Alicia was dismissed from Isla Negra, and Matilde told Neruda that they had to leave Chile. The party, helpfully, asked Allende to nominate Neruda as ambassador to France. On January 21, 1971, in a Senate session to confirm new nominations by Allende, the senators of the Right voted against Neruda, and the Christian Democrats abstained. He did get enough votes from UP senators, but the fact that the Christian Democrats abstained was an indication of their extreme dissatisfaction with the Communists and the Allende administration.
By serving in France, Neruda was fulfilling his youthful diplomatic dream. But all was not well. He was visibly agitated and anxious. Teitelboim remembers the day the poet left for Paris: “There is a part of the night that accompanies man even in daytime, especially when he has an ear finely tuned enough to hear the thunder before seeing the lightning. As if he had a covenant with something that was still hidden, Neruda did not seem happy when we bade him farewell at the airport, even though things were going well at that time.”
Despite his departure for Paris, the passion between Neruda and Alicia remained. They corresponded via Jorge Edwards, whom Neruda insisted on having as his chancellor at the embassy. Neruda would send gifts to Alicia and her daughter with friends returning to Chile. For his sixty-seventh birthday, she wrote him: “I kiss you and I caress your entire beloved body, my beloved love, love, my love, love . . .”
Chapter Twenty-one
The Flowers that Sleep
Wrapped in the sky, I return to the sea:
the silence between one wave and the next
creates a dangerous suspense:
life ebbs out, the blood slows down
until a new movement crashes
and the voice of infinity resounds.
—“Autumn”
Neruda arrived in Paris at the end of March 1971. When he was asked about his new position by a Swedish television station, Neruda had a righteous-sounding cover for the affair that had hastened his and Matilde’s departure:
My country is experiencing a peaceful revolution: We are changing our feudal system, we are fighting against the foreign domination of our economy, we are rescuing our natural riches, we are giving greater dignity to the life of the Chilean people. I could not have turned down this job. That’s it. I have come here because it is my duty.
As soon as they arrived in Paris, he and Matilde went immediately to a well-known urologist. A tube was placed into his bladder to ease his discomfort and ward off urinary tract infections. He couldn’t bear the hospital regimen and asked to be discharged as early as possible.
By July, Neruda’s prostate cancer symptoms were taking their toll on his tired body. His enthusiasm for all the cultural events he had imagined attending as ambassador would be put aside—soon, everything would be put aside. He wrote to Volodia Teitelboim on July 11:
Everything is the same here inside this catacomb. I have not seen friends or been to museums. Every once in a while, we go to the movies, with great effort, as if we were traveling from Isla Negra to Valparaíso. I am not going to talk to you about my poetry, because I have not taken it up again . . . If I keep dictating it to Matilde, she will catch my fever.
October brought a great affirmation of Neruda’s life in letters. His old friend Artur Lundkvist came from Stockholm to tell him he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. His admirers had long campaigned for this. The Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs had even tried to set up a bibliographic exhibition of Neruda’s works in Stockholm in 1966 to influence the judges. Many believe he didn’t receive the prize earlier because of pressure not to award it to such a prominent Communist. Following the public announcement of the prize, Neruda gave a press conference, and Allende called in the middle of it. Gabriel García Márquez, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Julio Cortázar, and other artists traveled to attend the party that night at the embassy. Telegrams came from all over the world, and Allende said, “Neruda is Chile.”
Immediately after Neruda heard the news, he asked Edwards to help him find a house in Normandy. The Chilean ambassador’s residence was part of the embassy complex; the poet wanted privacy and refuge, and access to nature.
That very morning, they found what they were looking for in Condé-sur-Iton. Near an old sawmill, on expansive land, was a chateau from the Renaissance era. Because of its low elevation, it couldn’t be seen from town. As per his custom, Neruda made the decision to buy it immediately. Matilde’s input, if any, had little effect on the decision. He instantly started to plan his life around the new property, as if, Edwards felt, “the house grew within him from that very instant.” He named his new house El Manquel, which is the Mapuche’s Mapudungun word for “eagle.”
The Chilean Right attacked him in the press for what it characterized as hypocrisy, a Communist making such an extravagant purchase. Neruda paid $85,000 for the home, taken from the $450,000 of his Nobel Prize.
The prize ceremony was held on December 11, 1971. In his presentation speech, Karl Ragnar Gierow of the Swedish Academy proclaimed, “His work benefits mankind precisely because of its direction . . . What Neruda has achieved in his writing is community with existence . . . In his work a continent awakens to consciousness.”
The sick poet’s voice was not weak when he accepted the prize and gave his lecture. He sounded clear but tired. As he spoke, Neruda hit his rhythm, and his words resonated.
The poet is not a “little god.” No, he is not a “little god.” He is not assigned a superior mystical destiny over those who pursue other crafts and careers. I have often said that the best poet is the one who gives us our
