Portrait in Sepia

by Isabel Allende

  “Because of that machine we have in the back room?” I asked.

  “What machine?” my grandmother cried.

  “No machine—” I began, remembering the secret pact, but Paulina del Valle did not let me go on, she took me by one ear and shook me with unusual ferocity.

  “What machine, I asked you, you devil’s seed!” she screamed.

  “I say, Paulina. Leave the child alone. She bears no responsibility in this . . . ahem . . . matter. A printing press,” said Frederick Williams.

  “A printing press? Here? In my house?” my grandmother bawled.

  “I’m afraid so, Aunt,” murmured Nívea.

  “Shit! What will we do now!” And the matriarch fell back into her chair with her head in her hands, muttering that her own family had betrayed her, that we were going to pay the price for such incomparable idiocy, that we were imbeciles, that she had taken Nívea in with open arms and look how she repaid her, that maybe Frederick didn’t know that this could cost them their skins, that we weren’t in England or in California, that he was going to learn how things were in Chile, and that she didn’t want to see Señorita Pineda ever again in her lifetime, and she forbade her to set foot in her house or speak one word to her granddaughter.

  Frederick Williams ordered the carriage and announced that he was off to “resolve the problem,” which far from calming my grandmother only increased her panic. Señorita Matilde Pineda gave me a good-bye wave and left, and I would not see her again until years later. Williams went directly to the North American legation and asked to speak with Mr. Patrick Egon, his friend and bridge partner, at that hour hosting an official banquet with other members of the diplomatic corps. Egon supported the government, but he was also deeply democratic, like nearly all North Americans, and he detested Godoy’s methods. He listened in private to what Frederick Williams had to say and immediately set into motion a plan to speak with the minister of the interior, who received him that same night but explained that it was not in his power to intercede for the prisoner. He was able, nevertheless, to arrange a meeting with the president early the next day. That was the longest night ever lived in my grandmother’s house. No one went to bed. I spent the night curled up with Caramelo in a chair in the hall while maids and servants with suitcases and trunks, nursemaids and wet nurses with Nívea’s children asleep in their arms, and kitchen maids with baskets of foodstuffs all raced back and forth. Even a pair of bird cages with my grandmother’s favorite birds ended up in the carriages. Williams and the gardener, a man who could be trusted, dismantled the printing press, buried the pieces at the back of the third patio, and burned all compromising papers. By dawn, two family carriages escorted by four armed servants on horseback were ready to drive us out of Santiago. The rest of the household personnel had been sent to take refuge in the nearest church, where other coaches would pick them up a little later. Frederick Williams did not want to come with us.

  “I am the one who has brought this upon our heads,” he said, “and I shall stay here to guard the house.”

  “Your life is much more valuable than this house and everything else I own. Please, come with us,” Paulina del Valle implored him.

  “They will not dare lay a hand on me— I am a British citizen.”

  “Don’t be naive, Frederick. Believe me, no one is safe in these times.”

  But there was no way to convince him. He kissed me on both cheeks, held my grandmother’s hands in his for a long time, and said good-bye to Nívea, who was breathing like a conger eel out of water, whether from fear or simply her advanced pregnancy I have no way of knowing. We left as a timid sun began to light the snowy peaks of the cordillera; the rain had stopped and the skies were clear, but a cold wind was whistling through crevices in the carriage. My grandmother held me tight in her lap, wrapped in her fox cape, the same one Caramelo had ravaged in a fit of lust. Her mouth was tight with anger and fear, but she had not forgotten her baskets of food, and we were barely out of Santiago on the road south before she opened them and unearthed roast chickens, hard-boiled eggs, pastries, cheeses, breads, wine, and barley water, enough to last the entire trip.

