The Neruda Case (17 page)

The sudden emphasis made Cayetano doubt the poet’s lucidity.

“Are you sure?” he said, to test him.

“My women never gave me children. Not Josie Bliss, who was a tornado of jealousy, nor the Cyclops María Antonieta, who gave birth to a deformed being; nor did Delia del Carril, whose womb was dried up when I met her; nor Matilde, who had several miscarriages. I’ve had everything in life, Cayetano: friends, lovers, fame, money, prestige, they’ve even given me the Nobel Prize—but I never had a child. Beatriz is my last hope. It’s a hope I buried long ago. I’d give all my poetry in exchange for that daughter.” They resumed their walk
through the drizzle as the children’s voices flowed and ebbed behind them. “Immortality is bestowed by children, Cayetano, not by books; by blood, not ink; by skin, and not by printed pages. That’s why you have to find out whether Beatriz’s daughter is mine. My friend, you have to go to Cuba, find Beatriz, and bring me the truth before the old woman with the scythe gets the best of me.”

22

M
aría Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang entered my life at a British Country Club on the Island of Java, by a wide and sinuous river whose name I no longer recall. The breeze faltered that morning, soft clouds filled the sky, and the swamp scent of the river’s currents pervaded the air. I saw her by chance as I walked past a tennis court, where María Antonieta was playing another woman on the lawn. The British colony had clubs, restaurants, shops, and offices, which only British people, diplomats, and a few chosen locals could patronize. I didn’t usually frequent them because their colonial attitude disgusted me, but on that particular day, loneliness, or perhaps destiny, who knows, led my steps there.

María Antonieta captivated me immediately. She was taller than me, and had slow yet graceful movements, white skin, long limbs, and dark hair. Her figure reflected on the undulating surface of the river. Accustomed as I was to the slight bodies of Burmese women, I was seduced by her statuesque appearance, like a Greek caryatid at the door of a temple, and her Valkyrian vigor. I decided to wait for her to finish the game so that I could introduce myself.

Was I ever truly in love with her? I ask myself this now, seated in La Nube, breathing the sad sighs of this Valparaíso, which various earthquakes have conspired against, one after the other, as well as the opening of the
Panama Canal and the centralism of Santiago. Of María Antonieta, I remember thick calves, upright breasts, and nipples as pink as certain beach pebbles. I recall her penetrating eyes, which over time lost their shine and depth, to be replaced by an air of resentful indifference. When we made love, her moans had a dark masculine resonance that disturbed me and stirred my own emigrant’s loneliness. She was, I realize, noble, diligent, and honest, a true Dutch peasant, and she trusted me in a way she never should have.

In the mornings, her thighs gathered up the beams of sun that pierced the lace curtains of our bedroom. Then that light set fire to her sparse blond pubic hair and climbed toward her belly, where it submerged itself in the shade of her navel and slid to the heights of her breasts, from which my avid lips had drunk. I studied that dance of light in silence, spellbound. What a name she had! María Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang. Now that I slide it across my tongue, over and over, it tastes of the
alfajor
cookies of La Ligua and of street names in Amsterdam. I regret that I didn’t know how to appreciate her when we were a couple. Hagenaar. The third syllable, clear and sustained, like the murmur of a stream that splashes and flows over stones that blend into the shade of boldo plants, whose leaves provided an old natural medicine for anxiety. Vogelzang: a
v
that intones like the resolution of a full-bodied
f,
vehemently, and a
z
that demands a crackling snort, a dart grazing the ear. Vo-gel-zang. I think it means “birdsong” in Dutch. But I didn’t want to hear the musicality of her name. My provincial ignorance, with its smell of a woolen poncho drenched by southern rains, made me change the name to something low and miserable: Maruca. How to compare that plain Maruca with the joyful fount of vowels that flows from the throat on saying María Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang?

I met her in 1930, in Java. I abandoned her in Spain, in 1936. I left her for Delia del Carril, and never mentioned her again. Only two of my poems mention her, and only in passing. But when I abandoned her, I also abandoned our poor Malva Marina. That is what pushed her to pursue me with ferocity. Resentment is never extinguished, it grows over the years;
time is its best fertilizer. In Chile she even became an ally of the tyrant of the moment, that despicable traitor Gabriel González Videla, in an attempt to destroy me. She could never stand for me to be happy with another woman.

