Beyond the Ties of Blood (39 page)

“Surprisingly well. Irene, Mami, and Laura have been getting along famously. Mamita's been telling Laura stories from her childhood, and last night, during the exchange of gifts, she gave Laura her pearl necklace.”

“I'm so glad to hear it. Do you think you'd be willing to leave Laura in your mother's and Irene's care for a few days?”

“Why?”

“Well, remember that I told you once we'd finished the work at the Commission, we'd see about us?”

“I didn't realize there was an us.”

“That's the point, isn't it? To see if there is.”

“And what do you suggest?”

“I could come pick you up. We could spend a few days on the road, just taking it easy. There are some beaches near your place, kind of rough and not that popular, that might be fun to explore this time of year. Just a vacation, some time together. No strings, no obligations.”

“How long do you think we'll be? Would I be back for New Year's?”

“Hard to tell. Maybe we could leave that open?”

“I'll check. Could you call me back tomorrow?”

“All right. And Eugenia? Remember. No strings.”

When Eugenia went back to the table, all eyes were on her.

“So?” Laura asked almost immediately.

“It was Ignacio,” her mother answered.

“Well, duh. What's up?”

Eugenia took a sip of tea and looked around at the three other women at the table. “He invited me to spend a few days with him on the road, until New Year's give or take. I told him I needed to check with everybody before I answered.”

“What do you think, Laurita?” Irene asked after a short silence.

Laura leaned back in her chair, her eyes on her mother, a smile spreading across her face. “What I think,” she answered, “is, about time! What took this guy so long?”

Doña
Isabel sat up straighter in her chair. “Laurita,” she began, “are you suggesting …”

“Exactly. My mama's spent most of her good years taking care of me. She deserves a fling before she gets too old to enjoy it!”

Eugenia waited for her mother's shocked exclamation, and for Irene's and Laura's laughter, to die down before she answered. “Are you sure, Laurita?” she asked. “I could be gone for New Year's.”

Laura smiled. She looked so much more at ease than she had a few weeks ago. “I'm sure,” she answered. “In fact, me and Irene and Mamita Isabel can get drunk on the special cherry wine that's hidden away in the kitchen and I'll win at canasta. I've been practicing with María.”

Ignacio drove up two days later in a royal blue convertible with the top down. It felt easy and comfortable from the start, Eugenia thought, and so different from the chauffeur-driven black sedan with the car phone. They went south to Curicó and cut west through Hualañé to the coast at Bucalemu. With the sun low over the Pacific, its bright orange tones shimmering in the slate-blue swells right before they broke, froth-like, along the surf, they decided to find a place to stay. A tattered building hugged the beach, the remains of its originally salmon-colored paint faded to a mottled shade of rust. “
Pensión
Bucalemu,” said the sign. “Breakfast Free. Dining Room open daily.” Ignacio pulled into the empty parking lot.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It looks pretty awful,” Eugenia answered.

“Have you seen anything else? Do you want to get out and at least take a look?”

They got out and climbed the stairs to the porch, ringing the bell next to the door with peeling paint. Just as they were about to go back to the car, they heard a door close on the second floor and the muffled sound of feet on the stairs. A woman about Eugenia's age opened the door. Her tanned skin and green eyes sparkled, her hair streaked with white.

“Well, hello,” she said, her lips spreading to show perfect white teeth. “I wasn't expecting anyone today.” Her accent was hard to place, but it had traces of a European language, perhaps French or German. “Are you interested in a room?”

They looked at each other, not sure of what to say. “Well,” Ignacio ventured, “at least something to eat. We saw the sign about your dining room.”

The woman laughed softly. “Yes, that's an old sign. We used to have a dining room, with a cook and a waitress and everything. Business has been a little slow recently and I had to let them go last year. But wait,” she continued, as they made moves to leave. “I could cook you up something. I was checking my traps earlier and found a couple of fresh
locos
. I also have some clams that a fisherman brought by earlier today and was about to make a soup. And there's always bread, and a bottle or two of red wine. You interested?”

“I think you had her at the word
locos
,” Ignacio answered, putting his arm around Eugenia's shoulders. “It sounds great.”

They watched the sunset from the picture windows in the dog-eared dining room. Angela kept up a conversation through the window that connected them to the kitchen. As they opened a first bottle of Cabernet, she headed off to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner, promising she would explain how she had ended up the owner of the
Pensión
Bucalemu.

“I'm a product of my time,” she said, a stained white chef's apron tied around her waist. “I was one of those young rebels in the sixties. I was born on the German side of the Alsace border, but ran away from home and rode the trains to Paris. Then one day, during the student movement, you know, May 1968? I met this beautiful young Chilean boy and fell in love. We came back to Chile and spent that next summer surfing together along the coast here. In Pichilemu there was no one else back then.”

She stopped talking for a moment to pay attention to her soup, beating the
locos
with a wide stick she took out of the cupboard. “You have to be very careful with these things,” she explained. “If you don't beat them long enough before cooking, they get as tough as leather.” She turned back to stir the soup once again, putting in some herbs and salt, then placed the
locos
in boiling water. The round, slightly tangy fragrance of seafood made their mouths water.

