to your country ready and willing to work and rebuild their lives,” he told them.



Matias Eyzaguirre came from a family that considered itself aristocratic, and had been brought up in a Catholic, conservative background. He was against immigration, but like Captain Pupin, when he came face-to-face with the individual refugees—men, women, and children—his views changed. He had been educated at a religious school, and lived his life protected by the privileges his clan enjoyed. His grandfather and father were Supreme Court judges, and two of his brothers were lawyers, so he studied law as his family expected, even though he was not cut out for the profession. He doggedly attended university for a couple of years, and then entered the Foreign Ministry thanks to his family connections. He started from the bottom and by the age of twenty-four, when he found himself stamping visas on the Winnipeg, he had already shown he had the makings of a good public servant and diplomat. In a couple of months he was being sent to Paraguay on his first foreign mission, and he was hoping to do so married, or at least engaged, to his cousin Ofelia del Solar.

The documentation complete, a dozen passengers were taken off the ship, as there was work for them in the north, and then the Winnipeg sailed on toward the south of Neruda’s “long petal.” The Spanish exiles were agog with silent expectation. On September 2, they glimpsed the outline of Valparaiso, their final destination, and at nightfall the ship dropped anchor outside the harbor. The passengers’ anxiety came close to collective hysteria: more than two thousand eager faces crowded onto the upper deck, waiting for the moment to set foot on this unknown land. However, the port authorities decided that the disembarkation should take place the next day, with early morning light and a calmer atmosphere.



Thousands of twinkling lights in the port and dwellings on the hills of Valparaiso competed with the stars: it was impossible to tell where the promised land ended and the sky began. Valparaiso was an idiosyncratic city of stairways, elevators, and narrow streets wide enough only for donkeys. Houses hung dizzily from steep hillsides; like almost all ports, it was full of stray dogs, was poor and dirty, a place of traders, sailors, and vices, and yet it was marvelous. From the ship it shone like a mythical, diamond-studded city. Nobody went to sleep that night: they all stayed out on deck admiring the magical spectacle and counting the hours. In the years to come, Victor would always remember that night as one of the most beautiful in his life. The next morning, the Winnipeg finally docked in Chile, with the enormous banner of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda and a Chilean flag draped from its side.

Nobody on board was expecting the welcome they received. They had been warned so often about the Right’s negative campaign, the Catholic Church’s uncompromising opposition, as well as the proverbial Chilean reserve, that at first they didn’t understand what was going on in the port. The crowds crammed behind barriers with placards and flags of Spain, the Republic, Euskadi, and Catalonia, cheering them in a deafening roar of welcome. A band played the national anthems of Chile and the Spanish Republic, and hundreds of voices joined in. The Chilean one summed up in a few rather sentimental verses the hospitable spirit and vocation for freedom of the country receiving them: Sweet fatherland, accept the vows given by Chile on your altars, that you will either be the tomb of the free, or the refuge against oppression.

On deck, battle-hardened combatants who had undergone so many brutal challenges wept openly. At nine, the disembarkation began in single file down a gangway. On shore, each refugee first had to go to a Health Department tent to be vaccinated, and then fell into the arms of Chile, as Victor Dalmau expressed it many years later, when he was able to thank Pablo Neruda personally.



September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles’ splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe.



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FELIPE DEL SOLAR HAD made the journey to the port of Valparaiso the day before the arrival of the Winnipeg because he wanted to be present at what he called a “historic event.” According to his pals in the Club of the Enraged, he was taking things too far. They said his enthusiasm for the refugees was less because he had a kind heart and more because he wanted to annoy his father and his clan.

Felipe spent most of the day greeting the newcomers, mingling with all those who had gone to receive them, and talking to acquaintances he met. Among the excited crowd on the quayside were members of the government; representatives of the workers and the Catalan and Basque communities with whom he had been in contact in recent months to prepare for the arrival of the Winnipeg; artists, intellectuals, journalists, and politicians. Also present was a doctor from Valparaiso, Salvador Allende, a Socialist Party leader who a few days later would be named health minister. Despite being so young, he was prominent in political circles, admired by some, rejected by others, but respected by all. He had taken part more than once in the gatherings of the Enraged, and when he recognized Felipe del Solar in the crowd, he waved to him from afar. Felipe had managed to secure an invitation to board the special train transporting the newcomers from Valparaiso to Santiago. That gave him several hours to hear firsthand what had happened in Spain; until then he knew only what was reported in the press and what he had gleaned from the testimonies of a few individuals, such as Neruda. Seen from Chile, the Spanish Civil War had been something so remote it was as if it had occurred in another time.