Portrait in Sepia

by Isabel Allende

  “Señorita del Valle! Forgive me, now you are Señora Domínguez, isn’t that right?” he exclaimed, holding both my hands.

  “Aurora, maestro, the same Aurora as always,” I replied, giving him a hug. Then I introduced Dr. Radovic, and explained his wish to learn photography for medical purposes.

  “I can’t teach anymore, my friend. Heaven has punished me where it hurts most, in my vision. Imagine, a blind photographer. What an irony!”

  “You don’t see anything, maestro?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Not with my eyes, no, but I still survey the world. Tell me, Aurora, have you changed much? How do you look now? The clearest image I have of you is of a thirteen-year-old girl with her feet planted before the door of my studio like a stubborn mule.”

  “I’m still the same, Don Juan. Shy, silly, and hardheaded.”

  “No, no. Tell me, for example, how your hair is combed, and what color you’re wearing.”

  “The señora is dressed in an airy white dress with lace around the neckline; I don’t know what the fabric is because I don’t understand such things, and she has a yellow ribbon around her hat. I assure you she looks very pretty,” said Radovic.

  “Don’t embarrass me, Doctor, I beg you,” I interrupted.

  “And now the señora’s cheeks are pink,” he added, and they both laughed.

  The maestro rang a little bell, and the maid came in with a tray of coffees. We passed a very entertaining hour talking about the new techniques and cameras used in other countries, and how much the science of photography had advanced. Don Juan Ribero was up-to-date in everything.

  “Aurora has the intensity, the concentration, and the patience every artist requires. I suppose the same things are needed to be a good physician, isn’t that so? Ask her to show you her work, Doctor; she’s modest and won’t do it unless you insist,” the maestro suggested to Iván Radovic as we said good-bye.

  A few days later there was occasion to do just that. My grandmother had waked up with terrible stomach pain, and her usual sedatives hadn’t helped, so we called Radovic, who came quickly and administered a strong compound of laudanum. We left my grandmother resting in bed, and once we were outside the room, he told me that we were dealing with another tumor but that she was too old to attempt another operation; she wouldn’t survive the anesthesia. All we could do was try to control the pain and help her die in peace. I wanted to know how much time she had left, but it wasn’t easy to determine that because, despite her age, my grandmother was very strong, and the tumor was growing very slowly. “Be prepared, Aurora, the end could come within a few months,” he told me. I couldn’t help crying. Paulina del Valle represented the only roots I had; without her I would be cast adrift, and the fact that I had Diego for a husband didn’t lessen my feeling of coming disaster, it increased it. Radovic handed me his handkerchief and stood quietly, looking away from me, troubled by my tears. I made him promise he would give me warning in time to come in from the country and be with my grandmother in her last moments. The laudanum took effect, and she quickly relaxed. When she was asleep, I showed Iván Radovic out. At the door he asked whether he could stay a bit; he had a free hour, and it was very hot outside. Adela was taking her siesta, Frederick Williams had gone to his club to swim, and the enormous house on Calle Ejército Libertador seemed like a docked ship. I offered him a cool drink, and we sat in the gallery of the ferns and bird cages.

  “Whistle something, Dr. Radovic,” I said.

  “Whistle? Why?”

  “According to the Indians, whistling brings the wind. We need a breath of air to survive this heat.”

  “Well, while I whistle, why don’t you bring me your photographs?” he asked. “I would like very much to see them.”

  I brought several boxes and sat beside him to try to explain my work. First I showed him some photographs I’d taken in Europe, when I was still more interested in aesthetics than content, then the platinum prints of Santiago and the Indians and campesinos on the estate, and finally the photos of the Domínguez family. He studied them as attentively as he examined my grandmother, with a question from time to time. He paused on those of Diego’s family.

  “Who is this very beautiful woman?” he wanted to know.

  “Susana, Eduardo’s wife, my sister-in-law.”

  “And I take it that this is Eduardo?” he asked, pointing to Diego.

  “No, that’s Diego. Why did you think he is Susana’s husband?”

  “I don’t know, he seemed. . . .”

  That night I spread the photographs on the floor and stared at them for hours. I went to bed very late, distressed.

