Portrait in Sepia (13 page)

Eliza picked up the baby from the cradle and handed her to Paulina. She held that tiny little bundle, so light she seemed no more than a handful of cloth, and thought her heart would burst with a completely new sentiment. "My God, my God," she kept repeating, terrified at the unfamiliar vulnerability that made her weak in the knees and brought a sob to her bosom. She sat in a large chair and rocked the granddaughter half hidden in her enormous lap while Eliza Sommers ordered the tea and pastries she had served in the days that Paulina had been her most assiduous customer. During those minutes, Paulina del Valle managed to recover from her emotion and line up her artillery for the attack. She began by offering her condolences for Lynn's death, and then followed by admitting that her son Matias had to be Aurora's father; all you had to do was look at her to know that, she was a carbon copy of all the Rodríguez de Santa Cruz y del Valles. She was terribly sorry, she said, that Matias was in Europe for reasons of health and could not as yet claim the baby. Then she said that it was her desire to keep her granddaughter, in view of the fact that Eliza worked so hard, had so little time—and fewer resources—and that clearly it would be impossible for her to give Aurora the same quality of life she would have in her own home on Nob Hill. She said all this in the tone of someone granting a favor, hiding the anxiety that made her hands tremble and a knot form in her throat. Eliza Sommers replied that she appreciated such a generous proposal, but she was sure that between Tao Chi'en and her they could care for Lai Ming, just as Lynn had asked them to do before she died. Of course, she added, Paulina would always be welcome in the little girl's life.

"We must not create any confusion about Lai Ming's paternity," added Eliza Sommers. "You and your son assured us a few months ago that he had nothing to do with Lynn's condition. You will recall that your son made it clear that the baby's father could be any one of his friends."

"These are things you say in the heat of a disagreement, Eliza. Matias spoke without thinking," Paulina stammered.

"The fact that Lynn married Mr. Severo del Valle proves that your son was telling the truth, Paulina. My granddaughter has no ties of blood with you, but I repeat that you can see her whenever you wish. The more people who love her, the better it will be for her."

During the next half hour the two women faced each other like gladiators, each in her own style. Paulina del Valle went from flattery to harassment, from pleading to the desperate stratagem of a bribe, and then when everything else failed, to threats, without moving the other grandmother a half inch from her position—except to take the infant and gently put her back in the cradle. Paulina did not know exactly when her rage went to her head, but she completely lost control of the situation and ended screeching that Eliza Sommers would see who the Rodríguez de Santa Cruzes were, how much power they had in this city, and how they could ruin Eliza, her stupid pastry business, and her Chinaman too, that it was not advisable to make an enemy of Paulina del Valle, and that sooner or later she would take the baby from her, of that she could be absolutely sure, because the person hadn't yet been born who could stand in her way. With one sweep of her hand she sent the fine porcelain cups and Chilean pastries flying from the table to land on the floor in a cloud of powdered sugar, and raged out, snorting like a bull. Once in her carriage, with her blood pounding at her temples and her heart kicking beneath the layers of fat captured within her corset, she burst into broken sobs, crying as she hadn't done since she shot the bolt on the door of her room to sleep alone forever in her enormous mythological bed. Just as then, her best tool had failed her: her ability to bargain like an Arab merchant, the talent that had served her so well in other aspects of her life. By wanting too much, she had lost everything.

There is a picture of me when I was three or four, the only one from that era that survived the avatars of fate and of Paulina del Valle's decision to erase any trace of my origins. It is a worn piece of cardboard in a travel frame, one of those antique metal and velvet cases that were so in fashion in the nineteenth century but no one uses anymore. In the photograph you see a very small child dressed in the style of Chinese brides, in a long tunic of embroidered satin over trousers of a different shade; she is wearing delicate little slippers on white felt soles protected by a thin layer of wood. Her dark hair is swept up in a topknot too tall for her size and secured by two thick pins, either gold or silver, joined by a small garland of flowers. The child is holding an open fan in her hand and could be laughing, although the features are barely distinguishable; her face is just a pale moon with eyes like two black smudges. Behind the girl can be seen the huge head of a paper dragon and the glittering stars of fireworks. The photograph was taken during the celebration of the Chinese New Year in San Francisco. I don't remember that moment, and I don't recognize the child in that one surviving portrait.

