CHILE: Displaced Maestro

Among the 434 European immigrants who landed in Chile this summer was a plump, dreamy-eyed little man named Edward Sienkiewicz. His greying hair was as long as Liszt’s; his hands were uncallused and he carried a cello. But the card on his lapel said that he was an expert on fishing, and so he was listed in the catalogue of immigrants’ skills.

At first, when representatives of Chilean fishing companies began calling at the immigrant pen in Santiago’s National Stadium to talk jobs with him, Edward Sienkiewicz thought it a big joke. Yes, it was true: he had told the interpreter that he knew about fishing—fishing was his hobby. But he had also told the interpreter that in his native Poland he was known as the grandnephew of famed Novelist Henryk (Quo Vadis?) Sienkiewicz, as a cello virtuoso and as an occasional conductor of the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra.

Sienkiewicz’s interviewers at Santiago’s stadium listened, smiled, went on talking about the good jobs in Chile’s southern fish canneries. Sienkiewicz got worried, pleaded with camp authorities for a chance to show his skill with a cello. At last they called in a group of musicians. The little man played for them. By nightfall, Cellist Sienkiewicz was the talk of Santiago.

By last week Edward Sienkiewicz, camp inmate no longer, had finished one series of radio recitals and was starting another by popular demand. Next week he will give a concert at Santiago’s snooty Union Club. The University of Chile has asked him to appear as soloist next season with the Santiago Symphony.

With his blonde pianist wife, Maria, 47-year-old Edward Sienkiewicz has found a home at the comfortable boardinghouse of Madame Clara Rubinstein, Santiago modiste and cousin of Polish-born Pianist Artur Rubinstein. He likes Chile: “Good climate, good people, and so far from Europe and war.”