Portrait in Sepia Read Online Free PDF

to his grandfather: he refused to confess or take Communion; he ran around with bohemians; books on the blacklist had been discovered in his possession; in short, it was suspected that he had been recruited by the Masons or, worse yet, the liberals. Chile was going through a period of battles between irreconcilable ideologies, and the more government posts the liberals won, the greater the ire of ultraconservatives imbued with messianic fervor like the del Valles, all of whom were attempting to implant their ideas by means of excommunication and pistols, crush the Masons and anticlerics, and wipe out the liberals once and for all. The del Valles were not disposed to tolerate a dissident in the very bosom of the family and of their own blood. The idea of sending Severo to the United States came from Grandfather Agustin. "The Yankees will cure him of his hankering to run around raising hell," he predicted. So without asking his opinion, Severo was sent off to California, dressed in mourning and carrying his deceased father's gold watch in his jacket pocket, a meager array of luggage—including a huge Christ with a crown of thorns—and a sealed letter for his uncle Feliciano and aunt Paulina.
    Severo's protests were merely formal, because that voyage fit right in with his own plans. His only regret was leaving Nívea, the girl whom everyone expected him to marry someday, in accord with the Chilean oligarchy's venerable custom of marriage among cousins. Severo was suffocating in Chile. He had grown up a prisoner in a thicket of dogmas and prejudices, but contact with other students at the school in Santiago had fed his imagination and awakened his patriotic fervor. Until that time he had thought there were only two social classes: his and that of the poor, separated by a fuzzy gray area of functionaries and masses of "the common people," as his grandfather Agustin called them. In the barracks he had come to realize that the members of his class, with their white skin and economic power, were but a handful, and that the vast majority of Chileans were poor and of mixed blood. It was in Santiago, however, that he had discovered a vigorous and growing middle class, educated and with political ambitions, that was in truth the backbone of the nation, among whom were immigrants fleeing from war and poverty, scientists, educators, philosophers, booksellers—people with modern ideas. He was awed by the oratory of his new friends, like someone in love for the first time. He wanted to change Chile, to turn it completely around, purify it. He became convinced that the conservatives—with the exception of the members of his own family, who in his eyes were acting out of error, not evil—belonged to the hordes of the devil, in the hypothetical case that the devil were something more than a colorful invention, and he was prepared to participate in politics as soon as he became independent of his family. He understood that it would be several years before that happened, which was why he considered the trip to the United States a breath of fresh air; there he could observe the enviable democracy of the North Americans and learn from it, read whatever he pleased without worrying about Catholic censorship, and become acquainted with the advances of the modern age. While in the rest of the world monarchies were being toppled, new states born, continents colonized, and marvels invented, in Chile the parliament was discussing the right of adulterers to be buried in consecrated cemeteries. In his grandfather's presence it was forbidden to mention the theory of Darwin that was revolutionizing human knowledge; on the other hand, one could spend an afternoon arguing about the improbable miracles of saints and martyrs. Another incentive for the voyage was Severo's memory of the girl Lynn Sommers, which with oppressive persistence kept infiltrating his affection for Nívea, although he never admitted that, not even in the most secret places of his