by Lucia Berlin
“I’m Laura. It was nice of you to invite me to the fundo, even if my parents can’t go.” Don Andrés kept her hand in his.
“Ted said his child would be coming, not a lovely woman.”
“I’m fourteen. I’m just all dressed up for this party. Please come in.” The American ambassador was right there. The two men embraced. Laura fled, embarrassed.
She took a tray of food and coffee up to her mother, propped her up in bed. Laura described the food and flowers to her, told her what everyone was wearing, who had sent regards. She told Helen about Andrés Ibañez-Grey. “Mama, he’s a hundred times more impressive than in photographs.” An imperious Jefferson.
“He’s worth more than any old twenty-dollar bill, that’s for sure,” Helen said.
“I wish you were coming tomorrow. Can’t you change your mind? I don’t want to go.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s supposed to be fabulous. Besides, your daddy really needs to get in good with the guy. I wish I could handle these things.”
“What things?”
Helen sighed. “Oh. Christ. Anything.”
She hadn’t eaten any food. “My back is killing me. I’m going to try and get some sleep.” She had that look that meant she wanted a drink. Laura never actually saw her mother drink.
“Good night, Mama.”
Laura checked on things in the kitchen again but didn’t go back to the party. Her father had been looking for her, María said, but Laura ignored her. In her room she phoned Conchi before she went to bed. They talked about Quena, how bossy and metete she was. Laura knew that probably only minutes before Quena and Conchi had been gossiping about her. If she wasn’t so sleepy she would call Quena to talk about how foolish Conchi was, going out with Lautaro Donoso. He was much too old, had racehorses. He stayed out all night, then went to the steam baths, and then, still wearing his smoking, went to Mass without having been to bed.
The girls all dated men much older than themselves. It was understood that these men had other, entirely separate, social lives. With the young virgin girls from Santiago College or the French schools they went to rugby and cricket games, played golf and tennis. They took the girls to the opera, to chaperoned dances and to nightclubs before dinner. But late at night the men had another world of nightclubs and casinos and parties, with mistresses or women of medio pelo. This would go on for the rest of their lives, had begun really, when they were children. Their mothers, in furs, came in to kiss them good night. But it was the maids who fed them, who rocked them to sleep. María packed Laura’s clothes while Laura talked and when she finished packing she began to brush Laura’s hair. Laura put her hand over the mouthpiece. No, María, you’re too tired. Hasta mañana. To Conchi she said she was going to bed before it got cold. María had put a hot brick in the foot of it.
Laura was about to turn off the light when María returned with cocoa. She kissed Laura on the forehead. Buenas noches, mi doña. From the empty streets outside echoed the chant of the watchman calling … Medianoche y andado. Midnight and “walked.” Andado y sereno … Safe and sound.
* * *
Rain beat down on the glass roof of the dark Mapocho railway station. Sleek trains glistened black outside. Black umbrellas, black uniformed porters vanished into white steam that hissed billowing from the trains. There were photographers, not from the society pages, as Conchi had hoped, but from the leftist papers. The senator of mines and the Yanqui imperialist who are raping our country confer together at Mapocho Station.
The two men were saying hello and good-bye. Laura stood apart, awkward, next to Don Andrés’s son Pepe. He was young, wore a black seminary uniform. He rocked, blushing, staring at his feet. Xavier, the eldest son, was just the opposite. Dashing, disdainful in English tweed. Laura disliked him already. Why is it sophisticated to be bored? Elegant travelers and theatergoers affect the same pained look of ennui. Why not say “A trip? Exciting! Wonderful play!”?
Xavier and his fiancée, Teresa, were arguing with her mother. The mother was very upset. Don Andrés’s sister, Doña Isabel, was ill, unable to come. Teresa’s mother felt there was not an appropriate chaperone. Don Andrés convinced her that his housekeeper, Pilar, would be in attendance, watching over Teresa and Laura. Mollified, the woman left with Laura’s father.
Don Andrés sat next to the window against red velvet. The conductor and several porters stood talking and laughing with him, hats clasped in their hands. Across the aisle, Xavier and Teresa faced Laura and Pepe. Teresa spoke baby talk to Xavier in a high voice that jarred with her matronly figure. Pepe began reading a text in Latin even before the train left the station.
