Months passed and “Pablo spoiled [Matilde] and was very loving.” One day he announced, “In a few days when the moon is full, I want to get married, because we should be when the baby is born.” On one beautiful spring evening, the lovers sent their maid home early, and Neruda decorated the walls of their house with flowers, branches, and “Matilde, I love you” and “I love you, Matilde” written out on pieces of paper of all colors. She cooked a duck à l’orange and small plates of local fish and shrimp. They walked out onto their terrace, where a brilliant full moon awaited. Neruda, very seriously, told the moon that he and Matilde couldn’t get married on earth and asked her, la luna, the muse of so many lovestruck poets, to marry them in the sky. He took Matilde’s arm and placed a ring on her finger, with an inscription that read: “Capri, May 3, 1952, Your Captain . . .”
Their time together was idyllic until Matilde started to feel sick. Knowing of her history, the doctor prescribed bed rest. At her side, Neruda would ask Matilde to tell him long stories about her childhood, about her parents, to keep her spirits up and to be engaged. They read a lot; they made fires. As they were confined to their home, their rather small dog, Nyon, named after the town where they spent those magical moments alone on Lake Geneva, became restless, missing and needing the long walks they used to go for. He ran away one Saturday afternoon and wasn’t back that Sunday morning. They told their host, Edwin Cerio, about it, and before they knew it the island’s radio started making announcements about the missing dog. Nyon returned on his own Sunday night.
But before long, “a shadow descended” on the couple, Matilde wrote, “threatening to wrap us in sadness and anxiety.” She lost her child, “who already had his own copy of The Captain’s Verses.” But this time Neruda didn’t hold it against her. Instead, he announced, “I’m going to give you a child. It’s just been born, and its name is Las uvas y el viento.”
The “child” does not have the haunting passion of The Captain’s Verses. Far from the moralist realism of “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” Las uvas y el viento (The Grapes and the Wind) uses socialist realism to depict (through Stalin-colored glasses) Neruda’s impressions of his travels through Eastern Europe. The book is an attempt to dazzle the reader with what lies behind the dark drapes of the Iron Curtain, as René de Costa puts it. In Canto General, Neruda constructed himself as the poet of the Americas; he dons the mantle of the poet of socialism. The verse, however, falls short. The only enthusiastic regard the book generated came from the Soviet Union itself, which awarded Neruda the Stalin Peace Prize for it in 1953.
As summer came, so did the tourists, who found out about the famous poet’s presence on Capri and would not leave him in peace. The island quickly lost its charm, and the couple moved to the volcanic island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples. They spent the month of June there, and then came the news: it was time to return to Chile. Neruda’s political friends in Santiago had fought hard for it. The Senate itself had asked for Neruda’s arrest warrant to be rescinded, and enough time had passed that the government was ready to move on. Every time he made an appearance on the international stage, officials had to defend Chile’s persecution of Neruda. Additionally, high inflation, continued labor unrest, a weary and frustrated population, and the end of his presidential term had led González Videla to relax his crackdown on the Communists and left him with no political capital to continue the vendetta.
During this period, notably when the repression was at its worst, the Chilean Communist Party did not deviate from its policy of pursuing change through democracy. One faction had advocated armed struggle to achieve the party’s goals, but it was expelled by the main leadership, which included Neruda’s close friends. Instead, the leaders plotted a course toward a “bourgeoisie democratic revolution,” where the peaceful fight for radical change would be led by the working class and the “enlightened” new bourgeoisie—capitalists with wealth and economic power who no longer wanted to exploit the workers. The road to socialism in Chile would be paved by this unity, combined with the continued industrialization of the country. Neruda supported this strategy. In his two years on the road, from 1948 to 1950, Neruda was one of the most active Communist artists in the world. He was also developing his own insights and positions that his poetry would soon illuminate.
Neruda flew to Berlin for one more political act, a special meeting of the World Peace Council. Then he met Matilde in Cannes, where they’d depart on a steamer to Uruguay. Neruda hated flying, and this voyage would give them time alone together. Neruda’s friends came to give him a surprise farewell lunch in a restaurant next to the Mediterranean. Among them was Picasso, and, the weather being hot, the artist tore off his multicolored shirt. On his muscular chest was a gold Minotaur, held around his neck by a shoestring. Everyone admired it. Picasso took it off and bestowed it on Neruda.
And then, just after the large meal with flowing wine, came the news that the French government had called for Neruda’s expulsion from the country. “I’ve been thrown out of the best places,” he would say later. Though he was no longer exiled from his homeland, it still must have stung to be expelled by his beloved France.
Neruda and Matilde boarded their boat, and from somewhere off the African coast, Neruda sent
