A Long Petal of the Sea

With Allende’s government in place, the country experiences shortages of essential products like baby formula, toilet paper, and food, due to the “opposition’s cunning sabotage” (221). The working classes are “still euphoric,” but the country is divided into “irreconcilable groups” (223), with elites temporarily fleeing to neighboring countries. The del Solars head to Buenos Aires and leave Juana to manage the house in Santiago. Felipe is the only family member to stay behind, but he too has become a conservative.

By now, Marcel is an adult. When the mining industry is nationalized, a copper corporation gives him a grant to study geology in the United States. In Colorado, Marcel is “comfortable in his own skin” (228) and moves into an apartment with “his first love, a young Jamaican woman” (228). Marcel is therefore absent from Chile when Carme dies on her 87th birthday. When Jordi awakes to find her dead, he wanders off. Later, his body is found in the river. The couple were together for 19 years. Marcel, who had the closest relationship with Carme, is inconsolable. Buying a plot in the cemetery to bury Carme and Jordi, Victor realizes “from this moment on he belonged definitively to Chile” (231). His dead are buried here.

After warning Allende that the right wing is gathering arms, Victor finds that the president is already aware of the situation but cannot legally act to raid factories. Amid this tension, homage is paid to Pablo Neruda, who received the Nobel Prize the previous year, at the National Stadium. Neruda is ill and “afraid for Chile” (233). As it turns out, he is correct to be afraid. On September 11, 1973, there is a military coup in Chile, with General Augusto Pinochet leading it and personifying the dictatorship. Allende is killed along with many others.

Both Roser and Marcel are out of the country at the time of the coup. Victor is working tirelessly at the hospital. When he emerges from work after nine days, he observes an “unrecognizable city” (236), with revolutionary murals gone and shop windows filled with products previously unavailable and now at soaring prices. The del Solars return to Chile, “ready to reclaim their privileges and the reins of the economy, though not political power” (239). Pablo Neruda dies, and there is suspicion that he was poisoned. While protest is allowed at his funeral, given the international attention it receives, the government takes photos of those attending.

Victor is arrested after being denounced by his neighbor, whom Victor had treated well. He becomes one of the many who disappear. In his case, he is taken to a concentration camp in the north, where he is forced to strip and stand in the “hot desert sun for hours without food or water” (242). About to turn 60, Victor finds himself in a camp even worse than the one in France. Roser returns to Chile and spends months searching for him.

For 11 months, Victor endures horrendous conditions and abuse in a concentration camp. Starved, sunburned, beaten, and humiliated, Victor finds inner strength. He says little at the camp and knows that Roser is searching for him. His bad fortune changes when the camp’s commandant suffers a heart attack and Victor saves him, performing the necessary surgery at a provincial hospital. Soon after that, Victor is paroled. He and Roser profess their love for one another over tears when reunited.

Given the repressive conditions under the Pinochet regime, Victor fears being arrested again. He seeks asylum in the Venezuelan embassy and is soon given safe passage to Venezuela. Once again, Victor and Roser are in a new country, though Roser has spent much time in Venezuela with the orchestra. She is more accepting of the easy-going culture where “any excuse was good enough to celebrate with music, dancing, and alcohol” (254). Victor finds the adjustment more difficult but is able to get work in “Caracus’s oldest hospital” (254). Visiting Aitor, Roser finds him happy despite his confinement to a wheelchair. He confesses that he is “a better husband, father, and grandfather” (251) in the wheelchair than when he could walk. Roser finally tells Victor about her past affair with Aitor. While that confession “awoke in him retrospective jealousy” (253), he sees the uselessness of worrying about the past and delights in his love of Roser.

After a long illness, Franco dies on November 20, 1975. The following year, Victor and Roser return to Spain for the first time since their flight as refugees. The country is unrecognizable to them: “Forty years of Francoism had left a deep imprint noticeable in the way people related to one another, and in every aspect of culture” (257). After six months, Victor and Roser conclude that this is not their home. They are Chilean, but for now, they return to Venezuela.

In Venezuela, Victor and Roser attend an exhibit of Ofelia del Solar’s art. It is the first time that Victor has seen Ofelia since their affair of so many years ago. It took “several seconds” (261) for Ofelia to remember Victor’s name, leaving Victor to conclude that “what for him had been a stab to the heart had left no trace in her” (261). Making excuses, Roser leaves Victor and Ofelia. Over a drink, Ofelia tells Victor of her deep love for Matias, who died of a heart attack six years ago. She has two adult children and enjoys her artwork. In providing an update about her family, Ofelia speaks of Father Urbina “with sarcasm” (264), noting the priest’s defense of the dictatorship’s methods. Victor is not impressed with Ofelia’s artwork or character. When he returns home to Roser, she bursts out laughing. She knew he would be disappointed with Ofelia and would return to her.