Xavier told Laura that in two weeks Pepe would be entering the priesthood. Lost to us, forever. But, of course found. You are Catholic? Xavier was tall, his hair jet black, otherwise he was much like his father, patrician, sardonic. With utmost tact he “placed” Laura. Good school. Ostentatious neighborhood. No, she didn’t know Europe. She played tennis at the Prince of Wales. Didn’t belong to El Golf. Summer at Viña del Mar. She knew Marisol Edwards but not the Dusaillants. Her French was good. You haven’t read Sartre?
“I’ve read very little. Most of my life was spent in mining camps in the States. I’m like Jemmy Buttons,” Laura said. At least she had read Subercaseaux, if not Darwin.
“A prettier noble savage,” Don Andrés said from across the aisle. “Laura, come sit by me. I’ll tell you where we are.”
She moved with relief to the seat opposite him, pressed her forehead to the window, cold. The outside of the glass was splattered with soot from the engine. Yellow aromo reflected in the Bío-Bío River, in lakes, in pools of water. Don Andrés named the towns they passed, the rivers they crossed; named the fruit trees, told her what would be planted in the fields. When the porter came by, playing a gong for luncheon, Don Andrés said for the others to go ahead. It was as simple as that, the pairing of Don Andrés and Laura for the holiday.
In the dining car there were more waiters and busboys than patrons, an inordinate amount of china and silver and wineglasses for each course, endless courses that proceeded from a galley scarcely three feet square.
Don Andrés asked her about the mountains in Idaho and Montana, the silver and zinc mines. How did the miners live? Where were the smelters? She was glad to talk about these places, was homesick for them. Laura had not forgiven her father for leaving the mines, for becoming an executive and a politician. He hadn’t wanted to. It was Helen who had so much wanted glamour and romance and money. But now, just as in the Rocky Mountains, she still rarely left her room.
Laura told Don Andrés about the desert in New Mexico and Arizona. Yes, it was like Antofagasta. She told him how she used to climb in the mountains with her father, pan for gold in the creeks. He had taken her down into the mines ever since she was a little girl. Sometimes in a regular lift down the mineshaft; in small mines on a big barrel attached to a rope, holding on to the rope, her head level with the rough denim of the miners’ knees. The smell of the mines. Dank, dark. How it felt to go into the earth itself. The shock when she saw her first open-pit mine at Rancagua, the Anaconda copper pit. The vast gash of it, the rape of it.
She blushed at the word. She had been talking on and on, giddy with wine and attention. How embarrassing, please forgive me. Not at all. Enchanted. She and Don Andrés were the only people left in the dining car. There were so many waiters that she hadn’t noticed.
She hadn’t noticed his arm on the back of her chair, how his hair brushed her shoulder when he filled her glass. Without any self-consciousness, without any consciousness at all, she had eased into the man’s presence. In the vestibules between cars he took her arm to steady her, drew her in to him when a mozo passed with luggage. She didn’t react to such intimacies, as she would have with any other man. She was simply enveloped.
This would never happen to her again. When she grew older she would always be in control, even when being submissive. This would be the first and last time anyon
e took over herself.
Pepe was asleep, across the aisle from Xavier and Teresa. His face was pale, dark lashes shadowed his cheekbones; his hands held a rosary, the Latin book. Xavier and Teresa were playing canasta.
“Good. We’ll join you.”
“Papá, you don’t play canasta.”
“Teresa, you and I will play Xavier and Laura.”
Pleasant, the rest of the journey. It grew dark outside. Joking and laughter. Soothing sound of shuffled cards. Tap tap tap as they were dealt. The whistle of the train, the steady rain on the metal roof. Click and flare of Don Andrés’s gold cigarette lighter. His gray eyes squinting through smoke.
Tea was brought by four tuxedoed mozos. A samovar of tea, pewter coffee urn, sandwiches, cuchuflís with caramel. Teresa poured. She and Laura were friendly now, chatting about shops. New York. Saks. Bergdorf’s.
