The Complete Memoirs

by Pablo Neruda

  My enthusiasm was mounting. More and more people were attending my rallies, more and more women coming to them. Fascinated and terrified, I began to wonder what I would do if I was elected President of a republic wholly untamed, patently unable to solve its problems, deeply in debt—and probably the most ungrateful of them all. Its Presidents were acclaimed in the first month and martyred, justly or not, for the remainder of the five years and eleven months of their tenure.

  ALLENDE’S CAMPAIGN

  It was a happy day when the news came: Allende had emerged as the one promising candidate of the entire Popular Unity. With the approval of my party, I quickly turned in my resignation. Before a huge and happy crowd, I announced my withdrawal and Allende accepted his nomination. The enormous rally was held in a park. People filled every visible space, including the trees; legs and heads stuck out of the branches. There is nothing like these hard-bitten Chileans.

  I knew the candidate. I had been with him in three previous campaigns, reading poems and making speeches all through Chile’s abrupt and endless territory. Three times in succession, every six years, my persistent comrade had been a presidential contender. This would be the fourth, and the victorious time.

  Arnold Bennett or Somerset Maugham (I don’t remember just which of the two) tells about a time when he had to share a room with Winston Churchill. The first thing that eminent politician did on waking was to stretch out a hand to take a huge Havana from the night table, the moment he opened his eyes, and start smoking it, right then and there. Only a healthy cave man, with the iron constitution of the Stone Age, can do this.

  None of those who accompanied Allende could keep up with his stamina. He had a knack worthy of Churchill himself: he could fall asleep whenever he felt like it. Sometimes we would be traveling over the infinite arid stretches of the north of Chile. Allende slept soundly in a corner of the car. Suddenly a small red speck would appear on the road, and, as we approached, it would become a group of fifteen or twenty men with their wives, their children, and their flags. The car would stop. Allende would rub his eyes to face the high sun and the small group, which was singing. He would join in and sing the national anthem. And he would speak to them—lively, swift, and eloquent. Then he would return to the car and we would continue on over Chile’s long, long roads. Allende would sink back into sleep effortlessly. Every twenty-five minutes or so, the scene would be repeated: group, flags, song, speech, and back to sleep.

  Facing huge crowds of thousands upon thousands of Chileans, going from car to train, from train to airplane, from airplane to ship, from ship to horse, Allende would carry out the day’s heavy schedule, never holding back, during those exhausting months. Almost all the members of his group lagged behind, fatigued. Later, when he was in fact President of Chile, his implacable efficiency was the cause of four or five heart attacks among his co-workers.

  AMBASSADOR IN PARIS

  When I came to take over the Embassy in Paris, I found that I had to pay a heavy price for my vanity. I had accepted the post without giving it much thought, once again letting myself be swept along by the current of life. I was pleased at the idea of representing a victorious popular government, after so many years of mediocre and lying ones. Perhaps, deep down, what appealed to me most was the thought of entering with new dignity the Chilean Embassy building where I had swallowed so many humiliations when I organized the immigration of the Spanish Republicans into my country. Each of my predecessors had had a hand in my persecution, had helped to revile and hurt me. The persecuted would now sit in the persecutor’s chair, eat at his table, sleep in his bed, and open the windows to let the new air of the world into the old Embassy.

  The most difficult part was to let air in. The stifling showplace décor stung my nostrils and my eyes that night in March 1971 when Matilde and I came into our bedroom and got into the illustrious beds where ambassadors and ambassadors’ wives had died peacefully or in torment.

  It’s a bedroom large enough to lodge a warrior and his horse; there’s space enough for the horse to feed and the horseman to sleep. The ceilings are very high and finely decorated. The furniture consists of velvety things in a color vaguely resembling a dry leaf’s, trimmed with horrible fringes, furnishings in a style that shows signs of riches and traces of decadence at the same time. The rugs may have been lovely sixty years ago. Now they have taken on the permanent color of footprints and a moth-eaten smell of conventional and defunct conversations.

