A Long Petal of the Sea(58)

In February 1948 Victor finally had the chance to return the favor he owed Pablo Neruda for choosing him among those to emigrate to Chile. The poet was a senator, but had already fallen out with the president, who was at loggerheads with the Communist Party even though it had supported him in his rise to power. Neruda didn’t spare his insults about someone he saw as the product of political machinations. He regarded him as a traitor, a small, vile, and bloody vampire. Accused of slander and calumny by the government, Neruda was stripped of his post as senator and hunted by the police.

Two leaders of the Communist Party, which was soon to be outlawed, appeared at the hospital to talk to Victor.

“As you know, there’s an arrest warrant out for Comrade Neruda,” they told him.

“I read about it in the newspaper today. I can hardly believe it.”

“He has to be hidden while he’s outlawed. We think the situation will soon be resolved, but if it isn’t, he’ll have to be somehow smuggled out of the country.”

“How can I help?” asked Victor.

“You can put him up for a while. Not long. He has to change houses frequently, to avoid the police.”

“Of course. It’ll be an honor.”

“It goes without saying that nobody is to hear about this.”

“My wife and son are on vacation. I’m alone in my house. He’ll be safe there.”

“We must warn you that you could face a serious problem as an accessory.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Victor replied, and gave them his address.



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THIS WAS HOW PABLO Neruda and his wife, the Argentine painter Delia del Carril, came to live clandestinely in the Dalmau family home for two weeks. Victor gave up his bed for them and took them food prepared by the cook at the Winnipeg, in small containers so as not to attract the neighbors’ attention. The poet couldn’t help but notice the coincidence of the restaurant’s name. He also had to be supplied with newspapers, books, and whisky, the only thing that calmed him down. He was desperate for conversation, as visits were restricted. He was an extrovert who lived life to the full; he needed not only his friends but his ideological adversaries with whom to practice his polemical verbal fencing. During the endless evenings in that reduced space, he went over the list of refugees he had granted a place on board in Bordeaux that distant August 1939 day, as well as other exiled Spanish men and women who arrived in Chile in the years that followed. Victor pointed out that Neruda’s refusing to stick to the government’s order to select only skilled workers, and instead including artists and intellectuals, had enriched the country with a wide range of talent, knowledge, and culture. In under a decade they had provided outstanding scientists, musicians, painters, writers, journalists, and even a historian whose dream was the monumental task of rewriting the history of Chile from its origins.



Being shut in was driving Neruda mad. He paced tirelessly up and down like a caged animal within the house’s four walls: he couldn’t even look out the window. His wife, who had given up everything, including her art, to be with him, had to struggle to keep him indoors. The poet grew a beard and filled the time by furiously writing his Canto General. To repay Victor’s hospitality, he read in his inimitably lugubrious voice earlier poems and some still unfinished. Listening to him infected Victor with an addiction to poetry that was to last throughout his life.

One night, without warning, two strangers arrived in dark coats and hats, even though the summer heat was still intense at that hour. They looked like detectives, but identified themselves as party comrades. Without explanation, they took the couple with them, barely giving them time to pack two suitcases with clothes and the unfinished poems. They refused to tell Victor where he could visit the poet, but warned him he might have to put Neruda up again, because it was hard to find refuges. There was a squad of more than five hundred policemen sniffing out the fugitive’s tracks. Victor explained that in a week’s time his family would be returning from the seaside, and his house would no longer be safe. In any event, it was a relief to recover peace and quiet. His guest had filled every nook and cranny with his huge presence.



Victor was to see Neruda again thirteen months later, when, together with two friends, he had to organize the poet’s flight on horseback through Andean mountain passes and into Argentina. For months Neruda, unrecognizable with his heavy beard, had hidden in the houses of friends and party comrades, with the police hot on his heels. Just as with Neruda’s poetry, this journey to the frontier left an indelible impression on Victor. They rode through the magnificent scenery of cold forests, age-old trees, mountains, and water: water everywhere, flowing down in hidden streams among ancient trunks, cascading from the sky, sweeping everything away in turbulent rivers the travelers had to cross, their hearts racing. Many years later, Neruda recalled that crossing in his memoirs: Each one moved along, intoxicated by that boundless solitude, by that green and white silence. It was all the dazzling and secretive work of nature, and at the same time a growing threat of cold, snow, and pursuit.

Victor said goodbye to him at the border, where gauchos were waiting for him with spare horses to continue the journey. “Governments come and go, but poets remain, Don Pablo. You’ll return in glory and majesty. Remember my words,” he said, hugging him.