A Long Petal of the Sea(62)

This friendship didn’t trouble Victor Dalmau because he knew that his wife’s friend was openly homosexual, but he suspected there could be a hypothetical lover. Each time Roser returned from Venezuela she was rejuvenated. She came back with new clothes, perfumed like an odalisque, or wearing a discreet jewel, a gold heart hanging round her neck from a slender chain, none of which she would buy for herself, as she was Spartan when it came to personal spending. What was most revealing for Victor was her renewed passion, as if when they met again she wanted to try out some acrobatics she had learned with another man, or else atone for her guilt. To be jealous would have been ridiculous in the relaxed kind of relationship they had, so relaxed that if Victor had to define it, he would have said they were comrades. He discovered the truth of his mother’s saying that jealousy bites worse than fleas. Roser enjoyed the role of wife. In the days when they were poor and he was still in love with Ofelia del Solar, without telling him, she bought two wedding rings in monthly installments, and demanded they both wear them until such day as they could divorce. According to the agreement they had made at the start always to tell each other the truth, she ought to have told him about her lover, but she was of the belief that a kind omission is worth more than a pointless truth, so Victor deduced that if she applied this principle to small things, all the more reason she would do so when it came to being unfaithful.



Theirs was a marriage of convenience, but they had been together for twenty-six years, and loved each other with something more than the quiet acceptance of an arranged marriage in India. Marcel had reached eighteen long ago, the birthday that was supposed to mark the end of the commitment they had made to be together, but it merely served to underscore their mutual affection and their intention to stay married awhile longer, in the hope that they would never part.

Over the years they became increasingly close in their tastes and foibles, but not in character. They had few reasons to argue and none to fight; they agreed about all things fundamental and felt as much at ease together as if they were on their own. They knew each other so well that making love for them was an easy dance that left them both contented. They didn’t repeat the same routine, because that would have bored Roser, as Victor well knew. The Roser naked in bed was very different from the elegant, sober woman up on a stage, or the strict professor at the Conservatory of Music. They had been through many ups and downs together before they reached the placid years of maturity when they had no great economic or emotional worries.

They lived on their own, as Carme had moved to Jordi Moline’s house after the death of the very old, blind, and deaf Gosset, who remained lucid to the last. Marcel was living with two friends in an apartment. He had studied mining engineering, and was working for the government in the copper industry. He had not inherited the least trace of the musical talent of his mother or his grandfather Marcel Lluis Dalmau, the fighting spirit of his father, nor any inclination toward medicine like Victor or for teaching like his grandmother Carme, who at eighty-one was still a schoolteacher.



“How strange you are, Marcel! Why on earth are you so interested in stones?” Carme asked him when she learned of his chosen career.

“Because they don’t have opinions or talk back,” her grandson retorted.



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HIS FAILED RELATIONSHIP WITH Ofelia del Solar left Victor Dalmau with a silent, suppressed anger that persisted for several years. He interpreted it as atonement for having behaved so cruelly, for having allowed that young virgin to fall in love with him when he knew he wasn’t free, but had responsibility for a wife and child. That had been a long time ago. Since then, the burning nostalgia left by that love gradually merged into that gray area of memory where what we have lived fades away. He sensed he had learned a lesson, although the precise meaning of that lesson wasn’t clear to him. For many years, that was his only amorous adventure, as he was constantly overwhelmed by the demands of his work. The occasional hasty encounter with a willing nurse didn’t count; this happened only rarely, usually when he was on duty for two successive days at the hospital. Those furtive embraces never created a complication: they had no past or future, and were forgotten within hours. His unshakable affection for Roser was the anchor of his existence.

In 1942, shortly after Victor had received Ofelia’s final letter, when he was still entertaining the fantasy of winning her again, although that would have been like rubbing salt on his wounded heart, Roser decided he needed a drastic cure to drag him out of his introspection. So one night she had slipped uninvited into his bed, just as she had years before with his brother, Guillem. That had been the best thing she had ever done, because the result was Marcel. On this occasion she thought she was going to surprise Victor, but found that he was waiting for her. He wasn’t startled to see her half-naked in his doorway, her hair flowing: he simply moved over in bed to make room and took her in his arms as naturally as a real husband. They frolicked for most of the night, knowing each other in the biblical sense clumsily but good-naturedly. They both realized they had been longing for this moment from their first skirmishes in the Winnipeg lifeboat, when they whispered together chastely while, outside, other couples were waiting their turns to make love. That night they had no thought of Ofelia or Guillem, whose ever-present ghost had accompanied them on board the Winnipeg, but who in Chile had wandered off to explore new discoveries. Little by little Guillem had withdrawn to a discreet corner of their hearts, where he was no trouble at all. From that first night on, they always slept in the same bed.