Neruda, page 3
Rudecindo Ortega never lost the grace of his employer, as Mason had been so fond of him before the scandal and apparently found him less culpable than Trinidad. Later, Mason would even allow Ortega to marry his youngest daughter, Telésfora.
Trinidad and José del Carmen hid their affair from Mason and Micaela, but Trinidad became pregnant, forcing the secret to light. Mason and Micaela were furious that she had been so reckless under their roof; each adopted baby came with the risk of social disgrace, and they searched for the right punishment for the young woman who, it seemed, could not accept that she was supposed to remain chaste until marriage. Trinidad revealed who the father was, and word was sent to him. José del Carmen was in Belén or Talcahuano when he found out, and he replied quickly, unmoved and refusing to marry Trinidad. Unlike with her first child, Micaela and Mason made it clear that under no circumstances would they see or raise this baby.
Far along in her pregnancy, Trinidad returned to Parral to give birth, most likely because there she would have the support of her local relatives and friends. She would be kept from the public scrutiny of Temuco, and, as she had left Parral many years before, none of the townsfolk would know that she was not married.
In 1897, Trinidad gave birth to her second son, Rodolfo, but Micaela and Mason (supposedly) prohibited her from keeping him. The baby was handed off to a midwife in the village of Coipúe, along the banks of the silver Toltén River. It was far enough away from Temuco and close enough to Parral so that it was easy for the Masons to keep tabs on him and send the midwife support.
For the next five years, José del Carmen drifted between working at the dry docks of Talcahuano, visiting Temuco to see if there were any good railroad jobs available, and occasionally returning home to Belén to rest and perhaps pick up a little work around Parral. Then, in the town he had left nearly a decade ago, he found the love of his life. Her name was Rosa Neftalí Basoalto Opazo. She was a schoolteacher who wrote poetry. In 1899 she had moved to Parral from the open countryside to be closer to a doctor, as she had struggled with pulmonary problems since childhood. José del Carmen saw her for the first time shortly after she had arrived and approached her. Rosa Neftalí may not have been beautiful, but there was something in the modest grandeur of her face that radiated a simple sweetness. Though not stern in nature, her expression did convey an unmistakable seriousness. She was the kind of woman who carried herself with intent and purpose, perhaps in part because she doubted how long her health would allow her to live an active life.
For José, who had grown rough from his life of hard work and constant movement, Rosa’s sweet, practical demeanor was enchanting. He was in love, but he still wasn’t sure he was ready to start a family, so for the following four years José didn’t stay in Parral. Each time he visited, however, he would see Rosa as often as he could. In 1903, he finally asked her to be his wife. They were married in a simple ceremony on October 4, 1903. José del Carmen was thirty-two; Rosa was thirty. They moved into their own home—a long, narrow adobe house with curved tiles ornamenting the roof—near the town limits of Parral. About nine months later, at close to nine o’clock on the night of July 12, 1904, Rosa gave birth to a son, Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, who would one day be known throughout the world as Pablo Neruda.
Two months and two days after the boy was born, Rosa died from tuberculosis. José, alone with his infant son, retreated into himself. His own mother had died shortly after his own birth, and this repeated misfortune threw José into a deep despair. He returned to Belén, and his stepmother took charge of the new baby. She searched for a wet nurse among the local campesinas and put Neftalí in the care of María Luisa Leiva. On September 26, twelve days after his mother’s death, Neftalí was baptized in Parral’s San José Church. The anguished José set off again, now not just to wander, but having to provide for someone besides himself. In contrast with the ambivalence he felt toward his firstborn from his affair with Trinidad, he felt a paternal closeness and responsibility to his new, legitimately born son.
Hearing of cattle work on the other side of the Andes, he headed to Argentina, but returned six months later, in March 1905, penniless. With Neftalí still in his parents’ care, José took the train to Talcahuano, which continued to boom with port business fourteen years after he had first arrived there. He worked the docks as he had previously, following the rhythm of the big boats that came to and went from the harbor, laden with machinery that would help to cultivate the newly settled southern countryside or timber and grains for export.
