Portrait in Sepia

by Isabel Allende

  “My father said the same thing.”

  “You are tall, like Tao. And Severo tells me that you are also clever like him.”

  In our family we serve tea when a situation is slightly uncomfortable, and since I feel self-conscious almost all the time, I serve a lot of it. That beverage has the virtue of helping me steady my nerves. I was dying to grab my grandmother by the waist and waltz her around the room, to babble everything about my life, and to list for her the reproaches I had mumbled to myself all those years, but none of that was possible. Eliza Sommers is not the type of person you treat familiarly; her dignity is intimidating, and it would be weeks before she and I finally could talk with ease. Fortunately the tea, and the presence of Severo del Valle and Frederick Williams—who came back from one of his walks around the property decked out like an explorer in Africa—relieved the tension. As soon as Uncle Frederick took off his pith helmet and smoked glasses and saw Eliza Sommers, something changed in his attitude: he puffed out his chest, raised his voice a notch, and fluffed out his feathers. His admiration doubled when he saw the steamer trunks and suitcases with souvenirs labels of her travels and learned that that tiny woman was one of the few foreigners who had gone to Tibet.

  I don’t know whether the only reason my oi poa came to Chile was to meet me—I suspect that she was planning to go on to the South Pole, where no woman had as yet set foot—but whatever the reason, her visit was essential for me. Without her my life would still be obscured with nebulae; without her I would not be writing this memoir. It was my maternal grandmother who provided the missing pieces for fitting together the jigsaw puzzle of my life, who told me about my mother, about the circumstances of my birth, and gave me the final key to my nightmares. It was also she who later would go with me to San Francisco to meet my uncle Lucky, a prosperous Chinese merchant, fat, short-legged, and absolutely delightful, and to unearth the documents I needed to tie together the loose ends of my story. The relationship between Eliza Sommers and Severo del Valle is as deep as the secrets they shared for many years; she thinks of him as being my true father, because he was the man who loved her daughter and married her. All Matías Rodríguez de Santa Cruz did was accidentally supply some genes.

  “Who conceived you is not really important, Lai Ming; anyone could do that. Severo is the one who gave you his name and took responsibility for you,” she assured me.

  “In that case, Paulina del Valle was my mother and my father; I carry her name and she took responsibility for me. All the others passed like comets through my childhood, leaving not much more than a faint trail of Stardust,” I rejoined.

  “Before her, Tao and I were your father and your mother. We raised you first, Lai Ming,” she insisted, and rightly, because those maternal grandparents had such a powerful influence on me that for thirty years I have carried their gentle presence inside me, and I am sure they will be there for the rest of my life.