I now recognize that, early on, things were good with her, that nothing about her bothered me. Not even the fact that she was taller than me or that we barely understood each other’s English. She didn’t speak Spanish, I didn’t speak Dutch, and my knowledge of English was always lacking. I loved poetry and bohemian ways, while she embraced a practical and disciplined life. I liked to spend what I didn’t have, while she preferred to save every last cent. We got married in Batavia, four months after we met. That day, without knowing it, I came between María Antonieta and the timid Dutch accountant who had been courting her for a long time, and who was also waiting for her by the tennis court. Why did I interrupt what was slated to become a marriage, and steal her from the road that fate had laid out? She could have been happy on the island; she could have loved her husband in Dutch; she could have visited Rotterdam every once in a while and admired the immaculate European cleanliness she so idolized. A consul without prospects or resources, who had come from a poor and melancholy country in the world’s other south, should simply have returned alone to his slow Andean evenings. If, on that Sunday, I had continued home without stopping at that tennis court, another rooster, as they say, would have sung.

If memory serves, our relationship began to splinter, not long after the wedding, when Maruca contracted a strange illness that made her lose the first baby. Those were painful months. We lost the child, and the medical bills took all our savings. And Maruca’s health did not improve. With the global crisis of 1929, the government had reduced my salary; in addition, it could not send me return tickets to Chile. A year into our marriage, Maruca no longer ignited any passion in me. To make love to her, I had to conjure up the soft skin, malevolent smile, and redolent cracked fruit of Josie Bliss.

We set sail from Batavia in 1932 in a boat bearing the beautiful name
of a Dutch writer, Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft. Our final destiny met us in Valparaíso. In Chile, Maruca was modest, loyal, and self-sacrificing. She stayed at my side as we settled into a gloomy, windowless apartment in the center of Santiago, where my bohemian friends lingered until dawn, without her understanding the source of laughter or topics of conversation. Language kept us apart. I managed to once again escape my own nation and escape poverty as well, thanks to another position as consul, this time in Spain, where I met Delia. I am often tortured by a vision of a disconcerted and fearful María Antonieta in our last weeks in Madrid. I’m still haunted by the memory of her impotent despair on realizing that I was leaving her for another woman. Delia, cultured, refined, twenty years older than me, connected to the crème de la crème of European intellectuals, awaited me impatiently in a nearby city. I packed my suitcase, closed the door, and left, abandoning María Antonieta and our daughter. Why must happiness be built at the cost of others’ misfortune? From this Valparaíso where I await my sunset, I want to beg your forgiveness, María Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang. Forgive me, woman of noble soul, for having betrayed you and Malva Marina; forgive me for having taken advantage of your loyalty and naï
veté, for having left you under such abominable circumstances, for having forgotten you as I ran, crazed, through the bombarded streets of the Spanish Republic, to be with Delia del Carril.

23

S
tepping down from the Russian two-engine plane into the humid heat of José Martí Airport, Cayetano immediately recalled his deep connection to the island. The green alligator-shaped land seemed to recognize him and embrace him like an old friend. He had left Havana as a boy, and his remembrances were frequent, though tormented and diffuse. His memory retained the colors, noise, and aromas of the island; the scent of its fruit; the sensuality of its women; the exaggerated gestures of its men; and the caress of saline breezes on its streets. The scorching air, the perfume of flowers whose names had been lost to memory, the bright glare of the asphalt, the coolness promised by its doors: all of these reconciled him at once with his own Cuban soul. The island had inoculated him with its light and rhythm, its fierce enthusiasm for life, all the things that yoked him to it forever, making him a perpetual hostage to nostalgia.

He showed his passport to the officials in green uniforms, who still vaguely resembled the bearded revolutionaries of Sierra Maestra, then took an Anchares cab—a 1951 Chrysler with shining chrome and muted speed—and got a room at a dilapidated hotel in El Vedado. El Presidente had simple architecture and looked out over the mansion
that housed the Ministry of Foreign Relations, as well as a sports complex and the tower of La Casa de las Américas. He went out to explore his surroundings, guided by the mix of helplessness and euphoria he felt upon recognizing buildings and corners in their current state. Havana was falling to pieces and in desperate need of paint yet was still beautiful, exuding a pleasant rural calm. He got in line at a café called El Carmelo, and when he found a seat, he asked for a cup of coffee, a
guanábana
juice, and a
medianoche
sandwich. In Valparaíso, he thought, no one knew that black, syrupy coffee, or the lovely thickness of
guanábana
juice, or the delicate consistency of that legendary sandwich.

He needed to organize his next steps or else he’d lose his way, and not even Simenon’s little novels would help him recover it. The poet’s unexpected disclosures and the subsequent change in his mission disconcerted him. Was he fully aware of the responsibility in his hands? It was no longer a question of finding a doctor who could postpone death but of finding the woman who held the secret information Neruda needed in order to die in peace.