for your brother of the deep mines,
for the pain of the betrayed,
did your syllable in flames ever come
to cry out for justice, to defend your people?
—“The Traitor”
Each time Neruda came back from abroad, whether from the Far East, Spain, or Mexico, he arrived transformed. In Lima, he told the journalist Jorge Falcón, “I am going to Chile because I have been missing it for quite some time now. I have been traveling around different countries for sixteen years, with just short trips to my country. Now, I want, I desire, to remain there, and participate more directly in its politics.” He expressed his belief that a unified Left presented the strongest hope for the future of Chile, and a strong Chile would help make all of South America stronger. He would retire from the diplomatic corps.
Once in Chile, while they waited for the completion of some restorations of the new house they bought on Avenida Lynch, the Nerudas stayed at the apartment of Sylvia Thayer. Sylvia was an acclaimed actress and the sister of Neruda’s pal Hinojosa, who had accompanied him to the Far East in his youth. Antonia Ramos, a young Argentine studying at the University of Chile, was also staying at the apartment. She wrote:
Pablo was already fat then, and bald. [Delia] was thin, very refined, with magnificent manners . . . Pablo was excessively bohemian. They arrived at two A.M., woke everyone up, and stayed up talking until four or five o’clock in the morning. The house became a beehive of Spanish refugees, people from Mexico; it was impossible to imagine how she lived her life around him and his bohemian lifestyle. They had that easygoing mentality of the free; nothing at all mattered to them. But she was serious. She took care of vulgar, everyday things patiently and stylishly. She was elegance itself; he was like an enfant terrible.
Soon the repairs on their new home were finished, and after a tour of Chile giving lectures, they moved in. In memory of their time in Mexico, they named the house La Michoacán. Delia’s family had sold a building in Argentina, and with that money the Nerudas were more stable financially; they also received help from the public employees’ pension fund, now that Neruda had officially retired from the diplomatic corps. It was a medium-sized house with a small office for Pablo and a large backyard, where they built a rough amphitheater-style stage dedicated to Lorca and a studio for Delia to practice her art, in particular her printmaking. They modeled the home on the typical style of the indigenous or mestizo houses of Michoacán: thick rafters and old wood. Neruda’s butterfly collection was displayed in a large frame next to the rustic dining table and chairs in front of the fireplace. He would sit outside on a stump below a huge oak tree and write his poetry.
Neruda was closely involved with the design of his houses. They were so particular, not just because he needed an environment that inspired writing, or because he derived great satisfaction from entertaining friends, but also due to his innate creativity, which resulted in environments that reflected his imagination and, in turn, sparked his imagination anew.
Out of all the objects and collections at La Michoacán, what most stood out to the Chilean writer José Donoso was a bar decorated with turn-of-the-century postcards, a great novelty then. He was always impressed by Neruda’s gift “to see beyond the usual” and pick out things, either real or abstract, that only he noticed. His ability to establish a deep relationship between himself and his surroundings was, Donoso believed, essential: “He was a creator in both the poetic and the lived sense.”
Neruda enjoyed sharing his homes with others. Diego Muñoz had recently begun a relationship with Inés Valenzuela, who was only eighteen at the time. Neruda and Delia invited them to share the house with them. Delia was ten years older than Inés’s mother, but Inés thought of her differently. “I never thought about la Hormiga as an older person,” she recalled in an interview sixty years later. Delia was “very, very young from within,” and joyful. Inés felt instantly at home with her new sixty-year-old friend. Delia was “able to make everyone who came to her home—everyone she knew—feel good.”
Rafael Alberti also had a lasting impression of life at La Michoacán when he visited Chile, invited by Neruda to give readings and talks. During his stay, Neruda gave a number of parties there in Alberti’s honor, attended by an eclectic mix of poets, writers, politicians, painters, and complete strangers. One night, Alberti saw Neruda open the kitchen door to find a group of strange-looking gate-crashers holding glasses of wine as they fried an enormous number of eggs in a huge pan. Amused and puzzled, Neruda simply signaled to Alberti, and the two withdrew silently. “They must know what they’re doing,” Neruda said to Alberti. “I’ve no idea who they are. They’ve never been here before.”
Neruda led Alberti away from the kitchen and other guests to a separate room, closing the door carefully behind him. He served his friend a large glass of wine and poured a generous whiskey for himself, then said, “I’m going to read you something that I think is quite important, that nobody knows about yet.” As Alberti described it, “in his slow, sleepy voice,” Neruda read him all of “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” which he was just finishing. When the long and secret reading was over, they returned to the party, which was in full swing.
During these parties, Neruda would sometimes go to La Vega Central himself and buy enormous pieces of cheese for the party, usually mantecoso, which is relatively soft, like butter on the tongue. He’d also put out several demijohns of local wine, nothing fancy. Everybody helped him- or herself to wine, bread, and those huge cheeses, as the conversation wove around the table, creating a sense of the communal.
* * *
While
