Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (36 page)

Sofia had trusted Dominique right from the moment she had shown sympathy for her situation. ‘You know,
cherie
, years ago I had a roaring affair with an Italian. I loved him with all my heart, but my parents said he was not good enough for me. He owned a small leather shop in Florence. In those days, I lived in Paris. My parents sent me to Florence to study art, not men - but I can tell you,
cherie
, I learned more about Italy with Giovanni than I would ever have done in a classroom.’ She had laughed, a deep throaty laugh. ‘And now I cannot remember his second name. It was a long time ago. What I am trying to say,
cherie
, is that I know how you are feeling. I cried for a month.’

Sofia had now cried for more than a month. She had lain on Dominique’s white damask bedspread one rainy afternoon and told her everything, from the moment Santi had arrived back home that summer to the moment he had kissed her goodbye under the ombu tree. She had lost herself in her memories and Dominique had sat back against the pillows chainsmoking, listening sympathetically to her every word. She had left out no details, describing their lovemaking without blushing. She had read Dominique’s novels, so she knew there was little that would shock her.

Dominique had supported Sofia right from the start. She couldn’t understand why Anna and Paco hadn’t allowed the two to marry and have their child. If she had been Sofia’s mother she wouldn’t have stood in their way. There must be more to all this, she thought, and blamed it on Anna. ‘So unlike Paco,’ Antoine had said when Dominique had recounted Sofia’s story.

Then they had discussed the baby. Sofia was adamant that she would keep it. ‘I have told Santi about the baby in my letter. I know he will want me to have it. He’ll make an adorable father. I’ll take it back to Argentina. It will be out of their control then. We’ll be a family and that’s the end of it.’

Dominique was encouraging. Of course she shouldn’t abort the child. What a barbaric thing to do. She would help her through it - she’d be proud to. It would be their secret until Sofia decided she was ready to tell her family. ‘You

can stay as long as you like,’ she had said.'l will love you like my own daughter.’

At first it had been quite exciting. Sofia had written to Santi the minute she had arrived and Dominique had inscribed the envelope for her with wholehearted enthusiasm. Dominique had then taken her shopping up the rue de Rive to celebrate and bought her the latest European fashions. ‘Wear these while you can. You won’t fit into them for long,’ she had laughed.

They had gone skiing on weekends in Verbier where Antoine had a beautiful wooden chalet nestled in the mountainside, looking down the valley. Louis and Delfine brought friends and the house was filled with laughter and games in front of the flickering flames of the large open fire. They had posted the letter across the border with much ritual, pleased that no one would suspect a postmark from France. While Sofia missed Santi, she imagined him receiving her letter and scribbling back immediately. They calculated the time it would take for him to write to her and the time it would take for the letter to reach her. She waited excitedly for it to arrive. When the two weeks they had anticipated turned into a month, then two, her mood declined until she simply wasn’t able to eat or sleep and she began to appear tired and pale.

Sofia had filled her days with the various courses that Dominque had set up for her. Courses in French, courses in art, courses in music, courses in painting. ‘We must keep you busy so you don’t miss your home or think too much about Santi,’ she had said.

Sofia had allowed them to absorb her because they provided her with some sort of spiritual relief. The music she chose to play on Dominique’s piano was heart-wrenching, the paintings she painted were dark and melancholic, and she vented her tears in the face of such ethereal beauty when she studied the paintings of the Italian Renaissance. As she waited for Santi’s letter or for his presence that she felt sure would appear as a surprise on their doorstep, she used art to find expression for her misery and her hopelessness. She had written again, and again, in case he hadn’t received the first letter, but still no word came from him. No word at all.

