A Long Petal of the Sea

by Isabel Allende

  As Victor had promised Pablo Neruda, after exactly three days he returned to the office of the Chilean Legation in Paris and placed the marriage certificate and his son’s birth certificate on the poet’s desk. Neruda gazed at him from behind his sleepy-looking eyelids and studied him for several seconds, intrigued.

  “I see you have a poet’s imagination, young man. Welcome to Chile,” he said at length, stamping the form. “Did you say your wife’s a pianist?”

  “Yes, sir. And also a seamstress.”

  “We have seamstresses in Chile, but we need pianists. Go with your wife and child to the Trompeloup port at Bordeaux, next Friday, as early as possible. You’ll leave on the Winnipeg at nightfall.”

  “We can’t pay for the passages…”

  “Nobody can. We’ll see. And don’t worry about paying for Chilean visas, as some consuls insist. I think it’s shameful to charge refugees for a visa. We’ll take care of that in Bordeaux as well.”

  * * *

  —

  THAT SUMMER DAY, AUGUST 4, 1939, remained forever engraved on the minds of Victor Dalmau, Roser Bruguera, and the other two thousand or more Spaniards sailing toward that long, narrow South American country that clung to the mountains so as not to topple into the sea. None of them knew anything about Chile. Years later, Neruda was to define it as a long petal of sea and wine and snow…with a belt of black and white foam, but that would not have left the migrants any the wiser. On the map, it looked slender and remote.

  The square in Bordeaux was teeming with people, a huge crowd that grew minute by minute, suffocating in the heat under a bright blue sky. Trains, trucks, and other vehicles crammed with new arrivals kept pulling up. Most of them had come straight from the concentration camps and were hungry, weak, and unwashed. Since the men had spent several months separated from their women and children, the re-encounter between couples and families produced dramatic, emotional scenes. They hung out of train windows, shouting when they recognized loved ones and falling sobbing into each other’s arms. A father who thought his son had died at the battle of the Ebro, two brothers who had heard nothing about each other since the Madrid front, a battle-hardened soldier who discovered a wife and children he had never expected to see again. And all this without any trouble, with a natural instinct for discipline that made the job of the French guards much easier.

  Pablo Neruda, dressed from head to toe in white, together with his wife, Delia del Carril, also decked out in white and wearing a big, broad-brimmed hat, was overseeing the process of identification, health checks, and selection like a demigod. He was aided by consuls, secretaries, and friends seated at long trestle tables. Permission to board was granted with his signature in green ink and a rubber stamp from the Spanish Refugee Evacuation Service. Neruda solved the visa problem by issuing collective ones. The Spaniards were put into groups and had their photograph taken. Each one was quickly developed, and then someone cut out the faces and stuck them on the permits. Charity volunteers handed out snacks and toiletries for everyone. Each of the three hundred and fifty children received a complete set of clothes: Elisabeth Eidenbenz took charge of distributing them.

  This was the day of departure, and the poet still needed a lot of money to pay for this immense transfer of migrants. The Chilean government refused to contribute, arguing that it would be impossible to justify the expense to a hostile, divided public at home. To everyone’s surprise, a small group of very formally dressed people suddenly appeared on the quay, volunteering to pay half of every passage. When Roser saw the group in the distance, she handed Victor the baby and ran to greet them. Among them were the Quakers who had taken her in. They had come in the name of their community to fulfill the duty they had set for themselves ever since their origins in the seventeenth century: to serve mankind and promote peace. Roser repeated to them what she had heard from Elisabeth, “You always appear where you’re most needed.”

  Victor, Roser, and the baby were among the first to embark. The ship was an old nine-thousand-ton cargo boat that brought goods from Africa and had been used as a troop ship in the Great War. Built to accommodate twenty seamen for short voyages, it had been converted to take more than two thousand people for a month. Triple bunks had been built in the hold, and a kitchen, dining room, and sick bay with three doctors had been installed. As soon as the Dalmau family arrived on board they were assigned to their sleeping quarters: Victor with the men in the prow, Roser with the women and children in the stern. Over the next few hours, the lucky passengers finished coming on board, while several hundred other refugees had to remain at dockside as there was no more room.

  At nightfall the Winnipeg weighed anchor with the high tide. On deck, some were weeping silently; others had their hands on their hearts as they sang the Catalan song of the emigrant: Dolça Cataluña / pàtria del meu cor / quan de tu s’allunya / d’enyorança es mor. Perhaps they knew in their hearts they would never return to their homeland. Pablo Neruda stood on the quay waving a handkerchief until they disappeared from view. That day was engraved on his memory too, and years later he would write: Critics can erase all my poetry if they wish. But this poem, that I recall today, cannot be erased by anyone.

