The Winterlings

by Cristina Sanchez-Andrade

But it’s not God making miracles. It’s repetition.

  In the evenings, while they sew on the Singer machines, they listen to a soap opera on the radio that nearly always makes them cry.

  Afterwards, they close the door of the house and are alone, under the covers, in the warmth of self-imposed solitude.

  6

  Only on very windy nights did the routine change.

  In the darkness of their bedroom, in their little iron beds, the Winterlings let themselves speak of their secret.

  A voice (or is it the wind?) scratches away at the silence.

  ‘Listen, Sala …’

  And the other replies:

  ‘What?’

  ‘That day, do you think …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Do you think we did the right thing, Sala?’

  ‘We did what we had to do, Dolores.’

  And then after a while:

  ‘Listen …’

  Saladina lights the oil lamp. She stretches an arm towards the other bed and takes her sister’s hand.

  ‘What, Dolores, tell me …’

  Her skin gives off waves of heat; the light, the beating of their hearts, and the touching of flesh soothes the women. Dolores’ answer lurks in the darkness.

  ‘Nothing.’

  They turn the light back off and fall asleep. At dawn, the same old fiesta. Breakfast, the cow, the orchard, the chickens, the jam,

  the soap opera on the radio that makes them cry,

  the clack clack clack of the sewing machine,

  Dolores and Saladina,

  Remorse.

  7

  Many things in this world are indescribable; but the marvellous thing about the human mind is how it adapts when the worst happens. It seems to reason that beyond the worst, there can’t be anything. The unimaginable has taken place, and on the other side is death, chaos, the end. But the worst thing happens, and the mind breaks through the silence. It knows how to break through. It flails around blindly, it exists in a state of shock, but it stays afloat. It rises toward the noise. It stands up and confronts. It gets used to it.

  Remorse, a tentacular octopus.

  Remorse: but for what?

  Only they know.

  The group of women peering in through the cobwebs in the doorway suspect nothing. Although they already know a few more things. They know what trade the sisters learnt and practised while they were away, and that they like the movies. They know that one of them married, that her husband died, and that she has no children. They know their ages: thirty and then some, maybe forty, or forty-two.

  The Winterlings have offered them coffee and brandy, and have told them all of this; the women also know that they always wanted to return to their grandfather’s house, the place they remembered with real nostalgia. ‘Having a country,’ they say, ‘means not being alone, knowing that in the trees, the rain, and the earth there is something that belongs to you, similar to blood, that even if you have gone away, it always awaits you.’ The women like hearing this. It forges a link.

  The house and the fig tree.

  The cow.

  Green meadows beneath the rain.

  Women from Tierra de Chá, like women all around the world, love to be told things in hushed and confidential tones, and in just the right amounts.

  What they’d love to be told the most is precisely what the Winterlings no longer wish to recall. But sitting there, with their nightdresses pulled up all the way to their thighs, they feel obliged to do it: one afternoon in the summer of 1936, when they were returning from gathering gentian and chamomile herbs from the forest, they ran into the kitchen, sure of finding their grandfather, with whom they had lived since they became orphans, sitting by the fire of the hearth. But Don Reinaldo was not there. All that was there was the big clay pot he would use to boil the herbs for his infusions, the liquid spilt across the floor. The girls understood none of it, and a few days later their grandfather returned, thin and haggard, yelling at them that they had to run away.

  They put whatever they could into some rucksacks and fled through the forest. For three days, they slept there under the trees, eating wild blackberries and sucking on roots. But they didn’t get very far because one of them kept thinking of the wolves, and the other of gatipedros, those monstrous cats with a big stone horn on their heads. They went home. Their grandfather was still there, but, after a few days, they came for him. In front of the girls, they stripped him, insulted him, and laughed at him, making him run about to avoid the stones they were throwing at him. When he finally collapsed, they tied his hands to a horse’s tail, and dragged him off to the place where they shot him.

  After that, somebody, maybe a woman from a neighbouring village, put them in a bus and took them to the port in Bilbao. She gave them some suitcases made out of cardboard. ‘Farewell,’ she said, and turned away. The girls barely knew her, but the image of that thickset woman turning her back on them, marching down the dock with great strides, without turning around even a single time to look, still haunts them.

  Along with many other children, nearly all from the Basque country, they set off in a ship called Havana. They had never seen the sea; the first time they saw it was from that boat. The girls were sure the boat was taking them to Cuba, where they could pick gold coins that grew on the trees like bunches of grapes.

  But after forty-eight hours of travelling, among toddlers who cried and vomited, they arrived at the port of Southampton. There were flags everywhere, and it wasn’t warm at all. The day before had been the coronation of King Edward VIII of England, but they preferred to think that the flags had been put up to celebrate their arrival in Havana. All each child had were two sets of clothes and a piece of cardboard with their personal details on it. A man met them and took them to a camp. This wasn’t at all how they had described it around the hearth. It rained, it was cold, and there were no talking parrots or mulattos to be seen. Nor was there gold hanging from trees. The man who had met them corrected them with a half-smile, telling them they weren’t in Cuba but in Eastleigh.