  In addition, the nervous personnel who had been waiting for us had thought of everything except the heat in the gigantic bedroom. Matilde and I spent our first diplomatic night in Paris numb with cold. On the second night, the heat worked. It had been in use for sixty years and its filters had become useless. The hot air of the antiquated system allowed only carbon dioxide to pass through. We couldn’t complain about the cold, like the night before, but we felt palpitations and distress from the poisoning. We had to open the windows to let in the cold winter air. Maybe the old-time ambassadors were getting even with an upstart who had come to supplant them without bureaucratic merits or genealogical crests.

  We decided we would have to look for a house where we could breathe with the leaves, the water, the birds, the air. Eventually this idea would turn into an obsession. Like prisoners kept awake by the idea of freedom, we searched and searched for pure air outside of Paris.

  * * *

  Being an ambassador was something new and uncomfortable for me. But it held a challenge. A revolution had taken place in Chile. A revolution Chilean-style, analyzed and discussed a good deal. Enemies within and without were sharpening their teeth to destroy it. For one hundred and eighty years, the same kind of rulers under different labels had succeeded one another in my country, and they all did the same thing. The rags, the disgraceful housing, the children without schools or shoes, the prisons, and the cudgeling of my poor people continued.

  Now we could breathe and sing. That’s what I liked about my new situation.

  In Chile, diplomatic appointments require the senate’s approval. The Chilean right had constantly praised me as a poet and had even honored me with speeches. Of course, it’s obvious that they would have much preferred making these speeches at my funeral. In the senate vote to ratify my appointment as ambassador, I squeezed by with a majority of three votes. The rightists and some Christian-hypocrites voted against me, under the secrecy of the little white and black balls.

  The previous ambassador had literally covered the walls with a tapestry of photographs of every one of his predecessors in the post, in addition to his own portrait. It was an impressive collection of vacuous people, save two or three, among whom was the distinguished Blest Gana, our small Chilean Balzac. I ordered the descent of the spectral portraits and replaced them with more solid men: five engraved likenesses of the heroes who gave Chile a flag, nationhood, and independence; and contemporary photographs of Aguirre Cerda, progressive President of the Republic; Luis Emilio Recabarren, founder of the Communist Party; and Salvador Allende. The walls now looked infinitely better.

  I don’t know what the secretaries in the Embassy thought, rightists almost all of them. The reactionary parties had run the country for a hundred years. Not even a doorman was appointed unless he was a conservative or a royalist. Calling themselves “revolution in freedom,” the Christian-Democrats, in turn, showed a voracity parallel to that of the ancient reactionaries. Later, these parallels converged until they almost became the same line.

  The bureaucracy, the archipelagos of the public buildings, everything was still overrun with employees, inspectors, and counselors from the right, as if Allende and Popular Unity had not won in Chile and the ministers in the government were not socialists and Communists now.

  This state of affairs led me to request that the post of counselor at the Embassy in Paris be filled by one of my friends, a career diplomat and an outstanding writer, Jorge Edwards. Although he came from the most powerful and reactionary family in the country, he was
a man of the left, without any party affiliation. What I needed more than anything was an intelligent functionary who knew his work and whom I could trust. Until then, Edwards had been chargé d’affaires in Havana. Vague rumors had reached me of some difficulties he had had in Cuba. Since I had known him for years as a man of the left, I did not consider this very important.

  My new counselor arrived from Cuba in a very nervous state and told me his story. I got the impression that both sides were right and at the same time neither was, the way it sometimes happens in life. Little by little, Jorge Edwards repaired his shattered nerves, stopped chewing his nails, and helped me with evident ability, intelligence, and loyalty. During his two years of hard work at the Embassy, my counselor was my best comrade and functionary, perhaps the only one in that huge office building who was politically impeccable.

