by Lucia Berlin
“Bloody shrewd, as always. You know that all of this land will be given to the people. Why not the precious house, too? It will go soon enough. A school, perhaps.”
The men talked until after midnight in the study. Laura finished First Love by lamplight in her room. She lay awake. Aromo and pine. She didn’t think, was simply awake, alone.
* * *
The train ride was long, delayed by rain, flooding. Don Andrés worked on papers. Laura sat facing him. Across the aisle Pepe read and Xavier slept, or pretended to sleep, while Teresa knitted something voluminous and burnt orange. She seemed to have settled into an affronted spinsterhood, wearing glasses that she had not put on before. No baby talk now. And then she and Pepe both fell asleep too. Don Andrés was looking at Laura.
“Junquillos was lovely,” she said.
“You are lovely. Please forgive me, Laura.”
He looked back down at the papers in his lap. Laura stared out the soot-spattered window. Rain dripped from the sodden aromo trees. Well, Laura thought … a weekend in the country.
At the station Teresa’s mother rushed her away as if there had been an accident. Laura’s father had sent a Chinese driver.
Good-bye, thank you for a marvelous time.
The house was silent when she got home, cold. María came in, fastening her bathrobe. They embraced.
“We missed you! May I fix some cocoa? What happened to your poor face?”
“An accident. An adventure, really, but I’m too tired to talk about it. Where are my parents?”
“Your mother is in the hospital. She took too many drugs; she turned blue and wouldn’t wake up. She’ll be home tomorrow.”
“Was she upset? Did something happen?”
María shrugged. “¿Quién sabe? Your father said she was just too overtired.”
“Overtired!” The two of them giggled.
“Is he with her now?”
“No. He’s at a dinner party. Doña, you look very bad.”
“I’m … I’m overtired! It was beautiful, María. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. I’m going to bed. No bath, no cocoa. But wake me at five tomorrow. I have to study chemistry.”
“Quena called. She got home too late to study. And Conchi called, said she was in love and didn’t ever want to study.”
Cram for chemistry in the morning. As much time inking symbols on their wrists under their white cuffs. But the test wasn’t so bad. Physics then. Dry, dry Señor Ortega. Algebra. History. Laura’s hand ached from taking notes.
Lunch finally. Grace was always said in English. God bless this food for our use and our lives for Thy service. During the meal only French could be spoken; not much was said. A stroll through the rose garden. Just enough time to hear that Conchi was in love again. He called her tú, held her hand at the film. Quena had skied all day, every day. The snow had been fine. Emile Allais had given her lessons without charging. Laura was brief but dramatic about the carriage accident. She raved about Electra, the house, the Marie Antoinette coach. More about Electra. Yes, she had worn a riding habit after all. “Oh, thank God,” Conchi sighed.
The bell rang. English. Flower in a crannied wall. French then with Madame Perea dozing over knitting. Le passé simple. Spanish, at last. Where were we? “¡Suspiros!”
Laura stood. “I haven’t read the lesson.”
Señora Fuenzalida laughed. “That never seemed to present a problem before. Your first black mark.”
Quena and Conchi were surprised too when Laura didn’t go with them to the Golf for tea. “Mama’s ill again.”
Helen was asleep. Laura studied until dinner, ate alone.
She stood at the foot of her mother’s bed. “Hi. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Have a good time?”
“Yes. I wish you had come. It was beautiful, like a novel.”
“Were the people nice?”
“Real nice. Just family. I rode a Thoroughbred.” Helen was looking at a sty on her eyelid in a hand mirror. Laura sat down on the bed across from her mother. Am I in love, Mama? she asked herself. Could I be pregnant? Have I been ruined? Mama, help me.
Out loud she said, “I’m sorry you went to the hospital, Mama. You need to get out more. Let’s go to a movie this weekend, or to lunch at the Prince of Wales.”
“Get me that magnifying mirror from the bathroom, will you, sweetheart?”
Laura was asleep when her father flicked on the light in her room. He was flushed, red-eyed, was pulling off his tie.
“Sure did miss you, baby. Have a good time?”
“Wonderful.”
