Portrait in Sepia (30 page)

However long I was occupied in writing and sighing as I read poems, I had time left over, so I went back to the studio of Don Juan Ribero. I went around the city taking photographs and at night worked in the darkroom I had set up at home. I was experimenting with platinum prints, a new technique that produced very beautiful images. The procedure is simple, and costly, but my grandmother bore the expenses. You brush a platinum solution on photographic paper, and that produces images in subtle gradations of tone—luminous and clear, and with great depth—that are not changed by time. Ten years have passed, and those are the most extraordinary photographs in my collection. When I look at them, many memories rise before me with the same impeccable clarity of those platinum prints. I can see my grandmother Paulina, Severo, Nívea, friends, and relatives; in some self-portraits I can also see myself as I was then, just before the events that were to change my life.

When the second Tuesday in March arrived, the house was royally outfitted with a modern gas installation, a telephone, an elevator for my grandmother, wallpaper shipped from New York, brand-new upholstery on the furniture, recently waxed parquet floors, polished brass, washed windows, and the collection of Impressionist paintings in the salons. There was a new contingent of uniformed servants under the command of an Argentine butler Paulina del Valle had stolen from the Hotel Crillón by paying him twice his salary.

"People are going to talk, Grandmother. No one has a butler, it's vulgar," I warned her.

"I don't care. I don't want to have to do battle with Mapuche Indians in house slippers who put hairs in the soup and throw plates down on the table," she replied, determined to impress Santiago society in general and the family of Diego Domínguez in particular.

So the new employees were added to the maids who had been in the house for years and could not, of course, be fired. There were so many people working for us that they had nothing to do but trip over each other, and there was so much gossip and pilfering that finally Frederick Williams had to intervene to establish order, since the Argentine couldn't decide where to begin. That caused a real ruckus, since no one had ever seen the master of the house lower himself to the level of domestic affairs, but he did it to perfection; his long experience in that employ had not been for naught. I don't think that Diego Domínguez and his family, our first visitors, appreciated the elegance of the service; to the contrary, they seemed intimidated by such splendor. They belonged to a very old dynasty of landholders from the south, but unlike most agriculturists in Chile who spend a couple of months on their lands and the rest of the time living off their income in Santiago or in Europe, the Domínguezes were born, raised, and buried in the country. People with a solid family tradition, deeply Catholic, simple, they boasted none of the refinements flaunted by my grandmother, which surely to them seemed slightly decadent and not at all Christian. I was struck by the fact that they all had blue eyes, except for Susana, Diego's sister-in-law, a dark beauty with a languid air, like a Spanish painting. At the table they were confused by the number of knives, forks, and spoons, and the six wine goblets; none of them tasted the duck a l'orange, and they were startled when the baked Alaska was served. When she saw the line of uniformed servants, Diego's mother, Doña Elvira, asked why there were so many military people in our house. They were stunned by the Impressionist paintings, convinced that I had painted those pigs' tracks and my grandmother had the gall to hang them, but they appreciated the brief harp and piano concert we offered in the music salon. The conversation died after the second sentence, until the bulls furnished an opening for talking about cattle breeding—which was of enormous interest to Paulina del Valle, who in view of the numbers of cattle the Domínguezes owned was doubtlessly thinking of starting a cheese business with them. If I had had any doubts about my future life in the country with my fiancé's clan, that visit dissipated them. I fell in love with these people from a long line of country gentry, good-hearted and unpretentious: the sanguine, laughing father, the innocent mother, the amiable and virile older brother, the mysterious sister-in-law, and the young sister, happy as a canary, all of whom had traveled for several days in order to meet me. They accepted me with all naturalness, and I am sure that though they were disconcerted by our way of life, they didn't criticize us; they seemed incapable of a bad thought. Because Diego had chosen me, they considered me part of their family; that was enough. Their simplicity allowed me to relax, something that rarely happens with strangers, and after a while I was talking with each of them, telling about our trip to Europe and my love of photography. "Show me your photographs, Aurora," Doña Elvira asked, and when I did, she couldn't hide her disillusion. I think she was expecting something more comforting than throngs of workers on strike, slums, ragged children playing in irrigation ditches, violent uprisings, patient emigrants sitting on their bundles in the hold of a ship. "But, child, why don't you take pretty pictures? Why go into those places? There are so many nice landscapes in Chile," the sainted lady murmured. I was going to explain that I was interested in those faces lined by hard work and suffering, not "pretty" things, but I realized this was not the proper moment. There would be time ahead for my future mother-in-law and the rest of the family to get to know me.

