Daughter of Fortune (13 page)

Rose's retreat to her aunt's home in Scotland had not eliminated gossip, but as the rumors could not be confirmed, no one dared openly snub the family. One by one, the many suitors who had besieged Rose returned, but she sent them away, using the excuse of her mother's illness. Things kept quiet simply never happened, Jeremy Sommers maintained, eager to snuff out every vestige of that episode with silence. Rose's shameful escapade lived on in the limbo of things not given words, although at times the brother and sister made oblique references that kept their rancor alive but also united them in the shared secret. Years later, when it no longer mattered to anyone, Rose dared tell her brother John, with whom she had always played the role of the spoiled and innocent little girl. Shortly after the death of their mother, Jeremy Sommers was offered the directorship of the British Import and Export Company, Ltd. in Chile. He left with his sister, Rose, carrying the secret with them, intact, to the other side of the world.

They arrived in Valparaíso at the end of the winter of 1830, when that city was still a hamlet even though there were already European companies and families there. For Rose their destination was a punishment, and she assumed it stoically, resigned to pay for her misstep with that inescapable exile, though not allowing anyone, most of all her brother Jeremy, to suspect her desperation. Her discipline in not complaining and not talking, even in dreams, about her lost lover sustained her when she was beset with difficulties. They moved into the best available hotel, wanting to guard against winds and humidity because of an epidemic of diphtheria, which the local barbers combated with cruel and futile surgical interventions they performed with their razors. Spring, and then summer, somewhat improved Rose's bad impression of Chile. She determined to forget about London and make the best of her new surroundings, despite the provincial atmosphere and the sea winds that pierced one's bones on even the sunniest days. She convinced her brother, and he his office, of the need to acquire a decent house in the firm's name and to ship furniture from England. She presented it as a matter of authority and prestige: it was unthinkable that the representative of such an important office should be lodging in a rundown hotel. Eighteen months later, when baby Eliza came into their lives, brother and sister were living in a large house on Cerro Alegre. Miss Rose had relegated her former lover to a sealed compartment of her memory and was wholly dedicated to winning a prominent position in local society. In the following years, Valparaíso grew in size and was modernized at the same pace that Rose left her past behind to become the exuberant, happy-appearing woman who eleven years later would enslave Jacob Todd. The false missionary was not the first to be rejected, but Miss Rose had no interest in marrying. She had discovered an extraordinary formula for never emerging from her idyllic romance with Karl Bretzner, reliving each and every moment of their incendiary passion, along with fantasies she invented in the silence of her spinster nights.

N
o one better than Miss Rose could know what was happening in Eliza's lovesick soul. She immediately guessed the man's identity, because only a blind man could have missed the connection between the girl's bizarre behavior and the delivery by her brother's employee of the crates of treasures for Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz. Her first impulse had been to write off the young man as a nonentity, too poor to be significant, but she quickly realized that she herself had sensed his dangerous attraction and had not stopped thinking about him. Naturally, she had first focused on his mended clothing and mournful pallor, but a second look had been enough to appreciate his aura: the tragic, damned poet. Furiously embroidering in her sewing room, she kept mulling over the reversal of fate that was affecting her plans to find Eliza a congenial and wealthy husband. In her thoughts she wove a web of plots to nip that love in the bud before it began, from sending Eliza to a boarding school for girls in England or to her own ancient aunt in Scotland to pouring out the truth to her brother so he would fire his employee. In the depths of her heart, however, quite despite herself, was germinating the secret hope that Eliza could live out her passion to the end, to compensate for the fathomless void the tenor had left in her own life eighteen years before.

In the meantime, for Eliza the hours passed with paralyzing slowness in a whirl of confused emotions. She didn't know whether it was day or night, Tuesday or Friday, whether it had been a few hours or several years since she'd met that young man. She felt that her blood had turned to froth, and she broke out in hives that faded as suddenly and inexplicably as they had appeared. She saw her beloved everywhere: in the shadows of the corners, in the shapes of the clouds, in her teacup, and most of all in her dreams. She did not know his name but did not dare ask Jeremy Sommers because that would unleash a wave of suspicions, but she entertained herself for hours imagining an appropriate name for him. She needed desperately to talk with someone about her love, to analyze every detail of his brief visit, to speculate on what they should have said to each other and what they had communicated with glances, blushes, and designs, but she had no one in whom to confide. She longed for a visit from Captain John Sommers, that uncle with the heart of a buccaneer who had been the most fascinating character in her childhood, the only one capable of understanding and helping in such a difficult time. She had no doubt at all that if Jeremy Sommers got wind of her feelings he would declare all-out war on his firm's humble employee, and she could not predict Miss Rose's reaction. She decided that the less that was known in her home the more she and her future sweetheart would be free to act. She never imagined a scenario in which her love was not returned with the same depth of feeling, for to her it was impossible to believe that a love of such magnitude could have stunned only her. The most elementary logic and justice indicated that somewhere in the city he was suffering the same delicious torment.

