Gertrude heaved slightly with each breath. In profile, her face was furrowed with wrinkles. All of a sudden, he felt she would soon die.
He clapped his hands to get her attention. “Aunt Gertrude,” he said when she looked up. “I love you.”
She smiled. She seemed embarrassed. He kissed her cheek with a loud smacking noise as if to turn the confession of love into a joke. He was not her favorite. This privilege belonged to Jaime, whom she had cured of polio.
Nevertheless, she was kind, comforting, the only stable adult after his father died. She was not whimsical, arbitrary, or cold-hearted as his mother could be.
He left Puerto Montt and took a train north, planning to stop at Viña del Mar outside of Santiago, where Alma Iñez had a summer home.
Alma Iñez, how I want you, how I want you, kept humming through his brain as the railroad cars rolled past forests and farmlands, with the Cordillera always in the distance, covered with snow even in summer.
The mountains and the Pacific confined Chileans within a narrow strip of land. Every Chilean artist and intellectual in the ‘50’s had dreamed of going to Paris. Now they dreamed of New York or Los Angeles. The old culture he had grown up with was vanishing.
Alma Iñez’ golden brown hair gleamed in the sunlight as they sat in her garden. There were lines around her mouth and eyes that had not been there when he left for Paris seven years ago, and she had gained weight. But she still possessed the same radiant beauty. Ricardo sat between them on a bench made out of thick beams of wood. Ricardo had Antonio’s coloring, Antonio’s jaw, something of Antonio’s arrogance in his eyes.
“How can Nicanor live like this?” Antonio asked softly. He meant how could her husband Nicanor live with this youngest child, who so clearly resembled Antonio, and who did not look at all like the two older children.
Alma Iñez smiled. She seemed resigned, sad. “He has his love affairs,” she said. The child stared straight ahead, as if he were deaf, at the gardener who was pruning an apricot tree.
Antonio began wrestling in a playful way with the child on the lawn, and after a while he got his son laughing. He told Ricardo several funny stories. The child’s constraint vanished.
After the child had been taken indoors by a maid for his nap, Antonio and Alma Iñez drove off in her Mercedes. She drove expertly through the narrow streets, past whitewashed houses and brilliant flowers of red, pink, purple, gold, past all the greenery, past palms and cypresses, past steep terraces, until they arrived at an ancient hotel of whitewashed bricks on the beach.
They made love. Afterwards they lay in each other’s arms. She was fragrant with the perfume he remembered that she used to wear.
He was drawn to her as he had never been to Rosa or to anyone else. They were each dripping with sweat and exhausted. He sniffed her upper arm, her breast. Shadows deepened the pale blue gauze curtains. He could hear waves rolling against the sand.
Her face was wet with tears.
“We have a marvelous son,” he said, wiping her tears with his hand. “How does Nicanor treat him?”
“Actually very well, although he suspects. He and I don’t sleep together anymore. I had sort of a breakdown after you left . . . I wrote to you about that. . . . After I got out of the rest home, I was dry, and I couldn’t nurse Ricardo at all.”
“Rosa couldn’t nurse either.”
“Have you separated for good?” Her voice was melodious. She wanted him to belong to her absolutely.
“Who knows? It’s you I want, Alma Iñez. It’s always you I’ve wanted. I only married for the sake of the baby.”
As if to contradict that statement, a vision of Rosa suddenly arose, pale, melting into the girl in the portrait, that mysterious, unsigned painting in dull oils that had lured him for so many years, as if the girl in it were an unknown part of himself.
He cupped Alma Iñez’s breasts in his hands, so full, so rosy, so soft, and he sucked at one nipple and then the other.
“Come away with me, Alma Iñez,” he pleaded. “We could go to Buenos Aires, or Paraguay, or El Salvador. We could change our names. No one would know us. You would have dictators at your feet.”
She laughed and ran her fingers through his hair. He kissed her all over her body. Her kisses mingled with his. Where did he leave off and she begin? Again they made love. It grew dark. She murmured that she must get home. Nicanor would be driving back from the City tonight for the weekend along with the two older children, who were tutoring in the slums this summer as part of a volunteer project.
“You’ve lost weight, mi amor. Fatten up. I love you.” She clasped his hands in farewell just before she left him at the railroad station.
In Santiago he took a room at a small hotel near the Plaza de las Armas and searched for work. He visited the offices of Ercilla, Hoy, La Nación, El Siglo, and El Mercurio. He had written for each of these publications.
In the dingy office of El Mercurio, his old friend Hermann Bloch, who had taken over Antonio’s former job as editor, reminisced over a series of articles Antonio once wrote on the psychology of Chileans. “All Santiago was in a furor,” Hermann recalled, leaning back in his chair. Hermann had grown a paunch and a mustache. He had married and was the father of two small children.
“Whatever happened to you, my friend? After those articles and after El Sueño de Manuel? Whatever happened to you in Paris and in California? What have you written? I thought you’d become a major writer.”
Antonio picked up a copper paperweight on Hermann’s desk. “Who knows? I lived the life I had to.”
