The Winterlings (17 page)

The hours became eternal. The house sank into silence. Without her sister there, feeling sorry for herself while she drank anise, complaining that Dolores was trying to kill her by putting stones in the lentils or treating her worse than the chickens, it was as if Dolores herself were not there. Just as she was about to go to bed, she heard the creaking of cartwheels, and looked out the window. She let out a sigh of disappointment when she saw that it was Meis' Widow.

The Winterling opened the door. After eyeballing the whole house, examining the crumbling walls and rotten furniture from which wet washing was hanging, and asking why she was all alone, the woman explained that she had come to reclaim the contract for the sale of her brain. Dolores said that she had no such thing, to which the Widow replied that she should save her stories, because before dying, the old woman from Bocelo had told everyone that she and her sister had kept the contracts, and that half the village had theirs back already.

‘It's not a matter of us not being able to die without the contract, as the old lady thought,' added the Widow. ‘It's that our lives stopped when we sold our brains, don't you understand? I need to tear up the piece of paper to begin truly living again.'

Then Meis' Widow told more stories. She went back in time, to the harsh January of 1936, when meat, coal, flour, and sugar began to be rationed in Tierra de Chá.

‘We were all very hungry, and the only place we could find anything to eat was on the black market. But you needed money to pay for that. So then we found out that Don Reinaldo was paying handsomely just for signing a piece of paper. Nearly everyone in the village did it. We didn't realise what we were doing until first Esperanza the maid died, and then old lady Resurrección, the priest's mother. You can't imagine the scandal that erupted in Tierra de Chá with those deaths. Doctors everywhere. And everything took place here' — she glanced around the house again — ‘in this house. Days and days locked up inside with the dead body' — here the Widow paused — ‘you can't live if you've sold your brain …'

Dolores listened to her in astonishment.

‘But Widow, you got married after the war, your life continued …'

Meis' Widow sighed. She took the Winterling by the arm and led her to the window. ‘Look over there,' she said. ‘Can you see my house?'

In the distance, next to the church, she could see the chimney belonging to the house where Uncle Rosendo and Meis' Widow lived. It was a humble home with a pitched roof, a pigeon loft, a chicken yard …

‘Do you know what lies beyond my house?'

Dolores said that she didn't know.

‘There is a wall.'

‘A wall?'

‘Yes, a wall. And do you know what lies beyond the wall?'

‘No.'

‘
Absence.
'

The Winterling felt a shiver.

‘They say I got married … Yes … But …' The Widow trailed off. ‘If you don't want to give it to me, I'll find it myself!' she added as she got up suddenly.

Trailed by Dolores, she began to move furniture and open drawers in the kitchen. She went up to the bedroom, turned everything upside down, caught sight of the trapdoor, opened it, looked, saw the cow, and went down to the cowshed. She was already lifting up the bed of gorse when the Winterling grabbed her by the arm. She looked at her with such resolution that the Widow yielded.

She told her to stop looking and get out of there at once.

That night, Dolores searched for Saladina's smell in her pillow; she cried for the first time since she had left.

At midday, on the way up the mountain, she came across the priest pulling his cart. He told her that he had been dining with the mayor of Sanclás, who had once again insisted that the sisters had to make a statement before a judge in Coruña. He said that if they didn't go, the Civil Guard would come to take them. Dolores promised that they would do it soon. (Stupid, foul-smelling priest.
Woolly bear caterpillar.
)

On her way back, three or four hours later, she stopped in front of Tristán's house. She was feeling scared and alone, she needed to talk to someone, and she remembered that, in fact, the rooster raiser still hadn't diagnosed the chickens' strange illness. And so she tied Greta to a tree, and decided to go inside. She found him upstairs, asleep among his capons. On the bench in the living room, blackened from smoke and grease, crows, silky-smooth bats, and other birds of all sizes and colours had made their nests. From time to time, one of them got up and flew around in the strange blue air of the room, almost as if it were the forest.

Dolores tapped on Tristán's arm a few times, and he woke up with a fright. He began to look around himself, muttering that he was in a hurry, that he had to arrive
well before
nightfall. A few seconds later, he realised he was in his own house, and he calmed down. Then Dolores explained to him that her chickens were still playing up. They spent the whole day scratching and fighting beneath the fig tree.
And when I …

‘Clearly, it's a case of jealousy,' Tristán interrupted.

‘Jealousy?' asked the Winterling, visibly excited.

Tristán explained that all groups of chickens, just like all groups of humans, become accustomed to their own internal laws, their own way of life, and, above all, their own hierarchy. If a rooster comes into the group, he will naturally occupy the top spot, and the hens will have their place beneath him. No chicken wants to end up on the bottom, and so they defend themselves by pecking and engaging in savage fights. The bigger the group, the longer and more complicated the transition process will be.

Dolores listened to him, perplexed.

‘And the poop?'

To this, Tristán replied that it was important to get to the heart of the matter, which wasn't the poop but the chicken.

He got up, grabbed one of the
amoados,
and pulled a nearby capon towards him, stuffing it in its mouth.

‘Listen, Winterling. I can't hold out any longer. I've got to ask you for my piece of paper as well …'

‘Your piece of paper?' she feigned.

‘The contract of sale for my brain,' he said. ‘I can't stand it anymore. These little monsters are driving me crazy. Tied up all day to this routine …
I'm not made for this.
I need to start living again!'