  * * *

  When a North American company tried to put an embargo on Chilean copper, a wave of feeling ran through the whole of Europe. Not only did the newspapers, television, and radio take up this affair with special interest, but once again the conscience of the people rallied to our defense.

  Stevedores in France and Holland refused to unload the copper at their ports as a sign of protest against the aggression. That marvelous gesture stirred the world. Such stories of solidarity teach more about the history of our time than the lecture rooms at any university.

  More humble but even more touching incidents also come to mind. On the second day of the embargo, a French lady of modest means, from a small country town, sent us a one-hundred-franc note from her savings to help Chile defend its copper. And a letter of warm support as well, signed by all the inhabitants of the town, including the mayor, the parish priest, workers, athletes, and students.

  Messages came to me from Chile, sent by hundreds of friends, known and unknown, who congratulated me for standing up to the international pirates. I received a package by parcel post, sent to me by a working-class woman, containing a mate gourd, four avocados, and a dozen green chili peppers.

  At the same time, Chile’s reputation had grown remarkably. We had been transformed into a country that actually existed. Before this, we had gone unnoticed among the great number of underdeveloped countries. Now, for the first time, we had an identity and no one could ignore the great fight we were putting up to build a future for our country.

  Everything happening in our country stirred up extraordinary interest in France and all of Europe. Popular rallies, student meetings, books in all languages studied, examined, photographed us. Every day, I had to put off journalists who wanted to know all there was to know and much more. President Allende was a world figure. The discipline and firmness of our working class were admired and praised.

  Warm sympathy toward Chile grew enormously as a result of the conflicts arising from the nationalization of our copper deposits. It was clear to people everywhere that this was a giant step along the road to Chile’s new independence. Without subterfuge of any kind, the popular government made our sovereignty definitive by reconquering copper for our country.

  RETURN TO CHILE

  When I returned to Chile I was received by new vegetation in the streets and in the parks. Our marvelous spring had been painting the forest leaves green. Our old gray capital needs green leaves the way the human heart needs love. I inhaled the freshness of this young spring. When we are far from our country, we never picture it in its winter. Distance wipes away the hardships of winter, the forsaken country towns, children barefoot in the cold. The memory only thinks of bringing us green countrysides, yellow and red flowers, the blue sky of our national anthem. This time I actually found the beautiful season which has so often been only a dream created by distance.

  Another vegetation splotched the walls of the city. It was the moss of hatred covering them with its tapestries. Anti-Communist posters gushing insolence and lies; posters against Cuba; anti-Soviet posters; posters against peace and humaneness; bloodthirsty posters predicting mass murders and Jakartas. This was the new vegetation defiling the city’s walls.

  I knew from experience the tone and the drift of this propaganda. I had lived with it in pre-Hitler Europe. That was exactly the spirit of Hitlerite propaganda: the extravagant use of lies, with no holds barred; the all-out campaign of threats and fear; parading all the weapons of hatred against what the future promised. I felt that they wanted to change the very essence of our life. I could not understand how there could be Chileans who insulted our national spirit like this.

  * * *

  When the reactionary right had to depend on terrorism, it used it unscrupulously. General Schneider, the army chief of staff, a respected and respectable man who opposed a coup d’état to prevent Allende’s accession to the presidency of the Republic, was assassinated. Near his home, a motley crew of fiends machine-gunned him in the back. The operation was directed by an ex-general who had been kicked out of the army. The gang was made up of young members of the social set and professional delinquents.

  When the crime was proved and the man who was the brains behind it was thrown into jail, he was sentenced to thirty years by a military court. However, the sentence was reduced to two years by the Supreme Court. In Chile, a poor devil who steals a chicken because he is hungry gets double the sentence imposed on the assassin of the commander in chief of the army. This is the class-conscious application of laws elaborated by the ruling class.

