When Severo del Valle notified Lynn Sommers that Matías had sailed for Europe with no plan to return in the near future, she burst into tears and kept weeping for five days, despite the sedatives Tao Chi’en gave her, until her mother slapped her in the face and forced her to face reality. She had acted imprudently, and now there was nothing to do but pay the consequences. She wasn’t a child any longer; she was going to be a mother, and she should be happy she had a family willing to help her, as other girls in her state ended up thrown into the street and forced to earn a living in the worst way possible, while their bastards were taken to an orphanage. The time had come to accept the fact that her lover had faded into thin air; she would have to be mother and father to the baby and grow up once and for all, for in that house they were sick and tired of putting up with her whims. For twenty years she had been taking with both hands; she shouldn’t get the idea she could spend her life lying in bed whimpering, so she should wipe her nose and get dressed, because they were going out for a walk, and they were going to do that twice a day without fail, rain or thunder, and was she listening? Yes, Lynn had listened to the end, her eyes wide with surprise and her cheeks burning from the only slaps she had received in her life. She dressed and obeyed without a word. From that moment her sanity returned with a crash. She accepted her fate with amazing serenity, never complained again, swallowed Tao Chi’en’s remedies, took long walks with her mother, and was even able to laugh when she learned that the project of the Republic statue was shot to hell, as her brother explained, the fault not of the model but of the sculptor, who had fled to Brazil with the money.
At the end of August Severo del Valle finally dared speak of his feelings to Lynn Sommers. By then she felt as heavy as an elephant and did not recognize her own face in the mirror, but to Severo’s eyes she was more beautiful than ever. They were returning from a walk, hot and sweaty, when Severo pulled out his handkerchief to wipe her forehead and neck but stopped before he completed the gesture. Somehow he found himself bending down, taking Lynn firmly by the shoulders, and kissing her right on the lips in the middle of the street. He asked her to marry him, and she answered with absolute simplicity that she would never love anyone but Matías Rodríguez de Santa Cruz.
“I’m not asking you to love me, Lynn; the affection I feel for you is enough for both of us,” Severo replied in the somewhat ceremonious tone he always used with her. “The baby needs a father. Give me the chance to protect you both, and I promise you that with time I will be worthy of your affection.”
“My father says that in China couples are married who have never met, and that they learn to love one another afterward, but I am sure that that would not be the case with me, Severo. I am truly sorry.”
“You don’t have to live with me, Lynn. As soon as the baby is born I’m going to Chile. My country is at war and I have already put off doing my duty too long.”
“And if you don’t come back from the war?”
“At least your child will have my name and the inheritance from my father, which I still have. It isn’t much, but it will be enough for his education. And you, my beloved Lynn, you will have respectability.”
That same night Severo del Valle wrote Nívea the letter he hadn’t been able to write before. He told her everything in four sentences, without preamble or excuses, because he understood that she would not tolerate any other way. He didn’t even dare ask her forgiveness for the waste of love and time that those four years of their epistolary courtship had meant for her, because such ignoble accountings were beneath his cousin’s generosity of heart. He called a servant to take the letter to the post office the next morning and then lay down in his clothes, exhausted. He slept without dreaming for the first time in a long while. A month later Severo del Valle and Lynn Sommers were married in a brief ceremony in the presence of her family and Williams, the one person Severo invited from his own home. He knew that the butler would tell his aunt Paulina, and decided to wait until she took the first step by asking him about it. The marriage was not announced to anyone, because Lynn had requested absolute privacy until after the baby was born and she had recovered her normal appearance. She didn’t want to show herself with that pumpkin belly and face covered with splotches, she said. That night Severo said good night to his bride with a kiss on the forehead and left, as always, to sleep in his bachelor room.
That same week another naval battle was waged in the waters of the Pacific and the Chilean ships put two enemy warships out of commission. The Peruvian admiral Miguel Grau, the same gentleman who months before had returned Captain Prat’s sword to his widow, died as heroically as Prat had done. It was a disaster for Peru; when they lost control of the sea lanes, their communications were interrupted and their armies fragmented and isolated. The Chileans took command of the sea and were able to transport their troops to sensitive points in the north and to implement the plan to march across enemy territory and occupy Lima. Severo del Valle followed the news with the same passion as the rest of his compatriots in the United States, but his love for Lynn more than outweighed his patriotism and he did not set forward the date for his return voyage.
In the early morning of the second Monday in October, Lynn woke with a wet nightgown and screamed in horror; she thought she had urinated on herself. “That is not good, her water has broken too soon,” Tao Chi’en said privately to his wife, but before their daughter he remained smiling and calm. Ten hours later, when her contractions were barely perceptible and the family was exhausted from playing mah-jongg to distract her, Tao Chi’en decided to try his herbs. The future mother joked defiantly: were these the birth pangs she had been warned about so much? They were easier to bear than the stomach cramps Chinese food gave you, she said. She was more bored than uncomfortable, and she was hungry, but her father would allow her only water and brews of medicinal herbs as he applied his gold acupuncture needles to speed the birth. The combination of drugs and needles had their effect, and by nightfall, when Severo del Valle arrived for his customary visit, he found Lucky at the door, agitated, and the house shuddering from the moans of Lynn and the tumult caused by the Chinese midwife, who was talking at the top of her lungs and running back and forth with rags and jugs of water. Tao Chi’en tolerated the midwife because she had more experience in that field than he, but he did not let her torture Lynn by sitting on her or punching her in the stomach, as she intended. Severo del Valle stayed in the sitting room, back against the wall, trying not to be seen. Every moan from Lynn bored into his soul; he wanted to run from there, as far as possible, but he couldn’t move from his corner or speak a word. This was his state when Tao Chi’en came into the room, impassive, dressed with his habitual neatness.
