Then one morning Maria had just managed to reach the top of the staircase
after a long climb, during which she had had to pause on every other step in order to catch her breath, when she had fainted onto the floor, only to be discovered by Don Carlos’s mistress, Serenidad, furtively leaving his bedroom on tiptoe. Serenidad would have liked to ignore the woman who lay on the wooden floorboards like a heaving ox, but her conscience overcame her revulsion and she called for her lover, fanning Maria with the wad of notes Don Carlos had given her to pay off her debts. So embarrassed was Don Carlos at having been discovered with his mistress that he sent Maria immediately to the private hospital in Valparaiso where she was informed by a kindly doctor that she was in labour. Don Carlos’s chauffeur drove Pablo into Valparaiso to join his wife. They held hands as Maria pushed, but she didn’t feel any pain or any discomfort. Their baby slid out of her body like a newborn seal, with silky brown skin, shiny black hair and the correct number of little fingers and little toes. Maria and Pablo were too in awe of the miracle to cry. They watched their child as if she were the first child ever to have been born into the world. ‘She shall be called Estella,’ said Maria with reverence, ‘because she is a star loaned to us from the heavens.’
Maria lost weight. It didn’t happen gradually, but within the short space of a
month. She was never again the ‘Spaghetti’ of her youth, but Pablo liked her that way. Now he had two people to love.
Pablo had always found it difficult to communicate, even to his wife. So he talked to his subterranean dead - an ever-increasing audience - with a fluency that evaded him when he spoke to the living. He patted his favourite tombstone that marked the grave of Osvaldo Garcia Segundo who died in 1896 from a single shot in the head delivered by the man whose wife had meant to run away with him. The wife had killed herself afterwards, with the same gun. But her husband had refused to have her buried anywhere near her lover and threw her body into the sea. Pablo wondered whether Osvaldo Garcia Segundo could see her from where he was, high up there on the cliff. He hoped so. That story had always touched him. He now unburdened his worries about his daughter and the man who had not only stolen her heart but her future in one short, useless affair, because he felt that Osvaldo would understand.
‘She’ll never marry now, you know,’ he said, tapping his fingers on the gravestone. ‘Not now. Who’ll have her? She’s pretty enough, but her belly will put them all off. Who’d want another man’s child? She believes this young man will come back, but you know that’s not the way life is. I don’t know who’s been feeding her these romantic ideas but they’ll come to no good. Mark my words. No good at all. I don’t know what to do. Maria has flooded the house with her tears and I put my fist through the wall. What’s going to become of us?’ he sighed, remembering his little girl as a child and the pleasure she gave them. ‘You give them everything you have, your possessions, you earnings, your love, your dreams and what do you get in return? Nothing but ingratitude,’ he continued, staring out across the sea. ‘Ingratitude.’
Estella had grown strong. She had temporarily sunk into despair after being dismissed from her job. But then she had pulled herself up by focusing on the two important things in her life - Ramon and her child. While she still believed he would come back for her she had the will-power to put her job behind her and think only of the future. She hadn’t listened to the ranting of her parents. She had waited as Don Ramon had asked her to and all the while she waited she had considered her dreams, like a pharmacist weighing out medicine. Don Ramon would return, of that she had no doubt, but what would become of her? He was still married. She wouldn’t want to go and live in the city; she had no desire for a glamorous life. She had no desire to see the world, either. She
didn’t want to tie him to a life that wouldn’t suit him. She simply wanted to breathe the same air as him, make love to the distant roar of the ocean and bring up their child with love. She had longed for him to come back so that she could tell him she didn’t want any more of him than that.
She had worked out his reservations from the conversations she had overheard between Don Ignacio and Señora Mariana as they discussed their ‘irresponsible’ son. Señora Mariana had been forgiving, explaining to her husband that Ramon was a free spirit, a being blessed with an unquenchable creativity. That explained why he couldn’t stay in one place for very long, why he was incapable of being a proper husband and father to his wife and children. Don Ignacio’s ears had throbbed with blood and he had sent his fist crashing onto the table, stating cuttingly that it was about time Ramon grew up and stopped behaving like a spoilt, petulant and selfish child. The world will continue to revolve without him setting it in motion with the burning soles of his feet, woman,’ he had growled, ‘but Helena and those children will be much the worse off without him.’ Estella had vowed not to be like Helena. She would give him his freedom in return for his love.