It was dark, raining still, when the train stopped in Santa Bárbara. They were met by Gabriel, the mayordomo of the fundo. A saffron-colored huaso in a heavy poncho, wide-brim hat, boots with spurs. Laura and Don Andrés rode in the cab; the others climbed into the back of the covered truck. Gabriel and two other men loaded the luggage, boxes and boxes of food.
The truck was the only vehicle at the station or on the muddy streets. There were two gas lamps in the town square; black-shawled women hurried to vespers in a candlelit church. Once beyond the square there was no one to be seen. Hours then, in open country, over the bad road, never once a house or a light or another car. Not a windmill or a telephone pole. Deer and fox, rabbits and other field animals ran before the headlights. The rain was the only sound. Don Andrés and Gabriel talked about plowing, planting, horses, and sheep. Who had died, which men had left for the city. Santiago was the city. At last they came upon faint flickering lights, a cluster of huts in a grove of eucalyptus trees. The truck slowed and Don Andrés lowered his window. Blast of aromo and pine, the smell of oak fires. His peons lived here. Don Andrés didn’t use the Chilean word for peasant, roto, which means broken.
They drove on then, up a rise, stopped at high iron gates. A caped figure opened the gates, waved them on, past miles of poplar, orchards bare except for a faint pink flurry of plum blossoms. At the top of the hill Don Andrés had Gabriel stop the truck. They got down in the rain. Far down in the valley stood a stone gabled house, yellow lights reflecting in a lake beneath it. There was no other light anywhere, for miles and miles around, but everywhere in the darkness pulsated the yellow groves of aromo. Laura was moved by the majestic view, the silence, but she laughed.
“In an American movie this is where you would say, ‘All this is mine.’”
“But it’s a black-and-white movie. I can only say that all this will soon be gone.”
Back in the truck she asked him if there would be a revolution, if the Communists would ever have power.
“Claro que sí. It will be soon.”
“My father says it can never happen.”
“Your father is very naïve. But, of course, that is his charm.”
* * *
Dogs barked in the cobblestone courtyard. A dozen servants were silhouetted in the lamp and candlelight from the open door. Inside, the parquet floors glowed beneath richly colored Persian rugs. Dark Spanish paintings, pale faces dreamy in the candlelight. An old woman, Pilar, shook hands with them all. Don Andrés told her that she was to be Teresa’s chaperone, to get Teresa settled and unpacked. Where is Dolores?
Aquí, señor. A beautiful green-eyed girl, no more than Laura’s age, with black braids to her waist. She was to take care of Laura, he said. Laura followed the girl up the curving staircase. The two skipped lightly up the stairs, like children. Laura was trying to imagine how the house had been built, how the materials or the laborers themselves were brought to such a remote place at all … like building the Sphinx. She kept stopping to look at tapestries, carvings. Dolores laughed. “Wait until you see your room!”
A curtained brocade bed, a blue-tiled fireplace, an oval mirror above an antique chest. The bathroom was marble; a dozen candles reflected in the mirrors. The water was tepid but next to the tub were copper buckets of boiling water.
The windows with wavering old glass and the yellow blurred mirrors added to the illusion of a dream. Dolores disappeared in the mirror but her voice was still there, soft, the singsong of the huaso. “E’ una hora, ma’ o meno’,” she said when asked what time dinner would be ready. She unpacked Laura’s things and added another log to the fire. She stood, waiting, until Laura nodded. Gracias. Alone, in the mirror, Laura’s reflection trembled, an old sepia photograph that floated in flickerings of light.
* * *
The others were already in the huge living room. A fire blazed. Teresa was at the grand piano, playing Chopin’s “Gota de Agua.” She played it over and over during the holiday. The tune played over and over in Laura’s head whenever she was to remember Junquillos. Don Andrés handed her a glass of sherry.
“I’m in love with this house, like an English governess!”
“Don’t go to the east wing!” Xavier smiled. Laura liked him a little better, smiled back.
“I built this from my dreams,” Don Andrés said, “from French and Russian novels. The country itself is pure Turgenev.”
“… The serfs are,” Xavier said.
“No politics, Xavier. Laura, my son is a socialist, a would-be revolutionary. A typical Chilean anarchist, discussing the plight of the masses while a valet brushes his coat.” Xavier said nothing, drank. Pepe turned pages at the piano.