Eliza hid to touch her body in secret places she had never explored before. She closed her eyes, and then it was his hand that caressed her with the delicacy of a bird, his lips she kissed in the mirror, his waist she embraced around the pillow, his the murmurs of love carried to her on the wind. Not even her dreams escaped the power of Joaquín Andieta. She would see him appear like a huge shadow looming over her and devouring her in a thousand outlandish and disturbing ways. Moon-calf, devil, archangel—she didn't know. She did not want to wake, and with fanatic determination she practiced the skill learned from Mama Fresia for entering and leaving dreams at will. She came to have such mastery of this art that her illusory lover appeared in bodily form; she could touch him, smell him, and hear his voice, perfectly clear and close by. If only she could always be asleep she would need nothing more, she thought: she could go on loving him from her bed through eternity. She would have perished in the delirium of that passion if Joaquín Andieta hadn't come to the house a week later to pick up the boxes of treasures being sent to their client in the north.

She learned the night before that he was coming, not through instinct or premonition, as she would imply years later when she told Tao Chi'en the story, but because at dinner she heard Jeremy Sommers giving instructions to his sister and Mama Fresia.

“The same employee who brought the load will come to get it,” he added in passing, never suspecting the hurricane of emotions his words—for different reasons—unleashed among the three women.

The girl spent the morning on the terrace, her eyes glued to the road rising up the hill toward the house. About midday she saw the cart pulled by six mules and followed by armed peons on horseback. She felt an icy peace, as if she had died, unaware that Miss Rose and Mama Fresia were watching her from the house.

“All that I have invested in educating her and she falls in love with the first good-for-nothing who crosses her path,” muttered Miss Rose.

She had decided to do whatever she could to forestall disaster, but without much conviction, because she knew too well the obstinate temper of first love.

“I will take him to the cargo. Tell Eliza to go in the house and don't let her come out for any reason,” she ordered.

“And how do you want me to do that?” Mama Fresia asked, grumbling.

“Lock her up if you have to.”

“
You
lock her up, if you can. Don't get me into it,” she replied, and left, bedroom slippers slapping.

There was no way to keep the girl from going up to Joaquín Andieta and handing him a letter. She did it openly, looking him in the eye, and with such fierce determination that Miss Rose did not have the gall to intercept her or Mama Fresia to stand in her way. Then the women understood that the sorcery was much stronger than they had imagined and that no locked door or blessed candles were enough to break the spell. The young man also had spent that week obsessed with the memory of the girl who he believed was the daughter of his employer, Jeremy Sommers, and therefore far beyond his reach. He had no inkling of the impression he had made, and it never crossed his mind that by offering him that memorable glass of juice on his first visit she was declaring her love; as a result, he was wildly surprised when she handed him a sealed envelope. Disconcerted, he slipped the envelope into his pocket and continued to supervise the task of loading the boxes into the cart, as his ears burned, his clothes grew damp with sweat, and a fever of shivers ran down his spine. Motionless and silent, Eliza watched closely from a few steps away, ignoring Miss Rose's furious and Mama Fresia's remorseful expressions. When the last crate was tied onto the cart and the mules turned to head down the hill, Joaquín apologized to Miss Rose for the nuisance, greeted Eliza with a brief nod of his head, and left as quickly as he could.

Eliza's note contained only two lines, telling him where and how to meet her. The strategy was of such simplicity and boldness that she might have been taken as an expert in duplicity: Joaquín was to present himself three days thence on Cerro Alegre at 9:00
P.M.
in the shrine of the Virgen del Perpetuo Succor, a chapel built a short distance from the Sommers' home as a haven for travelers on foot. Eliza had chosen that place because it was nearby and the date because it was Wednesday. Miss Rose, Mama Fresia, and the servants would be busy with dinner and no one would notice if she slipped out for a while. After the departure of the crestfallen Michael Steward there had been no reason for dances and the premature winter was not conducive to them, but Miss Rose maintained the custom in order to deflate the gossip circulating about her and the navy officer. To have suspended the musical evenings in Steward's absence would have been equivalent to confessing that he was the only reason for holding them.

