The Winterlings

by Cristina Sanchez-Andrade

  One day shortly after this, the Widow came into the barn. She said that she didn’t like poetry, but that she was impressed by the school. Rosendo began trembling. Without knowing why, he threw his cap to the ground, yelled out ‘Jeepers!’, and pushed the Widow to the wall, trying to kiss her.

  ‘Not until we’re married,’ she said without much surprise, disengaging herself.

  ‘What difference does that make?’ He asked, perplexed.

  ‘My husband might see us.’

  That was when Uncle Rosendo declared he’d never speak to that crazy woman again.

  They got married in the village church — the same one in which she had married the first time — on the same day of the same month, because the Widow said that they wouldn’t offend her husband that way.

  At the reception, when it came time for dessert and cigars, she disappeared. After looking for her everywhere, they found her washing herself in the swimming pool. Her explanation was that she was telling her dead husband how it all had gone.

  Also to avoid causing offense, she refused to get married in white, and she didn’t even take off her black mourning shawl on her wedding night. On this occasion, Rosendo held his tongue.

  The Widow had told him that the mourning period for a grandparent was a year, for a sibling it was two, for a parent it was three, and for a child or a spouse, a lifetime. And so, out of respect, he didn’t say anything. He knew a fair amount about geography, algebra, and poetry, but he didn’t know enough about that grey illness of the mind called mourning to venture an opinion.

  Uncle Rosendo had envisaged that marriage would bring about a better life, imagining that perhaps the Widow would soften her harsh ways. But right from the start, it was his wife who was in charge. She ridiculed him in front of others, and everything he did seemed wrong to her. After several years of marriage, the Widow was as much a virgin (if she ever had been) and as much a widow as the very first day.

  In the village, they said that when her first husband died, the Widow made a cruel commitment. Because she could no longer be with the man she loved, she decided that she would never belong to another. She swore against remarriage. And what better way to achieve this than by marrying Uncle Rosendo, the village idiot?

  With time, he got tired of being in the house with her, breathing in her dead husband’s air. And so with no children (because how could there be children?), he became a regular at the tavern. He began to get drunk every afternoon, and, thanks to this, many repressed memories inside him were set free.

  Some days, after Saladina was finished at Mr Tenderlove’s clinic, the Winterlings would pass by the tavern. Seeing them there, Uncle Rosendo would remember Don Reinaldo, and would talk of the old times. He said, with yearning, that their grandfather had been one of the best friends he had ever had, and that the village had never been the same without him. Once he warmed up, there was no stopping him, and the Winterlings noticed how the others bustled about telling him to shut up, nudging him in the side or gesturing at him.

  One day, he told them about how Don Reinaldo had cured a man of ‘his own childhood’. The poor man couldn’t stop saying ‘no’. From the moment he got up until he went to sleep, he refused everything: his mother, his wife and kids, work, the wine they served him at the tavern, the rain, the flowers, and the sun. When Don Reinaldo arrived at his house, he’d taken off his corduroy jacket and got into bed with him. He spent the night there, sharing voices, nightmares, and sweat, and in the morning, the man felt much better.

  ‘Oh, he was a fine man!’ added Uncle Rosendo. ‘He didn’t deserve what he got. He truly was everyone’s doctor, until they accused him of being a witch doctor and a Bolshevik. He thought that wealth was poorly shared out, and that it was a social injustice not to help the most needy. That was all. Don Reinaldo came out of prison all anxious; he felt persecuted by everyone. He never understood why they put him in there. The fear turned his mind. He started to do strange things … That’s when …’

  Suddenly, the innkeeper turned up the volume on the television.

  ‘… as I was saying,’ continued Uncle Rosendo, trying to make his voice heard over the TV announcer. ‘But that’s when they gave poor Tristán a beating too. I don’t know … those gun-crazy folks came along shouting and shooting in the air. No one got away from them.’

  It wasn’t quite seven o’clock, but after that comment, someone pulled him off his seat, bringing forward his nightly tumble.

  Boom.

  Shortly thereafter, slightly stooped, Meis’ Widow jumped down from her wagon.

  18

  ‘I told you quite clearly on the first day not to eat garlic or onion, Saladina!’ protested Mr Tenderlove. ‘That’s all I asked of you …’

  Lately, the visits to the dental mechanic’s clinic, which at the start were quite brief — just taking the time necessary to clear a spot, insert a tooth, fix it to the bone with cement, and stich up the wound on the gum — had begun to grow longer. After the work was done, they stayed chatting in the clinic, and the conversation became more and more expressive and personal. Instead of real anaesthetics, the dental mechanic used a local spirit distilled from herbs, and so when Saladina got up from the chair, she was a different woman altogether. Far from feeling pain or discomfort, her head would spin, and she felt pleasure and a swirling desire to dance.

