Portrait in Sepia

by Isabel Allende

  “Begging your pardon, milady, but may I inquire as to why I have fallen from your favor?”

  “What are you talking about, Williams! You know how much I appreciate you and how grateful I am for your services.”

  “Nevertheless, it is not madam’s wish to take me to Chile—”

  “Williams, for God’s sake! The thought had never occurred to me. What would I do with a British butler in Chile? Nobody has one. They would laugh at both of us. Have you looked at a map? That country is very far from here, and no one speaks English; your life there would not be very pleasant. I have no right to ask such a sacrifice of you, Williams.”

  “If you will allow me to say so, milady, being separated from madam would constitute an even greater sacrifice.”

  Paulina del Valle sat looking at her employee, eyes round with surprise. For the first time she realized that Williams was something more than an automaton in a black swallowtail coat and white gloves. She saw a man of about fifty, with broad shoulders and a pleasant face, a thick head of pepper-and-salt hair, and penetrating eyes; he did have the rough hands of a stevedore, and his teeth were yellowed by nicotine, although she had never seen him smoking or chewing tobacco. Neither of them spoke for what seemed a very long time, she observing him and he accepting her scrutiny with no sign of discomfort.

  “I could not help noticing, milady, the difficulties that widowhood has thrust upon madam,” Williams said finally in the indirect language he always used.

  “Are you making fun of me?” Paulina smiled.

  “Nothing farther from my mind, milady.”

  “Uh, ah,” she began, clearing her throat to fill the long pause that followed the butler’s answer.

  “Madam will be asking herself where all this is leading,” he continued.

  “Let’s say that you have succeeded in getting my attention, Williams.”

  “It occurs to me that in view of the fact that I cannot go to Chile as madam’s butler, perhaps it would not be an entirely bad idea if I went, ahem, as her husband.”

  Paulina del Valle thought the floor would open up and that she, chair and all, would drop to the center of the earth. Her first thought was that the man had lost his sanity, there was no other explanation, but when she reappraised his dignity and calm, she swallowed the insults that had risen to her lips.

  “Allow me to explain that point of view, madam,” he continued. “I do not, naturally, expect to exercise the role of husband in any sentimental area. Nor do I aspire to madam’s fortune, which would be entirely safe—for that madam would undertake the necessary legal precautions. My capacity would be very nearly the same as it is now: that is, to be of assistance in every way I am able, employing the maximum discretion. I surmise that in Chile, as elsewhere in the world, a woman alone encounters many obstacles. I would consider it an honor to be responsible for madam’s well-being.”

  “And what would you gain from this curious arrangement?” Paulina inquired, unable to veil her caustic tone.

  “For one thing, I would win respect. For another, I admit that the idea of never seeing madam again has tormented me ever since she began to make plans to leave. I have been at madam’s side for half my life, and I have become accustomed to that company.”

  Paulina was mute for another eternity while she mulled over her employee’s strange proposition. The way he had put it, it was a good business deal, with advantages for both: he would profit from a higher level of life than he would ever have otherwise, and she would go about on the arm of a man who, all things considered, was extremely distinguished-looking. In truth, he looked like a member of the British nobility. Just imagining the faces of her relatives in Chile, and the envy of her sisters, made her laugh.

  “You are at least ten years younger and sixty pounds lighter than I am. Aren’t you afraid of ridicule?” she asked, shuddering with laughter.

  “Not at all. As for madam, does she fear being seen with someone of my status?”

  “I fear nothing in this life, and I take pleasure in shocking people. What is your name, Williams?”

  ”Frederick, milady.”

  “Frederick Williams. A good name, aristocratic as you please.”

  “I regret to inform madam that it is, shall we say, ahem, the only thing aristocratic about me.” And Williams smiled.

