A Long Petal of the Sea

by Isabel Allende

  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.

  * * *

  —

  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.

  Now Victor’s sense of pride prevented him from spying on Roser or raising his suspicions with her. He didn’t link his doubts to the persistent stomachache that troubled him, which he attributed to an ulcer, although he did nothing to confirm the diagnosis, simply taking milk of magnesia in alarming quantities. His feelings for Roser were so different from the foolish passion he had felt for Ofelia that it took a year of suffering before he could finally put a name to it. To alleviate his jealousy, he took refuge in the suffering of his hospital patients and in study. He needed to stay up to date with the latest advances in medicine, which were so fabulous there was even talk of being able to successfully transplant a human heart. Two years earlier, a chimpanzee’s heart had been transferred to a dying man in Mississippi, and even though the patient lived only ninety minutes longer, the experiment raised the possibilities of medical science to the level of miracles. Like thousands of other doctors, Victor Dalmau dreamed of repeating the feat by using a human donor. Ever since he had held Lazaro’s heart in his hands, he had been obsessed with that magnificent organ.

  Apart from putting all his energy into work and studying, Victor had succumbed to one of his melancholy periods. “You’re in a dream, son,” Carme told him over one of their Sunday lunches at Jordi Moline’s. They usually spoke Catalan there, but Carme changed to Spanish when Marcel was present, because at the age of twenty-seven her grandson refused to speak the family’s mother tongue.

  “Ávia is right, Papa. What’s the matter?” asked Marcel.

  “I miss your mother,” Victor replied without thinking.

  This came as a revelation to him. Roser was in Venezuela for another series of concerts, which to him seemed to occur increasingly often. Victor continued turning over in his mind what he had blurted out, because until the moment he had admitted his need for her, he hadn’t fully realized how much he loved her. Although they discussed anything and everything openly, an inexplicable shyness prevented them both from expressing their love in words; what need was there to proclaim their feelings—it was enough to show them. If they were together it was because they loved each other, so why complicate such a simple truth?

  One or two days later, as he was still mulling over the idea of surprising Roser with a formal declaration of love and the wedding ring he should have given her years before, she returned to Santiago unexpectedly, and Victor’s plans were shelved i
ndefinitely. As on her previous trips, she came back euphoric, with that air of utter satisfaction that roused so much suspicion in her husband, and wearing a flamboyant red-and-black-checked miniskirt no longer than a kitchen apron, that seemed to him completely at odds with her discreet nature.

  “Don’t you think it’s too short for someone your age?” Victor asked, rather than giving the speech he had so carefully prepared.

  “I’m forty-eight, but I feel as if I were twenty,” she replied good-humoredly. This was the first time she had given in to the latest fashion: until then she had remained faithful to the styles she always wore. Her challenging tone convinced Victor it was best to leave things as they were and avoid the risk of an explanation that might be very painful or definitive.

  Years later, when it was no longer in any way important, Victor Dalmau learned that Roser’s lover had been his old friend Aitor Ibarra. Their relationship had been happy, if sporadic, since they only met whenever she was in Venezuela and in between times were not in contact at all. It had lasted seven long years.

  It began with the first concert given by the Ancient Music Orchestra, which was the cultural event of the season in Caracas. Aitor saw the name Roser Bruguera Dalmau in the newspaper. He thought it would be too much of a coincidence for this to be the same pregnant woman he had crossed the Pyrenees with during the Retreat at the end of the Civil War, but bought a ticket just in case. The orchestra gave its first performance in the Grand Hall at the Central University, with its Calder mobiles and the best acoustics in the world. On the huge stage, conducting the musicians with their precious instruments (some of which the audience had never seen before), Roser looked tiny. Through a pair of binoculars, Aitor examined her from the back. The only thing he recognized was her chignon, worn exactly the same way as in her younger days. He identified her for certain when she turned to acknowledge the applause, but she had more difficulty recognizing him when he appeared in her dressing room, because little remained of the lanky, jovial young man who was always in a hurry and to whom she owed her life. He had turned into a prosperous businessman with measured gestures, a few too many pounds, thinning hair, and a bushy moustache, although there was still a gleam in his eye. He was married to a splendid woman who had been a beauty queen, had four children and many grandchildren, and had made a fortune. Arriving in Venezuela with fifteen dollars in his pocket thanks to some relatives, he dedicated himself to doing what he knew best, repairing vehicles. He set up a garage, and in a short space of time had others in several cities; from there to the trade in vintage models for collectors was a short step. Venezuela was the perfect country for someone as enterprising and visionary as Aitor. “Opportunities drop from the trees like mangos here,” he told Roser.