  They held similar views on many things, and Tenderlove, in addition to being kind and good with his hands, turned out to be quite a cultured man of the world. Saladina spoke to him of the time she and her sister had spent in England: what the people there were like, how they dressed, what they ate, and all the films they had seen. She told him that she never had to work there because she lived with her lover in a mansion, that she had been the lead actress in two films, and that the producers were falling over themselves to have her star in a third, but that she hadn’t been able to take the role because the war broke out. He just watched her with his grey, penetrating eyes.

  Saladina enjoyed that man’s company; there was something hesitant and mysterious in his persona that made him interesting. For example, you could never get a definitive answer from him: ‘we’ll see’ or ‘you could say that’ is all that he would say. In response to the direct question of how much it would cost her to fix up her teeth, he would answer with ‘oh, not too much’ or ‘as much as I said the other day’.

  One day, Saladina dared to ask him why he had never married. Through Uncle Rosendo, she had found out that the dental mechanic was very discreet in his private life, and he didn’t like to talk about it. Tenderlove told her that essentially there were things that were meant to be, and things that weren’t, and that there was no explanation for them at all. Why did ham go with turnip tops, while fish didn’t go with cheese? Fish with cheese? It was this mad reasoning that was most attractive to gloomy Saladina.

  Among his many other qualities, Tenderlove had a great sense of humour. On occasion, he would disappear from the clinic into the shadows of the house. After a moment, he would come back dressed up as a priest, a cabaret girl, a nun, or a soldier, but nearly always in dark, tight-fitting clothes that accentuated his enormous masculine bulge.

  This was the game they played: Tenderlove would disappear, and Saladina had to guess what disguise he would put on. The dental mechanic was a great fan of clothing in general. Saladina had kept some very skimpy silk stockings that she had bought years ago in England. She wore them to the clinic especially to attract his attention. When she told him that in England, the women made their own underwear from the remains of parachutes from gunned-down enemy pilots, he was beside himself.

  His participation in the Spanish Civil War was a thorny topic. He had been part of the underground resistance, the maquis — that motley collection of bearded escapees who from 1940 onwards had fought from their hideaways in the mountains of Galicia, living on blackberries, broths made from animal bones, and water
drunk from streams. Saladina would casually mention the resistance, without imagining the rage he felt just hearing the word maquis. In fact, she could imagine it, thanks to Uncle Rosendo, but she still dragged it up. She was impressed at the thought of him belonging to such a virile and rebellious group of men. At any opportunity, she would ask him why he no longer went up the mountains to take food or blankets to his comrades.

  Saladina returned to the house glowing, in an excellent mood, and Dolores, who was accustomed to her sister’s vinegary disposition, was pleased but also worried to see her like that.

  In fact, since her sister had started going to the clinic, she had filled out and looked healthier. She got up at dawn, and, while she whistled childhood ditties from England to herself, she bustled to and fro throughout the house in great spirits, bursting with frenetic activity. No sooner had she built a new woodshed, she’d be mucking out the cowshed, the cow included, or watering the geraniums. Then she’d be cooking, or heading down to the river to fish for trout.

  But Dolores knew from experience (and this is why she wasn’t quite convinced) that spells of good humour did not last long in her sister, usually giving way to dark and gloomy moods.

  Until now, Saladina had never been in love. She didn’t know how to give herself over to it. But she had her reasons: apart from Dolores, and perhaps, back in his day, her grandfather, she had never been loved by anyone. As a consequence, she had built a wall around herself without even a single fissure of attachment. She had learnt that in England everyone did this, and that it was, without a doubt, the most practical way to survive.

  But now, having discovered the pleasure of feeling in love (because with time she was discovering that oh yes, she was madly in love with Mr Tenderlove) she appeared self-confident and much more independent. What’s more, she wanted to know if others felt the way she did.

  One day, she asked the country teacher when she saw him on the road to the mountain.

  ‘Uncle Rosendo, when you see your wife in the morning, do you feel butterflies in your stomach?’ Uncle Rosendo replied that what he felt when he saw her were more likely moths.

  Or she would ask Don Manuel, the priest.

  ‘Father, you love God, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, dear girl, what kind of nonsense is this?’

