Dancing the memories of clara
My father and I were not only father and daughter, we were great friends, says Clara. He was very fresh, yes, but just like any other man. He was like a rabbit, jumping from cave to cave but always came back to the same one, my mother. Her father worked in the world of celebrities, he was a talent seeker. Clara says that one day he came with a photo of a twelve-year-old boy who sang very well and who even became famous. She doesn’t remember the boy's name, but he was one of her father's discoveries. Don Francisco told her of his adventures, he was a man that loved the night life and its adventures, and she was his allied, she treasured his secrets. As a result of that, her mother did not love her, according to Clara Mrs. Ema didn’t like the fact that Clara covered her father’s secrets. Likewise, Francisco covered the back of his daughter whenever was needed. Father and daughter accomplices and friends. At night, he would settle on the edge of her bed and tell her stories of the past, the things he had done before meeting her mother. He always had a good time, Clara says. Once, her father pretended to be Spaniard, so he could enter Peru and enjoy the beauty of the country. In those years Peruvians did not like Chileans, and vice versa as a result of the Pacific War. Although the war ended over thirty or forty by then, the rancor remained around the three countries; Bolivia, Chile and Peru, for a long time. In some hearts, that still exists, says Clara. I cannot tell these things in front of my granddaughter's husband, you know? he is Peruvian, Grandma laughs.
Clara's mother was raised by an aunt named Rosario. Rosario had no children, Rosario and her husband, a man from Spain, had a warehouse, an immense place where they sold all kinds of things. Rosario adopted her when Ema was barely two years old. She was almost abandoned; her mother could not give her the attention that the girl needed, and the aunt offered to take care of her. Ema, mother of Clara, had been the result of a slip of her mother and as such became nobody’s responsibility. After five years, under the tutelage of Rosario, Ema had become a reading revolution. People crowded by the warehouse to listen to the girl reading the newspaper El Mercurio. Reading in those years, in the 1920s, was not common, which made it even more impressive that a little girl did it and did it so well. People gathered to watch her unveiling the words and the mysteries behind them, but also to find out what was happening outside the small-town limits.
Rosario ended her life in a tragic way. Her husband died, and she inherited the assets that both amassed over the years as a result of their work in the warehouse. Quite a fortune, as Clara explains. However, that fortune ended up being the sentence of her death. One of her nephews, son of the brother of the deceased Spaniard, interested in claiming such wealth for himself, slipped into her house one afternoon and spilled cyanide on the woman's tea pot. Her death was quick, painful, but fast. That family ended up amassing the inherited fortune, but the money was spent with the same speed in which it arrived, they ended up miserable.
Clara was a girl scout during her teen years. She says that when she was twelve, she went camping with her patrol. What she remembers the most are the knots. We went to competitions and campaigned for her team. I loved knotting, I was good at that. She says. There I even learned to cook. However, in those years she found the greatest passion of her life, dancing. Such was the fame of her among the boys and girls that when they went out camping the crowd sang songs a cappella for her to dance. She was quick to step into the dancing stage and move her hips at the sight of the people that gathered to admire her talent. Guarachas, cumbias and other tropical rhythms were her specialty. Dancing become her passion. These dancing skills became, years later, the financial sustenance during times of deprivation. The passion of my life has always been dancing. As a young girl I was always very good, I competed, and they even paid me for it. With that money I paid the rent of the bedroom in which we lived with my husband. He didn’t do much for us to survive, I feel like he always took advantage of me. But hey, he's already dead. Clara explains that Julio was always an absent man, that she spent her life following him, but that in the end he was never able to deliver the love that she expected. His life away from home was always more important.
When Clara was about fifteen years old, she and her family moved to Villa Alemana. There was a place where Clara used to go to dance, she remembered it well. She doesn’t remember the name, but they had great parties. You know, Clara says, Allende once came to that place. They were communists there. They brought guitars and they did the type of things that communists do, you know, singing and playing the guitar. Clara enjoyed wearing good-looking dresses, the pencil skirt, that was the most elegant, she says. She dressed into her best clothes and went to the parties of “La Villa.” I looked great. The truth is that it wasn’t ugly and had a good front, the men followed me with their sight. I liked that.