The Rhythm of Memory (19 page)

Upon that, the radio transmission went dead. The gas attack on the palace began, and the bombing continued.

Salomé turned away. The pain of listening to Allende’s last words was unbearable. Doña Olivia and Don Fernando were shaking their heads, their mouths covered by their hands.

However, as pained as Octavio was, he was overcome by a strange sense of pride. He imagined Allende standing by the microphone, the bombs exploding beside him, the chandeliers
breaking in pieces over his head, glass shattering beneath his feet, and fire burning the palace’s velvet curtains. Yet, through it all, Allende’s voice had never been more eloquent. He was shining in his darkest hour with grace and with conviction. During those moments of peril, he had not stuttered, his voice had not wavered. Octavio, looking beyond the transistor radio into the depths of his own wild garden, was now far away. He had temporarily transported himself to Allende’s private chamber in the presidential palace. He saw Allende with his chin held high and his eyes firmly rooted ahead. He saw him standing there before him with his thick, black glasses and English tweed jacket, his hair elegantly combed back. He had remained stalwart: unwilling to board the helicopters that had been offered to take him safely into exile. He would remain the leader of the country who had voted him into office, masterful and determined, even to the very end.

Silence had enveloped the room, and at that moment Octavio realized the gravity of his pupil’s fate. Only then, under the hush of his wife and children, did he understand that it was all over, that something terrible had happened to his beloved country. And although Octavio had no idea of the awful circumstances that would soon afflict his family, he felt himself sicken inside. Under the swirl of his wife’s whimpers, his mother-in-law’s wails, and his children’s confusion, Octavio began to cry, for it was not the ending he had imagined for this great man. Had it been a script, he would have demanded a rewrite. He would have made it so that Allende walked out of the palace badly wounded but with his life, his pride, and his political vision still intact.

But Octavio had not yet come to understand that life had a way of thumbing its nose at happy endings. That’s why people had
always loved his movies. He made them believe that love and beauty could triumph over sadness and evil. Yet even Chile’s most beloved cinematic treasure could not anticipate the horror and the trials of his next starring role.

S
ANTIAGO
, C
HILE

N
OVEMBER
1973

Octavio slipped into a deep depression after Allende’s tragic death. The drama of the president’s last moments seemed to give Octavio even more cause to deify the nation’s slain leader.

“I will never support this Pinochet!” Octavio complained to all of his colleagues and friends. “The man’s a butcher! What sort of man cuts down a leader who has been elected into office by democratic elections! A coward! A traitor!” There weren’t enough words in Octavio’s vocabulary to describe the bilious hatred he had for the general who, in his mind, had murdered his friend.

“You should be careful what you say, Octavio,” Salomé warned. “And to whom you say it.”

But he refused to listen to her. “I will not hide my feelings. I am not a coward!”

She had broken into tears on more than one occasion because her husband seemed so full of anger since the coup. Santiago itself was frozen in a stupefied fear. The new general had made promises to restore the nation’s faltering economy, and to rebuild the presidential palace, which was now a pile of broken glass and ashen walls, but still he maintained a police state. Salomé had enough stress reassuring her children and her parents that all would soon return to the way things once were. But it was a poor charade she felt forced to play.

She knew this coup was different from the ones Chile had experienced in the past. Coups had been a part of Chilean life for decades. But, for the most part, they had always been short-lived. The president was forced out by the military, ushered into exile, and eventually, the general in charge would step down and let new elections take place.

Everyone in Chile was expecting Augusto Pinochet to be no different. But they were wrong. Nearly six months had passed and the general had yet to step down and allow democratic elections to install a new president. He had designated himself Chile’s new leader, and it appeared he was there to stay.

The streets were lined with men carrying machine guns, and the palace remained a testament to the violence of Allende’s defeat and death. Octavio seemed like a complete stranger to Salomé. Perhaps even more foreign to her than her city under siege. He wouldn’t listen to reason. He spoke of forming his own political party to defy Pinochet and his henchmen; he told the writers at a studio that they should consider doing a film on the tragic and heroic life of Allende, in which he could star in the leading role.