"Why did you show them those photographs, Aurora? The Domínguezes are mired in the old ways, you shouldn't have frightened them with your modern ideas," Paulina del Valle scolded when they left.

"But, Grandmother, they were already frightened by the luxury of this house and the Impressionist paintings, don't you think? Besides, Diego and his family need to know what kind of woman I am," I replied.

"You're not a woman yet, you're a child. You will change, you will have children, you will have to adjust to your husband's surroundings."

"I will always be the same person, and I don't want to give up my photography. It isn't the same as Diego's sister's watercolors, or his sister-in-law's embroidery. Photography is fundamental to my life."

"Well then, marry first and later do whatever you like," my grandmother concluded.

We didn't wait until September, as planned; we had to get married in mid-April because Doña Elvira Domínguez had a slight heart attack, and a week later, when she was well enough to take a few steps on her own, she made clear her wish to see me become her son Diego's wife before she departed this mortal coil. The rest of the family agreed, because if she died they would have to postpone the wedding at least a year to observe the obligatory mourning period. My grandmother resigned herself to speeding up things and to sacrificing the princely ceremony she'd planned. I drew a deep breath of relief; I had been very nervous at the thought of exposing myself to the eyes of half Santiago as I entered the cathedral on the arm of Frederick Williams or Severo del Valle, floating in a cloud of white organdy as my grandmother had intended.

•

What can I tell you about my first night of love with Diego Domínguez? Very little, because memory prints in stark black and white; the grays get lost along the way. Perhaps it wasn't as wretched as I recall, but I've forgotten the shadings—all I have left is a general sensation of frustration and rage. After the private wedding in our house on Ejercito Libertador, we went to a hotel to spend the night before leaving for a two-week honeymoon in Buenos Aires; Doña Elvira's precarious health did not allow us to go any farther. When I said good-bye to my grandmother, I felt that a portion of my life was coming to a close. When I hugged her, I knew how much I loved her, and how much she had shrunk; her clothes hung from her and I was a half-head taller than she. I had the presentiment that she didn't have much time left; she looked small and vulnerable, a little old lady with a trembling voice and knees weak as cotton wool. Not much remained of the formidable matriarch who for more than seventy years had lived life on her own terms and managed the destinies of her family as she pleased. Beside her, Frederick Williams looked like her son. The years hadn't touched him; it was as if he were immune to the decline of ordinary mortals. Up until the day before the wedding, my good uncle Frederick had begged me, behind my grandmother's back, not to marry if I wasn't sure, and each time I replied that I had never been more sure of anything. I had no doubts about my love for Diego Domínguez. As the moment for the wedding grew closer, my impatience increased. I would study myself in the mirror, naked, or barely clothed in the delicate lace nightgowns my grandmother had bought in France, and ask myself anxiously whether he would find me pretty. A mole on my neck, my dark nipples, seemed terrible defects. Would he want me as much as I wanted him? I found out that first night in the hotel. We were tired. We had eaten a lot, he'd had more to drink than normal, and I was feeling the effects of three goblets of champagne. As we walked into the hotel, we feigned indifference, but the trail of rice we were leaving behind on the floor betrayed our state as newlyweds. So great was my embarrassment at being alone with Diego and imagining that outside our door someone was picturing us making love that I felt nauseated, and I locked myself in the bathroom so long that after a while my new husband tapped gently on the door to ask if I was still alive. He led me by the hand into the bedroom, helped me remove my elaborate hat, took the hairpins from in my bun, freed me from my short, fitted suede jacket, unbuttoned the thousand pearl buttons of my blouse, slipped off my heavy skirt and petticoats, until I was dressed only in the fine batiste chemise I wore under my corset. As he was taking off my clothes, I felt myself evaporate like water, I was vanishing, he was reducing me to nothing but bones and air. Diego kissed me on the lips, not as I had imagined so many times during the previous months, but with force and urgency. The kiss became more demanding, and his hands tore at my chemise as I struggled to hold it together because I was horrified by the prospect of his seeing me naked. His hasty caresses and the revelation of his body against mine put me on the defensive; I was so tense that I shook as if I were cold. He asked me, annoyed, what was the matter and ordered me to try to relax, but when he saw that this method was making things worse, he changed his tone, added that I shouldn't be afraid, and promised to be careful. He blew out the lamp and somehow managed to lead me to the bed. The rest happened quickly. I did nothing to help him. I lay as motionless as a hypnotized hen, trying futilely to remember Nívea's counsel. At some moment I was pierced by his sword; I managed to hold back a scream and was aware of the taste of blood in my mouth. My clearest memory of that night was one of disenchantment. Was this the passion that poets wasted so much ink on? Diego consoled me, saying that it was always like that the first time, that we would to know each other and everything would go better, then he gave me a chaste kiss on the forehead, turned his back to me without another word, and slept like a baby, while I lay awake in the dark with a cloth between my legs and a searing pain in my vagina and my heart. I was too ignorant to guess the source of my frustration—I didn't even know the word orgasm—but I had explored my body and I knew that hiding somewhere was that seismic pleasure capable of turning life upside down. Diego had felt it inside me, that was evident, but I had experienced only anguish. I felt I was the victim of a terrible biological injustice: sex was easy for the man—he could get it even by force—while for us it was without pleasure and with grave consequences. Would I have to add to the divine curse of giving birth with pain that of loving without pleasure?