  They stayed at this camp for several months. They sang, danced, and were educated in the English language. They were never treated badly — or particularly well, either. When summer was over, they were separated and put to work.

  One of the girls went to a house with many children. For seven pounds a month, she took care of everything around her: she washed up using polished stones in the washtub, peeled potatoes, aired out the sheets, carried trays of clothing on her head, and scrubbed the floors on her knees. She worked hard, and the lady who hired her never had reason for complaint, but she was only there for a few months before they moved her, without explanation, to a different house. For one reason or another, they always ended up moving her to a different house.

  The other sister worked first in a hotel making up beds and cleaning rooms, then in a restaurant, and finally in a hospital. On Sundays, the two sisters would meet up in a park, under a grey sky cleft with seagulls. They’d eat a mashed-banana sandwich, and tell each other everything that had happened that week.

  This was their favourite time, because they also spoke to each other about the village. They remembered the times they would go to bathe at the river; the bitter smell of freshly cut gorse; the brilliance of the undergrowth dampened by the rain; that wolf they had found, struck by lightning; the oak groves, the fields, the voices of the Galician women; the birds in Tierra de Chá, and a madman they called the Taragoña Express because he’d run forty kilometres a day, thinking he was a bus on that route.

  When it got dark, they would go to the hotel where one of them slept, and continue talking in the shadows of the room until dawn broke. The smells of the earth and the deep mystery of the forest stayed with them. Heavy breathing, the trembling of their hands, eyes fixed anywhere but on the other’s; united, they were defeated, but each foun
d the body they sought, and the two became one. Just let it flourish, they thought, then lie.

  The years went by easily, more or less in this way — after a while, a war broke out there as well — until one day when they had reached their twenties, having lived for eight or nine years in England.

  Then, just when they had begun to speak the language with some fluency and had begun to take a fancy to this dull life, they were told that the war in Spain had ended some time ago, and that it was high time to return home, to get married, and find a profession.

  And that’s what the other women most liked hearing in the story: to get married and find a profession.

  It comforts them and makes them feel good because, in the end, there’s no need to travel so far to live the good life.

  A family and a profession is exactly what they already have.

  8

  A profession?

  A little worried, the women of Tierra de Chá ask if they, too, are menciñeiras, or perhaps meigas: that is to say, have they inherited the healing powers of their grandfather? Have they come back with a secret medicine chest and the arsenal of magical practices that, in the end, caused so many problems in the village during the war? The Winterlings reply, ‘Jesus, no!’, adding that the women shouldn’t worry because they remember nothing of that magic.

  Upon returning from England, in a seamstress’ workshop on Real Street, they were taught to sew on a Singer machine. Death shrouds, brides’ trousseaux, embroidered neckerchiefs, and dresses for the Feast of Santiago.

  To begin with, they went from house to house carrying the sewing machine on their heads, resting on padding made from rolled-up rags. They were paid for alterations, and given some dinner. Because they were good at it, they set up their own workshop. Two machines, two tables with chairs, a portrait of Generalísimo Franco, and the two women. They decided to stay for good in Coruña.

  They became seamstresses.

  The Winterlings hated sewing.

  But things had changed a lot. It wasn’t the same country they had left behind as girls. No one cared about them. Everyone had something else to worry about: a dead son, firewood for the stove, the cold, hunger. The streets throbbed with vendors, smugglers, Civil Guards, black marketeers, priests, women in pairs, and sailors. When there were queues, it meant it was the day that rationed goods like flour or oil were handed out. The rotten scent of politics had set in everywhere: in the schools, in each stitch they made while sewing, in their clothes, and in the air they breathed. The Winterlings went to courses organised by the women’s section of General Franco’s Falange Party, where they were told that they should behave like delicate and pleasant little ants.

  And that’s what they were.

  Delicate little ants.

  On Sundays, they went to the cinema — the only one in the whole city — although they saw the movies in fits and starts because blackouts were frequent, and the juiciest scenes were censored.

  Dolores, the prettier of the two, found a husband. He was a fellow named Tomás, a fisherman of octopus and pout whiting, who lived in Santa Eugenia de Ribeira. He had an octopus trap and a small dorna boat, and he set out to fish at dawn, under the stars. He had just been widowed, and was looking for a woman to take care of the housework.

  ‘Think about it carefully,’ her sister advised her, while she finished off a pair of pants. ‘Here with me, you don’t want for anything. You and I make a great team’ — she spat out a thread — ‘and what’s more, once they’re married, men develop bad habits. You’ll see. At night, they snore … and ask for things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘You know, little things … You’ll see. There’s no reason for you to leave.’

  ‘So says the all-knowing voice of experience,’ answered her sister. ‘And what would you know about married life? I don’t think there’s anything strange about a man and a woman getting along … Anyway, you snore, too, and sometimes you ask for things. For example, just yesterday you asked me for a glass of water.’

