Portrait in Sepia

by Isabel Allende

  Severo del Valle, along with thousands of other wounded, was returned to Chile by ship. While many died of gangrene or of the typhus and dysentery rampant in the military field hospitals, he recovered, thanks to Nívea, who the minute she learned what had happened had contacted her uncle, Minister Vergara, and had hounded him until he ordered a search for Severo, rescued him from a hospital where he was but another among thousands of sick men under ominous conditions, and had him shipped home on the first available transport to Valparaíso. Vergara also issued a special permit for his niece that allowed her to enter the military area of the port, and assigned a lieutenant to help her. When Severo del Valle was brought ashore on a stretcher, she didn’t recognize him; he had lost over forty pounds and was a sallow-skinned, wild-haired, and bearded corpse with the terrified, delirious eyes of a madman. Nívea, controlling her panic with the Amazon will that had sustained her in all other aspects of her life, greeted Severo with a cheerful,“Hello, Cousin, a pleasure to see you!” Severo was unable to answer. When he saw her, his relief was so great that he covered his face with his hands so she wouldn’t see him cry. The lieutenant had a vehicle waiting and in accord with his orders drove the wounded man and Nívea directly to the minister’s palace in Viña del Mar, where his wife had prepared a room. “My husband says that you are to stay here until you can walk, my son,” she told Severo. The Vergara family physician called on all the resources of science to cure Severo, but when a month later his stump hadn’t healed and he was still shaken by feverish paroxysms, Nívea realized that his soul was sickened from the horrors of war, and that the only remedy against such guilt was love. She decided to take extreme measures.

  “I am going to ask my parents’ permission to marry you,” she announced to Severo.

  “I’m dying, Nívea,” he sighed.

  “You always have some excuse, Severo! So when has dying been an impediment to marriage?”

  “Do you want to be a widow without ever having been a wife? I don’t want you to go through what happened to me with Lynn.”

  “I won’t be a widow, because you’re not going to die. Do you think you could ask me humbly to marry you, Cousin? Tell me, for example, that I am the one woman in your life, your angel, your muse, or something in that vein? Invent something, man! Tell me you can’t live without me—at least that much is true, isn’t it? I admit that I don’t enjoy being the only romantic in this relationship.”

  “You are insane, Nívea. I’m not even whole, I’m a miserable invalid.”

  “You mean you lost something besides a little piece of your leg?” she asked, alarmed.

  “You consider that little?”

  “If you have everything else you’re supposed to have, that doesn’t seem like very much, Severo,” she laughed.

  “Then marry me, please,” he mumbled with profound relief and a sob in his throat, too weak to embrace her.

  “Don’t cry, Cousin. Kiss me. You don’t need your leg to do that,” she replied, bending over the bed exactly as he had envisioned her so many times in his delirium.

  Three days later they were married in a brief ceremony in one of the handsome salons of the minister’s residence, in the presence of their two families. Given the circumstances, they had a private ceremony, but counting just the closest relatives, that came to ninety-four persons. Severo appeared in a wheelchair, pale and thin, with his hair cut à la Byron, his cheeks shaved, and in elegant attire: a shirt with a stiff collar, gold buttons, and silk necktie. There wasn’t time to make a bridal gown or arrange a proper trousseau for Nívea, but her sisters and cousins filled two trunks with the linens they had been embroidering for years for their own hope chests. She wore a white satin dress and a tiara of pearls and diamonds lent to her by her uncle’s wife. In the wedding photograph she is radiant, standing beside her husband’s chair. That night there was a family dinner that Severo del Valle did not attend because the day’s emotions had exhausted him. After the guests left, Nívea was led by her aunt to the room she had prepared for her. “I am terribly sorry that your wedding night has to be like this,” the good woman stammered, blushing. “Don’t worry, Aunt, I will console myself by saying the rosary,” the young woman replied. She waited for the house to fall silent, and when she was sure that there was nothing moving but the sea breeze through the trees in the garden, Nívea got up in her nightgown, felt her way down the long hallways of that palace, and went into Severo’s room. The nun hired to keep vigil over the patient’s sleep was sprawled in a chair, deep asleep, but Severo was awake, waiting for Nívea. She placed her finger to her lips to caution silence, turned down the gas lamps, and slipped into bed.