When Diego awoke the next morning, I had been dressed for a long while and had made up my mind to go back home and find refuge in the familiar arms of my grandmother, but the fresh air and a stroll through the streets of the city center, almost empty at that hour of Sunday morning, calmed me. My vagina was burning where I could still feel the aftermath of Diego's roughness, but step by step my rage was dissipating, and I was prepared to face the future like a woman and not like a runny-nosed, spoiled brat. I was aware of how pampered I had been for the nineteen years of my life, but that stage was over; the night before I had been initiated into my status as a married woman, and I should act and think maturely, I concluded, swallowing my tears. The responsibility for being content was exclusively mine. My husband would not hand me eternal happiness like a present wrapped in tissue paper, I would have to cultivate it day by day with intelligence and effort. Luckily, I loved that man, and I believed, just as he had assured me, that with time and practice things would go much better between us. Poor Diego, I thought, he must be as disillusioned as I. I returned to the hotel in time to close our suitcases and set off on our honeymoon.

•

Caleufu, the estate set in the most beautiful area of Chile, a wild paradise of cold forest, volcanoes, lakes, and rivers, had belonged to the Domínguez family since colonial times, when land had been divided among the distinguished noblemen of the Conquest. The family had added to its wealth by buying more Indian lands for the price of a few bottles of liquor, until they had one of the most prosperous landholdings in the region. That property had never been divided; by tradition it was passed intact to the eldest son, who had the obligation to give work to or to help his brothers, to support and provide a dowry for his sisters, and to care for the campesinos. My father-in-law, Don Sebastián Domínguez, was one of those people who met every expectation; he was growing old with his conscience at peace and grateful for the rewards life had given him, most of all, the affection of his wife, Doña Elvira. In his youth, as he himself admitted, laughing, he had been a rake, and the proof was several campesinos on his land who had blue eyes, but the gentle, firm hand of Doña Elvira had gradually tamed him without his noticing. As patriarch, he was good and kind; the workers on his estate brought their problems to him before anyone else, because his two sons, Eduardo and Diego, were stricter than he, and Doña Elvira never opened her mouth outside the walls of the house. The patience Don Sebastián showed with the people on his lands, whom he treated like slightly retarded children, turned to sternness when dealing with his male offspring. "We are very privileged, which is why we have responsibilities," he would say. "For us there are no excuses or pretexts, our duty is to do God's will and help our people; we will have to answer for that in heaven." He must have been about fifty years old, but he looked younger because he lived a very healthy life. He spent the day on horseback, riding over his property; he was the first up in the morning, and the last to go to bed, he was present at the time for threshing, for breaking new colts, for the roundups, and he helped brand and castrate the cattle. He began his day with a cup of strong black coffee with six spoons of sugar and a slug of brandy; that gave him strength to see to the work in the fields until two in the afternoon, when in the company of his family he ate four full plates and three desserts washed down with abundant wine. There were not very many of us in that enormous house; my in-laws' greatest sorrow was having had only three children. It was God's will, they said. At dinner