  In truth, Dolores didn’t quite know why she had decided on that particular fisherman of octopus and pout whiting. She had seen him on only one occasion, one day when she went to deliver a piece to a dressmaker’s shop. Perhaps in marriage she hoped to find the stable life she had never had during her childhood; but the fact that it was her own sister who purported to plan out the course of her life also seemed like an insult to her intelligence.

  ‘No, there’s nothing strange about a man and a woman getting along,’ replied Saladina. ‘But you don’t even know this man. And just so we’re clear: the glass of water I asked you for wasn’t for me, it was for my teeth.’

  ‘You’re just jealous of me. Who’d ever want to marry you?’

  ‘Oh, woman! Don’t talk nonsense! If I wanted to, I could have them by the handful. It’s just that I don’t want to settle down …’

  ‘You? Ugly and toothless?’

  As soon as she’d said that she regretted it. Her sister stopped the sewing machine, clack, and raised her head slowly. She wore huge glasses while sewing, with frames made of mother-of-pearl and lenses that magnified her eyes. Her chin was trembling.

  ‘What did you say?’ she said.

  But the other sister didn’t want to repeat it. Behind those eyes protected by lenses there was only fragility, and she knew it.

  They went their separate ways without exchanging another word, noses in the air. Shortly after, Dolores went to live in Ribeira with the octopus fisherman.

  But one morning, only eight days after the wedding, someone knocked at the door. It was Dolores. She was much thinner, vaguely frightened, and the childhood pockmarks stood out more than ever on her scrawny cheeks.

  A poor soul in a terrible state.

  Her sister brought up her hand slowly, hesitantly, moving through the air and trying to reach her cheek in the gesture of a caress, or perhaps a slap.

  ‘It’s me …’

  ‘Yes, yes, I see …’ replied Saladina. With great coldness she let her in, hiding the flush of happiness that had lit up her cheeks.

  They looked at each other in silence. The Winterling who had returned was hunched over and lost in her thoughts. The other one was all blown up like a toad at the sudden presence of her sister.

  ‘My husband is at sea,’ she said. ‘I want to sew with you again.’

  No one asked her what had happened, and, because she wasn’t given over to explanations, her eight days of marriage remained shrouded in the darkest of mysteries.

  She may have marched off haughtily, but the Winterling returned with humility to the daily chores of the household. By the end of the month, she was riven again to her comforting routine, and was once again the same old sister.

  But after a while, especially at dusk, a shadow of worry descended upon her. Her sister came into the room to speak with her.

  If she asked what was worrying her, Dolores would let out a long and doleful moan, like a wounded whale, from the edge of the bed.

  She said that nothing worried her because she was happy as she was: a seamstress.

  And if Saladina asked her if she ever regretted coming back, Dolores said she felt better now: a seamstress.

  And when she asked her, her voice trembling with fear (fear of the answer) if she would ever see Tomás again, Dolores would work herself into a complete panic, start bellowing, and then break down in tears.

  Her weeping came from deep inside and rose up in waves, filling her mouth with the immense sound of the confusion and emptiness of her soul.

  9

  But this was all a part of the past, and now, at last, they were back in the village, just as they had always wanted: the distant little house, green meadows beneath the rain.

  In the morning, the procession formed by the two Winterlings, the cow, and the four sheep crossed the square in silence.
They passed under some apple trees in blossom, past the priest’s house, and then further on past the communal oven. Then they tramped through the flowerbeds, and into some fields that led on to the mountain.

  The potholes and the stones on the road unbalanced them, but the Winterlings kept on walking straight, unshakable like the animals. ‘Look, there go the Winterlings and their cow with its swinging gait,’ people said as they walked by.

  The tall one and the not-so-tall one; the pretty one and the ugly one; the one who has coffee for breakfast and the other who has bread and wine; the one with teeth and the other who lost them all biting into bread made with stones. The one who is a virgin and the other who is God knows what …

  The one who grumbles and the other who sings.

  One woman, two women. Nothing else?

  (Their feet remember,

  so they let them walk.)

  When they reached the top of the mountain, Dolores sat on some craggy rocks. The grasslands were covered in wild strawberries, and the mountain awoke to the first trills of the birds. Along with the bottle of anise, she brought up Superstars of Cinema, a magazine that she bought in Coruña and that came out every month with the latest news and rumours, the movie premieres, and photos of actors and actresses from Hollywood: Humphrey Bogart, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable. She talked about the latest releases, the weddings and divorces of the actors, and generally everything she read about in Superstars with the sheep and the cow. She’d ask them questions in one tone of voice, and answer them herself in another.

  The Winterlings had acquired their taste for cinema in England. One afternoon, in the park where they would meet up after work, a man heard them speaking in Spanish. When he found out they had arrived in England as refugees, he told them he was in charge of a production company, and offered them a role in a documentary about the Spanish Civil War. It was to be called Orphans of the Storm, and was about the settling of Galician and Basque children in Great Britain. All the lights, the cameras, the make-up … it was an experience they’d never forget. And they even got paid!