“Your outspokenness about the coup is going to get you in trouble,” Salomé again warned him.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he chastised her. His voice was becoming increasingly patronizing toward her. On occasion, he sometimes even sounded cruel.

“You should be thinking about your family!” she cried.

“Haven’t I always thought about our family!” he hollered out at her one night. “Can you actually sit here and tell me I haven’t sacrificed for my family…always provided for them! Haven’t you one of the largest, loveliest houses in this city!”

“Octavio…” And even through her tears, her eyes were ablaze.

“Stop looking at me like that, Salomé!” he shouted. “You know I would never do anything to jeopardize our family. Think about all I’ve done to get this far. I came from nothing! Unlike you!”

“What do you mean unlike me?” Salomé was fuming. “You begrudge me now because of where I come from?”

Octavio remained silent.

“I married you because I loved you, Octavio!”

She could tell he regretted what he had said to her just minutes before. But still he didn’t offer an apology.

“I’m going to bed now,” she said flatly. “I will not have you play out these scenes with me where you are the misunderstood hero.”

Salomé did not sleep that night. She could feel her husband slip under the sheets hours later, his breathing irregular and his body twisting in frustration from their argument that remained unresolved. Salomé turned from Octavio and pulled the covers tightly to her chin.

Three weeks later when Octavio came home from work, his face lined in anger, Salomé couldn’t say she was surprised to learn that the studio had fired him. That he found himself suddenly unemployed was a shock to him, but she had known that his comments against the new regime would get him into trouble. Once again, he had been naive and lacking in foresight. She shook her head to herself as she took his coat from him and told Consuela to prepare some tea.

“They’ll see,” he said as he thrust his fingers into his hair. He was pulling at the curls so violently that she feared he was going to make his scalp bleed.

“You could make things better, Octavio, if you went back and apologized for your behavior over the past months. They’ll probably
ask you to make a public retraction of your previous remarks, but it wouldn’t be so terrible.”

“Are you out of your mind, Salomé?” He looked up at her and she could see that he was beyond reason. “I would never be such a hypocrite. Let them fire me! See if I care!”

“I see,” she said quietly. “Place your pride over your family then.”

“What!” he cried. His face was now red. “What do I need to apologize for? We have enough money to live quietly for the rest of our lives.”

“You? You, who always said you had to keep working to make sure there was enough money…always saying that it could easily run out one day and you had to keep working to make sure you had saved enough.…Now there is enough?” She began to cry. “You wouldn’t stop working so that you could spend more than a few months with me and the children. But now to fuel your vendetta against Pinochet, you’re willing to give up everything? I don’t understand you at all!” Tears were running down Salomé’s face.

“I took time off in between my sixth and seventh movies,” he said quietly.

“Before Neruda came into our house, yes,” she said, shaking her head. “I wish he had never, ever stepped into this house of ours.”

“How can you say that, darling?” Octavio’s voice had finally become soft again.

“We wouldn’t be fighting like this if he hadn’t.”

“We might never have fallen in love without his poems.” Octavio took his wife’s hand. “We can’t live our lives by censoring it with ‘What if we hadn’t done this or that?’ ”

She didn’t want to spend another sleepless night with him, neither of them talking to the other. So she allowed him to hug her
tightly. She allowed him to reach into her blouse and caress her breasts and kiss her neck. When he carried her upstairs and laid her on their bed and made love to her with long strokes of his hand and his pelvis, she locked her ankles around his brown back and didn’t protest.

But their fight had left something unresolved in her and she was full of apprehension. When he fell asleep next to her, melting like warm chocolate against her side, she got up and went downstairs to drink the pot of tea that Consuela had made hours before, not even noticing that it was ice-cold.

