The Winterlings (21 page)

‘I can't, Father. I can't tell you any more …'

Don Manuel moved his dish of fried eggs and chorizo to one side. Lately, he had no appetite, and having no appetite bored him immensely. He was about to start speaking again when, without knowing why, he caught himself thinking that that was exactly what he used to say to his own mother: ‘I can't, I can't tell you any more, mother …' when she would ask him to tell her the secrets of all the people in the village.

He realised then that just before he began eating his fried eggs, he had been thinking of his mother — of her reddened hand after she slammed it down on the wooden table in the kitchen that day a long time ago, and of the sound that it made, and of her words, ‘You will become a priest, and that's the end of it! So it's not a good idea for you to go around with women, women are bad, my little Manny …'

‘Have you come to confess that you abandoned your poor husband?' he said suddenly.

‘No,' answered the Winterling.

He wanted to keep asking, but he knew that he couldn't be too direct.

‘And … this Tomás … if he is your husband, and you didn't abandon him, how is it that he is not here, with you?'

The Winterling told him that she couldn't tell him anything more, but that he shouldn't worry about the octopus fisherman, because he was quite at peace now. At peace forever.

The priest gulped.

12

Despite all the bed rest recommended by the doctor, Saladina was feeling weaker and weaker. Each step was an effort. She sat down at the kitchen table with an appetite, but soon her stomach turned. She barely ate, and the pain was so bad that it stopped her sleeping. Each morning, she got up feeling like her guts were loose, as she used to say. Dolores was completely devoted to her. Her life now took place next to her sister.

She didn't go up the mountain, she barely sewed, and she didn't even drop by the tavern.

She spent the whole day attending to Saladina, getting her to eat something and relieving her pain; she was constant in her dedication and patience.

The illness had managed to sweeten Saladina's character and make her serene. But strangely enough, this serenity was exactly what puzzled Dolores the most. This apathetic woman was not her sister. Her surly temperament, her fervour, her unpleasantness was what made Saladina who she was. The resignation with which she now arose every morning to be cared for worried Dolores, and even made her suspicious. Saladina had always been impetuous and ill tempered; she had always been the one to make decisions for both of them, but now she was just a rag doll.
It seems like she's just waiting for her time to come
, thought Dolores.

But one Monday in October, things seemed to take a turn. Just like every morning since she had returned from Tossa de Mar, Dolores went out to the orchard to see if the letter from Albert Lewin offering her a role in his next film had arrived.

‘Where are you going?' asked Saladina.

‘To find my destiny within the four walls of the letterbox,' replied Dolores with irony.

But as always, there was nothing in the mailbox except cobwebs. Then she went to tend to Greta the cow, who was also growing weaker and weaker. When she was in the cowshed, she thought she heard a noise, and looked out the window.

Wrapped in a black cape, her arms in the air, Violeta da Cuqueira advanced slowly towards the house. As she explained when she arrived, someone from the village, whose name she couldn't reveal, had paid her to cure Saladina. Dolores got out the broom with the intention of beating her, but her sister, who had listened to the conversation from her bed, asked the witch to come up.

With the distant serenity that characterised her, taking out two bowls from a hessian sack, the old woman explained that she had come to wash her down with rye bran, and give her a rub of pig fat. Hearing this, Saladina summoned the last of her strength and kicked off her covers, then pulled up her nightdress, leaving her stomach exposed.

‘I'm all yours, da Cuqueira,' she said.

The next morning, after she'd been scrubbed three times with rye bran and rubbed down five times with pig fat, Saladina woke up clicking her tongue like in the old days.

She sat up on the bed, felt her stomach, and said that she felt like eating chorizo. Her sister advised against it, and brought instead a simple broth. She didn't have the strength to get up, but they spent that day chatting, remembering time past, just like they used to when everything was fine. Saladina asked her sister to tell her a story. ‘A story' was always the same story:
Once upon a time there was a man called the Taragoña Express, who was all skin and bone, with a long scraggly beard …

‘Like Jesus Christ,' clarified Saladina.

‘Like Jesus Christ,' continued Dolores, ‘who ran over forty kilometres a day, and when he ran through the villages the people would come out to greet him and—'

‘You forgot to say that he wore a loincloth.'

‘Well yes, that's right … He only wore a loincloth and then one day—'

‘You also forgot to tell how he ran through the cornfields …'

‘Yes, through the cornfields and the tracks and the roads and the paths he would go, in the snow and the hail and the thunder and the pouring rain, in the scorching heat or in a storm until one day—'

‘No one has come by for a while,' Saladina cut in suddenly.

Dolores looked at her, puzzled.

‘What do you mean?' she said.

‘To ask for their piece of paper, the contract for the brain …'

Dolores went silent.

‘Do you think they found them?'

Dolores the Winterling shrugged her shoulders.

At lunchtime, Saladina ate again with gusto. ‘Too much gusto,' Dolores said to herself as she took the tray back to the kitchen.

That same afternoon, when Dolores bent down to tuck in her sister, Saladina pulled out her long, bony arms and wrapped them around her sister's neck. She gave her a kiss, and, looking over her shoulder towards the sky, she asked if it was night yet.

‘No, why do you ask?' said her sister.

They stayed like that, watching the horizon, spellbound.

The sky was darkened by thousands of birds of all sizes and colours: owls, chickens, and capons. Hooting and clucking, they beat their wings slowly, flying blindly with their necks stretched out. Guided by an ancestral and powerful feeling, the Winterlings' chickens took flight as well, first clumsily and close to the ground, then calmly as they soared up to join the mass of birds that now floated over Bocelo Mountain, motionless.

