Daughter of Fortune (10 page)

“You should adopt Eliza legally so that she can claim our name,” she told her brother Jeremy.

“She has used it for years, Rose, what more do you want?”

“I want her to be able to marry with her head held high.”

“Marry whom?”

Miss Rose did not tell him at that moment but she already had someone in mind. It was Michael Steward, twenty-eight years old, an officer in the English fleet anchored in the port of Valparaíso. She had found out through her brother John that the sailor came from an old family. They would not look fondly on the marriage of their oldest son and only heir to a girl who had no name and no fortune and furthermore lived in some godforsaken country they had never heard of. It was indispensable for Eliza to be provided with an appealing dowry and for Jeremy to adopt her, that way at least the question of her origins would not stand in the way.

Michael Steward had an athletic bearing, an innocent, blue-eyed gaze, blond sideburns and mustache, good teeth, and an aristocratic nose. The weak chin robbed him of perfection and Miss Rose hoped to speak to him in private and suggest that he disguise it by letting his beard grow. According to Captain Sommers, the youth was a model of morality and his impeccable service record guaranteed him a brilliant career in the navy. In Miss Rose's eyes, the fact that he spent so much time at sea would be a great plus for whoever married him. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced she had found the ideal man, but she knew that given Eliza's nature, she would not accept him for the sake of convenience, she would have to love him. There was hope: the man looked handsome in his uniform, and no one had yet seen him without it.

“Steward is a dunce who happens to have good manners. Eliza would die of boredom married to him,” Captain John Sommers protested when Rose told him of her plans.

“All husbands are boring, John. No woman with an ounce of sense gets married to be entertained, she marries to be maintained.”

Eliza still looked like a little girl, but her education was complete and soon she would be ready to marry. There was some time left, Miss Rose concluded, but she must act decisively so that a more quick-witted girl did not snatch away the candidate. Once her mind was made up, she concentrated on the task of attracting the officer, using every tactic she could imagine. She scheduled her musical gatherings to coincide with the dates of Michael Steward's shore leaves, with no consideration for her other guests, who for years had saved Wednesday for that sacred engagement. Annoyed, some stopped coming. Which was precisely what Rose had hoped; she was able to transform the placid musicales into lively dancing and replenish the guest list to include young bachelors and marriageable girls from the foreign colony, replacing the tedious Ebelings, Scotts, and Appelgreens who were turning into fossils. The poetry and voice recitals gave way to parlor games, informal balls, contests of wit, and charades. She organized complex picnics and beach outings. They would set off in coaches, preceded at dawn by heavy carts with leather floors and straw canopies and carrying servants charged with setting out countless luncheon baskets beneath tents and parasols. Stretching before them were fertile valleys planted with fruit trees and grapes, wheat and corn fields, the steep coastline where the Pacific Ocean exploded into clouds of foam, and, in the distance, the snowy cordillera profiled starkly against the sky. Somehow Miss Rose would arrange things so Eliza and Steward traveled in the same carriage, sat together, and were partners in the ball games and pantomimes, but in cards and dominos she separated them because Eliza stoutly refused to let anyone beat her.

“You must allow the man to feel superior, child,” Miss Rose patiently explained.

“That is very difficult,” Eliza, unmoved, responded.

Jeremy Sommers could do nothing to stop his sister's sea swell of expenses. She bought fabrics wholesale and kept two of the maids sewing all day, copying the latest dresses from magazines. She spent far more than was reasonable with the sailors who smuggled contraband, so they would never lack perfumes, Turkish rouge, belladonna and kohl for the mystery of the eyes, and cream made from crushed pearls for blanching the skin. For the first time she could not find time to write, turning all her attention to treats for the English officer, including biscuits and preserves for him to take to sea, everything made in their home and presented in beautiful jars.

“Eliza prepared this for you, but she is too shy to give it to you personally,” she would tell Steward, not adding that Eliza cooked anything she was asked to, never questioning whom it was for, and was inevitably surprised when he thanked her.

