Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop

by Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (retail) (epub)

  ‘You’re becoming as bad as that son of yours,’ Fidelia warned. ‘Nicanora, you’re not a young woman. I notice new wrinkles appearing on your face every day. You can’t go gallivanting back and forth to the city to buy ridiculous hats that will only fall into the swamp the first time we wear them. Be content with what you have, as I am, and, God willing, your children will look after you. Nena studies hard, she’ll probably grow up to be a teacher if she doesn’t ruin her eyes reading before she’s old enough. Isabela, well let’s hope she’ll marry a rich man, she’ll certainly have to get married soon if she carries on the way she is. And Ernesto – of course the less said about him the better, but perhaps he’ll finally leave home one day and stop bleeding you dry. Anyway, where would you get the money from to start up such a thing?’ And there Fidelia had the last word. Even the moneylender would refuse her any more capital. In her feverish half-sleep, Nicanora worked out that if she could keep the Gringito with her for a few months she would have time to convince Don Bosco to retire and sell the shop, and to save enough for a down payment on her first consignment of hand-made Italian Borsalinos, the finest hats in the city.

  Two

  Doña Nicanora and Don Bosco had a history, a history that they had both worked hard over the years to forget. Don Bosco had considered Nicanora to be a great beauty in her youth, an idea that Nicanora had dismissed as an illusion created by his poor eyesight. More than twenty years on, he still believed her to be the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

  In her early days, Nicanora had enjoyed the attention that Don Pedro Bosco lavished on her. He would walk her to the market every morning, talking with passion of the day he would turn his barber’s stall into a respectable business in the plaza. She listened to his plans in apparent awe, laughed at his ridiculous jokes and toyed girlishly with his affections. He waited for her every Sunday afternoon outside the church to walk her round and round the plaza, buying her numerous useless presents from the stalls. His particular favourites were the brightly coloured balloons, which he bought from the old balloon seller who mysteriously appeared every Sunday morning and then vanished at the end of the day back to her unknown village.

  Nicanora would return home from her afternoon strolls laden with the most luxurious and bizarre objects her suitor could find: sugared apples and toffee bananas, watermelon slices and carved mango on sticks, paper windmills that spun in the breeze, raffia dolls and wooden dogs whose heads nodded in agreement every time Don Bosco spoke, tinted glasses that he put on her to make the world look pink and hopeful, and scented balms that were made from the fat of the tigre that roamed the forest, bought for her to protect her ‘beautiful and succulent lips’. Don Bosco would walk her home, picking fruit and bunches of flowers along the way, talking of the day that he would make her the envy of the town. Nicanora listened and laughed, never indicating that she had the slightest understanding of his intentions. Nicanora’s Sunday exuberance was always expertly deflated by her mother as soon as she entered the house.

  ‘How long are you going to lead that poor man on for?’ her mother scolded. ‘What are you going to do when he finally asks you to marry him?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ Nicanora lied.

  ‘Well, you had better start to think about it, my girl, because he is bound to get around to asking you sometime, the hopeless fool. You’ve been parading yourself in the plaza with him for the past two years, like some careless hussy. Everybody has seen you. If you break his heart, people will find it hard to forgive you. He’s well liked.’ Nicanora managed to ignore her mother’s warnings, convinced that Don Bosco had taken so long to buy the barber’s shop that it would never really happen, and that even if he did he would still never manage to pluck up the courage to ask her to marry him. Besides, she was young enough not to care what anyone thought of her. She knew her future lay elsewhere.

  Don Bosco had worked tirelessly to save up the money to buy the lease for the shop in the plaza, which he believed to be the finest in town. It was owned by the family of Doña Teresa, as were all the best properties in Valle de la Virgen. The purchase of the shop involved some very unpleasant dealings with Doña Teresa’s great-nephew, Rodriguez Ramirez, who had recently arrived in town to look after the affairs of his great-aunt. The memory of the negotiations still caused Don Bosco acute pain. The haggling went on for over two years, during which time Don Bosco took great care in his courtship with Nicanora to reveal gently his intentions towards her and to convince himself that she returned his feelings. Don Bosco was certain that if he could secure the business and show Nicanora that he was destined to be a man of standing, she would agree to marry him.

