“A man, Rose. That is the only reason that a girl commits an indiscretion of this magnitude. You know that better than anyone. Who can Eliza possibly be with?”
“I cannot imagine.”
Miss Rose could imagine perfectly. She knew the party responsible for this calamitous state of affairs: that gloomy-looking fellow who had brought cargo to the house several months ago, Jeremy’s employee. She did not know his name, but she was going to find out. She did not, however, tell her brother anything because she believed there might still be time to rescue the girl from the pitfalls of forbidden love. She remembered with the precision of a notary every detail of her own experience with the Viennese tenor: the anguish of those days was etched in her mind. She did not love him now, that was true, she had purged him from her soul centuries before, but the mere sound of his name was enough to start a bell clanging in her breast. Karl Bretzner was the key to her past and her personality; their fleeting affair had shaped her destiny and the woman she had become. If she should ever love again as she had then, she thought, she would do the same all over again, even knowing how that passion had twisted her life. Maybe Eliza would have better luck and her love would work out; maybe in her case her lover was free and did not have children or a deceived wife. She had to find the girl, confront the accursed seducer, force them to marry, and then present the fait accompli to Jeremy, who, with time, would accept them. It would be difficult, given her brother’s rigidity in questions of honor, but if he had forgiven her, he would forgive Eliza as well. Persuading him would be her task. She had not played the role of mother for all those years just to cross her arms when her only daughter made a misstep.
While Jeremy Sommers locked himself in a stubborn, dignified silence that did nothing, incidentally, to protect him from loose tongues, Miss Rose swung into action. Within a few days she had discovered the identity of Joaquín Andieta and to her horror learned that, in addition to everything else, he was a fugitive from justice. He was accused of juggling the books of the British Import and Export Company, Ltd., and of having stolen merchandise from them. She knew then that the situation was far more serious than she had imagined: Jeremy would never accept such an individual into the bosom of their family. Worse yet, the minute he caught up with his former employee he would send him off to jail, even if he were Eliza’s husband. Unless, Miss Rose muttered with rage, she could find some way to get her brother to withdraw charges against that little worm and clear his name for the good of all. First she would have to find the lovers, then see how she could work the rest out. She was very careful not to reveal what she had learned, and the remainder of the week she kept making inquiries here and there until in the Santos Tornero bookshop someone mentioned the name of Joaquín Andieta’s mother. She obtained her address by asking in all the churches; as she suspected, the Catholic priests kept close tabs on their parishioners.
Friday, at midday, she went to call on Andieta’s mother. She went there filled with purpose, animated by righteous indignation and ready to speak her mind, but she felt her resolve weakening the farther she advanced through the twisting alleyways of that district where she had never before set foot. She regretted the dress she had chosen, lamented her overly ornate hat and white high-button shoes; she felt ridiculous. She knocked at the door, slowed by a feeling of shame that turned into honest humility when she saw Andieta’s mother. She had never imagined such devastation. Before her stood an ordinary little woman with feverish eyes and a sad expression. She seemed ancient, but when Rose looked more closely she could see that the woman was still young and had once been beautiful; there was no doubt that she was very ill. Señora Andieta was not surprised to find Rose at her door; she was accustomed to having wealthy women bring sewing and embroidery for her to do. Her customers passed her name to friends; it wasn’t unusual for a lady she didn’t know to knock at her door. This one was a foreigner, though, she could tell by that butterfly-bright dress; no Chilean woman would dare wear anything like that. She said hello without smiling, and invited Rose in.
“Please sit down, señora. What may I do for you?”
Miss Rose sat on the edge of the chair that had been offered to her, but she could not speak a word. Everything she had planned to say vanished from her mind in the flash of deep compassion she felt for that woman, for Eliza, and for herself, and tears poured like a river, flooding her face and her heart. Upset, Joaquín Andieta’s mother took Rose’s hand in her own.
“What is it, señora? Can I help?”