  The del Valle aunts and uncles, who had fled to the country when the uprising began in January, welcomed us with delight because we were interrupting seven months of numbing boredom, and we brought news. That news was far from good, but it was worse not to have any at all. I got reacquainted with my cousins, and those days that were so nerve-racking for the adults were like a vacation for the children. We had our fill of fresh milk, fresh cheese, and preserves put up during the summer, we rode horses, splashed in the mud when it rained, played in the stables and garrets, put on plays, and organized a chorus that was quite dismal, since none of us had any musical aptitude. The poplar-bordered road to the house curved through a lush valley where there were few traces of the plow and the pastures seemed abandoned. From time to time we saw rows of dry, scrawny sticks my grandmother said were grapevines. If we passed some campesino along the road, he swept off his straw hat and with his eyes to the ground greeted his patrones. “Your Mercy,” he would say to us. My grandmother was tired and bad-humored when she arrived, but after a few days she opened her parasol and with Caramelo at her heels walked around the property with great curiosity. I saw her examine the twisted sticks of the vines and pick up handfuls of dirt, which she poured into mysterious little bags. The U-shaped, adobe, red-tiled house was heavy-looking and solid, without a trace of elegance but with the enchantment of walls that have witnessed a long history. In summer it was a paradise of trees gravid with sweet fruit, of the fragrance of flowers, the chatter of excited birds, and buzz of diligent bees, but in winter beneath the chill drizzle and lowering skies it resembled a grumpy old lady. The day began very early and ended at sunset, the hour when we gathered in large rooms badly lighted by candles and kerosene lamps. It was cold, but we would sit about round tables covered with a heavy cloth beneath which the servants set braziers of coals to keep our feet warm. We drank red wine mulled with sugar, orange peel, and cinnamon, the only way it could be swallowed. The del Valle uncles produced that crude wine for family consumption, but my grandmother maintained that it was better suited for removing paint than for trickling down human gullets. Every working estate worth its name cultivated grapes and made its own wine, some better than others, but that one was particularly harsh. Spiders wove their delicate lace on the coffered ceiling, and mice scampered around with tranquil hearts because the house cats couldn’t climb that high. The whitewashed or indigo blue walls were bare of ornament, but carvings of saints and images of the crucified Christ were everywhere. At the front door was a figure of the Virgin Mary, with wood head, hands, and feet, blue glass eyes, and human hair. She was always honored with fresh flowers and a lighted votive, and we all crossed ourselves as we passed by; no one came or went without greeting the Madonna. Once a week the virgin’s clothing was changed; there was a wardrobe filled with Renaissance gowns, and for processions she was robed in jewels and an ermine cape that had seen better days. We ate four times a day in long ceremonies that were never really concluded before the next began, so that my grandmother got up from the table only to sleep and go to the chapel. At seven in the morning we attended mass and Communion conducted by Father Teodoro Riesco, who lived with my aunts and uncles, a rather ancient priest who had the virtue of tolerance: in his eyes no sin was unpardonable, with the exception of Judas’s betrayal. Even the horrible Godoy, according to Father Riesco, would find consolation in the bosom of the Lord. “Not that, Father,” Nívea would protest. “Look, if Godoy can be forgiven, I would rather pack up all my children and go to hell with Judas.” After sunset the family joined with the children, servants, and peons of the estate for prayers. Everyone would pick up a lighted candle and then march in a line to the rustic chapel on the extreme south end of the house. I came to like those daily rites that marked the calendar, seasons, and lives; I enjoyed arranging the altar flowers and cleaning the gold ciboria. The sa
cred words were poetry:

  I am not moved, my God, to love you

  because of promises of heaven yet to come,

  nor by threat of a hell I fear so greatly

  that it alone prevents me from offending you.

  You move me, Lord; I am moved

  when I see you mocked, and nailed to a Cross,

  moved when I see the wounds of your body,

  moved by jeers heaped upon you, by your death.

  Moved finally, by your love, so greatly

  that even if there were no heaven, I would love you

  and though there were no hell, I would fear you.

  You do not have to give me reason to love you,

  because even if I did not hope for what I hope

  I would still love you as I love you.

  I think that my grandmother’s tough heart melted a little, because after that stay in the country she gradually drew closer to religion; she began going to church by choice and not just to be seen, she stopped cursing the clergy out of habit, as she always had, and when we went back to Santiago she ordered the construction of a beautiful chapel with stained-glass windows at her home on Calle Ejército Libertador, where she prayed in her own way. She was not comfortable with Catholicism, so she adapted it to her measure. After nightly prayers we would go back with our candles to the large sitting room to have café con leche while the women knit or embroidered and we children listened, terrified, to the ghost stories our uncles told us. Nothing was as fearsome to us as the imbunche, an evil creature from Indian mythology. They told us that the Indians stole newborn babies to turn them into imbunches; they stitched up their eyelids and anuses, raised them in caves, fed them blood, broke their legs, turned their head backward, and inserted one arm under the skin of their back, and in that way obtained a variety of supernatural powers. Terrified that we would become food for an imbunche, we children never stuck our noses outdoors after sunset, and some of us, I for one, slept with our head under the covers, tormented by spine-chilling nightmares. “What a superstitious ninny you are, Aurora! There isn’t any such thing as an imbunche. Do you think a baby could survive all those tortures?” My grandmother tried to reason with me, but there was no argument that could stop my teeth from chattering.

