Portrait in Sepia (11 page)

"Grau is a gentleman. He himself collected Prat's sword and personal belongings and returned them to his widow," Severo recounted, and added that after that battle the sacred motto in Chile was "Fight to victory or to death," as those courageous men had done.

"And you, Severo, aren't you planning to go?" Eliza asked.

"Yes, I will do that very soon," the young man replied, embarrassed, not knowing why he was waiting to perform his duty. In the meantime, Lynn was growing large without losing a shred of her grace or beauty. She stopped wearing dresses she could no longer fasten and made herself comfortable in the bright silk tunics she bought in Chinatown. She went out very little, despite her father's insistence that she take walks. Occasionally Severo del Valle picked her up in his carriage and took her for a ride through the Presidio or along the beach, where they would sit on a shawl to picnic and read: he his newspapers and law books and she the romantic novels she didn't believe in any longer but still read as escape. Severo lived day to day, from one visit with the Chi'ens to the next, with no ambition but to see Lynn. He was no longer writing to Nívea. Many times he had taken pen in hand to confess that he loved another, but he tore up the letters without mailing them because he couldn't find words to break with his sweetheart without wounding her mortally. Lynn, furthermore, had never given him any sign that would offer hope for imagining a future with her. They never spoke of Matias, just as Matias never referred to Lynn, but the question was always in the air. Severo was careful not to mention his new friendship with the Chi'ens in the home of his aunt and uncle, and he assumed that no one suspected it except the fastidious Williams, whom he did not have to inform since he had learned about it the same way he learned everything that happened in that palatial mansion. Severo had been arriving home late with an idiotic smile on his face for two months when Williams led him to the attic and by the light of a spirit lamp showed him a bulky object covered by sheets. When it was uncovered, Severo saw that it was a gleaming cradle.

"It is embossed silver. Silver from the del Valle mines in Chile. All the children in this family have slept here. Take it if you wish," was all he said.

•

Paulina del Valle was so embarrassed that she stopped going to the tea shop, unable to paste together the shattered pieces of her long friendship with Eliza Sommers. She had to give up her Chilean pastries, which for years had been her greatest weakness, and resign herself to the French cook in her own kitchen. Her commanding vitality, so useful in sweeping aside obstacles and carrying out projects, now was working against her. Condemned to inaction, she was consumed with impatience, her heart jumping up and down in her chest. "My nerves are killing me, Williams," she complained, for the first time in her life feeling indisposed. She reasoned that given the fact she had an unfaithful husband and three irresponsible sons, it was more than likely that scattered here and there were a good number of illegitimate children with her blood, and there was no logic in tormenting herself so. Nonetheless, those hypothetical bastards had no name, no face, while this one was right under her nose. If only it hadn't been Lynn Sommers! She couldn't forget the visit of Eliza and that Chinese person whose name she couldn't remember; the vision of that dignified couple in her sitting room was very painful to her. Matias had seduced the girl—no subtlety of logic or convenience could refute the truth that her intuition had accepted from the first moment. Her son's denials and his sarcastic comments about Lynn's questionable virtue had merely reinforced her conviction. The baby that girl was carrying in her womb invoked a hurricane of ambivalent sentiments: on the one hand, a mute rage against Matias, and on the other, an inevitable tenderness for that first grandchild. The minute Feliciano returned from his trip, she told him the news.

"These things happen all the time, Paulina, no need to make a tragedy of it. Half the kids in California are bastards. The important thing is to avoid scandal and close ranks around Matias. The family comes first." Feliciano's opinion was clear.

"That baby is our family," she argued.

"It isn't even born yet, and you're already taking it in! I know that Miss Lynn Sommers. I saw her posing nude in the sculptor's studio, exhibiting herself in the middle of a circle of men. Any one of them might be her lover. Can't you see that?"

"You're the one who can't see, Feliciano."

"I see that this could turn into blackmail that never ends. I forbid you to have the slightest contact with those people, and if they come anywhere near here, I will handle the matter," was Feliciano's lightning conclusion.

