Fact and fiction
Tony Gould
THE HACIENDA: MY VENEZUELAN YEARS by Lisa St Aubin de Teran Virago, f16.99, pp. 342 THE PALACE by Lisa St Aubin de Teran Macmillan, £15.99, pp. 263 Lisa St Aubin de Teran, despite her outlandish name, is our very own and British magic realist — well, half-British, since her father, of whom she saw little, was from South America. So was her first husband, whom she married when she was an impressionable 16-year-old. Don Jaime Teran was a political exile from Venezuela when they met and married in unromantic south London. After that they traipsed around France and Italy with other Venezuelan exiles before the way was clear for them to return to Don Jaime's home- land and the by now legendary hacienda that he had inherited.
The Hacienda is LSAdT's non-fictional account of her seven years in Venezuela, which also formed the subject of her first, prize-winning novel, Keepers of the House. In South America, more than anywhere else it seems, truth is stranger than fiction — even Latin American fiction. LSAdT's transition, as she puts it, 'from schoolgirl to Dofia', qualifies by any standards as an extraordinarily tough rite of passage. What kept her going through her long ordeal was her dream of becoming a writer. So it is no surprise to find that the hero of her new novel, The Palace, set in the revolutionary Italy of the mid-19th century, is also sus- tained through a period of imprisonment by his dream — of love, yes — but also of building a palace worthy of his loved one.
LSAdT laces her memoir with contem- porary letters, or extracts from letters, to her much-loved mother in London. This device serves two purposes: it roots the tale in verisimilitude; and it contrasts her inner torment with the brave front she put on for her mother's sake.
Almost from the moment she arrives at the huge Andean sugar plantation which is to be her home, Lisa is left to fend for herself. Her husband wanders off for weeks on end, without telling her when he will return; when he is there, he hardly ever speaks to her. And to begin with at least, the estate workers take their cue from him. Lisa has no company but the two beagles she has brought with her and an uncertain- tempered turkey-vulture someone has given her as a pet. On top of that, she is forbidden to go to the big house that should be theirs, because of a feud with the tenants, and has to squat in a tin-roofed shack with no amenities.
So much for romance. But Lisa proves herself a gutsy girl and slowly, painfully, she learns to take control, not only of her own destiny but of the estate as well. As a budding Lady Bountiful she makes her share of mistakes, but finally she wins the trust and respect of la gente. The birth of a daughter (whose conception seems little short of miraculous, given the almost total breakdown of marital relations) provides her with the opportunity to move into the now vacated Casa Grande. Things now become more manageable, except for her own and her daughter's physical, and her husband's mental, health.
It is the latter that finally drives Lisa out of the home she has come to love. Don Jaime's schizophrenia endangers not just his own life but his wife's and daughter's lives as well. As is common in such cases, he 'refused to recognise that there was any- thing wrong with him'. Things begin to fall apart again, both on the estate, where the sugar fails and only the avocados flourish, and in the big house, where the staff slink off one by one. Left on their own with a madman, Lisa and her daughter Iseult take refuge in the shack by the sugar-mill until Lisa can make good their escape to Eng- land.
These are the bare bones of a remark- able story. There is much more of it than I can hope to summarise here. All I can say is, read it. The novel, The Palace, has most of the virtues of the memoir: the sensuous prose, the eye for detail, the sheer narrative thrust. It, too, tells a moving story of triumph over adversity, of learning things the hard way. Fans of LSAdT's earlier fiction will not be disappointed. So I may be revealing nothing more than a per- sonal prejudice when I say that I preferred the relative restraint of the memoir to the richer confection of the novel; it somehow seems less indulgent.
Previous page