  Since she was always pregnant, Nívea never relied on counting days but calculated instead the proximity of the coming delivery by the number of times she used the chamber pot. When for two nights in a row she got up thirteen times, she announced at breakfast that it was time to send for a doctor, and in fact her contractions began that same day. There were no doctors in that area, so someone suggested they go get the midwife in the nearest village. She turned out to be a meica, a Mapuche Indian of indeterminate years, the same brown color from head to toe: skin, braids, even her vegetal dyed clothes. She arrived on horseback, carrying a bag of plants, oils, and medicinal syrups and wrapped in a mantle pinned at the breast with an enormous silver brooch made from antique colonial coins. My aunts were slightly alarmed, since the meica seemed only recently emerged from the deepest reaches of Araucanía, but Nívea welcomed her without any sign of mistrust: she had no fear of what lay ahead because she had done it six times before. The Indian woman spoke very little Spanish, but she seemed to know her craft, and once she took off her mantle we could see she was clean. According to tradition, only women who had conceived could go into the room where a woman was in labor, so the young women and children went to the other end of the house and the men gathered in the billiards room with their cues to play and drink and smoke. Nívea was taken to the main bedroom, accompanied by the Indian and a few of the older women of the family, who took turns praying and helping. Two black hens were stewed to prepare a strong broth that would bolster the mother’s strength before and after giving birth, and borage tea was brewed to be given should there be any crisis in breathing or heart distress. My curiosity was stronger than my grandmother’s threat to give me a whipping if she caught me anywhere near Nívea, and I slipped through the back rooms to spy. I saw the maids going by with white cloths and basins of warm water and oil of chamomile for massaging the abdomen, also blankets and charcoal for the braziers, because nothing was more feared than a partum chill, or cold shivers during the birth. I could hear the uninterrupted murmur of women talking and laughing. It didn’t seem to me that there was any atmosphere of anguish or suffering on the other side of that door; just the opposite, it sounded like people having a good time. Since I couldn’t see anything from my hiding place, and the ghostly breath of the hallways raised the hair on the back of my neck, I soon grew bored and went off to play with my cousins, but later, as night fell and the family had gathered in the chapel, I sneaked back. By then the voices had stilled and I could clearly hear Nívea’s emphatic moans, the murmur of prayers, and sound of rain on the roof tiles. I was crouched in a corner of the hall, trembling with terror since I was sure that Indians might come to steal Nívea’s baby. And what if the meica was one of the witches who made imbunches of newborn babies? Why hadn’t Nívea thought about that frightening possibility? I was about to run back to the chapel, where there was light and people, but just that moment one of the women came out to look for something; she left the door half open, and I had a clear view of what was happening in the room. No one saw me because the hall was in darkness; in contrast, the room was bright with the glow of two tallow lamps and a multitude of candles. Three braziers in the corners kept the air much warmer than it was in the rest of the house, and a large pot in which eucalyptus leaves were simmering filled the air with the fresh scent of the forest. Nívea, dressed in a short nightgown, a sweater, and heavy wool socks, was squatting over a blanket, clinging with both hands to two thick ropes hanging from the beams of the ceiling and supported from behind by the meica, who was quietly whispering words in another language. Her huge, blue-veined belly looked monstrous in the flickering light of the candles, as if it were separate from her body, not even human. Nívea, bathed in sweat, was straining; her hair was stuck to her forehead, her eyes were closed and circled in purple, her lips swollen. One of my aunts was on her knees praying beside a table that held a small statue of San Ramón Nonato, the patron saint of women in labor, the one saint who had not been born in a normal way but taken through a slit in his mother’s belly. Another aunt was standing beside the Indian woman with a basin of warm water and stack of clean cloths. There was a brief pause in which Nívea sucked in air and the meica moved in front of her to massage her abdomen with her strong hands, as if accommodating the child inside. Suddenly a stream of bloody liquid soaked the blanket. The meica caught it up with a rag that also was immediately blood-soaked, then another and another.“Bendición, bendición, bendición,” I heard the Indian say in Spanish. Nívea grabbed the ropes and pushed so hard that the tendons in her neck and veins at her temples seemed about to burst. A mute bellow formed on her lips, and then something appeared between her legs, something the meica grasped gently and held for an instant, until Nívea gasped, pushed again, and the baby fully emerged. I thought I was going to faint with fright and revulsion. I retreated, reeling down the long and sinister hallway.