Michael Steward was not oblivious to the campaign of seduction. Sparing with words, he expressed his thanks in brief, formal letters on navy stationery, and showed up with bouquets when on shore. He had studied the language of flowers, but that refinement fell on barren ground because neither Miss Rose nor anyone in Valparaíso, at that distance from England, had heard of the difference between a rose and a carnation, much less suspected the significance of the color of the ribbon. Steward's efforts to find flowers that gradually grew more intense in color, from pale rose through all shades of pink to the deepest crimson to indicate his growing passion, were entirely wasted. With time, the officer learned to overcome his timidity, and from the painful silence that characterized him in the beginning he passed to a chattiness that made his listeners squirm. Euphorically, he expounded his moral opinions on insignificant topics and often lost himself in pointless comments on the subject of ocean currents and navigation charts. Where he truly shone was in rough sports, which showed off his daring and his muscular build. Miss Rose encouraged him to perform acrobatics, hanging from a tree branch in the garden, and even, after a certain insistence, to delight them with the heel taps, knee bends, and somersaults of a Ukrainian dance he had learned from another sailor. Miss Rose applauded it all with exaggerated enthusiasm, while Eliza watched, silent and serious, without offering her opinion. Weeks went by while Michael Steward weighed and measured the consequences of the step he wanted to take and communicated by letter with his father to discuss his plans. The inevitable delays of the post prolonged his uncertainty for several months. This was, after all, the most serious decision of his life, and it took more courage to face it than fighting any and all potential enemies of the British empire throughout the Pacific. Finally, during one of the musical soirées, after a hundred rehearsals before his mirror, he succeeded in gathering the courage that had been rapidly melting away and steadying a voice that fluted with fear to corner Miss Rose in a corridor.

“I must speak with you in private,” he whispered.

Miss Rose led him into her sewing room. She suspected what she was going to hear and was surprised at her own emotions; her cheeks were burning and her heart was racing. She tucked back a strand of hair that had escaped her bun and discreetly wiped the perspiration from her brow. Michael Steward thought he had never seen her so beautiful.

“I believe you have already divined what I want to tell you, Miss Rose.”

“Divining is dangerous, Mr. Steward. I am listening . . .”

“It regards my sentiments. I am sure you know what I am referring to. I wish to prove to you that my intentions are of the most honorable and irreproachable seriousness.”

“I expect no less from a person like yourself. Do you believe that your feelings are reciprocated?”

“That is s-s-s-something only you can answer,” the young officer stuttered.

They stood looking at one another, she with her eyebrows raised expectantly and he fearing the roof would crash down on his head. Determined to act before the magic of the moment turned to ash, the gallant took Miss Rose by the shoulders and bent down to kiss her. Frozen with surprise, Miss Rose could not move. She felt the officer's moist lips and soft mustache on her mouth, unable to imagine how the devil things had gone so wrong, and when finally she could react, she pushed him away violently.

“What are you doing!” she exclaimed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Can't you see that I am much, much older than you!”

“What does age m-matter?” the officer stammered, confounded, because in truth he had thought that Miss Rose was no more than twenty-seven.

“How dare you! Have you lost your senses?”

“But you . . . you led me to believe . . . I cannot be so mistaken!” the poor man mumbled, stupefied with embarrassment.

“I want you for Eliza, not myself,” Miss Rose sputtered with fright, and bolted out the door to run and lock herself in her room, while the hapless suitor asked for his cape and cap and left without a word to anyone, never to return to that house.

From a corner of the hallway, Eliza had heard everything through the half-open door of the sewing room. She, too, had been confused by the attentions to the officer. Miss Rose had always shown such indifference to potential suitors that she was used to thinking of her as an old woman. Only in recent months, as she watched her devote body and soul to games of seduction, had she become aware of her protector's magnificent bearing and luminous skin. She had thought Miss Rose was head over heels in love with Michael Steward and it had never crossed her mind that the bucolic picnics beneath the Japanese parasols and the butter biscuits to ease the discomforts of life at sea had been her protector's stratagem for snagging the officer and delivering him to her on a platter. The idea struck like a dagger to her heart—it took her breath away—because the last thing in this world she wanted was a marriage arranged behind her back. She had just been caught up in the whirlwind of her first love and had sworn, with irrevocable fervor, that she would never marry another.