  I had to tell my grandmother good-bye because it was time to return to Caleufú. In Santiago’s sunny December, Paulina del Valle was feeling better—winter there had been very long and lonely for her, too—and she promised that she and Frederick Williams would come for a visit after New Year’s instead of summering at the beach, as everyone did who could escape the dog days in Santiago. She felt so well that she went with us by train to Valparaíso, where Adela and I caught the boat south. We were back in the country before Christmas, because we couldn’t miss the most important festival of the year for the Domínguezes. For months in advance, Doña Elvira supervised gifts for the campesinos, either made at home or bought in town: clothing and toys for the children, fabric for dresses and knitting yarn for the women, tools for the men. On that day they gave out animals, sacks of flour, potatoes, chancaca, or dark sugar, beans and rice, charquí, or dried meat, maté tea, salt, and squares of quince paste, which was prepared in huge copper kettles over outdoor cook fires. The workers on the estate came from the four cardinal points, some traveling for days with their wives and children for the celebration. Steers and goats were slaughtered, potatoes and fresh corn boiled, and pots of beans simmered for hours. My job was to decorate the long tables set up in the patio with flowers and pine branches, and to prepare the jugs of sweet, watered wine that was not strong enough to intoxicate the adults and that the children could drink mixed with toasted flour. A priest came and stayed for two or three days, baptizing babies, confessing sinners, marrying unwed couples, and recriminating adulterers. On the stroke of twelve on December 24, we attended midnight mass before an improvised outdoor altar, because there were too many people to fit in the small chapel, and at dawn, after a delicious breakfast of café con leche, fresh baked bread, butter, marmalade, and summer fruit, Baby Jesus was carried in a joyful procession so each person could kiss his porcelain feet. Then Don Sebastián announced the family chosen for outstanding moral conduct and awarded the Child to them. For a year, until the following Christmas, the crystal urn containing the small statue would occupy a place of honor in that campesino hut, bringing them blessings. While it was there, nothing bad could occur. Don Sebastián worked it out so that each family had an opportunity to shelter Jesus beneath their roof. That year we also had the allegorical play about the arrival of the twentieth century, in which all the members of the family participated—except Doña Elvira, who was too weak, and Diego, who preferred to take charge of technical aspects such as footlights and backdrops. Don Sebastián, in an excellent mood, agreed to play the part of the Old Year, shuffling off grumbling, and one of Susana’s children—still in diapers—represented the New Year.

  At word of free food, several Pehuenche Indians showed up. They were very poor—they had lost their lands, and government plans for progress ignored them—but out of pride they did not arrive with empty hands: under their mantles they brought a few apples, which they offered caked with sweat and dirt, a rabbit smelling of putrefaction, and a few gourds of muchi, a liquor they made from a small violet-colored fruit they chew, spit into a ladle, and mix with saliva, and then let ferment. The ancient chief came forward with his three wives and his dogs, followed by twenty or so members of his tribe. The men never lowered their lances, and in spite of three centuries of abuse and defeats, they had not lost their fierce aspect. The women were not in the least ti
mid, they were as independent and powerful as the men; there was an equality between the sexes that Nívea del Valle would have applauded. They offered ceremonious greetings in their tongue, addressing Don Sebastián as “brother,” along with his sons, who welcomed them and invited them to join in the feast, although they also kept close watch, since the Indians would steal at the first excuse. My father-in-law maintained that they had no sense of property because they were used to communal living and sharing, but Diego alleged that those Indians who were so quick to take what wasn’t theirs never allowed anyone to touch anything of their own. Fearing that they would get drunk and become violent, Don Sebastián, as an incentive, offered to give the chief a cask of liquor as they left, not to be opened on his property. The Indians sat in a large circle to eat, drink, share a pipe, and to deliver long speeches no one listened to; they didn’t mix with the campesinos of Caleufú, although all the children raced around together. That celebration gave me a chance to photograph Indians to my heart’s content, and to make friends with a few of the women with the idea that they would let me visit them on the other side of the lake, where they had camped for the summer. When the grazing was exhausted, or they grew bored with the scenery, they would pull their tent poles from the ground, roll up the cloth, and leave in search of new campsites. If I could spend a little time with them, maybe they would get used to the camera, and to me. I wanted to photograph them in their daily tasks, an idea that horrified my in-laws—since there were all kinds of hair-raising stories about the customs of these tribes, upon which the patient labor of the missionaries had applied very little veneer.