  And that is how one week later, my grandmother, Paulina del Valle, her newly inaugurated husband, her hairdresser, the nanny, two maids, a valet, a manservant, and I set off by train for New York with a carload of trunks, there to take a British steamer to Europe. We also had Caramelo, who was at the stage in his development when dogs hump everything in sight—in this case, my grandmother’s fox cape. The cape had tails all around the edge, and Caramelo, confused by the passivity with which the vixens received his amorous advances, kept chewing the tails off. Furious, Paulina del Valle was at the point of tossing both dog and cape overboard, but I threw such a fit that I saved both their skins. My grandmother occupied a three-room suite, and Frederick Williams one of like size across the passageway. In the day-time she entertained herself by eating every hour, changing clothes for every activity, teaching me arithmetic so in the future I could take charge of her account books, and telling me the story of the family so I would know where I came from, without ever clarifying the question of my father’s identity, as if I had popped up in the del Valle clan through parthenogenesis. If I asked about my mother or my father, she answered that they were dead, and that it was all right because having a grandmother like her was more than enough. In the meanwhile, Frederick Williams would be playing bridge and reading English newspapers, like all the other gentlemen in first class. He had let his sideburns grow, had a bushy mustache with waxed tips, which gave him an air of importance, and smoked a pipe and Cuban cigars. He confessed to my grandmother that he was an inveterate smoker, and that the most difficult part of his job as butler had been abstaining in public; now finally he could savor his tobacco and throw away the mint tablets he bought wholesale and that by then had eaten holes in his stomach. In those days when men of high position sported a prominent paunch and double chin, the rather slim, athletic figure of Williams was a rarity in good society, although his impeccable good manners were much more convincing than my grandmother’s. At night, before they went down together to the ballroom, they would come by the cabin I shared with the nanny and say good night. They were a spectacle, she combed and made up by her hairdresser, gowned for a ball and shimmering with jewels like an obese idol, and he turned into a distinguished prince consort. At times I would sneak down to the salon to spy, openmouthed, at how Frederick Williams was able to steer Paulina del Valle across the dance floor with all the assurance of someone well accustomed to maneuvering heavy tonnage.

  We arrived in Chile a year later, when my grandmother’s stumbling fortune was back on its feet thanks to sugar speculation during the War of the Pacific. Her theory had been right: people eat more sweets during bad times. Our arrival coincided with a major theatrical event: the incomparable Sarah Bernhardt in her most famous role, La Dame aux Camélias. The celebrated actress did not have the same success in Santiago she had in the rest of the civilized world because a sanctimonious Chilean society had no sympathy for a tubercular courtesan; it seemed normal to everyone that she would sacrifice herself for her lover to quiet wagging tongues, and they saw no reason for all that drama and wilting camellias. The famous actress was convinced that she had visited a land of major idiots, an opinion Paulina del Valle fully shared. My grandmother had paraded her entourage through several cities of Europe but had not fulfilled her dream of going to Egypt because she felt sure she wouldn’t find a camel that could bear her weight and she would have to visit the pyramids on foot beneath a sun like molten lava. In 1886 I was six years old. I spoke a weird mixture of Chinese, English, and Spanish, but I knew the four fundamental operations of arithmetic and with incredibly precocious skill could convert French francs into pounds sterling, and pounds into German marks or Itali
an lire. I had stopped crying all the time for my grandfather Tao and grandmother Eliza, but I continued to be regularly tortured by the same inexplicable nightmares. There was a black hole in my memory, something always present and dangerous that I couldn’t identify, something unknown that terrified me, especially in the dark or in a crowd. I couldn’t stand to be surrounded with people, I would begin to scream like someone possessed, and my grandmother Paulina would have to wrap me in her bearlike grasp to calm me. I still had the habit of taking refuge in her bed when I woke up frightened, and a bond grew between us that I am sure saved me from the madness and terror I would otherwise have sunk into. Affected by her need to console me, Paulina del Valle changed in ways imperceptible to everyone except Frederick Williams. She was growing more tolerant and affectionate, and she even lost a little weight—running around after me, she was so busy that she forgot her pastries. I have no doubt she adored me. I say that with no false modesty, since she gave me so much proof of her love; she allowed me to grow up with as much freedom as was possible in those times, igniting my curiosity and showing me the world. She never allowed sentimentality or complaints: “There’s no looking back,” was one of her mottoes. She played pranks on me—some a little heavy-handed—until I learned to turn the tables, and that marked the tone of our relationship. Once in the patio I found a lizard that had been run over by a carriage wheel and lain in the sun for several days; it was fossilized and forever preserved in its sorry guise of a squashed reptile. I picked it up and kept it, not sure why, until I devised the perfect use for it. I was sitting at my desk doing my arithmetic, and when my grandmother wandered into the room for some reason, I pretended to have an uncontrollable attack of coughing, and she came over to pound me on the back. I bent way over, with my face in my hands, and to the poor woman’s dismay I “spit up” the lizard, which landed in my skirt. She was so shocked when she saw the horror my lungs had apparently spewed forth that she fell back into a chair, but later she laughed as hard as I had, and kept the desiccated little lizard between the pages of a book as a souvenir. It’s hard to understand why, as strong as she was, that woman was afraid to tell me the truth about my past. It occurs to me that despite her defiant stance in the face of convention, she was never able to overcome the prejudices of her class. To protect me from rejection, she carefully hid my one-quarter Chinese blood, my mother’s modest social position, and the fact that in truth I was a bastard. This is the only thing I can ever criticize my giant of a grandmother for.