José stayed at the same pension where he had first lived in Talcahuano. Back then, the owner’s daughter, Aurelia Tolrá, had been a budding teenage beauty. Now she was a young woman with a watchful face, framed by long black hair and punctuated by curving cheekbones. She and José quickly became close friends, and he spoke openly with her of his sadness and uncertainty. José was thirty-three, mourning his wife, and still working as a laborer as he had for fourteen years. He was hardened by experience, and now he had a goal to work toward: the train trips back to Parral to visit his son. On weeknights at the pension, José would often uncork a bottle of wine and talk with Aurelia, the sounds of the port whistling and clanging a few blocks away. One night, seeing his present and future in disarray, José asked Aurelia what he should do with his life. “Go back to Trinidad,” she told him. “She’s the mother of your firstborn.”
Nearly a decade had passed since Trinidad Candia Malverde had given birth to Rodolfo. José had kept in touch with her to some extent, keeping tabs on his oldest son, who was being raised in the woods by someone outside the family. He may have been harboring the hope that Mason would help him out if he reunited with Trinidad and also with his being the widowed son of Mason’s old friend José Angel back in Parral. Mason certainly had the connections and influence to get him a job on the railroad or something similar. Plus, José might have believed he’d find the comfort he sought in Trinidad; he would bring Neftalí from Belén and Rodolfo back from the forest to complete their family.
With a plan set at last, José returned to Temuco. He had a long, sincere discussion with Trinidad, now homey and sweet. He expressed his intentions to Mason and received his blessing to marry her. At 7:30 on the evening of November 11, 1905, the two were wed in the home of Mason and Micaela.
The newlyweds made their home next to the Mason-Candia homestead. It belonged to Trinidad, who had received the plot fifteen years prior as a free land grant, quite likely with Mason pulling a few strings. While Mason must have been supportive of José del Carmen, as he was making an honest woman of Mason’s sister-in-law, he wasn’t nearly as involved with him as José del Carmen would have hoped: Mason didn’t pull any strings for him; there was no new job.
Still, Neftalí, now two years old, was brought down from Parral to Temuco as planned. From the beginning, and for the rest of her life, Trinidad treated him with nurturing warmth. In a portrait of him taken at a Temuco studio in 1906, standing with his hand resting on a cushioned chair, wearing his white cambric baby dress and black boots, Neftalí looks poised and angelic. His cheeks are full, and he seems to have the composure of someone very sure of himself.
A few months after settling himself and Neftalí into their new Temuco home, José’s next move was to reclaim Rodolfo, or rather to claim him for the first time. José had never felt any obligation or affection toward his son until now, when he made it his mission to assemble the family together for the good of all. José del Carmen set off on the path of the Toltén River, to Coipúe. The small village where the boy was being raised was a wild place, with a smattering of houses along the riverbank, and surrounded by a thick oak forest and a few small, isolated farms. José, who had come dressed in a formal jacket and vest, must have seemed impossibly foreign to the barefoot eight-year-old. The only resemblance between the two was their blue eyes. When the only mother he had known told “Rodolfito” to greet his father, the barefoot, semiwild son drew back from the stranger. It would take a series of visits for the boy to become accustomed to his father and agree to join him in Temuco, and even then a sense of unease remained between them.
José del Carmen and Trinidad settled into their wood-plank house that was in a continual state of construction. José began to realize that he was just a minor player in Mason’s huge, active world. There would be little special treatment from his wife’s brother-in-law, forty-three years his senior. Meanwhile, he continued to mourn for Rosa Neftalí profoundly and often returned to her grave in Parral. On those trips he would occasionally visit Aurelia Tolrá in Talcahuano. As a man who was accustomed to the freedom of solitude, he quickly found himself straining against the confines of family life. It had been hardly a year since Aurelia had counseled him to return to Trinidad, but now José found himself longing for her instead.