“May I wait here? Am I in the way? How can I help?” Severo babbled, drying the sweat trickling down his neck.
“You are not in the way at all, my son, but you cannot help Lynn. She has to do this job alone. On the other hand, you can help Eliza, who is a little upset.”
Eliza Sommers had experienced the fatigue of giving birth, and like every woman, she understood that that was the threshold of death. She knew the courageous and mysterious journey in which the body opens to give passage for another life. She remembered the moment when she began to tumble, unchecked, down a steep slope, contracting, pushing—the terror, the suffering, and the unbelievable amazement when finally the child lets go and comes to light. Tao Chi’en, with all his zhong-yi wisdom, was slower than she to realize that something was very wrong in Lynn’s case. The resources of Tao’s Chinese medicine had provoked strong contractions, but the child was badly positioned, sideways and obstructed by its mother’s bones. It was a dry, difficult birth, as Tao Chi’en explained, but his daughter was strong, and it was just a matter of Lynn’s keeping calm and not tiring herself more than was necessary. This was a race of endurance, not speed, he added. During one pause, Eliza Sommers, as exhausted as Lynn herself, left the room and met Severo in the corridor. She gestured to him, and he followed, puzz
led, to a little room with an altar, a place he had never been before. On a low table stood a simple cross, a small statue of Kuan Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion, and in the center, a pen-and-ink drawing of a woman in a green tunic and two flowers over her ears. He saw a pair of lighted candles and saucers holding water, rice, and flower petals. Eliza knelt on an orange silk cushion before the altar and asked Christ, Buddha, and the spirit of Lin, Tao’s first wife, to come to help her daughter in giving birth. Severo stood behind her, automatically murmuring the Catholic prayers he had learned in his childhood. They stayed there for some time, united by their fear and love for Lynn, until Tao Chi’en called his wife to come help him because he had sent the midwife away and was preparing to turn the baby and pull it out by hand. Severo stayed with Lucky, who was smoking at the door, as little by little Chinatown awakened.
The child was born early Tuesday morning. The mother, dripping with sweat and trembling, struggled to help, but she was not screaming any longer; all she could do was pant, attentive to her father’s directions. Finally she gritted her teeth, clung to the bars of the bed, and pushed with brutal determination. A lock of dark hair appeared. Tao Chi’en grasped the head and pulled firmly and gently until shoulders emerged; he turned the small body and removed it with a single rapid movement, while with the other hand he untangled the dark cord about its neck. Eliza Sommers received a small bloody bundle, a tiny girl child with a flattened face and blue skin. While Tao Chi’en cut the cord and busied himself with the second stage of the birth, the grandmother cleaned her granddaughter with a sponge and clapped her back until she began to breathe. When she heard the cry that announced entrance into the world, and verified that the baby had a normal color, she placed her on Lynn’s stomach. Exhausted, the mother raised herself on one elbow to welcome her daughter while her body continued to contract; she held the baby to her breast, kissing her and welcoming her in a mixture of English, Spanish, Chinese, and invented words. One hour later Eliza called in Severo and Lucky to meet the baby. They found her sleeping peacefully in the silver cradle that had belonged to the family of the Rodríguez de Santa Cruzes, dressed in yellow silk and a red bonnet that gave her the look of a tiny elf. Lynn was drowsing, pale and calm, between clean sheets, and Tao Chi’en, by her side, was checking her pulse.
“What are you going to name her?” Severo del Valle asked, filled with emotion.
“Lynn and you should decide that,” Eliza answered.
“Me?”
“Aren’t you the father?” asked Tao Chi’en, winking.
“She will be called Aurora, because she was born at dawn,” murmured Lynn without opening her eyes.
“Then her name in Chinese is Lai Ming, which means dawn,” added Tao Chi’en.
“Welcome to the world, Lai Ming, Aurora del Valle,” and Severo smiled as he kissed the tiny baby on the forehead, certain that this was the happiest day of his life and that this wrinkled infant dressed like a Chinese doll was as much his daughter as if she were actually of his blood. Lucky took his niece in his arms and blew his tobacco and soy sauce breath in her face.
“What are you doing!” cried the grandmother, trying to take Aurora from his hands.
“I’m blowing on her to give her my good luck. What more worthwhile gift do I have to give to Lai Ming?” Her uncle laughed.
When Severo del Valle arrived at the mansion on Nob Hill during dinner and announced that he had married Lynn Sommers a week before and that on this day his daughter had been born, his aunt and uncle were as bewildered as if he had deposited a dead dog on the dining room table.