On the other hand, I have several photographs of my mother, Lynn Sommers, that I saved from oblivion through persistence and good contacts. I went to San Francisco several years ago to meet my uncle Lucky, and while there I spent hours scouring old bookstores and photography studios, looking for calendars and postcards she posed for. My uncle Lucky still sends me some when he comes across them. My mother was very beautiful, that's all I can say about her, because I don't recognize her in those photos either. I don't remember her, naturally, since she died when I was born, but the woman in the calendars is a stranger, I have no connection with her; I can't visualize her as my mother, only as a play of light and shadow on paper. Neither would you think that she's my uncle Lucky's sister; he is a very short Chinese man with a large head, rather rough looking, but a very good person. I look more like my father, I have his Spanish features. Unfortunately I inherited very little of the race of my extraordinary grandfather, Tao Chi'en. If it weren't for the fact that my grandfather is the clearest and most persistent memory in my life—and the oldest love, whom none of the men I've known can measure up to because none can equal him—I would never believe I have any Chinese blood in my veins. Tao Chi'en will live in me forever. I can see him, slim, elegant, always dressed with impeccable correctness, gray hair, round eyeglasses, and an expression of unremitting goodness in his almond-shaped eyes. In my evocations he is always smiling, and at times I hear him singing to me in Chinese. He circles round me, he walks with me, he guides me, just as he told my grandmother Eliza he would do after his death. I have a daguerreotype of my grandparents when they were young, before they married: she is sitting in a chair with a high back and he is standing behind her; both are dressed in the American fashion of the time, looking straight into the camera with a vague expression of fright. That portrait, finally rescued, is on my night table and is the last thing I see before I turn down the lamp every night, but I wish I had had it with me during my childhood, when I had such a great need for those grandparents.

Ever since I can remember, I have been tormented by the same nightmare. The images of that persistent dream stay with me for hours, ruining my day and draining my soul. It is always the same sequence: I am walking through the empty streets of an unfamiliar and exotic city; I am holding the hand of someone whose face I can never glimpse, I see only legs and the tips of shined shoes. Suddenly we are surrounded by children in black pajamas, dancing in a ferocious round. A dark stain, maybe blood, spreads across the paving stones as the circle of the children inexorably closes, more and more threatening, around the person who is holding my hand. We are corralled, pushed, pulled; we are separated. I reach for the friendly hand and find emptiness. I scream, voicelessly, I fall, noiselessly, and then I wake up with my heart racing. Sometimes I go several days without speaking, consumed by the memory of the dream, trying to penetrate the layers of mystery surrounding it to see if I can discover some detail, until then unperceived, that will give me the key to its meaning. Those days I suffer a kind of icy fever in which my body shuts down and my mind is trapped in a frozen land. I was in that state of paralysis for my first weeks in the home of Paulina del Valle. I was five years old when they took me to the mansion on Nob Hill, and no one bothered to explain to me why suddenly my life had taken such a dramatic turn, where my grandmother Eliza and grandfather Tao were, who the monumental lady covered with jewels was who observed me from a throne, her eyes filled with tears. I ran and scooted under a table, and there I stayed like a whipped dog, according to what I've been told. In those days Williams was the Rodríguez de Santa Cruzes' butler—as difficult as that is to imagine—and it was he who the next day had the idea of putting my food on a tray tied to a cord. They pulled the cord little by little, and when I was so hungry I couldn't stand it anymore, I came crawling out after the tray. They managed to extract me from my refuge, but every time I woke up with the nightmare, I ran to hide under the table again. That lasted a year, until we came to Chile, and in the daze of the journey and of getting settled in Santiago that mania passed.