From that day forward, Paulina never mentioned the subject before her son or her husband, but she could not keep it all to herself and ended by confiding in the faithful Williams, who had the virtue of listening to the end and not giving his opinion unless it was requested. If she could help Lynn Sommers, she would feel a little better, Paulina thought, but for once her fortune would not solve anything.

Those months were disastrous for Matias. Not only did the difficulty with Lynn stir up his bile, the pain in his joints had increased so markedly that he could not practice his fencing and he also had to give up other sports. He woke in such suffering that he wondered if the time hadn't come to consider suicide, an idea he had nourished ever since he had learned the name of his illness, but once he got out of bed and began to move around he felt better, and his gusto for life would return with new vigor. His wrists and knees swelled, his hands trembled, and the opium he smoked in Chinatown ceased to be a diversion and became a necessity. It was Amanda Lowell—his best companion in dissipation and his only confidante—who taught him the advantages of eating morphine: more effective, cleaner, and more elegant than a pipe of opium. A minimal dose, and instantly his agony would disappear and give way to peace. The scandal of the bastard on the way ceased to depress him, and by midsummer he suddenly announced that he was sailing for Europe within a few days to see whether a change of air, the thermal waters of Italy, and English physicians could alleviate his symptoms. He did not add that he planned to meet Amanda Lowell in New York and continue the journey with her, because her name was never spoken in the family, where the memory of the redheaded Scotswoman guaranteed Feliciano indigestion and Paulina apoplectic rage. It was not just his physical discomfort and his wish to get away from Lynn Sommers that motivated Matias's precipitous voyage; there was also the matter of new gambling debts, learned of soon after his departure when a pair of circumspect Chinese appeared in Feliciano's office to advise him, with extreme courtesy, that either he paid the amount his son owed them, including the interest, or something frankly disagreeable would happen to some member of his honorable family. As answer, the magnate had them thrown out of his office and then called Jacob Freemont, the journalist, who was an expert on the underworld of the city. Freemont listened with sympathy—he was a good friend of Matias—and then went with Feliciano to call upon the chief of police, an Australian with a murky reputation who owed him certain favors, to ask him to resolve the matter in his own way. "The only way I know is to pay," the officer replied, and explained that no one opposed the tongs of Chinatown. He had had to collect gutted bodies with their viscera neatly packed in a box beside them. Of course, those were retributions among the Celestials themselves, he added; with whites they at least tried to make it look like an accident. Hadn't Feliciano noticed how many people died in unexplained fires, trampled by horses in a deserted street, drowned in the quiet waters of the bay, or crushed by bricks that in some puzzling way fell from a building under construction? Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz paid.

When Severo del Valle notified Lynn Sommers that Matias had sailed for Europe with no plan to return in the near future, she burst into tears and kept weeping for five days, despite the sedatives Tao Chi'en gave her, until her mother slapped her in the face and forced her to face reality. She had acted imprudently, and now there was nothing to do but pay the consequences. She wasn't a child any longer; she was going to be a mother, and she should be happy she had a family willing to help her, as other girls in her state ended up thrown into the street and forced to earn a living in the worst way possible, while their bastards were taken to an orphanage. The time had come to accept the fact that her lover had faded into thin air; she would have to be mother and father to the baby and grow up once and for all, for in that house they were sick and tired of putting up with her whims. For twenty years she had been taking with both hands; she shouldn't get the idea she could spend her life lying in bed whimpering, so she should wipe her nose and get dressed, because they were going out for a walk, and they were going to do that twice a day without fail, rain or thunder, and was she listening? Yes, Lynn had listened to the end, her eyes wide with surprise and her cheeks burning from the only slaps she had received in her life. She dressed and obeyed without a word. From that moment her sanity returned with a crash. She accepted her fate with amazing serenity, never complained again, swallowed Tao Chi'en's remedies, took long walks with her mother, and was even able to laugh when she learned that the project of the Republic statue was shot to hell, as her brother explained, the fault not of the model but of the sculptor, who had fled to Brazil with the money.