  An hour later, while the maids were collecting and preparing to burn the stained rags and other items used during the birth—it was thought that this prevented hemorrhaging—and the meica wrapped up the placenta and umbilical cord to be buried under a fig tree, the custom in those parts, the rest of the family gathered in the sitting room around Father Teodoro Riesco to give thanks to God for the birth of a pair of twins, two fine boys who, the priest said, would carry on the del Valle name with honor. Two of the aunts held the infants in their arms, warmly wrapped in little wool blankets and with knit caps on their heads, as each member of the family came up to kiss them on the forehead and say, “God be with you,” to ward off any gratuitous evil eye. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t welcome my cousins as the others had done because to me they looked like two hideous little worms, and the vision of Nívea’s bluish belly expelling
them like a bloody mass would haunt me forever.

  The second week of August, Frederick Williams came to look for us, elegant, as always, and totally calm, as if the risk of falling into the hands of the political police had been nothing but a collective hallucination. My grandmother welcomed her husband like a bride, with shining eyes and cheeks rosy with emotion; she held her hands out to him, and he kissed them with something more than respect. I realized for the first time that this strange pair were united by ties that very closely resembled affection. By then Paulina was nearly sixty-five, an age at which other women were ground down by the imposed sorrows and calamities of life, but Paulina del Valle seemed invincible. She dyed her hair, a coquettish indulgence no lady of her class allowed herself, and she enhanced it with switches; she dressed with the vanity she had always displayed despite her weight, and she used makeup with such subtlety that no one was suspicious of the blush in her cheeks or the blackness of her eyelashes. Frederick Williams was noticeably younger, and it seems that women found him very attractive, because they were always fluttering their fans and dropping handkerchiefs when he was around. I never saw him respond to any of those overtures; in fact he seemed absolutely devoted to his wife. I have often asked myself whether the relationship between Frederick Williams and Paulina del Valle was more than a marriage of convenience, whether it was as platonic as we all supposed or whether there was an attraction between them. Did they ever make love? No one could know, because he never broached the subject, and my grandmother, who in her last years was able to tell me the most personal things, carried the answer to the other world.

  We learned through Uncle Frederick that thanks to the personal intervention of the president, Don Pedro Tey had been set free before Godoy could extract a confession from him, which meant that since our family’s name had never been entered on the police rolls, we could go back to our house in Santiago. Nine years later, when my grandmother Paulina died and I saw Señorita Matilde Pineda and Don Pedro Tey again, I learned the details of what really happened, information the good Frederick Williams had wanted to spare us. After raiding the bookstore, beating the employees, and throwing hundreds of books onto piles and burning them, they had taken the Catalan bookseller to their sinister barracks, where they applied the usual treatment. At the end of the session, Tey had lost consciousness without having said a single word, so they emptied a bucket of excrement over him, tied him to a chair, and left him there the rest of the night. The following day, as he was being taken back to his torturers, the North American ambassador, Patrick Egon, had come with an aide-de-camp to the president, demanding the prisoner be set free. They had let him go after warning him that if he told a single word of what had happened they would stand him up before a firing squad. He was led, dripping blood and excrement, to the ambassador’s carriage, where Frederick Williams and a doctor were waiting, and driven to the legation of the United States to be given asylum. One month later the government fell, and Don Pedro Tey left the legation, making room for the family of the deposed president, which found refuge under the same flag. The bookseller had spent several frustrating months while his wounds from the beating and the bones in his shoulders healed and he could get his book business back on track. The atrocities he had suffered did not deter him; the idea of going back to Catalonia never entered his mind, and he continued working for the opposition—whatever government was in power. When many years later I thanked him for the terrible torture he endured to protect my family, he told me that he hadn’t done it for us but for Señorita Matilde Pineda.