“Can you write something about California for us?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Back in his hotel room at the small, scratched mahogany desk by the window which looked out onto a crowded street flashing with neon signs—the signs had not been here eight years ago—he forced himself to begin. He remembered how in 1956, when he was writing El Sueño de Manuel, after working on the newspaper all day, he would stay awake until the early hours of the morning, drink cup after cup of black coffee, smoke a pack of cigarettes a night.
In those days writing had been as natural as breathing. Now words came with great difficulty. Doggedly he kept on. An electric water warmer was plugged into the wall outlet, its metal coil stuck into a tin pitcher of water. With that he made himself Nescafé. He smoked until his throat was parched. At last the entire draft of a ten-page article was finished. Perhaps he could type it in the Mercurio office, because he had given away his typewriter before he left Sausalito.
He looked over his cramped writing.
Vietnam is Johnson’s attempt to forestall a major economic depression worse than any yet experienced. . . . People in the United States seem unaware that they are fighting a racist war within their own borders. . . . Their racism resembles the Nazis’. . . I have heard rumors of concentration camps in the Arizona desert. . . .
He was pleased with the article. However, he wished he had brought more photographs of California with him.
The first article was published a week later, and he received a very small payment for it of twelve hundred pesos, barely enough to pay for a week’s hotel room.
The money Eleanor had given him just before he left for Chile was going rapidly.
When he asked for editorial work, everywhere he was refused or he was met with vague equivocations, despite the excellent reception his California articles received. “My friend, your reputation is too well known,” Hermann said. “It’s too bad, but they’ll never hire you again as an editor on this paper.”
He met old friends in the cafés: newspapermen, novelists, poets, politicians, artists. They were effusive. They welcomed him back. But it was clear to him that he no longer belonged. The texture of society had changed.
One night in a café he gave advice to a young man he had recently met. “You want to be appointed to a diplomatic post,” Antonio told him. “Then you’ll time have to write. Look at Borges, at Seferis the Greek, at Claudel, at our
own writer-diplomats.” The young man was on edge because of Antonio’s intensity. “You are sensitive. You’re an artist. You want to write novels,” Antonio boomed in his loud voice. The young man looked down in embarrassment. Antonio fingered the manuscript that the young man had given him to read. “Take this manuscript,” said Antonio, “to my friend at Zig Zag Press tomorrow. Mention my name.”
The young man sipped his whiskey and glanced around the crowded space. He knew Antonio had played an important role in the cultural life of the ‘50’s. People told him that Antonio was eccentric and given to fits of violence. “It’s all very well to talk about diplomatic work,” the young man said with slight hesitation. “But how do I get it?”
“You’re a journalist,” Antonio said. “Excellent! You write a few articles in praise of Frei’s regime. You go to Frei’s good friend . . .” Antonio named a man whom he knew to be close to the Chief of State. “Tell him you’d like to be appointed to the embassy in Paris or Buenos Aires or Berlin. It doesn’t matter where. Leave him copies of your articles. As for your little girl friend, marry her. They prefer it if you have a wife. Besides, she is deliciosa.
“Once you’re on the staff, then you’ll have time to write.” Antonio waved his hand. “Poof . . . you’ll have few official duties. It gives stature to Chile to have writers in diplomatic posts.”
The young man nodded. How simple Antonio made it all seem. (However, he wondered about marriage.) How clearly Antonio outlined a possibility which he himself had never even thought of.
“Waiter, another glass of wine,” called Antonio.
Suddenly Jorge and Francisco entered the noisy café.
“Ola!” shouted Antonio. “I thought you were in Switzerland.”
“I heard you came back from California,” said Jorge, who seemed as boyish, as ingenuous as ever. Francisco, however, looked older. There was a scar on his cheek where the cancerous growth had been removed. He no longer peroxided his hair. It was pure white.
“My father died. I inherited lots of money,” said Francisco with gaiety. “We bought a little house in Providencia. You must visit us.”
Jorge and Francisco declared they were famished and ordered osso bucco, squid, soup, and salad. They invited Antonio and his companion to join them. It occurred to Antonio that he could reclaim the money he had given them out of Rosa’s inheritance. But not now . . . not now. His talk with the young writer ended under the impact of his friends’ excited chatter.
Much later that evening after he had drunk far more than he should (he tried to curb his drinking), he wandered down a street, unconscious of where he was going. He would continue with the novel about Paris. It would win a prize, be a best seller. With the money he too would buy a cottage in Providencia, one of the more prosperous suburbs. Rosa would join him. They would have another child, a son. Isabel would speak about her father with pride to her schoolmates. When he grew older, Ricardo would be told in a hushed voice that his father was the famous author of the books which had created such a stir.
El Sueño de Manuel was already a permanent part of the literature. One chapter was constantly being used in anthologies of contemporary South American writing. But where were the royalties? When he asked, people shrugged and said they didn’t know, that this needed to be investigated.
Why could he find no steady work here? People were jealous. That was it. Long ago he had written about the peculiar expressions of Chilean jealousy in his articles for La Nación. He was slipping . . . slipping. . . . It was as though he were hanging by his fingers to the edge of a cliff.