  Those seven years of passion were intense in emotion and relaxed in expression. They would spend a whole day shut up in a hotel room making love like adolescents, laughing all the time, eating bread and cheese washed down with a bottle of Riesling. Both were amazed at their intellectual affinity and their shared unquenchable desire. It was unique in their lives, and never before or afterward would they feel anything similar. They managed to keep their love in a sealed, secret compartment of their lives so that it didn’t spoil either of their happy marriages. Aitor loved and respected his beautiful wife, as Roser loved Victor. From the outset, when they came close to losing their heads over the surprise at their mutual love, they decided that the only possible future for this tremendous attraction was to keep it in the realm of the clandestine. They wouldn’t allow it to turn their lives upside down or harm their families. They kept that promise throughout those seven blessed years, and would have stayed together many more if a stroke hadn’t left Aitor hemiplegic, needing to be cared for by his wife. Victor knew none of this until Roser told him everything much later.

  Victor Dalmau often saw Pablo Neruda, who had returned from exile in 1952, from a distance in public meetings, and occasionally at the house of Senator Salvador Allende, where he would go to play chess. Victor was also invited by the poet to gatherings in his house on Isla Negra, an organic dwelling resembling a beached ship, built in a crazy fashion on top of a promontory facing the sea. This was his place of inspiration and writing. The sea of Chile, the tremendous sea, with its waiting barges, its towers of black and white foam, its coastal fishermen educated in patience, the natural, torrential, infinite sea. He lived there with Matilde, his third wife, amid a ridiculous accumulation of the objects from his collections, from dusty bottles bought at flea markets to figureheads from shipwrecks. It was there that he received dignitaries from all over the world who came to honor him and bring invitations. Local politicians, intellectuals, and journalists, but above all personal friends, among them several of the refugees from the Winnipeg, also visited the poet there. Neruda was a celebrity, translated into every language, and by then not even his worst enemies could deny the power of his verses.

  What the poet most wanted was to write without interruption, cook for his friends, and to be left in peace, but that was impossible even on the rocky outcrop of Isla Negra. All kinds of people came to knock on his door and remind him that he was the voice of long-suffering peoples, as he defined himself. So it was that one day his party comrades came to demand he represent them in the presidential campaign. Salvador Allende, the ideal candidate for the Left, had already run for president three times unsuccessfully, and it was thought that he had bad luck. The poet set aside his notebooks and fountain pen with green ink and set out to tour Chile in cars, buses, and trains, meeting the people and reciting his poetry to a chorus of workers, peasants, fishermen, railway workers, miners, students, and craftsmen, who were thrilled by the sound of his voice. This experience gave new impetus to his combative poetry and led him to understand he wasn’t cut out to be a politician. As soon as he could, he withdrew and backed the candidacy of Salvador Allende. Against all odds, Allende became leader of Popular Unity, a coalition of left-wing parties. Neruda actively supported him in his campaign.

  Now it was Allende’s turn to travel north and south on trains, rousing the crowds who gathered at every station to listen to his passionate speeches, in tiny villages scorched by sand and salt, and in others darkened by eternal rain. Victor Dalmau went with him on several occasions, officially as his doctor, but really as his chess partner. That was the only way the candidate could relax, since on the train he had no Western films, his other means of relieving tension.

  Allende was so energetic, determined, and insomniac that no one could keep up with him, and his entourage had to rotate their shifts. Victor took on the hours late at night, when the exhausted candidate needed to clear his mind of the noise of the crowds and the sound of his own voice via a game of chess that went on sometimes until dawn or was left pending until the following night. Allende slept very little, but took advantage of ten minutes here and there to doze off wherever he was sitting, and would wake up as refreshed as if he’d just had a shower. He walked erect, chest thrust out as if ready for the fray. He talked with an actor’s voice and the eloquence of a missionary; his gestures were sparing, he was quick-witted and unshakable in his fundamental beliefs. Thanks to his lengthy political career he had come to know Chile like his own backyard, and never lost his belief that there could be a peaceful revolution, a Chilean path to socialism. Inspired by the Cuban revolution, some of his supporters maintained it was impossible to make a true revolution and escape U.S. imperialism without violence: it could only be achieved through armed struggle. For Allende, however, there was plenty of room for the revolution within the solid Chilean democracy, and he respected its constitution. Right to the end he believed it was above all a question of denouncing, explaining, proposing, and calling on others to act so that the workers could rise up and seize their destiny in their own hands. But he was also well aware of the power of his adversaries. In public he behaved with a dignity that had something pompous about it, which his enemies called arrogance, but in
private he seemed simple and jovial. He always kept his word; he couldn’t imagine betrayal, and that was what eventually cost him his life.