She took several tomatoes and a purple onion out of a large basket on the counter, then reached for some sprigs of cilantro to complete the ingredients for a tomato salad. “Anyway,” she continued as she began slicing up the tomatoes and the onion, “we were very happy here. For several years we surfed most of the time, and worked in the tourist hotels during the summers. At the beginning of the seventies, you know, there were a lot of young people coming south, and times were good.” She finished cutting the salad and reached up into one of the cupboards over the counter, bringing down a bottle of olive oil. After dribbling some of its contents across the top of the tomatoes and adding a pinch of sea salt from a bowl on the sideboard, she walked to the other side of the kitchen and opened a drawer. She rummaged around for a while among the various large kitchen utensils.

“Things changed in the spring of 1973,” she said, her head still down, eyes staring into the drawer. “Why is it I can never find those damn salad tongs? I know they're here, in plain sight!” She reached a hand into the back and pulled out the offending item. The slam of the drawer was so loud that it made Eugenia jump.

“Damn onions,” Angela muttered, swiping at her eyes. For a moment she busied herself tossing the salad, then drained the locos. “They still need to cool down a bit more,” she said, coming back to retrieve her glass of wine. “And the soup needs another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

“So how'd you end up with the
pensión?
” Eugenia asked when Angela joined them.

For a moment Angela looked out at the shimmering remains of sunlight that were playing along the horizon, a bluish, then greyish reminder of where the sun had disappeared only a few minutes before. She stood up and went to the cabinet to retrieve a second bottle of Cabernet. She reached over and flicked on a lamp. The room glimmered, saffron-like. She took the corkscrew out of the pocket of her apron and opened the new bottle. Then she walked back and refilled their empty glasses.

“You have to understand that the coup wasn't the same here as it was in Santiago,” she said, sitting down. “Why, if we'd actually counted up the members of all the political parties here, we wouldn't have used all the fingers on one hand.” She stopped for a moment, and when she continued her voice was muddy and rutted. “But it didn't matter. They still rounded them up, all the young men with long hair.”

By the time they finished dinner, they'd also polished off three bottles of Cabernet between them. There was something about Chilean wine, Eugenia thought dizzily, maybe especially the Cabernet. It made people feel like they'd known each other all their lives. Camilo, Angela's lover, had been picked up by the military police about a week after the coup, and even though she'd looked for him, gone to the local police outpost repeatedly over the next few weeks, he was never heard from again. The owner of the
Pensión
Bucalemu, a grizzled, long-haired man from further south, had also disappeared. In order to comfort his wife, for whom she had worked several summers, Angela moved into one of the upstairs rooms. People stopped traveling and business declined. One day in the early summer after the coup, when no one had appeared or even called to inquire about a room, the owner said she was leaving. I'm going back to my family in the north, she said. I just can't live here anymore. Some nights I hear him, or see his ghost in the moonlight that plays across the water. I can't stand it. The place is yours.

Of course they ended up spending the night. After Eugenia had hugged Angela, told her that she, too, had been arrested and her lover disappeared, they had cried together over the last remaining drops of wine. Then Angela had made up a room for them, fresh sheets on a double bed and a balcony overlooking the beach. By the time they'd brought up their bags and said good night, Eugenia felt like an entire layer of her skin had been pulled back, exposing nerve ends and raw flesh. She walked out on the balcony when Angela closed the door. A sliver of moon had risen, casting faint reflections across the dark water.

“If you want, I can sleep in the chair,” he said. She could feel the light brushing of his breath along her ear. A tingle went down her back.

“I feel strange,” she said, “and I don't think it's the wine.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, running a hand up and down her right arm, over the long sleeve she always wore. The tingle moved from her back to her shoulder in response. “It seems everywhere you go in this country, someone's got a story. And most of them won't get to the Commission. I didn't have the heart to suggest she report Camilo. And I suspect his family hasn't reported him, either.”

She felt his lips touch the side of her neck, then move down to her shoulder. A burning feeling under her lungs made it hard to breathe. She turned and he kissed her full on the mouth, tasting of wine and cilantro. As he unbuttoned her blouse they moved back, away from the window and onto the bed.

He slowly peeled the blouse off her arms, and when he saw the purple marks there he ran a tender finger over them and kissed them, murmuring comfort. He took his time, lingering over each one. By the time he was done, she had melted, opening up to him completely.

When she awoke, the timid light of early morning was spreading across the recently abandoned pillow next to her head. He was standing out on the balcony, a jacket pulled on over his bare torso in an attempt to stave off the briny chill of the sea breeze.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked. He came back to her side, taking her in his arms. He smelled of salt and fish, with a lingering undercurrent of sex. As he began taking off his jacket, kissing her strong on the lips, she pulled back.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I'm not even awake yet. I need a cup of coffee.”

He stood up and walked over to his bag lying open on the floor. Taking off his jacket, he put on a fresh shirt instead. He reached over and untangled his belt from among her clothes, threading it through the loops of his open jeans, then zipping and buckling them in place.

“I'm ready for the coffee, if that's what it will take,” he said.

Eugenia felt a chill from the breeze and pulled the covers over her breasts. “I think we need to take it easy,” she said.

“That's exactly what we're doing,” he said. “We're not in any rush. A few days on the road, nothing to worry about.”

“You know that's not what I mean,” she said.

“But you also know that, ever since I held you in the armchair in your Boston apartment, there's been something between us.”

“Maybe that's the problem. I'm not sure what happened in Boston.”

“Come on, Eugenia, we were both there!”

“I know. But I'm not sure what it was, even though I felt it, you felt it and, to be honest, I've thought about it a lot since then.”