  In Europe I met Matías Rodríguez de Santa Cruz y del Valle. Paulina did not respect the agreement she had made with my grandmother Eliza Sommers—to tell me the truth—and instead of introducing him as my father, she said he was another uncle, one of the many every Chilean child has, since all relatives or friends of the family old enough to carry the title with a certain dignity are automatically called aunt, or uncle, which was why I always called the good Williams Uncle Frederick. I learned several years later that Matías was my father, when he came home to Chile to die, and he himself told me. The man I met made no particular impression on me; he was thin, pale, and nice-looking. Sitting, he looked young, but much older when he tried to move. He walked with a cane and always had a servant to open doors for him, help him on with his overcoat, light his cigarettes, or hand him the glass of water that was always on a table by his side, because the effort of reaching for something was too much for him. My grandmother Paulina explained that this uncle suffered from arthritis, a very painful condition that made him fragile as glass, she said, and that I was to be very careful when I went near him. She would die years later without ever learning that her eldest son suffered from syphilis, not arthritis.

  The del Valle family’s stupefaction when my grandmother arrived in Santiago was monumental. From Buenos Aires we had traveled across Argentina to Chile, a true safari when you take into account the volume of luggage that had come from Europe plus the eleven suitcases filled with purchases we had made in Buenos Aires. We traveled in coaches followed by our baggage strapped onto mules and accompanied by armed guards under Uncle Frederick’s command because there were bandits on both sides of the border—although unfortunately they did not attack us and we reached Chile with nothing interesting to tell about crossing the Andes. Along the way we had lost the nanny, who fell in love with an Argentine and chose to stay there, and one maid who died of typhus, but my uncle Frederick arranged for us to get domestic help at each stage of our pilgrimage. Paulina had decided to settle in Santiago, the capital, because after living so many years in the United States she thought that the port of Valparaíso, where she had been born, would seem too small. Besides, she was used to being some distance from her clan, and she wasn’t up to seeing her relatives every day, a trying custom in every long-suffering Chilean family. Even in Santiago, however, she was not free from family, since she had several sisters who had married among “the best people,” as members of the upper class called one another, assuming, I suppose, that the rest of the world fell into the category of “the worst people.” Her nephew, Severo del Valle, who also lived in the capital, came with his wife to say hello as soon as we arrived. From the first day we met, I have a much clearer memory of them than of my father in Europe, because they welcomed me with such an extreme show of affection that it frightened me. The most memorable thing about Severo was that despite his lameness and his cane he looked like the prince in illustrations of storybooks—seldom have I seen a more handsome man—and the most memorable thing about Nívea was that she was preceded by an enormous round belly. In those times, procreation was thought to be indecent, and among the bourgeoisie pregnant women were confined to their homes—but not Nívea. She had no intention of hiding her state; she exhibited it, indifferent to the disturbance she caused. In the street, people tried not to look at her, as if she had some deformity, or were naked. I had never seen anything like that, and when I asked what was the matter with that lady, my grandmother Paulina explained that the poor thing had swallowed a melon. In contrast with her handsome husband, Nívea looked like a mouse, but you only had to talk with her a couple of minutes to fall prisoner to her charm and tremendous energy.