  Don Ramirez was asking for more than money. Recognising Don Bosco to be a man of future influence, he wanted the barber’s commitment to act as his friend and ally in all his political endeavours, an agreement that Don Bosco steadfastly refused to make. Every time Don Bosco came close to achieving the amount agreed, the price of the shop inexplicably rose, taking it just out of his reach again. Finally, desperate to buy the business and terrified that Nicanora would think he was no longer serious about her, he agreed to the terms set out by Don Ramirez. The next day the shop was his. Don Bosco had never breathed a word of what he had done to anyone.

  The day that Don Bosco held the keys to his shop in his hand was the proudest and happiest day of his life. The following day marked the beginning of a lifetime of loneliness, sadness and regret. He told only his friends Julio and Teofelo of his plans, and they helped him work through the night to prepare for the occasion, filling the shop with bunches of wild flowers gathered from the forest. The following morning, Don Bosco ran to meet Nicanora to secure his final triumph. He led her, laughing and blindfolded to the plaza, and revealed to her the flower-strewn interior of the shop. Then, on bended knee, he offered her a corner of the business from which to sell her woven shawls, if she would agree to be his companion on his life’s journey.

  At the age of eighteen, Nicanora did not consider that Don Bosco’s life journey would take him or her very far, and certainly not in the direction that she wanted to go. He was ten years older; and kind and attentive though he was, she thought him far too settled and contented with his lot in life. Besides, she had a secret lover who was much more exciting, although a good deal less respectable than Don Bosco. Nicanora had dreams, which certainly did not include a barber’s shop. She was determined that she would not spend the rest of her life rotting in a corner of forgotten swampland when there was a world full of cities and adventures just waiting for her.

  Nicanora first met Francisco during the fiesta of the Virgin. Francisco was everything that Don Bosco was not. He was tall, and handsome, and full of the danger and carefree vitality of youth. He was the cousin of one of Nicanora’s neighbours and had recently set up a business in the river town of Puerta de la Coruña, ‘cleaning the filth from the shoes of the rich’. He told Nicanora he was saving enough money to buy a ticket to travel to a distant and exotic location on one of the many boats that came and went along the river. Francisco offered to take Nicanora with him. After a day of festivities which involving countless bottles of beer and vast quantities of aguardiente, Francisco and Nicanora made their way into the forest to pay their own tribute to the Virgin, a state that was very quickly lost to Nicanora. Francisco disappeared back to Puerta de la Coruña two days later, promising to return in a few weeks. Nicanora was convinced that she now knew what love was. She could not get the thought of Francisco out of her mind. During her Sunday strolls with Don Bosco she started to imagine that it was her secret lover who was buying her presents and flowers and talking about the future. She managed to close her mind during the long musings about the barber’s shop and to imagine that it was her lover talking to her about travelling on boats and visiting foreign lands.

  ‘Don’t you ever want to get out of here?’ Nicanora once asked, coming back to earth during one of Don Bosco’s ramblings.

  ‘Why would I?’ h
e replied. ‘When everything I want in the world is right here in the plaza with me.’ He gently squeezed Nicanora’s hand and her heart missed a beat and then died a little.

