Read Online The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel - Free Book Online Page A

the capital. Along with my ten-month-old son, I was accompanied by Silvia Ossandón, an editor from the magazine, whom I had become friends with. We were met by the person in charge of public relations for la Casa Neruda, a man who had lived in exile in Mexico and who immediately took a liking to me. His name was Bernardo Baltiansky. We spoke a little bit before my tour through the museum house. We discovered that in the eighties we had lived in the same neighborhood. As I looked at the innumerable collections of the late author of I Confess I Have Lived , at all the remnants of his time on earth, I had only one thing on my mind, Ximena. When I left I was going to ask this man if he had known her, if he could tell me something about her—any piece of information, any fact that would bring me closer to her would satisfy me. I needed to find a way to bring up the subject. While thinking about it, Bernardo told me that in his lifetime Neruda had written, traveled, carried out diplomatic duties, been married several times, and above all had built houses and furniture, a colossal oeuvre. Ximena in turn had passed through the world on feet unsure and slippery. Her time here had been short, but resplendent for those of us lucky enough to have seen her.
    At the end of the tour, Bernardo invited us to have a drink in the museum café. The ocean waves lapped the sand a few meters away. It seemed like the water’s smooth persistence whispered secrets from the not too distant past when Chile’s coast had seen the most terrible atrocities, secrets no one was ready to hear, as if what those people most feared was waking the ghosts of the disappeared. Silvia reminded me that if we wanted to find an open restaurant we should leave soon. I asked Bernardo if he had known other Chileans in Villa Olímpica. As if he had expected the question, he answered yes, his sister had also lived there with her daughters.
    “My niece committed suicide in one of those buildings,” he said.
    Inside my body, I felt my blood turn as cold as the waves of the cobalt sea.
    “What was her name?” I asked, knowing it could be no one else. Bernardo confirmed it. He also told me that some months before her death his niece had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, an illness that served to encompass all the unclassifiable disorders, and which also happened to be the diagnosis for Javiera Enríquez. Bernardo spoke of her without telling me anything I didn’t already know. Until he started talking about her painting.
    “She was very talented. The best painting she did is still in my sister’s house. It’s of an immense tree that grew in Villa Olímpica, just in front of her house, where she spent many hours.”
    “And your sister?” I asked, “does she still live there?”
    “No, she lives in Santiago. If you’d like, we can call her.”
    That evening I had promised to have dinner at my writer friend Alejandro Zambra’s house. When I got there, I told him the story and asked him to go with me to the woman’s apartment. It wasn’t far from where he lived and he readily agreed. As soon as Ximena’s mother opened the door, I saw the painting on the main wall of her living room. It had a power of attraction, like a face with a strong magnetism. At least that’s the effect it had on me. It really was a portrait of our tree, if trees can belong to people. On the volcanic rocks there were silhouettes of children sitting in front of one another and back-to-back, children whose faces couldn’t clearly be made out, pensive children who played neither together nor alone. Children like we had been. The painting moved me to tears. All of a sudden, that feeling of abandonment, a constant in those years, came back to life; but so too did the composure I had always maintained, in those days when letting others see me cry was the last thing I’d do. Habits we develop in childhood stay with us forever, and even though we are able by force of great will to keep them at