And then between sobs, in her Anglicized Spanish, Miss Rose disclosed that her only daughter had disappeared more than a week ago, that she was in love with Joaquín, that they had met several months before, that the girl hadn’t been the same ever since, that she was burning with love—anyone could see that, except for herself, Miss Rose, who was so self-absorbed and distracted that she had not concerned herself in time and now it was too late because they had both run away. Eliza had ruined her life just as she, Miss Rose, had ruined hers. And she kept spinning out more and more words, unable to stop, until she had told that stranger what she had never told anyone. She told her about Karl Bretzner and her orphaned love, and the twenty years that had slipped by uncounted in her slumbering heart and barren womb. With streaming tears she poured out the losses she had kept silent all her life, the rage hidden beneath good breeding, the secrets carried like invisible shackles to save appearances, and the exuberant, youthful years wasted by the simple bad fortune of having been born a woman. And when finally she was out of breath from sobbing, she sat there unable to understand what had come over her or the source of the heady relief beginning to enfold her.
“Have a little tea,” said Joaquín Andieta’s mother after a long silence, placing a chipped teacup in her hand.
“Please, I beg you, tell me whether Eliza and your son are lovers. I am not mad, am I?” Miss Rose whispered.
“You may be right, señora. Joaquín was not in his right senses, either, but he never told me the girl’s name.”
“Help me. I must find Eliza.”
“I can tell you that she is not with Joaquín.”
“How do you know that?”
“Didn’t you tell me that the girl disappeared only a week ago? My son left in December.”
“Left, you say? Where did he go?”
“I do not know.”
“I understand, señora. In your place, like you, I would try to protect my son. I know that he has problems with the law. I give you my word of honor that I will help him; my brother is the manager of the British Company and he will do what I ask. I will not tell anyone where your son is; all I want is to talk with Eliza.”
“You daughter and Joaquín are not together, believe me.”
“I know that Eliza followed him.”
“She cannot have followed him, señora. My son went to California.”
The day that Captain John Sommers returned to Valparaíso with the Fortuna loaded with blue ice, he found his brother and sister waiting for him on the dock, as usual, but one look at their faces and he knew that something very serious had happened. Rose was pale and wan, and as soon as he hugged her she started crying uncontrollably.
“Eliza has disappeared,” Jeremy informed him, so angry he could barely mouth the words.
As soon as they were alone, Rose told John what she had learned from Joaquín Andieta’s mother. In those endless days of waiting for her favorite brother, and of trying to tie up loose ends, she had convinced herself that the girl had followed her lover to California, because that was what she would have done herself. John Sommers spent the next few days asking questions around the port. He found that Eliza had not bought a passage on any ship and that her name was not on any passenger list; on the other hand, authorities listed the departure of a Joaquín Andieta in December. Given the possibility that the girl could have changed her name to throw them off the trail, the captain made the same rounds again, this time with a detailed description—but no one remembered seein
g her. A young girl, nearly a child, traveling alone or with an Indian servant, would immediately have attracted attention, he was assured; besides, very few women were going to San Francisco, and all of them of light morals, with the exception of an occasional captain’s or businessman’s wife.
“She can’t have taken a ship without leaving a trace, Rose,” the captain concluded after a careful accounting of his inquiries.
“And Andieta?”
“His mother told you the truth. His name is listed.”
“He took some things from the British Company. I am sure he did it only because he had no other way to pay for his journey. Jeremy has no idea that the thief he is looking for is Eliza’s lover. I just hope he never finds out!”
“Aren’t you tired of carrying so many secrets, Rose?”
“What do you want me to do? My life is built on appearances, not truths. Jeremy is like stone, you know him as well as I. What can we do about the girl?”
“I am leaving tomorrow for California, the ship is loaded. If there are as few women as they say, it will be easy to find her.”
“That is not enough, John!”
“Can you think of anything better?”
That night at dinner Miss Rose insisted once again on the need to mobilize all available resources to find the girl. Jeremy, who had stayed at the margin of his sister’s frenzied activity without offering any advice or expressing any emotion other than dismay at being involved in a social scandal, offered the opinion that Eliza was not deserving of all the fuss.
“This atmosphere of hysteria is extremely unpleasant. I suggest you exert some self-control. Why look for her? Even if you find her, she will never enter this house again,” he proclaimed.
“Does Eliza mean nothing to you?” Miss Rose rebuked him.
“That is not the point. Eliza committed an unpardonable offense against society, and she must pay the piper.”
“As I have paid for nearly twenty years?”
A frozen silence fell over the dining room. The family had never spoken openly about Rose’s past, and Jeremy was not even certain that John knew what had happened between his sister and the Viennese tenor, because he himself had been careful not to reveal it.
“Paid what, Rose? You were forgiven, and protected. You have no reason to reproach me.”
“Why were you so generous with me but cannot be with Eliza?”