He had known the attractive Aurelia for years now, during which time they had developed a special, intimate friendship. Now in his mid-thirties, José looked and acted more dignified than he had in the past. He had taken on the familial responsibility that Aurelia herself had urged him to. With his solid body, handsome face, and hypnotic, rare blue eyes, José was a charmer. Thus on one of his visits to Talcahuano, after one of their long conversations at the pension over a bottle or two of wine, José del Carmen’s maturity made a deep impression on Aurelia. Their mutual attraction was undeniable. Aurelia was now a grown woman, with an endearing charm and a stern yet striking beauty. With a full moon shining on the water in the port below and everyone else in the pension asleep, the two joined each other in bed. Near the end of that year, 1906, she became pregnant with his child.
To avoid a scandal, Aurelia left the pension to her sisters and moved to San Rosendo, a railroad village at the juncture of two lines. There she gave birth to Neftalí’s half sister, Laura, on August 2, 1907. Aurelia set up a new pension house in San Rosendo and courageously cared for Laura alone, though José del Carmen would often take the train up from Temuco to visit. Trinidad had no idea about the relationship or the birth.
Aurelia was devoted to her daughter and in love with José. But despite her strong character, evidenced by the self-sufficiency and discipline that it took to run a pension while raising a child by herself, Aurelia’s situation became increasingly difficult to manage. Her Catholic faith—she always wore a crucifix around her neck—gave her strength, but it was also the source of great anxiety. How could she, in good conscience, continue to see a married man who was also the father of her illegitimate child? After two anguished, isolated years in San Rosendo, Aurelia, convinced she was unfit to raise a daughter alone, told José it was time for him to make a choice: either come back with her to Talcahuano and claim his daughter, or, if he had to stay with the family he established in Temuco, take Laura to his home with Trinidad. Aurelia would even have her daughter drop her last name, Tolrá, and take up Trinidad’s; she would be known as Laura Reyes Candia.
From Temuco, José del Carmen answered her call. He brought his son Neftalí, now seven or eight, along with him to pick up his new half sister. A hard rain fell as they took the train to San Rosendo, where Aurelia was waiting for them. It was the first time she and Neftalí had ever seen each other. His clothes were soaked; Aurelia helped him change and dried his clothes, then she put him and Laura to sleep in the same bed. Bewildered from this strange trip, Neftalí fell asleep wondering who in the world this skinny girl was, in bed beside him, and why he was there. An unshakable bond soon formed between the two of them.
The next morning, he awoke to see Laura’s bags were already packed. Aurelia’s eyes swelled with tears as José del Carmen took her daughter away with him. Laura too was struck by the sudden separation.
The father and the two half siblings rode the rickety steam train back to Temuco, seeing the endless forests and pastures passing outside the window. José reflected on his life and the change to come. It was the last time he would visit Aurelia.
When the train arrived in Temuco and the three travelers reached the wooden house, José finally confessed to his affair with Aurelia. Trinidad was outwardly neither angry nor hurt. Instead it seemed as if she had known about it all along, or at least suspected it. Trinidad had a certain equanimity, the source of which couldn’t be traced, but her inner nature was sweet, diligent, with a campesina’s sense of humor. Her compassion was limitless. Without a word, though perhaps with some resignation, she agreed to take care of Laurita. In their Temuco house, Trinidad thus would raise three children: her own Rodolfo, Rosa’s Neftalí, and Aurelia’s Laura. This family, with its complex origins and unique dynamics, would shape Neftalí’s formative years; its secrets and transgressions would mark the future poet for his entire life.
Chapter Two
Where the Rain Was Born
I first saw trees, ravines
decorated with flowers of wild beauty,
humid territory, forests that flame,
and winter behind the world, flooded.
My childhood is wet shoes, broken trunks
fallen in the dense forest, devoured by vines
and beetles, sweet days above the oats,
and the golden beard of my father leaving
towards the majesty of the railways.