  Eliza Sommers lived in another dimension, beside Tao Chi’en, whose death was a major inconvenience but not an obstacle to loving him as she always had. My grandmother Eliza is one of those beings destined to have one spectacular love; I don’t believe she has room for another man in her widow’s heart. After burying her husband in China beside the tomb of Lin, his first wife, and performing the Buddhist funeral rituals he wished, she was free. She could have returned to San Francisco to live with her son Lucky and the young wife he had ordered by catalog from Shanghai, but the idea of becoming a feared and venerated mother-in-law was to her the equivalent of giving in to old age. She did not feel alone, or frightened of the future, since the protective spirit of Tao Chi’en was always with her. In fact, they are closer than before, since now they are never separated for a single instant. She acquired the habit of talking with her husband in a very low voice—in order not to be taken for a mental case—and at night of sleeping on the left side of the bed in order to leave space for him on the right, which was their custom. The adventurous spirit that had impelled her to flee Chile when she was sixteen, hidden in the belly of a sailing vessel bound for California, awakened in her again once she became a widow. She recalled an epiphany when she was eighteen, right at the height of the gold rush, when the neighing of her horse and the first light of dawn woke her in the immensity of a wild and solitary landscape. That morning she discovered the exaltation of freedom. She had spent the night alone beneath the trees, surrounded by a thousand dangers: pitiless bandits, unfriendly Indians, snakes, bears, and other wild animals, yet for the first time in her life she was not afraid. She had been brought up wearing a corset, bound in body, soul, and imagination, frightened even of her own thoughts, but that adventure had released her. She had to develop a strength that she may always have had but until then ignored because she had no need for it. She had left the protection of her hearth when still a young girl, and pregnant, following the trail of an elusive lover; she had stowed away on a ship, on which she lost the baby and nearly her life as well. She reached California dressed as a man, and prepared to scour the territory from tip to tail, with no weapons or tools but the desperate spur of love. She had been able to survive alone in a land of machos where greed and violence were the rule; in the process she acquired courage and a taste for independence. She would never forget the intense euphoria of adventure. Also for love, she had lived for thirty years with Tao Chi’en as his discreet wife, a mother and pastry maker, fulfilling her duty, her only horizon her home in Chinatown—but the germ planted in those early years as a nomad lay intact in her spirit, ready to burst into bud at the propitious moment. When Tao Chi’en died, the polestar of her life, the moment to drift on the tide had come. “At heart I have always been a rover; what I want is to travel with no fixed course,” she wrote her son Lucky. She decided, however, that first she had to carry out the promise she had made her father, Captain John Sommers: not to abandon her aunt Rose in her old age. From Hong Kong she had gone to England, prepared to stay with the aged lady in her last years; it was the least she could do for a woman who had been like a mother. Rose Sommers was more than seventy years old, and her health had begun to fail, but she kept writing her novels—all more or less the same—and was now the most famous romance writer in the English language. There were people who traveled great distances to get a glimpse of her tiny figure walking her dog in the park, and it was said that Queen Victoria consoled her lonely life as a widow by reading Rose’s syrupy stories of love triumphant. When Eliza arrived, whom she had cared for like a daughter, it was an enormous comfort to Rose Sommers; among other reasons because her hand was growing unsteady, and it was more and more difficult for her to clasp a pen. From then on she dictated her novels, and later, when she was also becoming less lucid, Eliza pretended to take notes but in fact did the writing, without the editor or the readers ever suspecting; all she had to do was repeat the formula. When Rose Sommers died, Eliza stayed on in her little house in the bohemian quarter—very valuable because the area had become stylish—and inherited the fortune accumulated from her adoptive mother’s little romances. The first thing she did was visit her son Lucky in San Francisco and meet her grandchildren, who to her seemed rather ugly and boring; then she set off for more exotic places, finally realizing her destiny as a wanderer. She was one of those travelers who make an effort to get to places from which other people escape. Nothing satisfied her as much as seeing labels and seals from the most obscure countries on the planet on her luggage; nothing gave her as much pride as contracting some foul disease or being bitten by some foreign vermin. She traveled for years with her explorer’s trunks, but always returned to the little house in London, where Severo del Valle’s correspondence would be waiting with news about me. When she learned that Paulina del Valle had shuffled off this coil, she decided to return to Chile, where she had been born but which she hadn’t given a thought to for more than a half century, for a reunion with her granddaughter.

  It’s possible that during the long voyage on the steamship my grandmother Eliza recalled he
r first sixteen years in Chile, this geographically narrow and proud nation, her childhood in the care of a generous Indian woman and the beautiful Miss Rose, and her peaceful and secure life before the intrusion of the lover who left her pregnant, abandoned her to chase after gold in California, and was never again seen. Since my grandmother Eliza believes in karma, she must have concluded that the long voyage was necessary in order for her to meet Tao Chi’en, whom she would love in each of her reincarnations. “That is not a particularly Christian idea,” Frederick Williams commented when I tried to explain to him why Eliza Sommers didn’t need anyone.

