The Winterlings (20 page)

The next morning, when Dolores went out of the house to feed the chickens, she found Violeta da Cuqueira sitting on the bench near the doorway.

A shiver ran up her spine.

‘What are you doing here?' she rebuked her.

Dolores knew that not long ago, old lady Violeta had presaged that three men from Sanclás would die, and they had. She had dreamt of three chestnuts falling, and when she woke up, she understood.

‘Your sister's spirit came to me, I've come to warn you,' Violeta replied, unperturbed.

Dolores told her that she wasn't in the mood to listen to fairy tales, and that she should go away.

‘But when did you say her spirit appeared?' she added.

‘Two days ago. Tonight she will die.'

Dolores grabbed the broom and threatened to kill the old lady if she didn't leave.

‘Who were you talking to?' asked her sister when she came upstairs. ‘I thought I could hear voices.'

‘It was just the wind, woman. It's starting to blow from the north. See how it shakes the corn.'

‘Ah yes, the wind … Hey, does something smell rotten to you?'

Dolores sniffed at the air.

‘Something stinks.'

‘Get me a clean night-shirt out of the drawer,' replied Saladina.

That same night, a fierce wind broke one of the windows and got into the sisters' bedroom.

10

Old. Tall. Dry.

Saladina felt it arrive, with its violent stench of rotten apple. She felt it arrive and crawl over her sister's flesh as she slept by her side.
It's just the wind, woman, blowing in from the north.
She felt it arrive, dense and insistent.
Who were you talking to?
She felt it arrive, accompanied by its hushed music.

Death came down for the Winterling, reeking of scraps. For a whole night, Death fed on life. Death was not beautiful; it was just Saladina spread out on the bed in her clean nightdress. Death arrived, prowling like an animal with centuries-old hunger, secrets of blood, secrets of voices and flesh, barely whispering: ‘Come, Saladina, it's me, the only one who everyone shall know. Don't you tremble at the sight of me? Take your suitcase of memories; take as many of them as you can, because you will go stripped of everything else. Come with me, I am here for you. Leave, Sala.'

Saladina.

Hearing a thrashing in the sheets, Dolores lit the lantern. She was delighted to see her sister awake and pensive. Lucid, with her eyes open as wide as a fish, she stared at the wall.

‘We should paint the roof,' she heard her say.

‘Yes,' replied her sister, with a sigh of relief.

Saladina, who by now had sat up on the bed, cast an imposing figure. A thick branch of black hair hung down her back, all the way to her waist. The light of the lantern barely lit up her face, bringing out her harsh features — reminders of smallpox, scars and lines around the eyes — giving her a strange, almost savage sense of beauty.

‘The house is falling down around us.'

‘Yes …'

‘Did you call the doctor?'

‘Of course! He won't take long to come, you'll see.'

‘I'm not ready to kick the bucket yet.'

‘You won't kick anything.'

‘Dolores …'

Saladina was still rigid, sitting up in bed and staring straight ahead.

‘What, Sala — what?'

‘Don't go away again without me.'

‘No.'

But Saladina was already crawling over her sister's bed, making her way towards the thighs, kissing the navel and the breasts, the armpit salty like the sea.

‘The house is falling down around us.'

‘…'

Days later, the doctor from Sanclás appeared. That morning, Saladina was awake. Seeing him walk through the door, she began to tremble like a rabbit. The doctor asked Dolores how long she'd been like that, and Dolores said that she'd been complaining about her stomach for some time now. She also commented that she thought it might be due to the figs.

‘How are you feeling?' asked the doctor, addressing Saladina.

Saladina twisted the sheets between her sweaty hands.

‘You tell me! That's what doctors are for, aren't they?'

The doctor closed his eyes for a few seconds, as if stopping himself from taking the bait.

‘I'll put it another way. What symptoms have you noticed?'

‘Pain,' she said. ‘It's because my guts are loose.'

‘Quite,' replied the doctor.

‘Sometimes some of them travel up to my gullet, and I can barely breathe,' added Saladina, feeling very important with all this attention.

‘Some of what?'

‘My guts,' she clarified. ‘And they cause little choking fits, you see?'

The doctor looked for his stethoscope in his doctor's bag.

‘Can I ask you something, doctor?' asked Saladina while he listened to her breathing.

‘Ask away …'

‘What's happening to me now …' — she fixed her feverish pupils on his — ‘could it have anything to do with a kiss?'

‘With a what?'

‘With a kiss.'

‘Your abdominal pain?'

Saladina had the expectant look of someone waiting for an answer. She clicked her tongue like she used to when she had false teeth.

‘No. Abdominal pain has nothing to do with kissing.'

Saladina let out a large sigh.

‘And is it contagious?'

‘No, it's not contagious.'

Saladina let out another sigh.

The doctor asked her more questions. Before he left, he spoke with Dolores in the doorway. Saladina would live a while longer, but she wouldn't get better. Stomach cancer was one of the worst illnesses. There was no treatment for it.

When the doctor left, Dolores went back up to the bedroom. She found Saladina looking much more calm.

‘What else did the doctor tell you, Dolores?'

Dolores' legs were shaking. She could barely think.

‘Nothing else. Just that you'll get better soon. You just need a bit more bed rest.'

‘More bed rest? My arse will get big.'

A wave of sadness rolled over Dolores' eyes.

‘You've got a lovely arse.'

Shortly after, while Saladina was taking her siesta, Mr Tenderlove knocked at the door. He said that the doctor from Sanclás had gone by his house to have a molar looked at, and had told him the news about Saladina.