  Santiago was a beautiful city situated in a fertile valley and surrounded by tall mountains purple in summer and snow-covered in winter, a tranquil, sleepy city filled with the odors of flowering gardens and horse manure. It had the look of a French city, with its old trees, plazas, Moorish fountains, gates, and alleyways, its elegant women and exquisite shops where the finest from Europe and the Orient was sold, its parks and boulevards where the wealthy showed off their coaches and magnificent horses. The streets were crowded with packs of stray dogs and vendors hawking the humble wares in their baskets, and doves and sparrows nested on the tiled roofs. Church bells marked the passage of the hours, except during siesta time, when the streets were empty and people took their rest. It was a stately city, very different from San Francisco with its unmistakable seal of a frontier town and colorful, multiracial air. Paulina del Valle bought a mansion on Ejército Libertador, the city’s most aristocratic street, near the Alameda de las Delicias, where every spring the Napoleonic coach, plumed horses, and honor guard of the president of the republic passed on its way to the military parade and patriotic celebrations in the Parque de Marte. The house could not compare in splendor to the mansion in San Francisco, but for Santiago it had an irritating opulence. Even so, it was not the display of prosperity and lack of tact that staggered the city’s society, but the pedigreed husband Paulina del Valle “had bought,” as they said, as well as the gossip that circulated about her enormous gilded bed with its mythological sea creatures, in which who knows what sins that geriatric pair committed. To Williams they attributed titles of nobility and bad intentions. What reason would a British lord, so refined, so handsome, have for marrying a woman of known bad character, and a lot older than he to boot? He could only be a ruined count, a fortune hunter ready to strip Paulina of her money and then abandon her. Deep d
own, everyone hoped that was the case, that he would take my arrogant grandmother down a notch or two; nevertheless, no one snubbed Paulina’s husband, true to the Chilean tradition of hospitality toward strangers. Besides, Frederick Williams won the respect of pagans and Christians alike with his excellent manners, his prosaic way of confronting life, and his monarchic ideas: he believed that all the ills of society were owing to lack of discipline and of respect for hierarchies. The motto for that man who had been a servant for so many years was, “Everyone in his place and a place for everyone.” When he became my grandmother’s husband he assumed his role as oligarch as naturally as earlier he had lived his destiny as a servant. He had never attempted then to mix with anyone above him, and now he never had contact with those beneath him: he believed that separation of the classes was indispensable if chaos and vulgarity were to be avoided. In that family of passionate barbarians, which is what the del Valles were, Williams produced stupor and admiration with his exaggerated courtesy and impassive calm, products of his years as a butler. He spoke four words of Spanish, and his compulsory silence was taken as wisdom, pride, and mystery. The one person who could have unmasked the supposed British noble was Severo del Valle, but he never did so because he liked the former servant and admired the aunt who mocked the world by strutting about like a peacock with her stylish husband.

  My grandmother Paulina dove into a campaign of public charity to silence the envy and slander her fortune aroused. She knew how one went about it; she had spent the first years of her life in that country, where helping indigents is the obligatory task of women of good breeding. The more one sacrificed for the poor, taking on tasks in hospitals, asylums, orphanages, and tenements, the higher one rose in general regard, which was why good works were shouted to the winds. To ignore this duty brought on so many critical glances and priestly admonishments that not even Paulina del Valle would have escaped a sense of guilt and fear of condemnation. She trained me in these compassionate labors, but I confess that I was always uncomfortable as we drove into a wretched neighborhood in our luxurious carriage loaded with foodstuffs and with two lackeys to distribute the gifts to ragged creatures who thanked us with a great show of humility but with loathing burning in their eyes.