  My grandmother Eliza brought me as a gift a beat-up trunk, which she delivered to me with a naughty twinkle in her dark eyes. It contained yellowed manuscripts signed by “An Anonymous Lady.” Those were the pornographic novels Rose Sommers had written in her youth, another well-guarded family secret. I read them carefully—for purely didactic reasons, of course—to the direct benefit of Iván Radovic. That entertaining literature—where did a Victorian spinster get such audacity?—and Nívea del Valle’s confidences have helped me combat my shyness, which at first was a nearly insurmountable obstacle between Iván and me. It is true that on the day of the storm, when we were supposed to go to the operetta but didn’t, I made the move to kiss Iván in the carriage before the poor man could defend himself, but that was as far as my daring went; after that we lost a lot of precious time arguing over my tremendous insecurity and his scruples, because he didn’t want “to ruin my reputation,” as he put it. It wasn’t easy to convince him that my reputation was rather battered before he appeared on the horizon, and would go on being battered because I did not plan ever to go back to my husband or to give up my work or my independence, all of which are frowned on in this country. After the humiliating experience with Diego, I thought I was incapable of inspiring desire or love. Added to my total ignorance in sexual matters was a sense of inferiority; I thought I was ugly, inadequate, not very feminine, and I was ashamed of my body and of the passion Iván aroused in me. Rose Sommers, that distant great-grandmother I’d never known, handed down a fantastic gift when she gave me the playful freedom so necessary in making love. Iván often takes things too seriously; his Slavic temperament tends toward the tragic. Sometimes he sinks into despair because we can’t live together until my husband dies, and by then surely we will be ancient. When those clouds darken his mind, I go to An Anonymous Lady’s manuscripts, where I discover some new trick for giving him pleasure, or at least to make him laugh. For the purpose of entertaining him in our private time, I have been losing my inhibitions and acquiring a security I’ve never had. I don’t feel seductive yet—the positive effect of the manuscripts hasn’t gone that far—but at least I am not afraid to take the initiative in encouraging the adventurous side of Iván, who might otherwise be mired in the same routine forever. It would be a waste to make love like an old married couple when we’re not even married. The advantage of being lovers is that we have to work hard at our relationship, because everything conspires to drive us apart. Our decision to be together has to be renewed again and again; that keeps us on our toes.

  This is the story my grandmother Eliza Sommers told me.

  Tao Chi’en never forgave himself for the death of his daughter Lynn. It was futile for his wife and Lucky to keep repeating that no human power is capable of changing the course of fate, that as a zhong-yi he had done everything possible, and that medical science was still powerless to prevent or contain the fatal hemorrhages that kill so many women during childbirth. For Tao Chi’en it was as if he had walked in circles to find himself right where he’d been more than thirty years before in Hong Kong when his first wife, Lin, gave birth to a baby girl. She, too, had begun to bleed, and in his desperation to save her, he had offered heaven anything he had in exchange for Lin’s life. The baby had died a few minutes later, and he had believed that was the price for saving his wife. He never imagined that much later, on the other side of the world, he would have to pay again with his daughter Lynn.

  “Don’t talk that way, Father, please,” Lucky berated him. “It isn’t a matter of trading one life for another, those are superstitions unworthy of a man of your intelligence and culture. My sister’s death has nothing to do with that of your first wife, or with you. These calamities happen all the time.”

  “What use are all my years of study and experience if I couldn’t save her?” Tao Chi’en lamented.

  “Millions of women die in childbirth. You did everything that could be done for Lynn.”

