A Long Petal of the Sea(41)

They passed a group of about twenty young people bearing swastika armbands protesting against the Jews disembarking the boat and hurling insults at all those who had come to welcome them.

“Poor people, they’ve escaped from Germany and look what they find when they get here,” said Ofelia.

“Don’t pay these protesters any attention. The police will disperse them,” Matias reassured her.

During the four-hour journey up a winding dirt road to Santiago, Felipe, who was with his parents in one of the cars, had time to tell them how the Spaniards were adapting wonderfully: in less than a month the majority had found somewhere to live and jobs. Many Chilean families had taken them in: it was embarrassing that with half a dozen empty bedrooms they weren’t doing the same. “I know that you’ve got some atheist communists in your house,” said Isidro. “You’re going to regret it.”

Felipe pointed out that they were definitely not communists, possibly anarchists, and as for being atheists, that remained to be seen. He told them about the Dalmau family and how decent and well educated they were, and about the boy, who was in love with Juana. Isidro and Laura already knew that the faithful Juana Nancucheo had betrayed them, that she went every day to see Marcel in order to supervise his meals and take him to the park to get some sun with Leonardo, because as she put it, his mother was always out on the streets and never at home, using the piano as an excuse, and her husband spent all his time in a bar. Felipe was amazed that his parents had obtained so much information in mid-ocean.



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THAT DECEMBER MATIAS EYZAGUIRRE left for Paraguay to serve an ambassador who was despotic toward his subordinates and servile toward those of a higher social rank. Matias entered into this second category. He left alone, as Ofelia had rejected his ring on the pretext that she had promised her father to stay single until she was twenty-one. Matias was well aware that if she had wanted to get married, nobody would have been able to stop her, but he resigned himself to wait, with all the risks that implied. Ofelia had her choice of admirers, but his future in-laws assured him they would keep an eye on her. “Give the girl time, she’s very immature. I’m going to pray for you both, for you to be married and very happy,” Do?a Laura promised him. Matias thought he could win Ofelia over once and for all with a constant stream of correspondence, a flood of love letters: that was what the mail was for, and he could be much more eloquent when he wrote than when he spoke. Patience. He had loved Ofelia since they were children; he hadn’t the slightest doubt that they were made for each other.

As he did every year, a few days before Christmas, Isidro del Solar had a suckling pig brought from their country property, and hired a butcher to slaughter it in the most distant yard behind the house, out of sight of Laura, Ofelia, and Baby. Juana supervised the transformation of the hapless beast into meat for the barbecue, sausages, chops, ham, and bacon. She was also in charge of the Christmas Eve dinner for the whole family, as well as of making a crib in the hearth with plaster figures brought from Italy.

Early on Christmas Eve, when she went to take Don Isidro his coffee in the library, she paused in front of him.

“Is something wrong, Juana?”

“In my opinion, we ought to invite ni?o Felipe’s communists.”

Isidro del Solar raised his eyes from the newspaper and stared at her in amazement.



“I mean for little Marcel’s sake.”

“Who?”

“You know who I’m talking about, patron. The little brat, the communists’ child.”

“Communists don’t give a damn about Christmas, Juana. They don’t believe in God, and couldn’t care less about the baby Jesus.”

Juana stifled a cry. Felipe had explained to her a lot of communist nonsense about equality and the class struggle, but she had never heard of anyone who didn’t believe in God and couldn’t care less about the baby Jesus. It took her a minute to recover her voice.

“That may be so, patron, but that’s not the brat’s fault. As I see it, they should dine here on Christmas Eve. I’ve already told ni?o Felipe and he agrees. So do Se?ora Laura and little Ofelia.”



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SO IT WAS THAT the Dalmaus spent their first Christmas in Chile with the extended del Solar family. Roser wore the same dress she had worn for her wedding in Perpignan, navy blue with white flowers around the neckline. She gathered her hair up in a net with black beads and a jet clasp Carme had given her when she learned Roser was expecting a child by her son Guillem. “You’re my daughter-in-law now, there’s no need for any paperwork,” she had told Roser. Victor had on one of Felipe’s three-piece suits that was a little baggy and short in the leg.

When they arrived at the house on Calle Mar del Plata, Juana took charge of Marcel and swept him off to play with Leonardo, while Felipe propelled the Dalmaus into the big drawing room for the obligatory presentations. He had told them that in Chile the social classes were like a mille-feuille cake, easy to reach the bottom but almost impossible to reach the top of, because money could not buy pedigree. The only exceptions were talent, as in the case of Pablo Neruda, and the beauty of certain women. That had been the case with Ofelia’s grandmother, the daughter of a modest English shopkeeper, a beauty with the bearing of a queen who came to improve the race, as her descendants, the Vizcarras, claimed. If the Dalmaus had been Chilean, they would never have been invited to the del Solars’ table, but for the moment, as exotic foreigners, they were floating in limbo. If things went well for them, they would end up in one of the numerous subdivisions of the Chilean middle class. Felipe warned them that in his parents’ house they would be observed like wild animals in a circus by people who were conservative, religious, and intolerant, but once that initial curiosity had been satisfied they would be welcomed with the obligatory Chilean hospitality.