all of us gathered who during the day had been scattered in different occupations—no one could be absent. Eduardo and Susana lived with their children in a different house two hundred yards from the big house, but the only meal they prepared was breakfast; the others they took at my in-laws' table. Because our wedding date had been set forward, the house intended for Diego and me wasn't ready, and we were living in a wing of his parents' house. Don Sebastián sat at the head of the table in the tallest and most ornate chair; at the other end was Doña Elvira, and on either side were distributed the sons and their wives, two widowed aunts, some cousins or distant relatives, a grandmother so ancient she had to be fed from a baby bottle, and guests—and there were always several. Extra places were set for visitors who dropped in unannounced and sometimes stayed for weeks. They were eagerly welcomed, because in the isolation of the country visits were the major entertainment. Farther to the south lived a few Chilean families deep in Indian territory, also some German colonists without whom the region would have remained semi-savage. It took several days on horseback to travel across the Domínguez holdings, which reached to the border with Argentina. At night there were prayers, and the year's calendar was ruled by religious dates, which were observed with rigor and rejoicing. My in-laws realized that I had been brought up with very little Catholic instruction, but we had no problems in that area because I was very respectful of their beliefs, and they did not try to impose theirs on me. Doña Elvira explained to me that faith is a divine gift: "God calls your name, he chooses you," she said. That freed me from guilt in her eyes; God hadn't as yet called my name, but if He had placed me in that very Christian family it was because He soon would. My enthusiasm for helping her in her charitable works among the tenants compensated for my limited religious fervor. She believed it was owing to my compassionate spirit, a sign of my good character; she didn't know that it was my training in my grandmother's ladies' club and a pedestrian interest in meeting the field laborers so I could photograph them. Outside of Don Sebastián, Eduardo, and Diego, all of whom had gone to a good boarding school and made the obligatory voyage to Europe, no one suspected there was a big world out there. No novels were allowed in that home. I believe that Don Sebastián lacked the heart to censor them, so to prevent anyone's reading a novel on the church's blacklist, he preferred to take the easy way out and forbid them all. Newspapers arrived so long out-of-date that they brought no news, only history. Doña Elvira read her books of prayers and Adela, Diego's young sister, had a few volumes of poetry and some biographies of historic figures and travel journals, which she read over and over. Later I discovered that she somehow obtained mystery novels, tore off the covers, and replaced them with covers from books authorized by her father. When my trunks and boxes came from Santiago and hundreds of books appeared, Doña Elvira asked me with her habitual sweetness not to show them to the rest of the family. Every, week my grandmother or Nívea sent me reading matter, which I kept in my room. My in-laws said nothing, confident, I suppose, that this bad habit would pass once I had children and didn't have so many hours of leisure, which was the case with my sister-in-law Susana, who had three darling, and very badly behaved, children. They did not, however, oppose my photography; perhaps they guessed that it would be very difficult to bend my will on that point, and although they never showed any curiosity to see my work, they gave me a room at the back of the house where I could set up my darkroom.