When Dolores saw that the capon was refusing to eat, and Tristán was starting on a string of insults, she disappeared downstairs without another word.

When she arrived home, she decided to sew in order to stop thinking about her sister. But while she got her work out, she couldn't stop thinking about what the rooster raiser had told her. Jealousy? Hierarchy? Chickens don't have the brains to feel jealousy! And the piece of paper! Tristán wanted his contract too! She was sick of this business about the brains!

Just as she was about to start the Singer, she heard something outside that sounded like footsteps on the staircase; she'd thought she had heard them the previous night as well, but they had been rats. ‘Good God, what's in store for us?' she exclaimed. And just as she finished saying it, she heard the creaking of the back door.

Saladina came home like a nocturnal fog, with her brow furrowed and her face twisted into a grimace of ill humour, lean and haggard.

As soon as she had walked through the door, her sister sobbed and hugged her, telling her they had combed the mountain looking for her, that both Meis' Widow and Tristán had come for their contracts … Most of all, she wanted to know where she had been, what had been so important that she'd taken off like that with no notice, that she had been sick with worry.

‘I love you very much, Saladina, and I don't care that you're seeing the dental mechanic. I'm not jealous. I'm not going to start pecking at you, but tell me where you were …'

‘Shut your mouth!' replied her sister.

Dolores obeyed.

Saladina told her to leave off with the lecturing, that she wasn't a chicken and that she too had her own private business, and to leave her alone, because she had a sore stomach.

‘Were you eating figs out there?'

‘No!'

From then on, there was no more discussion. Dolores turned on the Singer and began to sew. She'd barely had a wink of sleep in the four days her sister was missing, and now, happy and relaxed, she fell asleep hunched over the machine. She woke up feeling that a large amount of time had passed. She heard voices in the orchard.

‘Get down, woman, don't be silly! You're too young for this.'

‘I'm killing myself! There's no other way!'

‘Get down!'

‘My guts hurt!'

She went to the window. At the very top of the fig tree, among ripe figs, astride a branch that was about to snap, Saladina sat perched like a big, ugly, dishevelled bird.

From down below, a woman from the village was yelling up at her.

‘What if you stopped talking to the sheep?'

There was another woman, who from her voice sounded like Meis' Widow.

‘We all want to change, oh yes, to be different, how nice that would be. But think of your sister, all alone. Have a think about it. Do you want her to die of sadness?'

Dolores heard a rustling in the branches. Then came Saladina's voice.

‘I'm killing myself! There's no other way! Nobody loves me!'

Beneath the fig tree, next to the spot where the chickens scratched and fought, more and more people were gathering. Some of the women were crying, although, in the depths of those moist eyes, you could tell that they were having a great time of it. Uncle Rosendo, who was also there, had a hint of song in his voice.

‘You'll have plenty of time to kill yourself. Look, here comes your sister …'

When Dolores appeared, everybody went quiet. Then a voice like thunder shattered the silence.

‘Sweet Mother of Jesus! And what the hell are you doing up there?' She waved her hands about four or five times to get the chickens off her feet. ‘Missing for four days, and then as soon as you're back, you climb up the fig tree and say you're going to kill yourself!'

Silence. The chickens pecked at each other more than ever. Uncle Rosendo kicked out at one, which flew off into the air. After a while, Saladina's voice could be heard again.

‘I'm killing myself, Dolores. I'm jumping. Nobody loves me. I'm miserable!'

‘You're going to jump? After all that time I've spent looking after you?'

A fig fell off the tree,
splat
, and burst all over the ground like the insides of an animal. The bystanders, thinking that Saladina could end up like that too, let out a gasp.

But Saladina was clinging to the branch, and she didn't fall.

‘You looking after me? More like the other way around … Remember all that about your Tomás. If it weren't for me, you'd still be there, eating octopus with him, in that horrible house. Don't you remember? All men are the same! All men are shameless! They're bastards!'

‘You should remember, Sala, how lonely you were when I left.'

‘And you should remember, Dolores, how that bastard was going to kill you but …'

‘Shut up!' shouted Dolores from below.

‘Yes, shut up!' answered Saladina from above. ‘Now I think we should both shut up.'

‘Put up and shut up!' they yelled in unison.

Just then Don Manuel, the priest, showed up.

‘My little sheep who has gone astray!' he yelled to Saladina. ‘But what is this that they're telling me you're going to do?'

Hearing the priest's voice, Saladina redoubled her efforts.

‘I'm not coming down — no way! I'm going to jump! Anyway, my stomach hurts!'

Don Manuel pulled out a bottle from under the folds of his cloak.

‘Come down for a drink, and you'll see how you're an entirely new person, my girl,' he yelled.

But Saladina wouldn't see reason. Between sobs, she began to ramble on about how cruel men are, and how undeserving they are of women's love. Because they always do the same thing, they wait for the woman to give in and then —
ow, ow, my stomach hurts! On the count of ten I'm jumping.
And then she began to count:
one, two …

Everyone on the ground joined in:
three, four, five
… The chickens scratched at the ground. Right at that moment, Mr Tenderlove came running down the road.

‘Sala!' he yelled from a distance. ‘Forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt your feelings!'

When she heard his voice, Saladina began to tremble nervously.

‘What are you doing here, you little poofter? Where did you leave your wig, you fag, you hairy wart?' She yelled until the branch began to crack, and once again everyone down below gasped! They kept counting:
six, seven
…

‘Poofter?' asked the priest.