“Because you are my sister and it is my duty to protect you.”
“Eliza is like my own daughter, Jeremy!”
“But she is not. We have no obligation to her; she does not belong to this family.”
“Oh, but she does!” Miss Rose cried.
“Enough!” the captain interrupted, banging the table with his fist as plates and cups danced.
“Yes, Jeremy, she belongs! Eliza is one of us,” Miss Rose repeated, sobbing and burying her face in her hands. “She is John’s daughter.”
Jeremy listened, aghast, as his brother and sister recounted the secret they had kept for sixteen years. That man of few words, so self-controlled that he seemed invulnerable to human emotion, exploded for the first time, and everything held back for forty-six years of perfect British self-possession boiled up, choking him with a torrent of reproaches, rage, and humiliation.
“How could I have been so stupid! Dear God, living beneath the same roof, in a nest of lies, and never suspecting, confident that my brother and sister were the right sort and that we trusted one another, when, in fact, it was all a fiction, a web of lies; who knows how many things you have systematically hidden from me? But this is the crowning blow. Why the devil did you not tell me? What have I done to cause you to treat me like a monster? To deserve to be manipulated in this way? To have you take advantage of my generosity all the while you are scorning me? Because there is no other face to put on the way you have surrounded me with deceit, and excluded me. You have used me, happy to have me pay the bills. It has been the same all my life, ever since we were children you have made sport of me behind my back. . . .”
Mute, finding no way to justify their behavior, Rose and John accepted the tongue-lashing, and when Jeremy’s tirade was exhausted the room filled with silence. All three were drained. For the first time in their lives they were seeing one another with the mask of good manners and courtesy torn away. Something fundamental, something that had sustained the fragile equilibrium of their three-legged family table, seemed irrevocably broken. Nevertheless, as Jeremy began to catch his breath, his features again assumed their usual impenetrable arrogance, and he brushed back a lock of hair from his forehead and straightened his tie. Only then did Miss Rose stand, walk to the back of his chair, and place one hand on his shoulder, the only gesture of intimacy she dared; her heart ached with tenderness for that solitary brother, that silent, melancholy man who had been like a father to her, whose eyes she had never made the effort to meet. She realized that, in fact, she knew nothing about him and that she had never in her entire life touched him.
Sixteen years before, on the morning of March 15, 1832, Mama Fresia had gone out into the garden and seen an ordinary box of Marseilles soap covered with newspaper. Curious, she had looked to see what it was and when she lifted the paper discovered a newborn baby. She had run into the house yelling, and an instant later her patrona was bending over the infant. Miss Rose was twenty at the time, fresh and beautiful as a peach; she was wearing a topaz-colored dress and the wind was playing with her hair, just as Eliza remembered or imagined it. Between them, the women lifted the box and carried it to the sewing room, where they removed the papers and picked up the baby girl clumsily wrapped in a wool sweater. She had not been outside long, they deduced, because despite the cold morning wind the baby’s body was warm and she was sleeping peacefully. Miss Rose ordered the Indian woman to look for a clean blanket, sheets, and scissors to cut diapers. When Mama Fresia returned, the sweater had disappeared and the naked baby was yelling in Miss Rose’s arms.
“I recognized the sweater immediately. I had knitted it for John the year before. I hid it because you would have recognized it, too,” she explained to Jeremy.
“Who is Eliza’s mother, John?”
“I don’t remember her name—”
“You do not know her name! How many bastards have you strewn across the world?” Jeremy exclaimed.
“She was a girl from the port, a young Chilean. I remember her as being very pretty. I never saw her again, and I didn’t know she was pregnant. When Rose showed me the sweater a couple of years later, I remembered that because it was cold, I had given it to the girl when we were on the beach but forgotten to ask for it back. You have to understand, Jeremy, that is how a sailor’s life is. I am not a beast—”
“You were drunk.”
“That’s possible. When I learned that Eliza was my daughter, I tried to find the mother, but she had disappeared. She may have died. I don’t know.”
“For some reason, that woman decided that we should bring up the girl, Jeremy, and I have never been sorry that we did. We gave her affection, a good life, an education,” Miss Rose added. “Possibly the mother couldn’t give her anything and that is why she wrapped Eliza in the sweater and brought her here, so we would know who the father was.”
“And that is all? A filthy sweater? That proves absolutely nothing! Anyone could be the father. The woman very cleverly pawned her daughter off on us.”