After nine years, word arrives that Victor is among those exiles authorized to return to Chile. Marcel goes first to “scout out the terrain” and reports that Chile is prosperous on the surface, but the “degree of inequality” is “staggering” (268). When Marcel accepts a job at a copper corporation there, Roser and Victor decide to return. At first, Victor, as a former dissident, is not allowed to work in the public hospital. Instead, he finds work in Santiago’s “most exclusive clinic” (270). The military government had privatized health care, treating it as a consumer good. Felipe, who lives in England now, visits Victor there on one of his frequent trips to Chile. The two old friends now have diametrically opposed ideologies, with Felipe a conservative and Victor a progressive.

In addition to his paid job, Victor volunteers in one of the many shantytowns in Santiago. His patients there live “in shacks made of cardboard and wooden planks with beaten earth floors,” and they have “no running water, electricity, or latrines” (272). Victor spends his salary buying medical supplies for these clients, leaving him and Roser to rely on her earnings and their savings. Thanks to Venezuelan generosity from ambassador Valentin Sanchez, Roser performs at open-air concerts and works to form a youth orchestra. Roser also accompanies Victor to the shantytown and teaches music. After three years volunteering in this community, Victor and Roser arrive one day to find only “bulldozers clearing the ground where the shanties had been” (277). The police and soldiers came during the night to evacuate the residents at gunpoint, ensuring the poor stay invisible.

Finally, in 1987, the dictatorship begins to relax some restrictions, and a referendum is held in 1988 to decide if Pinochet will remain in power for eight more years. The people vote no in droves. With no US or military backing, Pinochet leaves office in March 1990. After 17 years, Chile makes a slow return to democracy. With Pinochet gone, Victor is welcomed back to the public hospital and becomes a celebrity of sorts, “the most admired [cardiac] specialist in the country” (280). Roser is surprised with Victor’s reaction, one of vanity which is uncharacteristic of him.

At 73, Roser is diagnosed with terminal cancer. This devastating news brings Victor crashing back to earth, and he takes time off to be with Roser. Six years ago, the couple had purchased a home in a part of Santiago that was still bucolic. There, they enjoy the peace and beauty of nature. Marcel visits regularly. Roser accepts her impending death stoically, but it takes Victor time to give up. Finally, he does, saying, “I’m not going to let you suffer anymore” (286).

Three years after Roser’s death, Victor plans to spend his 80th birthday alone. He prepares a special Catalonian meal, allowing the “legendary aroma” to invade “the house and his soul” (292). Marcel calls and encourages him to invite his neighbor, Meche, over for dinner. Both Roser in her final days and now Marcel encourage Victor to form a relationship with Meche, whom they see as “an ideal partner” (294). Victor declines to do so, as he remembers his previous loves. Of course, the “only woman who counted was Roser” (291). He is content to be alone with his animals in the house that he and Roser shared.

Just as he is relaxing before dinner, a visitor arrives claiming to be his daughter. It took Ingrid Schnake a long time to track Victor down, as she is now 52 years old and about to become a grandmother herself. For the first time, Victor learns about Ofelia’s first pregnancy. When Ofelia insisted on keeping the baby, Father Urbina conspired to take the baby from Ofelia without her knowledge. Only Laura and the midwife knew of the plan and participated in it. They all lied to Ofelia, telling her that she had a baby boy who died. The baby was adopted by a loving German couple who lived in the south of the country.

This lie haunted Laura, who on her deathbed asked Juana to find the baby and let the truth come out. Juana took this promise seriously, as she saw its fulfillment necessary for Laura to enter heaven. Enlisting Felipe in her task, they first went to Father Urbana, who readily admitted the deed and defended his actions. He could not remember the name of the couple but let slip that money was donated. After much effort, Felipe found the record of the donation, and he then told Ofelia what happened. Although Ofelia was not interested in meeting her long-lost daughter, she traveled with Felipe and Juana to meet her. Ingrid resembled a younger Ofelia, but the two did not bond. Ofelia finally named Victor as Ingrid’s father. With this promise of finding the baby complete, Juana was ready to die and did so soon thereafter. Felipe, who was so close to her, buried her in the family plot.

Victor is ecstatic to learn that he has a daughter and three grandchildren, and he phones Marcel to tell him the good news. He in no way takes the place of Ingrid’s real father who raised her, but he will be part of her life moving forward. They spend the night of his birthday sharing a Catalonian meal and talking. While they do not resemble one another physically, they share traits, particularly a tendency toward depression. She encourages Victor to not retire from life but to seek adventure and maybe fall in love once more. After Ingrid leaves, Victor resolves to share some of his home-cooked meal and dessert with his neighbor Meche.