  Nívea had been educated by nuns, and she came from an old-fashioned family in which bodily functions, say nothing of those related to reproduction, were never mentioned, but she was twenty years old, and she had a passionate heart and good memory. She remembered very well the secret games she’d played in dark corners with her cousin, the shape of Severo’s body, the tension of never-satisfied pleasure, the fascination of sin. In those days they had been inhibited by modesty and guilt, and both had come out of those corners trembling and weak, their skin aflame. During the years they had been apart, Nívea had had time to replay every instant shared with her cousin and to transform childhood curiosity into profound love. In addition, she had taken full advantage of her uncle José Francisco Vergara’s library. He was a man of liberal and modern thought who accepted no boundary to his intellectual curiosity and did not abide religious censorship. As Nívea was classifying his scientific, art, and military books, she had by chance discovered a secret section of shelves where she found a not inconsiderable number of erotic texts and novels on the blacklist of the church, including an amusing collection of Japanese and Chinese drawings of inventive couples in postures that were anatomically impossible but capable of inspiring an ascetic, even more a person as imaginative as she. The most instructive texts, however, were the pornographic novels written by one Anonymous Lady, rather badly translated from English to Spanish, which the girl took with her, one by one, hidden in her handbag, read studiously, and stealthily returned to the same place—a pointless precaution since her uncle was off directing the war, and no one else in his palace ever went into the library. Guided by those books, Nívea explored her own body, learned the rudiments of humanity’s most ancient art, and prepared for the day when she could apply theory to practice. She knew, of course, that she was committing a horrendous sin—pleasure always is sin—but she refrained from discussing the subject with her confessor, since it seemed to her that the pleasure she received and would give in the future was well worth the risk of hell. She prayed that death would not take her suddenly and that before she drew her last breath she could manage to confess the hours of delight those books afforded her. She never imagined that her solitary training would help her infuse life into the man she loved, much less that she would have to do it six feet away from a sleeping nun. Starting with that first night with Severo, Nívea arranged to bring a cup of warm chocolate and a few biscuits to the nurse as she went to say good night to her husband, before going to her own room. The chocolate contained a dose of valerian strong enough to speed a camel to dreamland. Severo del Valle had never imagined that his chaste cousin could be capable of such extraordinary exploits. The mending leg, which caused him shooting pains, fever, and weakness, limited him to a passive role, but what he lacked in vigor Nívea made up with initiative and knowledge. Severo had no idea that such acrobatics were possible, and he was sure they were not Christian, but that did not prevent him from enjoying them immensely. If he hadn’t known Nívea from childhood, he would have thought his cousin had been trained in a Turkish seraglio, but if he was uneasy about how this maiden had learned such a variety of professional flourishes, he was intelligent enough not to ask. He followed docilely in the voyage of the senses as far as his body could go, surrendering along the way the last shred of his soul. They explored one another beneath the covers in way
s described by the pornographers in the library of the honorable minister of war, and in others they invented, spurred by desire and love but limited by the bandaged stump and by the nun snoring in her armchair. Dawn would surprise them throbbing in a knot of arms, their lips joined, breathing in unison, and as soon as the first ray of light peered through the window, Nívea would slip like a shadow back to her room. Their former childish games were transformed into true marathons of lust; they caressed with voracious appetites, kissed, licked, and penetrated, all this in darkness and in the most absolute silence, swallowing their sighs and biting pillows to smother the sounds of joyous licentiousness that lifted them to glory again and again during those all-too-brief nights. The minutes flew by: no sooner had Nívea materialized like a ghost in the room and climbed into Severo’s bed than it was morning. Neither of the two closed their eyes, they couldn’t lose a minute of those blessed encounters. The next day Severo would sleep like a newborn babe until noon, but Nívea would get up early with the befuddled air of a sleepwalker and carry out her normal routines. In the afternoons Severo del Valle would rest in his wheelchair on the terrace, watching the sun set over the sea, while by his side his wife fell asleep over her embroidery. In front of others they behaved like brother and sister; they never touched and scarcely glanced at one another, but the atmosphere around them was charged. They passed the day counting the hours, waiting with delirious impatience for the moment to hold each other in bed. What they were doing by night would have horrified the doctor, their families, society in general—never mind the nun. Meanwhile, family and friends were going about commenting on Nívea’s sacrifice, that pure, Catholic girl condemned to a platonic love, and about the moral fortitude of Severo, who had lost a leg and ruined his life defending his country. Gossipy old ladies wove a tale that a leg wasn’t all Severo had lost on the battlefield—it was his male attributes as well. Poor things, they would lament among sighs, never suspecting what a romp that pair of dissolutes were having. After a week of anesthetizing the nun with hot chocolate and making love like gypsies, Severo’s stump had healed and his temperature returned to normal. Before two months had passed, Severo del Valle was walking with crutches and beginning to talk about a wooden leg, while Nívea was vomiting up her insides in one of the twenty-three bathrooms in her uncle’s palace. When there was nothing to do but confess that Nívea was in a family way, the surprise was so great that it was even suggested that her pregnancy was a miracle. The nun professed to be the most scandalized of all, but Severo and Nívea suspected that despite the massive doses of valerian, the blessed woman had learned a great deal; she had pretended to sleep so as not to deprive herself of the pleasure of spying on them. The one person who was able to imagine how the “miracle” had happened, and to laugh uproariously as he celebrated the couple’s cleverness, was Minister Vergara. By the time Severo was able to take his first steps with his artificial leg, and Nívea’s belly was not to be disguised, he helped them get settled in another house and gave Severo del Valle a job. “The nation, and the Liberal party, need men of your audacity,” he said, although in truth the audacious one was Nívea.