  Francisco started making frequent visits back to the town, always being careful to meet Nicanora in the forest. Nicanora went to great lengths to ensure that her lover remained a secret, the clandestine nature of their meeting adding to the passion of their moments together. Her mother, who had an unnerving sixth sense, announced to her one day when they were working together on their small plot of land: ‘These leaves help to stop babies coming when they are not wanted, and these ones help them come out quickly once they are there.’ Nicanora had no idea why her mother had suddenly decided to impart this information to her. She supposed that she must be priming her for marriage and no more was said on the matter. Nicanora kept quiet about her plans to leave, until one day Francisco arrived saying that he had almost saved up enough money to buy their tickets to paradise. He convinced Nicanora that she should leave with him when he returned to Puerta de la Coruña the following day. The day that Francisco offered Nicanora her ticket out of town was the day that Don Bosco clinched the deal on the barber’s shop.

  Nicanora was so filled with excitement at the prospect of leaving with her lover to discover the mysteries of the world, and with fear at the thought of the perilous journey ahead, that she hardly listened to Don Bosco’s prattling as he led her blindfolded to the plaza to show her the great surprise. She did not listen as he told her that the shop would always smell of flowers as long as she was near it, and she did not hear him say that he no longer needed dreams now that he held the keys to their future happiness in his hands. It was only when he got down on his knees in front of her that she realised what he was asking of her. She looked down at the man staring lovingly up at her, his legs half buried in flower petals, his eyes smiling with a spirit and warmth that made her heart question her head for the first time, and said nothing.

  ‘Everything I have is yours,’ he said, laughing with pride. She stood looking at him. He got up, dusting the petals off his trousers and held her hand. ‘You never thought I would manage it, did you? But look – I have – it’s mine,’ he said, dancing with delight. ‘I mean it’s ours, if you will have me,’ and he bent to kiss her on the cheek. She stood silent.

  ‘So will you, will you have me?’

  Nicanora said nothing.

  ‘Will you have me?’ he asked again.

  Still she was silent.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said finally, in a whisper.

  ‘What can’t you do, my love?’ Don Bosco replied, holding on to his self-deception to the last.

  ‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t. I can’t marry a barber.’ He stared at her.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked, almost inaudibly.

  ‘I … I can’t marry a barber,’ she repeated.

  He looked at her and then looked at the floor. He tried to speak, but the room resounded with her words. In an instant the shop was transformed. Where there had been bunches of flowers and petals strewn over the floor he now saw a mess of rotting vegetation that needed to be cleared away. Where there was a future home and happiness, he saw a small dingy shop that had cost him his life savings and for which he had signed away his integrity for ever.

  ‘Why?’ he said finally. ‘What’s wrong with marrying a barber?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Would you marry me if I were a tailor instead?’ he asked, as if all the wrongs that had been done in the last minute could be undone with a swift change of career.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so,’ she replied candidly.

  ‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that it isn’t just barbers that you have such distaste for. But you will marry a shoeshine boy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, tears of shame now pouring down her cheeks.

  ‘At least marry someone worthy of you,’ he said gently and squeezed her hand for the last time. She ran out of the shop and home to tell her mother that tomorrow she was leaving to travel the world. He locked the door, pulled down the shutters, sat among the flower petals and wept.

  Francisco and Nicanora did not make it to the boat. They got as far as Francisco’s small rented room on the outskirts of the town, from which it was possible to see the ferries coming and going, along with Nicanora’s dream for her future. Despite his promises, Francisco always remained one month’s work away from having the money to buy their tickets.

  The first couple of months in Puerta de la Coruña were ones of blind happiness for Nicanora. Even though they were living in a damp room with nothing to cook on and nowhere private to wash, she enjoyed the excitement of having her own home and she thrilled with the touch of Francisco’s beautiful body at night. All day, while he was out working, she would long for the smell of his sweat and the touch of his warm dark skin against hers. He would return home with little presents from the market where he sat cleaning shoes, and with stories of the people above the feet he spent his day staring at, which made them both breathless with laughter. He would imitate the voices of his clients and the way they stood looking down on him, and he would tell her glorious lies about the generous tips that they promised him next time they came to the market. He assured her he would be able to buy the tickets within a month.