My nightmare is in black and white, silent and unchanging; it has an eternal quality. I suppose that I have enough information now to untangle the keys to its meaning, but that doesn't mean it has stopped tormenting me. Because of my dreams, I am different, like people who because of a genetic illness or some deformity have to make a constant effort to live a normal life. They bear visible signs; mine can't be seen, but it exists. I can compare it to attacks of epilepsy, which come on suddenly and leave a wake of confusion behind. I am afraid to go to bed at night; I don't know what will happen while I'm sleeping, or how I will wake up. I have tried various remedies for my night demons, from orange liqueur laced with a few drops of opium to hypnosis and other forms of black magic, but nothing guarantees me peaceful sleep except good company. Sleeping in someone's arms is, until now, anyway, the only sure cure. I should get married, as everyone has advised me, but I did that once, and it was a calamity; I can't tempt fate anew. At thirty, and with no husband, I am little more than a freak; my friends look on me with pity, even though some envy my independence. I am not alone—I have a secret love, with no ties or conditions, a cause for scandal anywhere but especially here where we happen to live. I am not a spinster, or a widow, or a divorced woman. I live in the limbo of the "separated," where all the wretched creatures end up who prefer public opprobrium to living with a man they don't love. How else can it be in Chile, where marriage is eternal and inescapable? Some extraordinary early mornings, when my lover and I, wet with sweat and limp with shared dreams, are in that semi-unconscious state of absolute tenderness, happy and confident as sleeping children, we fall into the temptation of talking about marrying, of going somewhere else—to the United States, for example, where there is all kinds of room and no one knows us—to live together like any other normal couple, but then we wake up with the sun peering in the window and we don't speak of it again, because we both know that we could not live anywhere but here in this Chile of geological cataclysms and human pettiness, but also of rugged volcanoes and snowy peaks, of immemorial lakes scattered with emeralds, of foaming rivers and fragrant forests, a country narrow as a ribbon, a land of impoverished people still innocent despite so many and such varied abuses. He cannot leave, and I never tire of photographing it. I would like to have children; yes, I would like that, but I have finally accepted that I will never be a mother. I am not sterile, I am fertile in other regards. Nívea del Valle says that a human being is not defined by her reproductive capacity, which is a fine irony coming from her, a woman who has given birth to more than a dozen children. But this isn't the place to talk about the children I won't have, or about my lover, but of the events that determined who I am. I understand that in writing this memoir I must betray others, that's inevitable. "Remember that dirty linen is washed at home," Severo del Valle keeps telling me, he who, like the rest of us, was raised with that maxim. On the other hand, Nívea's advice is, "Write with honesty and don't worry about the feelings of others, because no matter what you say, they'll hate you anyway." So let's get on with it.

Given the impossibility of getting rid of my nightmares, I at least try to draw some benefit from them. I have found that after a miserable night the hallucinations remain, and my nerve ends are raw, an optimum state for creativity. My best photographs have been taken on days like those, when the one thing I want to do is crawl under the table the way I did in those first days in my grandmother Paulina's house. The dream of the children in black pajamas is what led me to photography, I'm sure of it. When Severo del Valle gave me a camera, the first thing that occurred to me was that if I could photograph those demons, I would drive them away. At thirteen, I tried many times. I invented complicated systems of wheels and cords to activate a fixed camera as I slept, until it became obvious that those malicious creatures were invulnerable to the assault of technology. If you observe an ordinary object or body very closely, it is transformed into something sacred. The camera can reveal secrets the naked eye or mind cannot capture; everything disappears except for the thing that is the focus of the picture. The photograph is an exercise in observation, and the result is always a stroke of luck: among the thousands and thousands of negatives that fill several cartons in my studio, very few are exceptional. My uncle, Lucky Chi'en, would feel somewhat defrauded if he knew how little effect his good-luck breath has had on my work. The camera is a simple apparatus, even the most inept person can use it; the challenge lies in creating with it that combination of truth and beauty called art. That quest is above all spiritual. I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in more elusive forms of reality. Sometimes, working with an image in my darkroom, the soul of a person appears, the emotion of an event or vital essence of some object; at that moment, gratitude explodes in my heart and I cry. I can't help it. Such revelations are the goal of my work.