  I never knew my grandfather Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz. He died a few months before I came to live in his house. He suffered apoplexy while presiding at the head of the table during a banquet in his mansion on Nob Hill, choking on a veal pie and red French wine. Several guests picked him up from the floor and laid him, dying, on a sofa with his handsome Arab prince’s head on the lap of Paulina del Valle, who to keep up his spirits kept repeating, “Don’t die on me, Feliciano, you know widows never get invited anywhere. Breathe, man! If you breathe, I promise that this very day I’ll remove the bolt from my door.” They tell that Feliciano managed to smile before his heart swelled with blood and exploded. There are countless photographs of that hearty, happy Chilean. It is easy to imagine him alive, because none is posed for a painter or photographer; in every one he gives the impression of having been caught in a spontaneous gesture. He showed shark’s teeth when he laughed, waved his arms as he talked, and moved with the certainty and arrogance of a pirate. Paulina del Valle crumbled at his death; she was so depressed that she was unable to attend either his funeral or any of the many homages paid him by the city. Since her three sons were away, it fell to the butler, Williams, and the family lawyers to take charge of the services. The two younger sons arrived a few weeks later, but Matías was wandering around Germany and, using the excuse of his health, did not appear to console his mother. For the first time in her life Paulina lost her coquettishness, her appetite, and her interest in the account books; she refused to go out, and spent days in her bed. She did not allow anyone to see her in that condition; the only people who knew of her grieving were her chambermaids and Williams, who pretended not to notice but from a prudent distant kept watch in order to be of help when she asked. One afternoon Paulina happened to stop in front of the large gold-framed mirror that occupied half the wall of her bathroom and saw what she had turned into: a fat, frowsy witch, her turtle’s head crowned by a mat of gray tangles. She screamed with horror. No man in the world—certainly not Feliciano—deserved such abnegation, she concluded. She had touched bottom; it was time to kick up from the depths and rise back to the top. She rang the bell to summon her maids and ordered them to help her bathe, and to send for her hairdresser. From that day on, she began to combat her mourning with an iron will, with no help but mountains of sweets and long baths. Night tended to find her soaking in her tub with her mouth stuffed with pastries, but she did not cry again. Around Christmastime she emerged from her seclusion weighing a few pounds more but perfectly composed; then to her amazement she found that in her absence the world had kept turning and no one had missed her, which was another incentive to get back on her feet once and for all. She was not going to be ignored, she decided; she had just turned sixty and she planned to live thirty years more—even if for the sole purpose of mortifying everyone around her. She would wear mourning for a few months, it was the least she could do out of respect for Feliciano, but he would not want to see her turn into one of those Greek widows who bury themselves in black for the rest of their days. She began planning a stunning wardrobe in pastel colors for the New Year and a pleasure trip through Europe. She had always wanted to go to Egypt, but Feliciano had thought it was a land of sand and mummies where nothing interesting had happened for three thousand years. Now that she was alone, she could fulfill that dream. Soon, however, she realized how much her life had changed and how little she was esteemed by San Francisco society; her fortune was not great enough for her to be forgiven her Latin American origins and her kitchen maid’s accent. Just as she had said in jest, no one invited her; she was no longer the first to receive invitations to parties, she was not asked to inaugurate a hospital or a monument, her name was dropped from the social pages, and she was barely greeted at the opera. She was excluded. For another thing, she also found it difficult to augment her income because without her husband she had no one to represent her in financial circles. She made a careful accounting of her holdings and realized that her three sons were throwing money away more rapidly that she could earn it; she had debts everywhere, and before Feliciano’s death he had made several terrible investments without consulting her. She was not as rich as she thought, but she was far from defeated. She called for Williams and asked him to contract a decorator to remodel the salons, a chef to plan a series of banquets to celebrate the New Year, a travel agent to talk about Egypt, and a couturier to plan her new wardrobe. That is where she was, employing emergency measures to recover from the shock of widowhood, when she was called on by a child dressed in white poplin, a lace bonnet, and high patent leather shoes, and holding the hand of a woman in mourning. It was Eliza Sommers and her granddaughter Aurora, whom Paulina del Valle had not seen in five years.