“And everyone throwing the blame on Matías! I always knew he wasn’t the father but I never imagined it was you,” Feliciano spit out as soon as he recovered a little from his shock.
“I’m not the blood father but I am the legal father,” Severo clarified. “The baby’s name is Aurora del Valle.”
“This is unpardonable! You have betrayed this family, and after we took you in like our own son,” bellowed his uncle.
“I haven’t betrayed anyone. I married for love.”
“But wasn’t that woman in love with Matías?”
“That woman’s name is Lynn, and she is my wife; I demand that you treat her with the respect she deserves,” Severo said curtly, rising to his feet.
“You’re an idiot, Severo, a complete idiot!” Feliciano shouted as he strode furiously from the dining room.
The imperturbable Williams, who had come in at that moment to oversee the service of dessert, could not contain a quick smile of complicity before discreetly retiring. Paulina listened, incredulous, to Severo’s information that in a few days he would be leaving for the war in Chile. Lynn would continue to live with her parents in Chinatown, and, if things worked out well, he would return when he could to assume his role as husband and father.
“Sit down, nephew, let’s talk this over like decent folk. Matías is the baby’s father, isn’t he?”
“Ask him, Aunt.”
“I see it all now. You married to get Matías out of this mess. My son is a cynic, and you’re a romantic. . . . But you are going to ruin your life for some quixotic gesture!” exclaimed Paulina.
“You’re mistaken, Aunt. I haven’t ruined my life; on the contrary, I believe this is the best chance I will ever have to be happy.”
“With a woman who loves another man? With a child that isn’t yours?”
“Time will help. If I come back from the war, Lynn will learn to love me, and the child will believe I am her father.”
“Matías may come back before you do,” she noted.
“That won’t change anything.”
“All Matías would have to do is speak one word and Lynn Sommers would follow him to the end of the earth.”
“That is an unavoidable risk,” Severo replied.
“You’ve completely lost your head, Nephew. Those people are not of our social class.”
“It is the most decent family I know, Aunt,” Severo assured her.
“I see you haven’t learned anything from me. To triumph in this world you have to consider the results before you act. You are a lawyer with a brilliant future, and you bear one of the oldest names in Chile. Do you think society is going to accept your wife? And your cousin Nívea, isn’t she waiting for you?”
“That’s over.”
“Well, you stuck your foot in it this time, Severo, I suppose it’s too late for regrets. Let’s try to fix things as much as we can. Money and social position count for a lot both here and in Chile. I’ll help however I can—it’s not for nothing that I’m the grandmother of that baby. What did you say her name is?”
“Aurora, but her grandparents call her Lai Ming.”
“She’s a del Valle, and it is my duty to help her, seeing that Matías has washed his hands of this sorry matter.”
“That won’t be necessary, Aunt. I’ve made arrangements for Lynn to have the money from my inheritance.”
“You can never have too much money. At least I can see my granddaughter, can’t I?”
“We’ll ask Lynn and her parents,” Severo del Valle promised.
They were still in the dining room when Williams appeared with an urgent message saying that Lynn had suffered a hemorrhage and they feared for her life, that Severo should come right away. He immediately rushed off to Chinatown. When he reached the Chi’en home, he found the small family gathered around Lynn’s bed, so still that they seemed to be posed for a tragic painting. For an instant he was struck with wild hope when he saw everything so clean and orderly, with no signs of the birth, no stained rags or smell of blood, but then he saw the expression of grief on the faces of Tao, Eliza, and Lucky. The very air was thin in the room; Severo took a deep breath, gasping, as if he were on a mountain peak. Trembling, he walked to the bed and saw Lynn lying with her hands on her chest; her eyes were closed and her features transparent: a beautiful sculpture in ashen alabaster. He took one hand, hard and cold as ice, leaned over her, and note
d that her breathing was barely perceptible and her lips and fingers were blue. He kissed the palm of her hand for an eternal moment, wetting it with his tears, bowed with sorrow. Lynn managed to murmur Matías’s name and then sighed twice and departed as lightly as she had floated through this world. Absolute silence greeted the mystery of death, and for a time impossible to measure they waited, motionless, while Lynn’s spirit rose from her body. Severo felt a long howl surging from the center of the earth and passing through his body to his lips, but it did not escape. The scream invaded him, filled him, and burst inside his head in a silent explosion. He stayed there, kneeling beside the bed, voicelessly calling to Lynn, not believing that fate had so abruptly taken the woman whom he had dreamed of for years, taken her just when he thought he had won her. An eternity later, he felt someone touch his shoulder, and turned to meet the deadened eyes of Tao Chi’en. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” it seemed he murmured, and behind Tao Severo saw Eliza Sommers and Lucky, sobbing in each other’s arms, and he realized that he was an intruder in the family’s grief. Then he remembered the child. He staggered to the silver cradle like a drunk and took the tiny Aurora in his arms, carried her to the bed, and held her near Lynn’s face, so she could say good-bye to her mother. Then he sat down with her in his arms, rocking inconsolably.
Portrait in Sepia Page 9