She looked out over the lake and wondered whether Santi had been appalled by her pregnancy. Perhaps he didn’t want to know. Maybe he thought it was just better for everyone if he forgot about her and got on with his life. And what about Maria? Had she forgotten her too? Sofia had wanted to write to her; in fact, she had started a couple of letters but each time she had scrunched up

the paper and thrown it into the fire. She felt too ashamed. She didn’t know what to say. Sofia looked about her, at the small fragile flowers poking out through the melting snow. Spring was on its way and she had a child growing inside her. She should be happy. But she missed Santa Catalina, the hot summer days and their humid siestas in the attic where no one had been able to reach them.

When she returned to the house Dominique was frantically waving at her from the balcony, a blue envelope in her hand. Sofia ran up the road. Her depression lifted. Suddenly the clean air filled her lungs and she savoured the taste of spring. Dominique was smiling broadly, her white teeth glimmering against her scarlet lips.

‘I was so tempted to open it. Hurry! What does it say?’ she said, impatient with excitement. Finally the young man had written. Sofia would smile again.

Sofia grabbed the letter and looked at the writing on the front. ‘Oh!’ she groaned in disappointment. ‘It’s from Maria. But perhaps she’s written for him since they probably forbade him to write to me.’ She tore open the envelope. Her eyes scanned the lines of neat, flowery writing. ‘Oh no!’ she wailed and burst into tears.

‘What is it,
cherie,
what does it say?’ asked Dominique, alarmed. Sofia flopped onto the sofa while Dominique read the letter.

‘Who is Maxima Marguiles?’ she asked angrily.

‘I don’t know,’ sobbed Sofia, heartbroken. ‘Maria says he is going out with Maxima Marguiles. How can he - so soon?’

‘Do you believe your cousin?’

‘Of course I do. She was my best friend - after Santi.’

‘Perhaps he’s going out with someone else to show his family that he doesn’t care any more about you. Perhaps he is acting?’

Sofia took her head out of her hands. ‘Do you think so?’

‘He’s clever, isn't he?’

‘Yes, and I went out with Roberto Lobito for the same reason,’ she said, brightening up.

‘Roberto Lobito?’

‘Another story,’ she replied, waving her hand in the air, not wanting to be distracted from talking about Santi.

‘Did you tell Maria about your affair with Santi?’ Dominique asked. Sofia felt her stomach sink with guilt. She should have told Maria.

‘No. It was our secret, I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t tell anyone. I always told Maria everything - but this time ... well, I just couldn’t.’

‘So, you don’t think Maria knows,’ Dominique said steadily.

‘I don’t know,’ Sofia replied biting her nail in agitation. ‘No, she can’t know, because if she did she wouldn’t want to hurt me by telling me about Maxima. She would also have mentioned our affair in her letter. We were best, best friends. I imagine then she doesn’t know.’

‘Well, Santi will hardly have confided in her then, would he?’

‘No, you’re right.’

‘Okay, if I were you, I would wait until you receive a letter from Santi.’

So Sofia waited. The days lengthened into summer until the sun had melted all the snow and the farmers let their cows out of their sheds to roam freely amid the mountain flowers and long grasses. By May she was four months pregnant. Her belly was round but the rest of her was thin and gaunt. Dominique’s doctor told her that if she didn’t eat she would damage her child. So she forced herself to eat healthily and drink plenty of fresh water and fruit juices. Dominique worried about her constantly, praying that Santi would write, damn him! But no letter came. Sofia still hoped long after Dominique had given up hoping. She would sit for hours on the bench looking out across the lake, watching winter melt into spring, spring flower into summer and finally summer die into autumn. She felt a part of her die with it. Her hope.

It was only later when she felt less emotional and able to look at things more objectively, that it occurred to her that if Maria had known her whereabouts then Santi most certainly would have known, too. She realized that he could easily have written to her, but he hadn’t. He had betrayed her, for whatever reason. He had made a conscious decision not to communicate. Sofia tried to console herself by justifying his betrayal with many different reasons that might have given the desperately love-sick Santi no other option but to let her

goOn 2 October 1974 Sofia gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She wept as she held him to her breast and watched him feed. He had dark hair like her and his eyes were blue. Dominique told her that all babies were born with blue eyes. Then his will be green like his father’s,’ Sofia said. ‘Or brown like his mother’s,’ added Dominique.