He no longer knew where he was. He had taken no account of the streets he wandered. There were no buses at this hour. He swayed as he walked. He felt dizzy, chilled and feverish. The cool night air permeated his body. He would like to sink down into the gutter and sleep, bury his head against the curbstone.
With a spurt of apprehension he realized that he was in a poor neighborhood and that it was not safe to be here so late at night. Unaware, he had walked in the direction of the callampas, the shanty towns outside the city.
He passed a dilapidated movie theater with a torn banner. Decrepit buildings of adobe or brick housed far too many people. Windows were broken. Garbage overflowed cans into the gutters. An emaciated black cat with white forepaws rushed across the unpaved street, its eyes glistening green-gold. No streetlights. Only the pale light of stars and the half-full moon.
There was a hissing sound, as of half-starved cats fighting. Then he heard footsteps behind him. A soft whistle. “Hombre, un luz por favor.” He walked faster. “Hombre, un luz.” Rough voice, deceptively soft. Then another voice, harsher. “Arrete.” He wondered where he could fling himself for safety, if he could escape by running through the narrow maze of back alleys. But hands pulled on him. A blow to the kidneys knocked him down. Two youths in their twenties stood over him. One’s foot was planted firmly on his stomach.
The fall had bruised him. His head, shoulders, and kidneys ached. He wondered if he’d sprained an ankle, because it throbbed with pain.
One youth flicked open a pocket knife. He wore a dark hat, a ragged shirt, and trousers held with rope. The other wore an oversized jacket. Both had thick-soled shoes without socks.
Perhaps they were going to kill him. He looked at them, curiously calm.
“Hombre.” One kicked him in the ribs; the other lowered himself to his knees and stuck the knife very lightly against his chest. “Tu dinero.”
“Inside my jacket.”
Still holding the knife, jabbing it slightly against the skin, the youth removed his wallet. “Take off your jacket.”
Antonio obeyed. The one in the ragged shirt put it on.
Now they would let him go.
“Stand up, gringo.”
“Blanco y rico,” one muttered.
“No,” said Antonio. “I am not rich.”
But then there was a blow against his jaw, another against his eye sockets, and another against his face and against his ribs. He gagged. He was spitting blood.
“Eh gringo!”
Cold white dawn. Broken ends of front teeth. He was one with the pain. He was lying in the middle of the dirt road. He dragged himself to the side and staggered to his feet. A bus approached. He would get himself to a clinic.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The alarm rang. Rosa forced herself out of bed. She was so sleepy. She splashed cold water over her face, then heated Isabel’s bottle. Still in her bathrobe, she put electric curlers in her hair, made coffee and toast, ate quickly, and dressed in her office clothes. Beige wool dress. Stockings. High heels. She felt unreal in these clothes, with her makeup. Hurry up. Six forty-five a.m. Sticking the bottle of warm milk in Isabel’s mouth, she lifted her out of her crib and hurried out holding the baby, a bag of the baby’s clothes, and canned apricots as well as a pound of liverwurst for the babysitter.
Into the car. Drive quickly. Siren in back.
“Miss, you didn’t come to a complete stop.”
Fifteen dollar ticket. Second moving violation in three months. Damn policemen. Damn her absentmindedness. “They wait for you in the mornings,” chuckled the babysitter’s husband, Les, a heavy, florid man who drove a truck for the city of Sausalito. His wife, Joanna, a Portuguese woman, slender, high-strung, who looked to Rosa like a virgin in a Renaissance painting, took Isabel from her and laid her down, still sleeping, in a crib. Later she would dress her, feed her, and Isabel would play with the other children. Joanna’s son was almost exactly the same age as Isabel, which was why Rosa had chosen her as a babysitter.
She wondered how Joanna could stand the children all day and admired her for being able to do it. “Forty-five minutes a day,” she told herself. “If I spend forty-five good minutes a day with Isabel, it’s better than if I screw her up. If I were with her all the time, then I’d lose my temper. I’d be terrible for her. Better for her to learn to play with other babies and children, to live with normal people—not me.”
Shitty job. Why hadn’t she landed something better? “We are pleased to inform you that your insurance Policy Number___ has come to maturity. Enclosed is your check for___. Should you wish to reinvest, please fill out the enclosed form.”
Still there was something reassuring about this huge airy room of thirty typists (all women). There was something reassuring about the structure of her life. Every moment of her life accounted for except evenings and weekends. No time to brood except then. She looked to see if anyone were paying attention, then slipped in a Maturity Form backwards so that it was blank and wrote,
A moth circles
the flame of a candle
as though I have lost my soul
and I seek to devour the bright
Her supervisor stood over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Oh . . . checking out the type. Something was funny with it.”
“Really? Shall I call the repairman?”
Screw the bitch. She, Rosa, would grow old here before her time. No privacy. At times she went into the bathroom stall to cry. At least then she did not feel like a robot, as though her skin, her muscles underneath, her brain were congealing inside her office uniform, her office coiffure, her office persona.
“Can you type?” they asked at employment agencies. She told them she had majored in comparative literature. “No experience? . . . We have six hundred girls a day coming into San Francisco . . . lucky to find any jobs at all. . . . Take this card, dear, over to the Personnel Director at Insurance Securities.”
Longing Page 22