“I was afraid that would be your reaction, Jeremy,” his sister replied. “And that is precisely why I didn’t tell you then.”
Three weeks after telling Tao Chi’en good-bye, Eliza was with five miners panning for gold on the banks of the American River. She had not traveled alone. The day she left Sacramento she had joined a group of Chileans leaving for the placers. They had bought mounts and pack animals, but no one had any experience with livestock and the Mexican ranchers had skillfully disguised the age and defects of the horses and mules they bought. These were pathetic beasts, doped, their bald spots painted over with dy
e, and within a few hours after starting they had come up lame. Everyone in the party was carrying a full load of tools, weapons, and tin utensils, so that the dreary caravan crept along amid a clanging of metal. Along the way, they began shedding equipment, which lay scattered among the crosses that dotted the landscape to indicate the dead. Eliza had introduced herself as Elías Andieta, only recently arrived from Chile with instructions from his mother to look for his brother Joaquín, and prepared to travel California from top to bottom to carry out his duty.
“How old are you, kid?” the miners had asked Eliza.
“Eighteen.”
“You look more like fourteen. Aren’t you kind of young to be looking for gold?”
“I am eighteen, and I am not looking for gold, only my brother Joaquín,” she repeated.
The Chileans were young, cheerful, and had not yet lost the enthusiasm that had motivated them to leave their country and travel so far, although they were beginning to realize that the streets were not paved with treasure, as they had been told. At first Eliza did not show them her face and kept her hat pulled down over her eyes, but soon she noticed that the men paid little attention to one another. They took for granted that she was still a boy and were not surprised by her size, her voice, or her behavior. Each of them was self-absorbed and didn’t notice that she went off from them to relieve herself or that when they came to a pool of water where they could take a dip, while they were taking off their clothes Eliza jumped in with hers on, even her hat, claiming that that way she could do her laundry at the same time. Besides, cleanliness was the least of their worries, and after a few days Eliza was as filthy and sweaty as her companions. She discovered that their grime made them all equally sordid: her bloodhound-sharp nose could scarcely distinguish her own body odor from theirs. The heavy cloth of her trousers chafed her legs; she was not used to riding long distances, and the second day her buttocks were so raw she could scarcely take a step, but the others were tenderfoots, too, and in as much pain as she. The dry, hot climate, the thirst, fatigue, and constant assault of mosquitoes, quickly killed any banter. They rode forward in silence, metal clanking, sorry before they began. For weeks they looked for a good place to set up and look for gold, time that Eliza used to ask around about Joaquín Andieta. Neither the information they had gathered nor their badly drawn maps were of much use, and when they did reach a good site for panning they found hundreds of miners ahead of them. Every prospector had the right to claim a hundred square feet; they marked their site, working it every day and leaving their tools there when they were away, but if they were gone for more than ten days, someone else could claim the spot and register it in his name. The worst crimes, claim-jumping and stealing, were punished with the gallows or with a horsewhipping, after a quick trial in which the miners played the roles of judge, jury, and executioner. Eliza’s party met bands of Chileans everywhere. Recognizing them by their clothing and accent, they would embrace enthusiastically, share their mate, liquor, and the jerked meat they called charqui; they would exchange colorful tales of misadventures and sing nostalgic songs beneath the stars, but the next day they would say good-bye: there was no time for excessive cordiality. From their speech and conversation, Eliza deduced that some of her countrymen were privileged young men from Santiago, upper-class dandies who a few months before had been wearing frock coats, patent leather boots, kid gloves, and slicked-back hair, but in the placers it was nearly impossible to tell them from the rough peasants with whom they were working side by side. Class affectations and prejudices went up in smoke when they met the brutal reality of the mines, but not racial hatred, which exploded in deadly fights on the least pretext. The Chileans, more numerous and more enterprising than other Hispanics, had drawn the Yanquis’ hatred. Eliza heard that back in San Francisco, a group of drunken Australians had attacked Little Chile, setting off a pitched battle. Several Chilean companies had peons from their fields working at the placers, hands who for generations had worked for a pittance under a feudal system and so were not surprised that whatever gold they found wasn’t theirs but the patrón’s. In the eyes of the North Americans, that was simple slavery. American laws favored the individual: each piece of land was reduced to the area a man could work by himself. The Chilean associations scoffed at the law, registering claims in the names of each of their peons in order to work more sites.