At the end of August Severo del Valle finally dared speak of his feelings to Lynn Sommers. By then she felt as heavy as an elephant and did not recognize her own face in the mirror, but to Severo's eyes she was more beautiful than ever. They were returning from a walk, hot and sweaty, when Severo pulled out his handkerchief to wipe her forehead and neck but stopped before he completed the gesture. Somehow he found himself bending down, taking Lynn firmly by the shoulders, and kissing her right on the lips in the middle of the street. He asked her to marry him, and she answered with absolute simplicity that she would never love anyone but Matias Rodríguez de Santa Cruz.

"I'm not asking you to love me, Lynn; the affection I feel for you is enough for both of us," Severo replied in the somewhat ceremonious tone he always used with her. "The baby needs a father. Give me the chance to protect you both, and I promise you that with time I will be worthy of your affection."

"My father says that in China couples are married who have never met, and that they learn to love one another afterward, but I am sure that that would not be the case with me, Severo. I am truly sorry."

"You don't have to live with me, Lynn. As soon as the baby is born I'm going to Chile. My country is at war and I have already put off doing my duty too long."

"And if you don't come back from the war?"

"At least your child will have my name and the inheritance from my father, which I still have. It isn't much, but it will be enough for his education. And you, my beloved Lynn, you will have respectability."

That same night Severo del Valle wrote Nívea the letter he hadn't been able to write before. He told her everything in four sentences, without preamble or excuses, because he understood that she would not tolerate any other way. He didn't even dare ask her forgiveness for the waste of love and time that those four years of their epistolary courtship had meant for her, because such ignoble accountings were beneath his cousin's generosity of heart. He called a servant to take the letter to the post office the next morning and then lay down in his clothes, exhausted. He slept without dreaming for the first time in a long while. A month later Severo del Valle and Lynn Sommers were married in a brief ceremony in the presence of her family and Williams, the one person Severo invited from his own home. He knew that the butler would tell his aunt Paulina, and decided to wait until she took the first step by asking him about it. The marriage was not announced to anyone, because Lynn had requested absolute privacy until after the baby was born and she had recovered her normal appearance. She didn't want to show herself with that pumpkin belly and face covered with splotches, she said. That night Severo said good night to his bride with a kiss on the forehead and left, as always, to sleep in his bachelor room.

That same week another naval battle was waged in the waters of the Pacific and the Chilean ships put two enemy warships out of commission. The Peruvian admiral Miguel Grau, the same gentleman who months before had returned Captain Prat's sword to his widow, died as heroically as Prat had done. It was a disaster for Peru; when they lost control of the sea lanes, their communications were interrupted and their armies fragmented and isolated. The Chileans took command of the sea and were able to transport their troops to sensitive points in the north and to implement the plan to march across enemy territory and occupy Lima. Severo del Valle followed the news with the same passion as the rest of his compatriots in the United States, but his love for Lynn more than outweighed his patriotism and he did not set forward the date for his return voyage.

•

In the early morning of the second Monday in October, Lynn woke with a wet nightgown and screamed in horror; she thought she had urinated on herself. "That is not good, her water has broken too soon," Tao Chi'en said privately to his wife, but before their daughter he remained smiling and calm. Ten hours later, when her contractions were barely perceptible and the family was exhausted from playing mah jongg to distract her, Tao Chi'en decided to try his herbs. The future mother joked defiantly: were these the birth pangs she had been warned about so much? They were easier to bear than the stomach cramps Chinese food gave you, she said. She was more bored than uncomfortable, and she was hungry, but her father would allow her only water and brews of medicinal herbs as he applied his gold acupuncture needles to speed the birth. The combination of drugs and needles had their effect, and by nightfall, when Severo del Valle arrived for his customary visit, he found Lucky at the door, agitated, and the house shuddering from the moans of Lynn and the tumult caused by the Chinese midwife, who was talking at the top of her lungs and running back and forth with rags and jugs of water. Tao Chi'en tolerated the midwife because she had more experience in that field than he, but he did not let her torture Lynn by sitting on her or punching her in the stomach, as she intended. Severo del Valle stayed in the sitting room, back against the wall, trying not to be seen. Every moan from Lynn bored into his soul; he wanted to run from there, as far as possible, but he couldn't move from his corner or speak a word. This was his state when Tao Chi'en came into the room, impassive, dressed with his habitual neatness.