Trinidad knew the consequences of taking a lover. Four years earlier, the first of several secret scandals had occurred. Trinidad had a son, Orlando, from an earlier affair with Rudecindo Ortega, a twenty-two-year-old seasonal farm laborer whom Mason had invited down from Parral to help him get things started in Temuco. Micaela and Mason, the boy’s aunt and uncle, were irate at Trinidad’s indiscretion and quickly adopted Orlando. The circumstances of Orlando’s birth were never mentioned outside Mason’s household.
Rudecindo Ortega never lost the grace of his employer, as Mason had been so fond of him before the scandal and apparently found him less culpable than Trinidad. Later, Mason would even allow Ortega to marry his youngest daughter, Telésfora.
Trinidad and José del Carmen hid their affair from Mason and Micaela, but Trinidad became pregnant, forcing the secret to light. Mason and Micaela were furious that she had been so reckless under their roof; each adopted baby came with the risk of social disgrace, and they searched for the right punishment for the young woman who, it seemed, could not accept that she was supposed to remain chaste until marriage. Trinidad revealed who the father was, and word was sent to him. José del Carmen was in Belén or Talcahuano when he found out, and he replied quickly, unmoved and refusing to marry Trinidad. Unlike with her first child, Micaela and Mason made it clear that under no circumstances would they see or raise this baby.
Far along in her pregnancy, Trinidad returned to Parral to give birth, most likely because there she would have the support of her local relatives and friends. She would be kept from the public scrutiny of Temuco, and, as she had left Parral many years before, none of the townsfolk would know that she was not married.
In 1897, Trinidad gave birth to her second son, Rodolfo, but Micaela and Mason (supposedly) prohibited her from keeping him. The baby was handed off to a midwife in the village of Coipúe, along the banks of the silver Toltén River. It was far enough away from Temuco and close enough to Parral so that it was easy for the Masons to keep tabs on him and send the midwife support.
For the next five years, José del Carmen drifted between working at the dry docks of Talcahuano, visiting Temuco to see if there were any good railroad jobs available, and occasionally returning home to Belén to rest and perhaps pick up a little work around Parral. Then, in the town he had left nearly a decade ago, he found the love of his life. Her name was Rosa Neftalí Basoalto Opazo. She was a schoolteacher who wrote poetry. In 1899 she had moved to Parral from the open countryside to be closer to a doctor, as she had struggled with pulmonary problems since childhood. José del Carmen saw her for the first time shortly after she had arrived and approached her. Rosa Neftalí may not have been beautiful, but there was something in the modest grandeur of her face that radiated a simple sweetness. Though not stern in nature, her expression did convey an unmistakable seriousness. She was the kind of woman who carried herself with intent and purpose, perhaps in part because she doubted how long her health would allow her to live an active life.
For José, who had grown rough from his life of hard work and constant movement, Rosa’s sweet, practical demeanor was enchanting. He was in love, but he still wasn’t sure he was ready to start a family, so for the following four years José didn’t stay in Parral. Each time he visited, however, he would see Rosa as often as he could. In 1903, he finally asked her to be his wife. They were married in a simple ceremony on October 4, 1903. José del Carmen was thirty-two; Rosa was thirty. They moved into their own home—a long, narrow adobe house with curved tiles ornamenting the roof—near the town limits of Parral. About nine months later, at close to nine o’clock on the night of July 12, 1904, Rosa gave birth to a son, Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, who would one day be known throughout the world as Pablo Neruda.
Two months and two days after the boy was born, Rosa died from tuberculosis. José, alone with his infant son, retreated into himself. His own mother had died shortly after his own birth, and this repeated misfortune threw José into a deep despair. He returned to Belén, and his stepmother took charge of the new baby. She searched for a wet nurse among the local campesinas and put Neftalí in the care of María Luisa Leiva. On September 26, twelve days after his mother’s death, Neftalí was baptized in Parral’s San José Church. The anguished José set off again, now not just to wander, but having to provide for someone besides himself. In contrast with the ambivalence he felt toward his firstborn from his affair with Trinidad, he felt a paternal closeness and responsibility to his new, legitimately born son.
Hearing of cattle work on the other side of the Andes, he headed to Argentina, but returned six months later, in March 1905, penniless. With Neftalí still in his parents’ care, José took the train to Talcahuano, which continued to boom with port business fourteen years after he had first arrived there. He worked the docks as he had previously, following the rhythm of the big boats that came to and went from the harbor, laden with machinery that would help to cultivate the newly settled southern countryside or timber and grains for export.
José stayed at the same pension where he had first lived in Talcahuano. Back then, the owner’s daughter, Aurelia Tolrá, had been a budding teenage beauty. Now she