The birth had been difficult. She had screamed as the pain had viciously

wrenched her womb apart. Gripping Dominique’s hand until it had drained of blood, she cried out for Santi. In those intense moments where struggle gives way to relief and finally joy, Sofia had felt her heart empty with her womb. Santi didn’t love her any more and the withdrawing of his love cast a shadow over her soul. She felt she had not only lost her lover, but the only true friend she had in the world. She sank once more into despair.

The delight she felt when she first held her child momentarily filled the void Santi had left. She ran her hand down his mottled cheek, stroked his angel hair and breathed in the warm scent of him. As he fed she played with his tiny hand that clutched hers possessively and refused to let it go, even once he had fallen asleep. He needed her. She took great pleasure in watching him fill his little stomach with her milk. Milk that would sustain his life and make him grow. As he sucked on her breast she felt a strange pulling sensation in her belly that delighted her. When he cried she felt it in her solar plexus even before she heard it. She would call him Santiguito, because if Santi had been there that is the way he would have wanted it - Little Santiago.

After the initial joy of loving her new baby, Sofia’s vision once more darkened and her future seemed to hold nothing to brighten it. It was then that she experienced a crisis of confidence. She was consumed by an icy panic that seemed to squeeze the air out of her lungs and make it difficult for her to breathe. She wasn’t capable of looking after a small baby on her own; she didn’t know how to. Not without Santi, not without Soledad. When she opened her mouth to scream, nothing came out but a long, silent cry. She was alone in the world and she didn’t know how to face it.

Sofia thought of Maria often. She yearned to share her misery with her friend, but didn’t know how to. She felt guilty. If Maria knew, which by now Sofia felt she most certainly did, she would feel betrayed. She knew for sure when no more letters arrived. Sofia felt so cut off from all that had been familiar to her. As much as she tried to love Geneva, it represented nothing but pain. Whenever she looked out of her hospital window, over those shimmering mountains in the distance, she thought about what she had lost. She had lost the affection of both Santi and Maria. She had lost her much-cherished home and all that was familiar to her, everything that had made her feel loved and secure. She felt abandoned and alone. She didn’t know where to go from there. Wherever she went, however far away, she couldn’t run away from herself and the deep sense of bereavement she carried inside her.

After a week in the hospital, Sofia brought her baby home to the Quai de Cologny. She had had a lot of time to think while she had lain in her hospital bed. It was no easy decision to come to, but it was plain that Santi didn’t want them. She couldn’t return home to Argentina, and she certainly wasn’t going to Lausanne as her parents had planned. At first, back in March, they had both written to her, attempting to explain themselves. Her father had written more often. But Sofia had never written back, so their letters had dried up. She supposed they thought that things would get back to normal once she returned home. But she wasn’t ever going home.

She explained to Dominique that she couldn’t bear to be in Argentina if she couldn’t have Santi, and Geneva was too quiet for her to build a future there. She was going to put her roots down in London.

‘Why London?’ asked Dominique, deeply disappointed that Sofia and little Santiguito were going to leave her. ‘You know you can stay here with us. You don’t have to go.’

‘I know. But I need to get away from everything that reminds me of Santi. I love it here with you. You and Antoine are the only family I have now. But you have to understand, I want to make a new start.’ She sighed and lowered her eyes. Dominique saw that the child before her had grown into a young woman since she had become a mother. Yet, she didn’t glow with that post-natal radiance normal in young mothers. She looked sad and oddly evasive.

‘Mama and Papa met in London,’ she went on, ‘I speak the language and I have a British passport thanks to my grandfather who was from the north of Ireland. Also, London is the last place they would come looking for me. Geneva or Paris would be their first choices, or Spain, of course. No, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to London.’