“How’d you like Andy? Classy guy, no?”
“Classy. Daddy, what about Mama?”
“She got hold of some sleeping pills, that’s all. She’ll be fine. Just wanted a little attention.”
Laura could hear the velador as he walked the streets. Loud at first, echoing. Son las once, andado y sereno.
Block by block he chanted to the neighborhood that the streets were patrolled and safe. He sang to the night that the moon was full. ¡Son las once, luna llena! Until at last it trailed into a faraway falsetto … Andado y sereno.
DUST TO DUST
Michael Templeton was a hero, an Adonis, a star. Truly a hero, a much-decorated bombardier in the RAF. When he returned to Chile after the war he had been a star rugby and cricket player for the Prince of Wales team. He raced his BSA for the British motorcycle team and had been the champion for three years. Never lost a race. He even won the last one before he spun out and hit the wall.
He had arranged for Johnny and me to have seats in the press box. Johnny was Michael’s little brother and my best friend. He idolized Michael as much as I did. Johnny and I felt disdain for everything then and a contempt for most people, especially our teachers and parents. We even conceded, with some scorn, that Michael was a cad. But he had style, cachet. All the girls and women, even old women, were in love with him. A slow, slow low voice. He gave Johnny and me rides on the beach in Algarrobo. Flying over hard wet sand, scattering flocks of gulls, their wing beats louder than the motor, than the ocean. Johnny never made fun of me for being in love with Michael, gave me snapshots and clippings in addition to the ones we helped his mum paste in scrapbooks.
His parents didn’t go to the race. They were at the dining room table having tea and bickies. Mr. Templeton’s tea was rum, really, in the blue cup. Michael’s mum was crying, sick with worry about the race. He’ll be the death of me, she said. Mr. Templeton said he hoped Mike would break his bloody fool neck. It wasn’t just the race … this was pretty much their daily conversation. Even though he was a hero, Michael still had no job after three years back from the war. He drank and gambled and got into serious troubles with women. Whispered phone calls and late-night visits from fathers or husbands, slamming doors. But women just became even more fascinated with him and people actually insisted upon loaning him money.
The stadium was crowded and festive. The racers and pit crews were glamorous, dashing Italians, Germans, Australians. The main contenders were the British team and the Argentines. The English rode BSAs and Nortons; the Argentines Moto Guzzis. None of the racers had Michael’s panache, his nonchalance or white scarf. What I am saying is that even with the shock of his death, even with the bike in flames, with Michael’s blood on the concrete wall, his body, the shrieking and the sirens, it all had his particular throwaway insouciance. That it was the last race, and he had won it. Johnny and I didn’t speak, not about the terror, nor about the drama of it.
The dining room at home was buzzing and crowded. Mrs. Templeton had frizzed her hair and powdered her face. She was saying that it would be the death of her but in fact she was very lively, making tea and passing scones and answering the telephone. Mr. Templeton kept on saying, “I told him he would break his bloody neck! I told him!” Johnny reminded him that he had said he wished Michael would.
It was exciting. Nobody but me had visited the Templetons for years, and now the house was ful
l. There were reporters from the Mercurio and the Pacific Mail. Our “Michael album” was open on the table. People were saying hero and prince and tragic waste all over the house. Groups of beautiful girls were upstairs and downstairs. One of the girls would be sobbing while two or three others patted her and brought her tissues.
Johnny and I kept up our usual stance of mirthful scorn. We had not actually realized that Michael was dead, didn’t until the Saturday night after the funeral. That was when we used to sit on the rim of the tub while he shaved, humming “Saturday night is the loneliest night in the week.” He’d tell us all about his “birds,” listing their attributes and inevitable, very funny, flaws. The Saturday after he died we just sat in the tub. We didn’t cry, just sat in the tub, talking about him.
We had fun, though, watching the flurry before the funeral, the rivalries between the mourning girlfriends. Most amazing of all was the way the entire British colony of Santiago decided that Michael had died for the King. Glory to the Empire, the Pacific Mail said. Mrs. Templeton was peppy, had us and the maids beating rugs and oiling bannisters and baking more scones. Mr. Templeton just sat with his blue cup muttering how Mike never could take direction, had been hell-bent.