‘I'm truly sorry,' he added.

‘Sure …' said Dolores, not wanting to open the door fully.

The pair of them stood in silence.

‘You two should never have come back,' he said suddenly.

‘But we did,' she said, surprised by his comment. ‘We can't turn back time now.'

‘There is … There is a way,' said Tenderlove.

Dolores opened the door a little more.

‘All the village wants is to forget,' he continued. ‘I know that your grandfather kept those contracts. If you hand them over to me, this will be over once and for all.'

Dolores thought it over. Then she summoned the courage to do what she'd been thinking they ought to do for a while now. She set out for the orchard, followed by Mr Tenderlove. She brushed off the chickens scratching around there with a boot, and crouched down under the fig tree. With her hands, she dug up a wooden chest that she handed over to the dental mechanic.

‘Is your fire lit?' he asked, looking fixedly at the chest as he took it in his shaking hands.

The fire was lit, and they went back into the house. In front of the hearth, Tenderlove opened the chest with solemnity. The metal hinges were rusted over, but at last they were able to pull out a wad of tied-up envelopes that gave off a strong stench of earth and mould. One by one, with a look of disdain, he pulled them out and threw them in the fire. In barely a second, the envelopes opened up like the petals of a flower, then twisted and danced in the air before dwindling down. They began to turn away when suddenly, through the open door, a gust of wind blew in. The shreds of paper that had burnt in the fire went up through the chimney and into the sky. Tenderlove and the Winterling went out into the orchard. Now the bits of paper floated down to the ground only to fly back up again, fluttering like tiny grey butterflies and settling on the trees, the fence posts, the pile of dry gorse in the square, and on the tiled roofs of the houses of Tierra de Chá.

‘It's raining,' said Uncle Rosendo to his wife, looking at the sky from the other end of town, when they both went outside to look.

‘Look, you dummy,' the Widow replied, astonished by the spectacle of the little grey papers, resting her hand instinctively on her belly. ‘Can't you see they're butterflies?'

Rosendo squinted and looked again.

‘They're moths,' he said.

11

It was a vague memory, melding in with the faces, gestures, and words of other men. Memory, always so wise, had silenced almost everything. Nevertheless, without realising it, the people of Tierra de Chá had resolved many of their doubts about the grandfather.

A tall, strong, decisive man. A man with brilliant, nervous eyes the colour of the sea. A man with a thin and scratchy yellow beard. A man in corduroy pants and jacket, sometimes with a black tie. His pants were a brownish-grey, old, the corduroy worn away from the wiping of hands, with patches over the knees. His jacket had elbow patches and was too big for him. A handsome man, and pleasing to the eye with his weather-beaten skin.

A good man (was he really good?) who was both a Christian and a communist. Interested in the sciences. At times, a man of darkness, it had been said. And stubborn. Something unknown moved inside him, like little roots entangled beneath the ground that have never seen the light of day, whose blind strength is the support for a beautiful plant of yellow flowers.

Don Reinaldo was the root of the gorse bush.

Gorse can be devastated by fire, pulled out by men, trampled by tractors, and yet it always sprouts again somewhere, time and time again, clinging onto the hillside or surviving next to the asphalt of the highway. That's what he was: a blind strength out of which sprouted his wild delirium, his obsessions and eccentricities, and his youthful nostalgia. He had begun by studying medicine, but he'd never finished. There was his obstinate desire to control and manage everyone around him, to make decisions for everybody else, to know more and more. The mad business of buying brains was what truly led him to his death.

Not long after
Esperanza a la Puerta de Nicolasa
died, there was cause for commotion in the village. The priest wanted to bury her immediately, but Don Reinaldo was set on keeping the body unburied for a few days. Cars and people in suits began to arrive in Tierra de Chá, mostly doctors from the Faculty of Medicine in Santiago. The Winterlings' grandfather put them up in his house, and there they spent their days, cooped up drinking cognac and doing who knows what.

A few of the villagers — the priest, Uncle Rosendo, and perhaps Tenderlove — confronted Don Reinaldo and demanded that the poor maid be buried. That was when he pulled out the contract for the sale of the brain, signed by the maid herself.

Don Manuel told Dolores all of this one morning. In fact, the Winterling had gone to him to get some weight off her own chest. She couldn't stop thinking about what had led them to seek refuge in this remote village, and Mr Tenderlove's comment that they should never have returned … In the beginning, Saladina had always spoken as if she too were involved in the whole business. But lately, it seemed she wanted to distance herself from it. Dolores noticed that she was more and more scathing in her words.

And now she was convinced that her sister's illness had burst into their lives because of all this. And so one September morning, with birds flitting about her and awash with strange aromas, she went to the priest's house. She found him eating breakfast by the stove. She said that she had come to confess, but that there was no need to go to the church.

She told him that she couldn't stand it anymore, that she had a secret that wasn't just any old secret. It was about something dark and terrible, a secret she had wanted to reveal ever since they arrived in Tierra de Chá, but that she had never had the courage for. It was about something that oppressed her, as if she were wearing medical corsets. It was something she had to tell, she had to do it, although she knew that once she did tell it, things would never be the same because—

‘But what is it?' shouted the priest, throwing down his fork and waving his hands in the air.

So then Dolores confessed that she had been married to a certain Tomás, a fisherman of octopus and pout whiting from Santa Eugenia de Ribeira, just to escape the drudgery of routine and for the dream of leading a different life. But very soon, she discovered that not only was she not in love, but that her life was even more boring with him, she …