By seven, Joaquín Andieta was already waiting impatiently. In the distance he saw the glow of bright lights from the house, the parade of carriages bringing guests, and the torches of the coachmen waiting along the road. Once or twice he had to hide as watchmen came by to check the lamps on top of the shrine, which the wind kept blowing out. The building was a small adobe rectangle only slightly larger than a confessional, topped with a painted wood cross and housing a plaster image of the Virgin. A tray held rows of burned-down votive candles and a vase containing withered flowers. There was a full moon, but the sky was striped with clouds that from time to time completely blacked out the moonlight. At nine exactly he felt the girl's presence and saw her silhouette, cloaked from head to foot in a dark mantle.

“I have been waiting for you, señorita,” was all he could think to stammer, feeling like an idiot.

“I have been waiting for you forever,” she replied without the least hesitation.

She threw back her mantle and Joaquín saw she was dressed for a party, though her skirt was tucked up and she was wearing rough sandals. She was carrying her white stockings and chamois dancing slippers to keep from muddying them on the road. Her black hair, parted in the center, was caught back on both sides of her head into braids decorated with satin ribbons. They sat at the back of the shrine on the mantle that she lay on the floor, hidden behind the statue, unspeaking, very close but not touching. For a long time, they lacked the courage to look at one another in the soft shadows, stupefied by their closeness, breathing the same air and aflame despite the cold wind that threatened to leave them in blackness.

“My name is Eliza Sommers,” she said finally.

“And I am Joaquín Andieta,” he replied.

“I thought maybe your name was Sebastian.”

“Why?”

“Because you look like Saint Sebastián the martyr. I don't go to the Papist church, I am a Protestant, but Mama Fresia has sometimes taken me when she goes to make promises to her saints.”

The conversation ended there because they didn't know what else to say; they stole glances out of the corners of their eyes and then blushed in unison. Eliza could smell his scent of soap and sweat but didn't dare move closer to sniff him, as she wanted to. The only sounds in the shrine were the whispering wind and their agitated breathing. After a few minutes, Eliza announced that she had to go back to the house before she was missed, and they said good-bye, brushing hands. They met the next few Wednesdays, always at a different time and for only brief intervals. In each of those tumultuous meetings they moved forward with giant steps through the delirium and torment of love. Hurriedly, they told each other what was indispensable to tell, because words seemed a waste of time; soon they held hands and kept on talking, their bodies closer and closer as their souls moved toward each other, until on the night of the fifth Wednesday they kissed on the lips, first tentatively, then exploring, and finally, losing themselves in pleasure until the fever consuming them was totally unleashed. By then they had exchanged abbreviated summaries of Eliza's sixteen years and Joaquín's twenty-one. They discussed the improbable basket with batiste sheets and mink coverlet in contrast to the Marseilles soap crate, and it came as a relief to Andieta that Eliza was not the daughter of either Sommers but was, like him, born of obscure origins, although they were still separated by a social and economic abyss. Eliza learned that Joaquín was the fruit of a passing ravishment; his father had vanished as quickly as he had sown his seed, and the boy had grown up not knowing his father's name, carrying his mother's, and, marked as a bastard, limited at every turn of the road. The family drove their dishonored daughter from their bosom and disregarded her illegitimate son. His grandparents and his uncles, merchants and minor civil servants in a middle class mired in prejudice, lived in the same city, only a few blocks away, but their paths never crossed. On Sundays they went to the same church, but at different hours, because the poor never went to noon mass. Branded by the stigma, Joaquín never played in the same parks or went to the schools his cousins attended, although he wore their old clothes and played with their discarded toys, which a kindhearted aunt sent to her banished sister through convoluted means. Joaquín Andieta's mother had been less fortunate than Miss Rose, and had paid more dearly for her weakness. The women were about the same age, but while the English lady looked young, the other was worn down by poverty, consumption, and the dismal task of embroidering bridal gowns by candlelight. Bad luck had not diminished her dignity and she had brought up her son with inviolable principles of honor. Joaquín had learned at a very early age to hold his head high, defying any glimmer of mockery or pity.