  The bunks were like niches in a cemetery: the refugees had to crawl into them and lie without moving on straw mattresses. Even so, this seemed to them the height of luxury compared to the holes they had made in the wet sand of the concentration camps. There was a latrine for every fifty people and three sittings for the dining room, which were strictly respected. Coming, as most of the passengers did, from wretched conditions and near starvation, they thought this was paradise: they had not had a hot meal in months. On the boat the food was very simple but tasty, and they could have second helpings of as many vegetables as they liked. They had been tormented by lice and bedbugs, and could now wash in basins with clean water and soap. They had been prisoners of despair, and now were sailing toward freedom. There was even tobacco! And beer and spirits in a small bar for those who could afford them. Almost all the passengers volunteered to help with the work on board, from the engine room to peeling potatoes or scrubbing the deck. On their first morning at sea, Victor introduced himself to the doctors in the sick bay. They greeted him warmly, lent him a white coat, and told him that several of the refugees showed symptoms of dysentery and bronchitis; there were also a couple of cases of typhus that had escaped the health authorities’ attention.

  The women organized themselves to look after the children. They put up some barriers on deck to create room for a kindergarten and school. From the first day there was a nursery, games, art, exercise, and classes—an hour and a half in the morning, and an hour and a half in the afternoon. Like almost everybody else, Roser was seasick, but as soon as she could get up she began teaching the little ones to make music with a xylophone and drums made out of buckets. Once she had begun her lessons, the first mate, a Frenchman from the Communist Party, approached with the good news that Neruda had arranged for a piano and two accordions to be brought on board for her and anyone else who could play them. Some other passengers had a couple of guitars and a clarinet. From then on there was music for the children, concerts and dances for the adults, and a stirring Basque choir.

  Fifty years later, when Victor Dalmau was interviewed on television about the odyssey of his exile, he said that the Winnipeg had been the ship of hope.

  * * *

  —

  FOR VICTOR, THE SEA journey was a pleasant holiday, but Roser, who had spent several months comfortably installed in her Quaker friends’ house, suffered at first from the crowded conditions and the smells. She never dreamed of mentioning it (that would have been the height of discourtesy) and she quickly became so used to them she didn’t even notice. She put Marcel in a makeshift sling and went everywhere with him on her back, even while she was playing the piano. Victor took turns with the baby whenever he wasn’t working in the sick bay. Roser was the
only one who could breastfeed—the other malnourished mothers could count on a reliable supply of bottles for the forty babies on board. Several women offered to wash clothes and diapers for Roser so that she wouldn’t spoil her hands. One peasant woman, toughened by years of hard toil, examined Roser’s hands in amazement, mystified as to how she could play the piano without looking at the keys. Her husband had worked collecting cork before the war, and when Neruda had told him there were no cork oaks in Chile, he replied drily: well, there will be. The poet thought this was a splendid riposte, and so accepted him on board, together with fishermen, farm and factory workers, manual laborers, and intellectuals as well, despite instructions from his government to avoid anyone with ideas. Neruda simply ignored that instruction: it made no sense to leave behind men and women who had defended their ideals so heroically. In his heart of hearts he was hoping they would rouse his country from its insular somnolence.

  The migrants stayed out on deck until very late each evening, because down below the ventilation was awful and there was little room to move around. They created a newspaper with news from the outside world; this grew steadily worse as Hitler continued to occupy more territory. After nineteen days at sea, when they learned of the nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, many of the communists who had fought against Fascism in Spain felt badly betrayed. The political divisions that had split the Republican government persisted on board. Occasionally fights broke out due to blame and past resentments; these were rapidly stifled by other passengers before the ship’s captain could intervene. Captain Pupin was a man of right-wing beliefs who had no sympathy for the passengers he was transporting, but did have an unshakable sense of duty. The Spaniards, blind to this aspect of his character, suspected he might betray them, change course, and take them back to Europe. They kept their eye on him as well as on the route the ship was taking. The first mate and most of the seamen were communists, so they also had Pupin in their sights.

  Evenings were filled with recitals by Roser and the choir, dances, and games of cards and dominoes. Victor organized a chess club for those who knew how to play and those who wished to learn. Chess had rescued him from despair in the empty moments during the war and in the concentration camp, when he was at his wit’s end and was tempted to lie down like a dog and let himself die. At moments like that, if he didn’t have an opponent, he played from memory against himself with an invisible board and pieces. On board the Winnipeg there were also lectures on science and many other topics, aside from politics, because their commitment to the Chilean government was to avoid spreading any doctrines that might lead to a revolution. In other words, gentlemen, don’t come and set the cat among the pigeons, as one of the few Chileans on board put it. These Chileans gave talks to the others to prepare them for what they were likely to find in Chile. Neruda had handed them all a short leaflet and a reasonably realistic letter about the country: Spaniards: possibly of all our vast America, Chile was for you the most remote region. It was that for your ancestors as well. The Spanish conquistadors faced many dangers and much hardship. For three hundred years they lived continually at war with the indomitable Araucanians. That harsh existence has bequeathed a race that is accustomed to the difficulties of life. Chile is far from being a paradise. Our land only rewards those who work hard in it.