  The tickets never came. At first, she willingly forgave Francisco for his inability to move their lives forward at the pace she had hoped for. She reprimanded herself for being too demanding, her mother’s last words to her before she left home still ringing in her head: ‘You always were an impetuous and impatient girl. It will be your downfall.’ Gradually the thrill of lust began to be replaced by the gnawing disquiet of distrust. Francisco started to return home later and later at night, apparently too exhausted from his day’s work to stay awake long enough to even begin to satisfy her desires, although usually just long enough to satisfy his own. He would lie lifeless, snoring in her arms, as if the passionate and caring husband of the first few months of their marriage had now been replaced by an overgrown baby with the sour stink of booze, rather than the sweet smell of the breast, on its breath.

  Nicanora blamed herself. She was not beautiful enough or a good enough lover to keep her husband interested. Francisco would complain that he was simply too exhausted from his long hours of work to able to be both a good worker and a good husband, and that the pressure to save up so much money so quickly was affecting his manhood. Nicanora sensed the resolve in Francisco to leave the security of his wretched life dissolving with the midday heat of the river town. His absences, which at first only encroached into their nights together, soon began to stretch into days at a time. Nicanora was certain that if she could take Francisco away from the monotony of the life they had so readily slipped into and from whatever temptations were pulling him away from her, the beautiful young lover from the forest would be restored to her. She made up her mind to change their fortunes by not only selling her woven shawls at the side of the road during the busy afternoons, but cleaning the houses of the rich in the mornings.

  After six months of hard labour, she had gathered enough money to buy two single tickets to Manola, from where she understood they could sail to anywhere in the world. When she presented the money to Francisco, she lied as to how she had come by it, so as not to make him feel he had failed. She told him that a wealthy elderly patron whose house she had been cleaning had died suddenly, and that his family had given it to her as a thank-you gift. She was surprised at how readily he accepted the unlikely story. They celebrated their good fortune with a feast of roast chicken, throwing liberal quantities of beer on the ground to thank the Mother Earth for her help along the way. The next day Francisco went out proudly with the money in his pockets to buy the tickets, and did not return for three days.

  Nicanora had not told Francisco about the bouts of sickness that she had been having for a few months, which at first she put down to the stench of the busy st
reets. The monthly bleeding, which initially she was relieved to be without, showed no signs of returning. Despite there being scarcely any food in the house, a growing belly had begun to accompany the sickness. She wanted to keep her condition a secret from Francisco until she had saved enough money to buy the tickets, worried that the thought of the added responsibility of a baby would put him off leaving for ever. She convinced herself that she could quite as easily look after a child on a boat as she could in a dingy little rented room. He only commented on how life in Puerta de la Coruña must be agreeing with her as she was looking fatter than ever. When Francisco returned home after his three-day absence, he came carrying a handful of coloured stones and a pocketful of foreign coins, offering no explanation for his disappearance.

  ‘And the tickets?’ she said expectantly.

  ‘I bought them,’ he said, unable to meet her eye. ‘I did buy them.’

  ‘Well, where are they?’ she asked, thinking he was playing a cruel game in which she momentarily saw all hope disappear before he finally produced the promise from his pockets. It was no game. It was the start of her life’s disappointments.

  ‘I lost them,’ he said.

  ‘Lost them?’ she repeated. ‘How could you lose them?’

  ‘I just did. In a game. It was a chance, a chance to win us the tickets around the world.’

  ‘You gambled them?’

  ‘It was a good bet. I knew I could win. I had already won these,’ and with a sheepish grin he put the stones and coins down on the table in front of her. ‘They told me I could sell them. They’re rare gemstones – look at the colour. Have you ever seen stones that colour before?’

  Nicanora picked them up, green and blue flakes of paint peeling off as she turned them over in her hands. She had never felt rage like it before, not even when conversing with her ancestors. She threw the stones on the floor and flew at him. She grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. She reached for his hair, trying to pull it out by the roots. She slapped his face and then sank down, sick and exhausted.