A Long Petal of the Sea(47)

“I’ll send word when I can escape. We’re returning to Santiago in three weeks; it’ll be easier then. We’ll have to be very, very careful, because if this gets out, we’re going to pay dearly for it. I can’t bear to think what my father would do.”

“I’ll have to talk to him at some point…”

“Are you out of your mind? What are you thinking? If he finds out I’m going with an immigrant who’s married and has a child, he’ll kill both of us. Felipe has already warned me.”



* * *



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USING THE DENTIST AS an excuse, Ofelia managed to return to Santiago a second time. In the weeks apart from Victor, she discovered somewhat fearfully that her initial curiosity had given way to an obsession to recall every last detail about that evening in the hotel, an unbearable need to see him and make love, to talk and talk, to tell him her secrets and find out about his past. She wanted to ask him why he limped, to count all his scars, to learn about his family and the feelings he had for Roser. He was a man with so many mysteries that unraveling them was going to be a lengthy task: what did words like “exile” and “military uprising” mean, or “mass grave,” “concentration camp,” what were “shattered mules” or the “bread of war”? Victor Dalmau was more or less the same age as Matias Eyzaguirre, but he seemed far older, as tough as cement on the outside and impenetrable inside, sculpted with a chisel, marked by scars and bad memories. Unlike Matias, who enjoyed her explosive temperament and her whirlwind moods, Victor grew impatient at her childishness, wanting her to be clearheaded and intelligent. He wasn’t interested in anything superficial. If he asked her a question, he would listen to her reply as closely as a schoolmaster, and not permit her to evade it with a joke or change of topic. Ofelia was confronted for the first time with the challenge of being taken seriously.



The second time she awoke from dozing a few minutes after their lovemaking, Ofelia decided she had found the man of her life. None of the pretentious, pampered young men in her circle, their futures secure thanks to their families’ wealth and power, could compete with him. Victor was moved by this confession on her part, because he too felt she was the one for him, and yet he didn’t lose his head: he took into account the bottle of wine they had shared and the novelty of this situation for her. The circumstances encouraged an exaggerated response; but they would have to talk when their bodies had cooled down.

Ofelia would have willingly broken off her engagement with Matias Eyzaguirre, but Victor made her see that he wasn’t free and had nothing to offer her apart from these hasty, forbidden encounters. She suggested they elope to Brazil or Cuba, where they could live beneath the palm trees and nobody would know them. They might be condemned to secrecy in Chile, but the world was a big place.

“I have a duty to Roser and Marcel; besides, you have no idea what poverty and exile mean. You wouldn’t be able to stand a week with me under those palm trees,” Victor replied good-humoredly.

Ofelia began not answering Matias’s letters, in the hope that he would grow tired of her indifference, but that didn’t happen, as her stubborn suitor attributed her silence to nervousness typical of a sensitive fiancée. Meanwhile, surprised at her own duplicity, she continued to display to her family a delight she was far from feeling over the wedding arrangements.



She let several months go by without making up her mind, still meeting Victor in stolen moments, but as September drew closer, she realized she had to find the courage to break off her engagement, whether or not Victor agreed; the invitations had been sent out, and the wedding announced in El Mercurio. Finally, without a word to anyone, she went to the Foreign Ministry to ask a friend to send a package to Paraguay in the diplomatic bag. The package contained the ring and a letter explaining to Matias that she was in love with somebody else.

No sooner had he received Ofelia’s package than Matias Eyzaguirre flew to Chile, sitting on the floor of a military plane, because in the midst of a world war fuel was too scarce for unplanned private flights. He burst into the Calle Mar del Plata house while she was having tea, crashing into fragile tables and chairs with curved legs. Ofelia found herself confronted by a total stranger. Her obliging, conciliatory fiancé had been taken over by a madman who laid into her, scarlet with rage and bathed in sweat and tears. His reproachful shouting drew the attention of the family, and this was how Isidro del Solar learned what had been going on under his nose for months.

Isidro succeeded in removing the irate suitor from the house with the promise that he would deal with the situation in his own way, but his overbearing authority came up against his daughter’s resolute stubbornness. Ofelia refused to give any explanation or reveal the name of her lover, much less to repent her decision. She simply kept her mouth shut, and there was no way to get a word out of her. She remained impervious to her father’s threats, her mother’s tears, and the apocalyptic arguments of Father Vicente Urbina, who was called for urgently as her spiritual guide and administrator of God’s thunderbolts. Seeing it was impossible to reason with her, her father forbade her to leave the house, and gave Juana the task of keeping her in quarantine. Juana Nancucheo took this to heart, because on the one hand she had a great deal of affection for Matias Eyzaguirre—that young man was a real gentleman, one of those who greet the domestic staff by name—on the other, he adored Ofelia, so what more could she ask for? She genuinely wanted to carry out her master’s instructions, but her efforts as a jailer failed completely thanks to the lovers’ guile.