S
ANTIAGO
, C
HILE

D
ECEMBER
1973

Every day since he had been let go at the studio, Octavio left the house at the same hour he had done since Salomé and he were married. She knew he was too restless to stay at home and read his novels or work on his writing. He was incensed that he had been dismissed because of his political involvement and couldn’t sit in the garden alone with his thoughts.

So Octavio ate his
churro
and drank his cup of coffee and set out to speak with friends about the different work he could do, the theater, television. However, they all said the same thing: they could not help him. Only one of his friends was honest enough to speak plainly: “You must change your opinion of Pinochet. You must openly accept him. We all have, even though we think he’s a sneaky bastard. You cannot continue on this personal crusade, nothing good will come of it. You will only continue to remain blacklisted and you will never find work again.”

“Blacklisted?” Octavio was completely shocked. He had never heard of such a thing. “They’ve blacklisted me?”

“Of course they have, you imbecile! You think you can make statements about the general being a murderer and the country being an embarrassment and not be reported? That those declarations have no consequences?”

“Who would report me? What sort of coward, what kind of spy? I ask.” Octavio was now fuming. “I have never said these things except when I was in the company of friends and colleagues!”

“The walls talk, Octavio. You must realize things have changed.”

“I understand people have changed. But I have not. I will not.”

“We all have changed. How can we not when the world around us has? I suggest you think about your wife and family.”

“My wife and family,” Octavio replied curtly, in the same tone he had used with his wife and his in-laws. “I assure you, my wife and family will be just fine.”

He left his friend and returned home visibly annoyed. He was tired of everyone’s inaction. “Why aren’t people banding together and demanding that the general step down and allow democratic elections?” he asked Salomé when he sat down for dinner.

“People are afraid.” Her voice now was terse and impatient. She was tired of having the same conversation with him.

“Afraid of what?”

“There is talk that people are disappearing in the city.”

“You shouldn’t believe such hearsay,” he said, shaking his head. “You sound ridiculous saying such nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense, Octavio. Why should anyone take risks…especially when every street corner has a soldier with a machine gun strapped against his chest.”

“It’s all for effect,” Octavio said confidently. “Pinochet’s trying to make all of Santiago look like the backdrop of a movie set, for chrissakes!” He pushed his plate to the side. Half his food remained uneaten. “The man is trying to make people fear him through cheap tricks. If the people of Chile stood up to him, I bet he would skulk away like the sewer rat that he really is.”

“Do you think you should be the one to call his bluff, Octavio?” She could feel her blood boiling underneath her skin.

“I think any intelligent person should point out the injustice of this man’s claim to legitimate office.”

“I can’t believe you! You are acting like a fool, Octavio!”

“A fool?” He hit their dining-room table with his fist. The empty glasses and plates from where the children had eaten hours before rattled against the wooden surface. Salomé knew that the maid had been afraid to interrupt them and clear them away.

“You have no understanding of politics!” he shouted.

“Perhaps I don’t, but I have a deep understanding of family!”

“And I don’t?” He was raising his voice once more.

“Go and wage your war, Octavio! See if I care!”

“You don’t understand what I am saying…Salomé.”

“I think I do. You think because I got pregnant and didn’t go to university that I don’t understand? That I can’t possibly understand what is going on here?” Salomé’s eyes were now wide with anger. “Octavio, I agree with you that the general murdered Allende. I agree with you that there should be democratic elections in Chile. But you cannot take this battle on yourself.”

“But if I don’t, who will, Salomé? Who will?” He was screaming at her now. “Tell me, Salomé. Tell me how will I live with myself if I know I stood by and did nothing. That I was silent.”

“I can’t tell you how to do that, Octavio!”

“I would rather be dead than live my life under such cowardice.”

“You would rather be dead?” she screamed. “You would rather be dead and leave me a widow with three children, Octavio?” She was shrieking now and her entire face and throat were red except for the three blue veins that were pulsating in her neck.