Eliza Sommers saw Joaquín Andieta for the first time one Friday in the May of 1848 when he came to the house overseeing a cart pulled by several mules and loaded to the top with crates belonging to the British Import and Export Company, Ltd. Packed inside were Persian carpets, crystal chandeliers, and a collection of ivory figurines Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz had ordered to decorate the mansion he had built in the north, precious cargo that was at risk in the port and safer stored in the Sommers' home until time to forward it to its destination. If the rest of the trip was overland, Jeremy hired men to guard the treasures, but in this case he would route them by way of a Chilean schooner scheduled to sail in a week's time. Andieta was wearing his one suit, out of style, dark, and threadbare, and he had no hat or umbrella. His funereal pallor contrasted with his flashing eyes and his black hair gleamed with moisture from an early autumn mist. Miss Rose went out to meet him, and Mama Fresia, who always carried the keys to the house on a large ring at her waist, led him to the storeroom in the back patio. The youth organized the peons in a long line and they transported the crates from man to man down rugged terrain, up twisting stairs, across superfluous terraces, and through unvisited bowers. As Andieta counted, marked, and recorded in his notebook, Eliza made use of her ability to make herself invisible and watched him at her leisure. Two months before, she had turned sixteen and she was ready for love. As she watched Joaquín Andieta's long ink-stained fingers and heard his voice—deep, but at the same time clear and cool as a flowing brook—issuing brusque orders to the peons, she was shaken to her bones and an overpowering urge to be close enough to smell him forced her from her hiding place behind the potted palms. Mama Fresia, grumbling because the mules had fouled the front entry, and busy with her keys, didn't notice, but out of the corner of her eye Miss Rose caught a glimpse of the girl's flushed face. She didn't think much about it; in her eyes her brother's employee was a cipher, barely a shadow among the many shadows of that cloudy day. Eliza disappeared into the kitchen and after a few minutes returned with glasses and a pitcher of honey-sweetened orange juice. For the first time in her life, this girl who had spent years balancing a book on her head without giving it a thought was conscious of how she walked, the swaying of her hips, the undulation of her body, the angle of her arms, the distance between her shoulders and chin. She wanted to be as beautiful as Miss Rose when she had been the splendid young woman who'd rescued her from her improvised cradle in a Marseilles soap crate; she wanted to sing with the nightingale-sweet voice of Miss Appelgreen when she warbled her Scots ballads; she wanted to dance with the impossible lightness of her dance instructor; and she wanted to die right there, pierced by the sensation, sharp and no more to be denied than a sword, that was filling her mouth with warm blood and, even before she could identify it, crushing her with the terrible weight of idealized love. Many years later, standing before a human head preserved in a jar of gin, Eliza would remember that first meeting with Joaquín Andieta and again experience the same unbearable anguish. She would ask herself a thousand times along the way whether she had had a chance to flee from the devastating passion that would warp her life, whether maybe in those brief instants she could have turned away and saved herself, but every time she formulated the question she concluded that her fate had been determined since the beginning of time. And when the sage Tao Chi'en introduced her to the poetic possibility of reincarnation, she convinced herself that the same drama was repeated in each of her lives; if she had been born a thousand times before and had to be born a thousand times again in the future, she would always come into the world with the mission of loving that same man in the same way. There was no escape for her. But then Tao Chi'en taught her the magical formulas, for untangling the knots of karma and freeing herself from forever repeating the same harrowing uncertainty of love in every incarnation.

That day in May, Eliza placed the tray on a bench and offered the cooling drink first to the laborers—in order to gain time while she controlled her shaking knees and won the battle that was mulishly paralyzing her chest and blocking her breathing—and only then to Joaquín Andieta who, absorbed in his task, barely looked up when she handed him the glass. When he did, Eliza moved as close to him as she could, calculating the direction of breeze so it would carry the scent of this man who, she was sure, was hers. With her eyes half closed, she inhaled the aroma of damp clothing, common soap, and fresh sweat. A river of flowing lava swept through her, melting her bones; and in an instant of panic she believed that she was actually dying. Those seconds were so intense that Joaquín Andieta's notebook dropped from his hands, as if some irresistible force had seized it from him, as that same glowing heat washed over him, searing him in its reflection. He looked at Eliza without seeing her; the girl's face was a pale mirror in which he thought he glimpsed his own image. He had only a vague idea of her size and of a dark aureole of hair, but it would not be until their second meeting a few days later that he would sink into the perdition of her black eyes and the watery grace of her gestures. Both stooped down at the same time to pick up the notebook; their shoulders bumped and the contents of the glass splashed onto her dress.