—“The Frontier (1904)”
Trinidad and her stepson had a close, confiding relationship. Trinidad not only nurtured Neftalí affectionately, but protected him as much as she could from the flares of his father’s increasingly short-fused temper, much as José’s stepmother had done for him as a child. In his memoirs, Neruda calls Doña Trinidad his “guardian angel,” and notes tenderly that her “gentle shadow watched over my childhood.”
She governed the Reyes family home, which was always in a state of flux. The interior patio of the house was a familiar, essential setting in Neftalí’s social development growing up. The extended Mason family, as well as neighbors and friends, constantly interacted on the patio and, as Neruda later said, shared everything: “tools or books, birthday cakes, rubbing ointments, umbrellas, tables and chairs.”
Gloomy moss and various vines grew freely on the patio and up the two-story walls. Overflowing potted red geraniums sat atop a five-foot-tall armoire on one side of the patio, and a young palm tree was situated in the center. There were other fruit trees by the fence, and a patch of grass where cilantro, mint, and some medicinal herbs grew. There was a chicken coop. The gate dangling from the fence was rendered irrelevant by the constant circulation of people as the Ortegas, the Masons, and other relatives, friends, and neighbors passed through.
Many of the Mason clan, in which Charles served as paterfamilias, all lived on the same block with interconnecting backyards. José del Carmen’s house adjoined Charles Mason’s larger and much nicer home. The Masons by then had a very full house with six children (two had died in infancy), plus the adopted Orlando, whose parentage was still a secret. Another adjoining home was that of Rudecindo Ortega, who had fathered Orlando and later married Mason’s youngest daughter, Telésfora. In 1899, Telésfora gave birth to Rudecindo Ortega Mason. José del Carmen’s half brother Abdías also lived nearby. He had married Mason and Micaela’s daughter Glasfira, and they had six children who grew up alongside Neftalí.
Like the families that inhabited them, these houses were always being augmented. Consequently, they seemed perpetually under construction. Incomplete staircases led to floors that were equally unfinished, and a conglomeration of objects populated the compound: saddles lined up by the entrances, large wine barrels sat in corners, and ponchos, sombreros, horseshoes, and horse spurs lined the walls. This atmosphere of constant evolution helped to ignite Neftalí’s prodigious creativity. Decades later, Neruda would fill his own homes with unique collections of objects, from ships’ figureheads, glass bottles, and countless seashells to Asian masks and Russian dolls.
There was some pragmatism behind José del Carmen’s efforts and design. A purposeful path cut through the rectangular property, directly linking the street to the patio. Other than the particularities of the objects all around, the walls lacked any creative, artistic sensibility. The second floor was built quickly out of the need to expand when all the children came together at once. Its construction was thrifty and basic, yet the windows were large.
Neftalí’s room looked out over the patio, where he’d get lost in the rain raking the leaves of the avocado tree or the coal-colored smoke disappearing into the sky as it rose from the pipe jutting out from the kitchen’s wood-burning stove. Near the window stood the little desk on which he would start to write his first poems in his arithmetic book.
Right across from the house was a no-name bar, just some shack with hitching posts outside where Mapuche would exchange whatever money they made from whatever wares they managed to sell that day for aguardiente—firewater—in Chile made from grapes like a harsh grappa. Not all Mapuche were drunks, but Neftalí saw how Temuco disenfranchised all of them. The injustices they faced made many Mapuche despondent. Witnessing their condition instilled in Neftalí a lifelong empathy for the oppressed. Their downtrodden state mirrored the mental state that was now descending upon him.
Neftalí seemed to embody a natural melancholy, which would slowly begin to slip into serious sorrow as he progressed through childhood. His figure cut thin, a reflection of his weak constitution. His demanding father inflicted a hefty emotional toll, and the relentless rain of Temuco’s long winters made him restless.
The railroad ran through his childhood, as constant as the rain. Charles Mason’s foresight into the new railroad’s potential for bringing development to the country around Temuco proved accurate. Business at his hotel was steady, as people continued to migrate south. José, now integrated into Mason’s family, must have felt he had proven himself to be a steady, mature, and reliable head of household. Whether he got it from pressing Mason or not, José finally got a job with the railroad company.
