In the Name of Salome

Camila’s memories have traveled backward five years to the time when she and her brother Pedro are both graduate students at the University of Minnesota. Their father has vacated the post of president because he doesn’t want to be a puppet of the American occupying force. During this time, a world war has begun, and Americans are feeling particularly patriotic and suspicious of all foreigners. Camila and Pedro are both about to graduate and need to consider future employment.

Camila feels herself drawn to one of the students in a Spanish class she is teaching. The girl’s name is Marion Reed. She wears trousers and has a free-spirited attitude that frightens Camila slightly. Camila later meets Marion again in a dance class that she is required to take. The two become friends and, soon afterward, lovers. Marion suggests that Camila spend the summer with Marion’s family in LaMoure, North Dakota. Though Camila is fearful of anti-foreign sentiment in a small town, Marion persuades her to go.

One night, as Camila is walking home to the tiny apartment she shares with Pedro, she notices someone following her. She eventually learns that Pedro is spying on her, assuming she is involved with some young man on campus. He has received letters from his best friend advising that he take Camila home to her family immediately after graduation. Camila never confronts her brother about his snooping. She realizes he’s only trying to honor a promise he made to their mother to always look after his little sister. When graduation approaches, Camila decides to take a teaching post at the university despite her brother’s objections. She also tells Marion the happy news that she will spend the summer with her friend in North Dakota. Just as they share a kiss, Pedro walks into the apartment. Baffled by the spectacle, he turns and runs away.

Salomé debates how she will handle the homecoming of Pancho and Fran after a four-year absence. When she arrives at the dock to greet her son, Pancho is obviously shocked by her wasted appearance. Salomé herself says, “He had come back from France, the figure of a man, thirty-two years old, his life ahead of him. I, on the other hand, had been consumed by the separation. I was forty and looked ten years older” (255). Salomé assigns her estranged husband to separate sleeping quarters in their house. Pancho adjusts and goes about the business of setting up his medical practice. Because his fancy Parisian education makes him think he knows best, Pancho alienates his mentor and most of his patients. He soon develops a reputation for killing them on the operating table with his newfangled surgical techniques.

When Salomé’s own health deteriorates, she takes the advice of her family doctor instead of Pancho and relocates to the northern coast for three months of rest. While away, she writes two political poems that once again offer inspiration to patriots in the Dominican Republic. At the end of the season, she returns healthy and filled with resolve to continue managing her school for girls. Pancho has moved the family to a more impressive house. Despite his best efforts to get Salomé to share his bedroom, she refuses. After Lilis stages a new election to dispose of his political rivals, chaos once more comes to the capital. Salomé thinks, “I could see all that was coming: Marchena dead, the Lauranzóns forced into exile, Pancho himself forced to flee, the instituto’s doors closed, my children without a settled home. And I could not catch my breath” (274).