  Eliza Sommers was as crushed as her husband by the pain of having lost her only daughter, but she bore in addition the responsibility of caring for the tiny orphan. While she fell asleep on her feet out of pure exhaustion, Tao Chi’en never shut his eyes. He spent the night meditating, walking around the house like a somnambulist, and secretly weeping. They had not made love for days, and considering the states of mind in that home, it didn’t seem they would anytime in the near future. After a week Eliza chose the only solution that came to her: she placed her granddaughter in Tao Chi’en’s arms and announced to him that she was incapable of tending her, that she had spent more than twenty years of her life like a slave, looking after their children, Lucky and Lynn, and that she didn’t have the strength to start all over with little Lai Ming. Tao Chi’en found himself in charge of a newborn baby, who had to be fed watered milk every half-hour from an eyedropper because she could barely swallow, and be rocked constantly because she screamed with colic night and day. The little thing was not even pleasant to look at; she was tiny and wrinkled, her skin yellow with jaundice, her features squashed by the difficult birth, and there was not a hair on her head, but after twenty-four hours of caring for her, Tao Chi’en could look at her without being terrified. After twenty-four days of carrying her in a pouch strung around his neck, feeding her with the eyedropper, and sleeping with her, she began to seem pretty to him. And after twenty-four months of giving her a mother’s care he was completely enamored of his granddaughter and convinced that she would be even more beautiful than Lynn, despite there not being the least basis for that supposition. The child was not the mollusk she had resembled at birth, but she was far from looking like her mother. Tao Chi’en’s routines, which previously had been composed of his practice and the few hours he shared with his wife, changed completely. His schedule centered around Lai Ming, that demanding infant who was glued to his side, whom he had to tell stories to, sing to sleep, force to eat, take on walks, buy the prettiest dresses in American stores as well as those in Chinatown, and introduce to everyone on the street because there had never been such a clever little girl, according to the grandfather, whose judgment was clouded by affection. He was sure that his granddaughter was a genius, and to prove it he talked to her in Chinese and in English, to which he was adding the Spanish jargon her grandmother spoke, creating a monumental confusion. Lai Ming responded to Tao Chi’en’s stimuli like any two-year-old child, but to him it seemed that his occasional successes were irrefutable proof of superior intelligence. He reduced his office hours to a few in the afternoon; that way he could spend the morning with his granddaughter, teaching her new tricks, like a trained macaque. Only grudgingly did he allow Eliza to take her to the tearoom in the afternoons while he worked, because he had it in his head that he could begin to train her for medicine from early childhood.

  “There are six generations of zhong-yi in my family; Lai Ming will be the seventh, seeing that you do not have the least talent for it,” Tao Chi’en told his son Lucky.

  “I thought that only men could be physicians,” Lucky commented.

  “That was in the past. Lai Ming will be the first female zhong-yi in history,” Tao Chi’en replied.

  But Eliza Sommers did not permit him to fill their granddaughter’s head with medical theory at such an early age. There would be plenty of time for that; for the moment they needed to get the girl out of Chinatown a few hours a day to Americanize her. On that point at leas
t, the grandparents were in agreement. Lai Ming should belong to the world of the whites, where undoubtedly she would have more opportunities than among Chinese. In favor of this plan, the girl had no Asian features; she had come out looking as Spanish as the family of her father. The possibility that Severo del Valle would return one day with the proposition of reclaiming his purported daughter, and take her to Chile, was intolerable, so it was never mentioned. It was simply assumed that the young Chilean would respect their pact because he had given ample proof of nobility. They did not touch the money he had provided for the girl but deposited it in an account for her future education. Every three or four months Eliza wrote a brief note to Severo del Valle, telling him about his “protégée,” as he called her, to make it clear that they did not recognize his claim of paternity. There was no reply for a year, because he was immersed in his mourning, and the war, but later he was able to answer occasionally. They had not seen Paulina del Valle again, because she did not return to the tearoom and never acted on her threat to take away their granddaughter and ruin their lives.