  Allende’s victory came as a weird shock to that ruling class. For the first time, it crossed their minds that laws so carefully fabricated by them could bounce back in their faces. They scurried off somewhere for cover, with their stocks, jewels, banknotes, gold coins. They went off to Argentina, Spain, they even got as far as Australia. Their terror of the people would have made them reach the North Pole in record time.

  Later they would come back.

  FREI

  Blocked everywhere by diabolical and legal obstacles, the Chilean road was at all times strictly constitutional. In the meantime, the oligarchy patched up its tattered clothing and transformed itself into a Fascist faction. The North American blockade became more implacable after the nationalization of copper. In league with ex-President Frei, I.T.T. threw the Christian-Democrats into the arms of the new Fascist right.

  The diametrically opposed personalities of Allende and Frei have always preoccupied Chile. Perhaps for the very reason that they are such different men, each in his own way a strong leader in a country without a tradition of strong leaders, each with his own goals and his road well marked out.

  I think I knew Allende well. There was nothing enigmatic about him. As for Frei, we were in the senate at the same time. He is a strange, highly premeditative man, a far cry from Allende’s spontaneity. Yet he often explodes into violent laughter, strident cackles. I like people who are given to loud outbursts of laughter (I am not gifted that way). But there are laughs and laughs. Frei’s break out of a troubled, serious face, very intent on the needle and thread with which he is sewing together his political life. It’s a sudden laughter that is a bit startling, like the screech of certain birds at night. Aside from this, his behavior is generally circumspect and deliberately cordial.

  I often found his political zigzagging depressing, before it disillusioned me completely. I remember that one day he came to see me in my house in Santiago. At that time the possibility of an understanding between the Communists and the Christian-Democrats was in the air. They were not yet called Christian-Democrats, but Falange Nacional, a horrid name adopted while they were still deeply impressed by the young Spanish Fascist Primo de Rivera. Then, after the Spanish war, they came under the influence of Maritain, became anti-Fascists, and took a different name.

  Our conversation was casual but friendly. We Communists were interested in reaching some kind of understanding with all men and all sectors of good will; we would never get anywhere by ourselves. Although he was naturally evasive, Frei let me know the leftist feelings he apparently had at that time. He made me a part
ing gift of one of those laughs that fall out of his mouth like stones. “We’ll have another talk,” he said. But, two days later, I realized that our conversation had ended for good.

  After Allende’s triumph, Frei, an ambitious and cold politician, believed he needed a reactionary alliance if he was to return to power. It was merely a pipe dream, the frozen dream of a political spider. His web will not hold up; the coup d’état he sponsored won’t do him any good. Fascism does not put up with compromises, it demands submission. Frei’s figure will become more obscure each year. And someday his memory will have to face responsibility for the crime.

  TOMIC

  From its beginning, from the moment it dropped the unacceptable name of Falange, the Christian-Democratic Party interested me very much. It came into being when a small group of Catholic intellectuals formed a Maritain-Thomist elite. This philosophy did not appeal to me. I harbor a natural indifference toward people who are theorists about poetry, politics, or sex. But the practical consequences of that small movement were felt in a special, unexpected way. I got several young leaders to speak out for the Spanish Republic at the huge meetings I organized on my return from Madrid, which was still in the throes of fighting then. This participation was unprecedented; prodded by the Conservative Party, the old Church hierarchy almost broke up the new party. Only the intervention of a farsighted bishop saved it from political suicide. A statement from the Bishop of Talca saved the group that would eventually turn into Chile’s biggest party. Its ideology changed completely with the years.

  After Frei, the most important man among the Christian-Democrats was Radomiro Tomic. I met him in my senate days, right in the middle of strikes and election stumping in northern Chile. In those days the Christian-Democrats followed us Communists around in order to take part in our rallies. We were and still are the most popular people in the deserts of potassium nitrate and copper—I mean, among the most victimized workers on the American continent. Recabarren came from there, the workers’ press and the first unions were born there. None of this would have been possible without the Communists.