  This warning, and others issued by the Chileans, didn’t frighten any of the refugees. The Chileans explained that the doors to their country had been opened thanks to the Popular Front government led by President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, who had defied the opposition parties and the terror campaign by the Right and the Catholic Church. “In other words, we’re going to find the same enemies we had in Spain,” sighed Victor. This news inspired several artists on board to paint a huge banner in homage to the Chilean president.

  The migrants also learned that Chile was a poor country, with an economy based on minerals—above all copper—but that there was a lot of fertile land, thousands of kilometers of coastline for fishing, endless forests, and sparsely populated areas where they could settle and prosper. Nature there was spectacular, from the lunar desert in the north to the southern glaciers. Chileans were used to shortages and to natural disasters such as earthquakes, which often sent everything crashing to the ground, but the exiles regarded this as a lesser evil compared to what they had lived through, and what Spain would be like under Franco’s rod of iron. They heard they should be prepared to repay what they were offered, because that would be a lot. Collective hardships didn’t make Chileans mean, but hospitable and generous: they were always ready to open their arms and their homes. Now it’s my turn, tomorrow it’ll be yours, was their slogan. The unmarried men were also warned to beware of Chilean women: if one of them set their sights on you, you’d have no means of escape. They were seductive, strong, and bossy: a lethal combination. All of this sounded like a fantasy world to the Spaniards.

  Two days into the voyage, Victor was present at the birth of a little girl in the sick bay. He had seen the most terrible wounds and death in all its guises, but he had never seen the very beginnings of life, and when the newborn was placed on her mother’s breast, he could barely hide his tears. The captain made out the birth certificate in the name of Agnes America Winnipeg.

  Then one morning the man who slept in one of the top bunks in Victor’s dormitory didn’t show up for breakfast. Thinking he must still be asleep, nobody disturbed him until Victor went to wake him for lunch and discovered he was dead. This time, the captain had to sign a death certificate. That evening, after a brief ceremony, they launched his body into the sea wrapped in a tarpaulin. His comrades formed up on deck to bid him farewell, singing one of their battle songs in unison with the Basque chorus. “You see, Victor, how life and death always go hand-in-hand,” said an emotional Roser.

  The couples made up for the lack of privacy by using the lifeboats. They had to take orderly turns to make love, just as they did for everything else, and while the loving couple was enjoying themselves in the boats, a friend would stand guard to ward off other passengers and distract the attention of any crew member who drew near. When they learned that Victor and Roser were newly married, more than one couple offered them their turn. They began by refusing these offers with a great show of thanks, but suspicions would have been aroused if the whole month went by without them showing the least desire to make love, and so once or twice they made their way to the assignation separately, as all the couples did, following a tacit protocol. Roser was scarlet with embarrassment, and Victor felt like an idiot, while a volunteer walked up and down the deck with Marcel in his arms.

  Inside the lifeboat it was airless, uncomfortable, and stank of rotten cod, but the opportunity for Victor and Roser to be alone brought them closer together than if they had made love. Lying side by side with her head on his shoulder, they talked about those who were missing: Guillem and Carme, whom neither of them wanted to believe were dead, and speculated about the unknown land awaiting them at the end of the earth, while they planned their future. The most pressing question was to settle and find whatever work they could: after that, they could divorce and both of them be free.

  Roser asked Victor to promise they would always remain friends, as he was the only family she and her son had left. She didn’t feel she belonged to her family back in Santa Fe—she had only very rarely visited them since Santiago Guzman took her to live with him, and no longer had anything in common with them. Victor repeated his promise of being a good father to Marcel. “As long as I can work, you two will lack for nothing,” he added. This wasn’t what Roser had meant, because she felt more than capable of both looking after herself and bringing up the child, but she preferred to say nothing. They both avoided talking about their deepest feelings.

  * * *

  —

  THEIR FIRST PORT OF call was the island of Guadeloupe, a French colony where they docked to take on food and water. Then they sailed on to Panam
a, where they were held up for many hours at the entrance to the canal, unable to discover what was going on until they heard through the ship’s loudspeakers that they had run into an administrative hitch. This almost caused a revolt among the passengers, convinced that Captain Pupin had found a good excuse to head back to France. Victor and two other men who had a reputation for being coolheaded were delegated to find out what was going on and to negotiate a solution. An irate Pupin explained that the people who had organized the voyage were to blame because they hadn’t paid the fees for using the canal, and now he was wasting time and money in this hellhole. Had they any idea how much it cost just to keep the Winnipeg afloat? Sorting out the problem took five days of anxious waiting, crammed aboard the ship in an oven-like heat, until finally they were given permission to enter the first lock.

  Victor, Roser, and the other passengers and crew looked on in amazement at the system of sluices taking them from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The maneuvers were a miracle of precision in a space so narrow they could talk from the deck to the men working on land on both sides of the ship. Two of these men turned out to be Basque, and were entertained by the chorus of their fellow countrymen singing in Euskera. It was here in Panama that the migrants felt definitively cut off from Europe; the canal separated them from their homeland and their past.