I was allowed to leave school for the burial. I wouldn’t have gone at all but there was a chemistry test second period. After that I took off my school apron and went to my locker. I was very solemn and brave.
There are things people just don’t talk about. I don’t mean the hard things, like love, but the awkward ones, like how funerals are fun sometimes or how it’s exciting to watch buildings burning. Michael’s funeral was wonderful.
In those days there were still horse-drawn hearses. Massive creaking wagons drawn by four or six black horses. The horses wore blinders and were covered in thick black net, with tassels that dragged dusty in the streets. The drivers wore tails and top hats and carried whips. Because of Michael’s hero status many organizations had contributed to the funeral, so that there were six hearses. One was for his body, the others for flowers. Mourners followed the hearses to the cemetery in black cars.
During the service at Saint Andrew’s (high) Anglican church many of the sad girls fainted or had to be led away because they were so overcome. Outside the gaunt and jaunty drivers smoked on the curb in their top hats. Some people always associate the heady smell of flowers with funerals. For me it needs to be mixed with the scent of horse manure. Parked outside too were over a hundred motorcycles which would follow the cortege to the cemetery. Gunnings of engines, splutters, smoke, backfires. The drivers in black leather, with black helmets, their team colors on their sleeves. It would have been in poor taste for me to tell the girls at school just how many unbelievably handsome men had been at that funeral. I did anyway.
I rode in the car with the Templetons. All the way to the cemetery Mr. Templeton fought with Johnny about Michael’s helmet. Johnny held it on his lap, planned to place it in the grave with Michael. Mr. Templeton argued, reasonably, that helmets were hard to come by and very dear. You had to get someone to bring them from England or America, and pay a stiff duty for them too. “Sell it to some other sod to race in,” he insisted. Johnny and I exchanged glances. Wouldn’t you know he’d only care about the cost?
More glances and grins between us in the cemetery itself with all the tombs and crypts and angels. We decided to be buried at sea and promised to attend to that, for each other.
The Canon, in white lace over a purple cassock, stood at the head of the grave, surrounded by the British racing team, their helmets crooked in their arms. Noble and solemn, like knights. As Michael’s body was lowered into the ground the Canon said, “Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower.” While he was saying that Odette tossed in a red rose and then so did Conchi and then Raquel. Defiantly, Millie stalked up and threw in a whole bouquet.
It was lovely then what the Canon said over the grave. He said, “Thou shalt show me the path of life. In Thy presence is the fullness of joy, and at Thy right hand there is pleasure for ever more.” Johnny smiled. I could tell he thought that was just what to say for Michael. Johnny looked around, to be sure it was the end of the roses, stepped to the rim of the grave, and tossed in Michael’s helmet. Ian Frazier, closest to the grave, cried out with grief and impulsively threw his own helmet on top of Michael’s. Pop pop pop then, as if mesmerized, each member of the British racing team tossed his helmet upon the casket. Not just filling the grave but mounding it up with black domes like a pile of olives. Most merciful Father, the Canon was saying as the two grave diggers piled earth upon the mound and covered it with wreaths of flowers. The mourners sang “God Save the King.” Upon the faces of the race drivers were expressions of sorrow and loss. Everyone filed sadly away and then there was a clatter and roar of motorcycles and an echoing and clatter of hooves as the hearses galloped off, careening dangerously, whips cracking, the tails of the drivers’ black coats flapping in the wind.
ITINERARY
Were there any jet airplanes then? DC-6 from Santiago to Lima. Lima to Panama. A long night from Panama to Miami, ocean glittering. We had always made the trip by boat before, from Valparaiso to New York. The voyage took over a month. It wasn’t just the beauty of it but the crossing of oceans and continents and seasons … a comprehension of vastness.