“Laura, you will really fall in love with my carriages. I collect them. You can play Becky Sharpe, Emma, Madame Bovary.”
“I don’t know any of them.”
“You will one day. This way, when you do meet them, you’ll put down the book and think of my barouche landau, and of me.”
(Oh. True.)
There were fireplaces in the dining room too. Two mozos served them, appearing from wherever they stood, back in the shadows of the room.
Pepe was animated and gay. His mare had foaled; there were dozens of new lambs. He and his father talked about different events on the estate … the animals, births and deaths of peons.
After dinner Xavier and Teresa played backgammon in the living room; Pepe and Laura had brandy and coffee with Don Andrés in his study. A smaller fire, tended by a mozo who came in from the hall whenever it began to smolder or when a log fell with a shatter of sparks.
The three of them read out loud. Neruda. Rubén Darío’s “La princesa está triste. La princesa está pálida.”
“Let’s read Turgenev’s First Love. You begin, Pepe, but with more feeling. You’ll make a perfect priest, the way you drone.”
When it was Laura’s turn to read she traded places with Pepe to be by the light. As she read she glanced up from time to time at the two men across from her. Pepe’s gray eyes were closed, but Don Andrés’s eyes looked into hers as she read, as Zoraida wound a skein of wool around poor Vladimir’s hands.
Oh gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and growing calm of a heart that is deeply moved, the melting gladness of the first tender raptures of love. Where are you? Where are you?
“Pepe’s asleep. He missed the best part.”
“You’re falling asleep too. I’ll show you to your room.”
He adjusted the wick to the lantern by her bed, kissed her brow. Cool lips. “Buenas noches, mi princesa.”
You silly fool, Laura told herself. He almost made you swoon! Just like someone in Mama’s romances.
Laura lay in bed, unable to fall asleep. Dolores tiptoed in and raised the window a few inches. She put a log on the fire, turned out the lantern. After Dolores had left, Laura got out of bed and went to the window. She opened it wide to the fragrance of pine and yellow aromo. It had stopped raining. The sky had cleared to a dazzle of stars that lit the fields and the courtyard. Laura saw Dolores cross the cobblestones of the courtyard and enter a door next to the kitchen. Minutes late
r Xavier crossed the yard and tapped on the door. Dolores opened it, smiling, and drew him in, to her.
Laura heard Teresa’s window slam softly shut. Laura went back to bed. She tried to stay awake then, to think, but she fell asleep.
Days are brighter when the nights have no electricity. The sun burst warm into the room, caught in a pearl-handled letter opener, the brass firedogs, the cut-glass marmalade jar on the breakfast tray. Outside the window the three white peaks of Las Malqueridas glistened against a clear blue sky.
“They’re riding already,” Dolores said. “Don Pepe says for you to hurry; he wants you to see the colt. I brought you these riding clothes.”
“I was just going to wear these pants…”
“But these will look much nicer.”
In riding clothes, with her hair up, Laura looked, in the dark mirrors, like a painting of someone in another age. Dolores was removing the breakfast tray, stepped back to let Teresa enter the room. Laura searched their faces for some expression—of rivalry, scorn, embarrassment—but both were impassive.
“My bedclothes are musty,” Teresa said. “Please change them, or air them.”
“I’ll tell your maid.” Dolores walked out, her head high. Teresa pouted, flung herself onto the chaise by the window.
“I wish Tía Isabel were here. She’d have me walk with her by the lake. I hate horses. Don’t you?”
“No. I love horses. But I’ve never ridden English saddle.”
Pepe was calling from the courtyard. He rode a chestnut mare, led a graceful black one. Laura called down to Pepe that she would be right there. But Teresa kept talking. She wanted to marry soon. Marriage would cure Xavier of his rash politics, would settle him down. How long had they been engaged? Since they were born, Teresa said. Their fathers had decided it. Fortunately they had fallen in love.
“Let’s go. It’s a perfect day,” Laura said, but Teresa was taking off her coat. “No. I’m going to stay and knit. I’m ill. Tell Xavier to come keep me company.”
“If I see him. Look, he and Don Andrés are far away, near the foothills.”