Further and further away.

The next day, Saladina got up and swathed herself in blankets. She said that if the rubs had worked for her, they couldn't do any harm to the cow. She went down to the cowshed with the rye bran and the pig fat, and spent a good while rubbing Greta Garbo's shrunken stomach, the poor cow not having the strength to protest. Exhausted by the effort, she sat down afterwards by the hearth.

Dolores, happy to see her on her feet, lit the fire and prepared her breakfast. Then Saladina asked her to tell her in detail how it had all gone in Tossa de Mar.

‘You really want to hear about that?' asked Dolores. ‘Maybe … maybe it's not the right time.'

‘Tell me!' exclaimed Saladina.

Swallowing bitter saliva, her face calm and exhausted, Saladina heard about all that Dolores had seen: the sea, the cameras, the lights, the costumes, the sets, the men. In the bay of Tossa, there was a headland on the beach itself, on which there was a little mediaeval citadel with seven circular towers. That's where they were filming. The shooting of
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
began at seven in the morning and didn't finish until eight in the evening. The brightness was overwhelming, and for that reason, they had to put up black netting everywhere. They had been searching for doubles for over two weeks, and despite all the women they had seen and interviewed, they still hadn't found anyone capable of doubling for the famous actress.

Just like every other day, the day Dolores arrived there was a long line of women waiting for a screen test. The Winterling asked where the end of the line was, and waited her turn.

In the beginning, when they saw her dressed in her skirt, her cable-knit cardigan, and her provincial shawl, they didn't even think she had come to give a screen test. Then, when she let down her hair and told them in nearly perfect English that she had come to take the role of Ava's double in
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
, that she had some but not much experience, and that she wouldn't do any nude scenes, they began to look at her more closely.

They were fascinated.

Albert Lewin told her about his new film, and his intention to give her a contract.

‘For a new movie? You, in the lead role?'

‘Yes, in the lead role, I told you that when I got back, don't you remember?'

But for the moment, none of that was important. The important thing was for Saladina to get better, and until that happened, she wasn't going anywhere. The two of them would get out of the village as soon as they could, that was for sure.

‘Does your stomach hurt, Sala?'

‘No, it doesn't, Dolores. Since old Violeta came with her ointments, I feel much better.'

Neither of them knew that at that moment, the illness was preparing to redouble its attack with brutal and unexpected force.

13

Around that time, the village was undergoing changes as well. The mayor of Sanclás connected every home with electricity; a road was built between Tierra de Chá and Coruña; and many houses had toilets installed inside. They were redirecting drinking water through pipes and had it running all the way to the town square. But there were no telephones. When they were laying the cables down by the side of the road, the whole village rose up to reject the possibility of a telephone booth. Why waste money on something nobody would use? Nearly every household acquired milking machines, but Dolores and Saladina didn't use theirs: they'd never betray Greta by hooking her up to some kind of breast pump.

Ever since Saladina applied the washes and rubs, the cow had been putting weight back on little by little; she kicked out again when the flies were bothering her, and she went back up the mountain, producing excellent milk — slightly acidic, but very good for making cheese that was the envy of all the neighbours.

Life slipped by like that for two or three weeks. Then one night, while they were eating dinner, the Winterlings heard bleating in the cowshed. One sister elbowed the other.

‘Did you hear that?'

‘I heard it.'

‘Was that bleating?'

‘It was.'

They sat there thinking. They had sold the sheep months ago. Even before the chickens flew off, caring for the cow was more than enough to keep them busy during the day. Someone made them a good offer, and they sold the three sheep and the newborn lamb. But what they had just heard was definitely bleating …

Dolores went to the bedroom and opened the trapdoor. Sitting down on her hind legs, Greta the cow was bleating at the stars with her mouth open, the way a sheep does.

She calmed down as soon as she had been milked, but by the next day she didn't have a single drop of milk left.

But it wasn't just Greta the cow. Meis' Widow had also started to act strangely, not to mention Uncle Rosendo.

The Widow asked her husband for bitter blackberries from the forest, curd, or cheese. Before making an omelette, she broke the egg and inspected it thoroughly to make sure there weren't two yolks. She did the same with chestnut shells, which sometimes come in pairs. She refused to take in the aroma of certain flowers or to touch the liver of a recently slaughtered pig. When she tied up the wagon, she avoided walking underneath the rope, for fear that it would get wrapped around ‘the kid's' neck. But what kid?

A kid here, a kid there.

Uncle Rosendo watched her bustling about the house, the way someone watches a fly flit about, listening to her anxiously as she prattled away. Then one day, he came home from school and found the Widow bent down in the paddock, as dirty as she was happy, eating handfuls of stones and soil like an animal. That's when he decided to ask her how she'd been feeling lately.

Meis' Widow lifted her head slowly. She looked like a little girl who'd been baking mud pies in the backyard.

‘They say if you don't satisfy your cravings, they're born with stains on them,' she told him.

Uncle Rosendo swallowed. For a good while now, ever since they saw all those grey butterflies in the sky, he'd noticed that his wife had stopped giving him hell. It wasn't as if she was especially
friendly
, but at least she no longer dedicated her time to making his life impossible, and that worried him. In the morning, when he left for school, she even said goodbye to him, and then when he got home, she had dinner prepared, and they sat chatting over coffee. She didn't talk about the past so much, or about her godforsaken
absence
, and one day, she even asked him to recite some poetry.