This was my first plane trip, my first trip anywhere alone. I was leaving Chile for college in New Mexico. It was the going alone that was so glamorous. Dark glasses and high heels. Pigskin luggage from Bariloche, a graduation present. Everyone was at the airport. Well, not my father, he couldn’t get away, but even my mother and all my friends. Everyone was talking and laughing except Conchi and Quena and me, crying. We had made time capsules. Letters to be opened in thirty years, with avowals of friendship and predictions about our futures. They came out pretty right. Both of them married who they thought they would and gave their four or five children the names they said they would. Boris María, Xavier Antonio. But both Quena and Conchi died in the revolution, years before it was time to open the letter. The predictions for me were all wrong. I married and had children too, when I was supposed to be single, a journalist, in a walk-up apartment in Manhattan. I do live alone in a walk-up now.
It was exciting, boarding the plane, everybody waving from the observation deck. We buckled in and listened to the steward. The plane taxied down the runway and then stopped, for a very long time. Hot. It’s summer in Chile in December. There was some problem; the plane turned back to the airport for an hour wait.
Everyone had gone; the lobby was deserted. An old man was pushing a rag with a stick, mopping. I could see my mother in the bar with some Americans from the plane. I went to the door and she saw me, looked surprised and then looked away, as if I weren’t there. She’s like that, doesn’t see what she doesn’t want to, but actually sees everything that’s going on, more than most people. She once confided to me something “downright rotten and mean” she had done. It had been at the Sunshine Mine in Idaho, when I was little. She hated the Sunshine Mine, all of the dozens of mining camps we lived in, hated the “common” women and their tacky houses. We lived in tar-paper cabins with woodstoves too, but she didn’t notice that. She wore a wool coat with a fur collar, glassy-eyed foxes. Hats with blue feathers. None of the women could play bridge well at all. But they were playing that day and the room was hot. There were ridiculous Halloween decorations. Orange and black crepe paper, jack-o’-lanterns. The women talked about cooking and recipes. “The last two things I would ever want to hear about.” My mother glanced up from her cards and saw that a lantern had caught fire to a curtain. Flames blazed. She just looked back down at her hand and said, “I bid four no trump.” Finally the fire got totally out of hand and the women fled to stand outside in the rain until the fire truck came from the mine. “I can’t tell you how desperately bored I was.”
Taking off above Santiago was splendid. The Cordill
era was at the wingtips, you could see the sparkle of the snow. Blue sky. We circled back over Santiago toward the Pacific. I saw Santiago College and the rose garden. Santa Lucía Hill. It had never occurred to me that I would want to go back home.
Ingeborg, my father’s secretary in Lima, was supposed to meet me at the airport. I wished he hadn’t done that. He was always planning, making lists. Goals and priorities. Timetables and itineraries. In my purse was a list of all the people who were to meet me, their numbers if I should get lost, embassy phone numbers, etc. I dreaded this secretary, spending three hours with her. His secretary in Santiago wore her hair in a net, had a blind mother and a retarded son she went home to every night, on two buses, standing, probably, after she got off work at six thirty. But when Ingeborg wasn’t at the airport I felt scared, not a glamorous traveler at all. I called the number on my list and a woman with a European Spanish accent said to take a cab to 22 Cairo. Ciao.
In Lima the slums were as foul and desolate as in Santiago. Miles and miles of shacks made of cardboard and tin drums, roofs shingled with flattened tin cans. But in Chile the Andes are there and the blue sky and you just naturally look up, above the stench and misery. In Peru the clouds hang low, grim and wet. Drizzle mixes with wispy fires. A long bleak ride into town.
One thing I still like in the U.S. is windows. How people leave their window curtains open. Walking through neighborhoods. Inside people are eating, watching TV. A cat on the back of a chair. In South America there are high walls with broken glass on them. Crumbling old walls with small beat-up doors. The door to 22 Cairo had a frayed and knotted bell pull. An old Quechuan hag opened it. Her legs were bound in urine-soaked rags for chilblains. She stood back to let me in, into a brick patio with a tiled fountain. Cages with finches and canaries. Roses. Banks of cineraria, anemones, nemesia. It was as if the sun were shining. Bougainvillea cascaded from every wall and up the stone staircase into the sala. Pale wood floors with rich Peruvian rugs. Pre-Incan huacos, masks. Masses of tuberoses and bowls of gardenias, narcotic, cloying. Had my father ever been there? He hated smells.