A Long Petal of the Sea(53)

Roser’s intuition had not failed her regarding Ofelia’s emotions. As the days went by after her condition became known to her family, her passion was gradually transformed into a smoldering anger raging inside her. She spent hours analyzing her behavior and examining her conscience as Father Urbina demanded, but instead of repenting for her alleged sin, it was her obvious stupidity she repented of. It had never occurred to her to ask Victor what they should do to avoid a pregnancy, because she assumed he had it under control and that, anyway, they met so infrequently it wouldn’t happen. Magical thinking. Since he was older and more experienced, Victor was to blame for this unforgivable accident; and yet as the victim, she had to pay for both of them. That was a monumental injustice.

She could scarcely recall why she had clung so tightly to that hopeless love for a man with whom she had so little in common. After being in bed with him, always in some sordid room, rushed and uncomfortable, she was as frustrated as with Matias’s clumsy fumbling. She supposed it would have been different if they had been more trusting and had more time to get to know each other, but she didn’t have that with Victor. She had fallen in love with the idea of love, romance, and the heroic past of her warrior, as she would often call him. She had lived an opera whose outcome had to be tragic. She knew Victor was in love with her—at least, as much in love as a heart full of scars can be, but on her side it was nothing more than an impulse, a fantasy, another of her whims. She felt so nervous, trapped, and ill that the details of her adventure with Victor, even the happiest ones, were distorted by her terror that she had ruined her life. For him it had been pleasure with no risk; for her there was risk with little pleasure. And now finally she was suffering the consequences, while he could carry on with his life as if nothing had happened.



She hated him. She hid from him the fact that she was pregnant, fearing that if he knew it, Victor would claim his position as father and refuse to leave her in peace. She was the one who had to make all the decisions concerning her pregnancy; no one else had any right to give their opinion, least of all that man who had already caused her enough harm. None of this was in the letter, but Roser sensed it.

At the end of three months, Ofelia was no longer sick, and was filled with an upsurge of energy she had never before experienced. By sending her letter to Victor she had closed that chapter, and within a few weeks no longer tormented herself with memories or speculation over what might have been. She felt liberated from her lover, strong, healthy, with the appetite of an adolescent. She strode out for long walks in the countryside followed by her dogs; went into the kitchen to bake an endless supply of biscuits and buns to be handed out to the children on the estate; and enjoyed herself painting daubs with Leonardo, huge colored splotches that seemed to her more interesting than the landscapes and still lifes she had painted in the past; to the laundry maid’s consternation, she took to doing the ironing, and spent hours surrounded by heavy flat irons, perspiring and happy. “Let her be, she’ll soon get over it,” Juana predicted. Do?a Laura was shocked by Ofelia’s sunny disposition: she was expecting to see her bathed in tears as she knitted baby clothes, but Juana reminded her that she herself had experienced several months of euphoria during her pregnancies before the weight of her belly became unbearable.



Felipe visited the estate once a week to deal with the accounts, the expenses, and instructions for Juana, who ran the house as usual while her mistress was preoccupied with complex negotiations with the saints. He brought news from the capital, which nobody was interested in, pots of paint and magazines for Ofelia, teddy bears and rattles for Baby, who no longer spoke and had gone back to crawling everywhere. Vicente Urbina appeared once or twice with his odor of sanctity, as Juana Nancucheo called it, but which in reality was nothing more than the stench of his sweaty cassock and shaving lotion. He came to take stock of the situation and guide Ofelia along her spiritual path, and to encourage her to make a full confession. She listened to his wise words with an absent air like a deaf person, showing not the slightest emotion at the prospect of becoming a mother, as if it was a tumor she had in her stomach. Father Urbina thought this would make adoption far easier.



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THEIR STAY IN THE country would last throughout the summer and into the winter, and had the virtue of gradually easing Do?a Laura’s frantic pleas to the heavens. She didn’t dare ask for the miracle of a miscarriage, which would have solved the family’s problem, because that was as serious as wishing her husband dead, but she subtly hinted at it in her prayers. The peacefulness of nature, with its unchanging, tranquil rhythm, the long days and quiet nights, the warm, frothy milk from the barn, the huge bowls of fruit and the delicious-smelling bread fresh from the clay oven, all suited her timid temperament much more than the hustle and bustle of Santiago. If it had been up to her, she would have lived there permanently. Ofelia also relaxed, and her hatred for Victor gave way to a feeling of vague resentment; he was not the only one to blame, she too was partly responsible. She began to think of Matias Eyzaguirre with a certain nostalgia.



The house was colonial and ancient: thick adobe walls, red roof tiles, wooden beams, and tiled floors. Unlike other houses in the region, it had resisted the 1939 earthquake well: only some of the walls were cracked and only half the tiles fell off. In the disorder following the earthquake, attacks on properties in the area increased; there were good-for-nothings scavenging, and a high level of unemployment, the result of the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s as well as the crisis in the saltpeter industry, when natural saltpeter was replaced by a synthetic one, causing thousands of workers in Chile to lose their jobs. The effects of these events were still being felt nearly a decade later. In the countryside robbers poisoned guard dogs and got in at night to steal fruit, hens, sometimes a pig or a donkey to sell.