  And so five years of harmony went by in the home of the Chi’ens, until, inevitably, the events that were to destroy the family were set in motion. Everything began with the visit of two women who announced themselves as Presbyterian missionaries and asked if they could speak alone with Tao Chi’en. The zhong-yi received them in his consulting room, because he thought they had come for reasons of health; there was no other explanation for why two white women would unexpectedly appear in his house. They looked like sisters; they were young, tall, rosy-cheeked, with eyes bright as the waters in the bay, and both displayed the attitude of radiant assurance that tends to accompany religious zeal. They introduced themselves by their given names, Donaldina and Martha, and proceeded to explain that the Presbyterian mission in Chinatown had until that moment maneuvered with great caution and discretion in order not to offend the Buddhist community, but now it could count on new members determined to implant the minimum norms of Christian decency in that sector which, as they put it, “was American territory, not Chinese, and thus violations of law and morality could not be tolerated.” They had heard about the Singsong Girls but had encountered a conspiracy of silence in regard to the traffic in children for sexual purposes. The missionaries knew that American authorities were taking bribes and looking the other way. Someone had told them that Tao Chi’en would be the only person with enough courage to tell them the truth, and to help them. That was why they were there. The zhong-yi had waited decades for that moment. In his slow labor of rescuing those miserable adolescents, he had counted solely on the silent aid of a few Quaker friends who took responsibility for getting the young prostitutes out of California and starting them in a new life far from the tongs and madams. It had been his role to buy the girls he could afford to pay for in the clandestine auctions and to take to his home those who were too ill to work in the whorehouses. He tried to heal their bodies and comfort their souls, but he did not always succeed; many died in his care. In his home there were two rooms, almost always occupied, where the Singsong Girls were given shelter, but Tao Chi’en felt that as the Chinese population in California increased, the problem of the slaves grew worse every day, and he could do very little to change that by himself. Those two missionaries had been sent from heaven; first of all, they had the backing of the powerful Presbyterian Church, and, second, they were white. They would be able to mobilize the press, public opinion, and the American authorities to put an end to that inhuman traffic. So he told them in detail how the girls were bought or kidnapped in China, how Chinese culture disdained girls, and how it was not unusual in that country to find newborn baby girls drowned in wells or tossed into the street to be chewed on by rats and dogs. Their families had no love for them, which was why it was so easy to acquire them for a few cents and bring them to America, where they could be exploited for thousands of dollars. They were transported like animals in huge crates in the holds of ships, and the ones who survived dehydration and cholera entered the United States carrying false marriage contracts. They were all brides in the eyes of immigration officers, and their young age, their lamentable physical condition, and the expression of terror on their faces apparently did not arouse suspicion. They were not important. What happened to them “was up to the Celestials,” it was of no concern to the whites. Tao Chi’en explained to Donaldina and Martha that the life expectancy of the Singsong Girls, once they started in the trade, was three or four years. They serviced up to thirty men a day, and they died of venereal diseases, abortion, pneumonia, hunger, and rough treatment. A twenty-year-old Chinese prostitute was a curiosity. No one kept a record of their lives, but since they entered the country with a legal document, their deaths had to be recorded, though it was highly improbable that anyone would ask after them. Many went mad. They were cheap; they could be replaced in a blink of an eye. No one invested in their health or in making them live. Tao Chi’en reported to the missionaries the approximate number of young slaves in Chinatown, when the auctions were held, and where the brothels were located—from the most wretched, in which the girls were treated like caged animals, to the most luxurious, ruled by the celebrated Ah Toy, who had become the major importer of new flesh into the country. She bought youngsters of eleven in China and on the voyage to America handed them over to the sailors, so that when they arrived they would already know how to say “pay first” and tell gold from brass, so they wouldn’t be tricked by false coins. Ah Toy’s girls were selected from among the most beautiful, and they were more fortunate than the others, whose fate was to be auctioned like cattle and to service the most degenerate men in any way they demanded, however cruel and humiliating. Many became wild creatures, acting like ferocious beasts that had to be chained to the bed and kept dazed with narcotics. Tao Chi’en gave the missionaries the names of three or four Chinese businessmen who had money and prestige, among them his own son Lucky, who might help them in their task, the only ones who agreed with him about eliminating that kind of traffic. Donaldina and Martha, with trembling hands and teary eyes, took notes on everything Tao Chi’en said, then thanked him. As they said good-bye they asked if they could count on him when the time came to act.