  My grandmother Paulina did not come to visit me that summer, as she had promised. She could tolerate the trip by train and by ship, but the two days by oxcart from the port to Caleufú frightened her. Her weekly letters were my main contact with the outside world, and as the weeks went by, my nostalgia grew. My mood changed; I became unsociable, more taciturn, trailing my frustration behind me like a heavy bridal train. My loneliness brought me closer to my mother-in-law, a gentle, discreet woman totally dependent on her husband, with no ideas of her own, incapable of coping with the slightest problems of living, but who made up for lack of intellect with enormous goodness. My silent tantrums melted in her presence; Doña Elvira had the virtue of focusing me and of placating my sometimes suffocating anxiety.

  Those summer months we were busy with harvests, new calves and kids, and putting up preserves. The sun set at nine P.M., and the days were eternal. By that time the house my father-in-law had built for Diego and me was ready: solid, new, beautiful, encircled with roofed galleries on four sides, and sweet with the scent of fresh clay, newly hewn wood, and basil, which the campesinos planted along the walls to frighten off bad luck and witchcraft. My in-laws gave us some furniture that had been in the family for generations; Diego bought the rest in town without asking my opinion. Instead of the wide bed in which we had slept until then, he bought two bronze single beds and placed a night table between them. After lunch the family retired to their rooms for an obligatory rest until five in the afternoon, because it was thought that heat paralyzed digestion. Diego would lie in a hammock under the grape arbor to smoke for a while and then go to the river to swim. He liked to go alone, and the few times I wanted to go with him, he was annoyed, so I didn’t insist. Seeing that we didn’t share those hours of the siesta in the intimacy of our room, I targeted them for reading or working in my little darkroom, because I couldn’t get used to sleeping in the middle of the day. Diego didn’t ask me for anything; he never questioned me, his interest in my activities and feelings was no more than the barest good manners, he was never impatient with my changing moods, my nightmares, which had returned with greater frequency and intensity, or my sullen silences. We would go for days without exchanging a word, but he didn’t seem to notice. I wrapped myself in my muteness like an armor, counting the hours to see how long we could draw out that contest, but in the end I would give in, because the silence weighed much more on me than on him. Before, when we had shared the same bed, I would move close to him, pretending to be asleep. I would press myself against his back and interlace my legs with his; in that way I sometimes bridged the abyss that was deepening between us. In those rare embraces I was not seeking pleasure, since I didn’t know that was possible, only consolation and companionship. For a few hours I lived the illusion of having recaptured him, but then dawn would come, and everything would again be as it always was. When we moved to the new house, even that precarious intimacy evaporated; the distance between our beds was much wider and more hostile than the raging waters of the river. Sometimes, however, when I awakened screaming, pursued by the black pajamaclad children of my dreams, he would get up and put his arms around me until I grew calm. Those were perhaps the only spontaneous contacts between us. He was worried by those nightmares; he believed they might degenerate into madness, and he bought a vial of opium and sometimes gave me a few drops dissolved in orange liquor to help me sleep and have happy dreams. Except for activities shared with all the other family members, Diego and I were almost never together. Often he would go off on some jaunt, crossing the cordillera toward the Argentine Patagonia, or to town to buy provisions; sometimes he would be away two or three days without explanation, and I would sink into anguish, imagining an accident, but Eduardo would calm me with the argument that his brother had always been that way, a solitary man brought up in the magnitude of nature, accustomed to silence. From the time he was young he had needed great spaces; he had the soul of a wanderer, and had he not been born within the closely woven net of that family, he might have been a sailor. We had been married a year, and I felt guilty; not only had I not given him a child, I hadn’t been able to interest him in me, much less win his love. Something basic was lacking in my womanhood. I supposed that he had chosen me because he was of an age to marry, his parents had pressured him to look for a bride, and I was the first, maybe the only, person he had come across. Diego didn’t love me. I had known that from the beginning, but with the arrogance of first love and my nineteen years, that hadn’t seemed an insurmountable obstacle. I had thought I could seduce him with persistence, virtue, and flirtation, as girls did in romantic tales. In the anguish of identifying what was lacking in me, I devoted hours and hours to shooting self-portraits, some before a large mirror I had brought to my studio, others standing before the camera. I took hundreds of photographs; in some I am dressed, in some I’m naked; I examined myself from every angle, and the only thing I discovered was a crepuscular sadness.