  ‘And you don’t stutter when you speak to Him? You don’t blush or feel your insides churning?’

  The priest walked off without answering.

  She asked Tristán, who raised capons, when she saw him one day at the tavern.

  ‘Do you get goosebumps when you see a woman you like?’

  And when she got home, she would write a list of all the words associated with love: butterflies, moths, goosebumps, stuttering, lion’s roar.

  By this stage, she was an expert in lists, and she had all kinds of them: lists of friends and enemies, shopping list, blacklists, to-do lists, lists of shoes she didn’t have, lists of actors with and without an Oscar. It was as if her frightened and chaotic mind needed the absurd order these lists had to offer. Through these lists, she became who she wanted to be.

  But that day in the clinic, Tenderlove didn’t feel like talking, and was quite surly. He was fixated on the fact that Saladina had eaten garlic or maybe onions.

  ‘I swear on my mother that I didn’t.’

  The dental mechanic, who at that moment was polishing a tooth, looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Saladina had flushed cheeks and feverish eyes. Because she had arrived by walking through the forest, her skirt had stirred up all kinds of butterflies and insects from the long grass, and now they were stuck in her hair like shiny bobby-pins. She was breathing heavily.

  ‘You did so! You ate something. I knew it as soon as I saw you, or should I say since I smelt you coming along.’

  The dental mechanic started preparing the cement with a sour look on his face. Saladina watched him pensively. She thought that Tenderlove had a muscly face. She also thought that underneath all that tension he had hidden away lies, and that when he smiled, his eyes didn’t change at all. She struck up the courage to break the silence.

  ‘It’s because of the titanium, isn’t it? Yesterday they were saying on the television in the tavern that it’s running out. Don’t worry, you’ll find another material to make teeth with. Is one of my new teeth missing? I’m happy to wait …’

  Tenderlove stared at her in silence. Some mosquitoes disentangled themselves from her hair, and began to buzz around her head.

  ‘It’s not because of that. I have three teeth to go. But I’ll get them. I’m just … I’m just waiting for the material to arrive …’

  ‘Well, maybe it’s because I haven’t paid you yet, right, Tender? It’s just that you haven’t told me how much you’re charging for the replacement!’

  Tenderlove shifted abruptly, as if he’d been disturbed.

  ‘How am I supposed to work with that rotten garlic you have in your mouth … You stink, Winterling!’

  ‘Why do you talk to me like that? And why do you call me that? I have a name …’

  Tenderlove looked at her. He slammed the dish with the cement in it on the table.

  ‘The truth is I don’t know why I call you that. Sometimes the tongue is quicker than the word. Look, now that you’re here I’ll put in today’s tooth, but for the remaining three you’ll have to wait …’

  And so that day Saladina was forced to hear, with a heavy heart, that she was not to come back until Tenderlove sent word.

  19

  At dusk, lulled by the clack clack of the Singer, more and more often Dolores felt a tingling in her spine. Now that they were settled in the village, and especially since her sister had become more independent, she had the feeling that something big was about to happen.

  She didn’t quite know what the feeling was. Sometimes she confused it with a sense of lacking.

  Perhaps, she thought to herself, it was just women’s nonsense.

  Other times, however, she thought that whatever she was waiting for was already right there, along with her sister, Greta the cow, and her simple life, beneath the stars and the sky, in the house with the fig tree in Tierra de Chá.

  The sun was coming up on a warm day when her feelings began to take shape. The earth gave off a damp smell, and the chimneys puffed out a dirty white smoke. The whole countryside resonated with the chirping of insects and the crackling of grass. The time had come to reap the corn and shear the sheep. Dolores went out to the orchard to feed the chickens. The kitchen window was open with the radio on. Just then, the announcer’s voice interrupted the music with breaking news. News that would disrupt their whole routine. News that would destroy the monotonous safety the two sisters had been clinging to since their arrival. Ava Gardner, the famous American actress, ‘the most beautiful animal in the world’, was coming to Spain to make a movie. Soon she would be arriving in Tossa de Mar to shoot Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

  The announcer said it was great news, because the film would create jobs for many local people on the coast. ‘Ava Gardner is coming to Spain,’ the Winterling told the chickens.

  She shrugged her shoulders and threw more breadcrumbs.

  She didn’t think of it again until nightfall.

  Her sister came back from the tavern, and they took the animals up the mountain. She spent the afternoon sewing the hem of a dress, a commission that the Winterlings received every year from a certain family in Santiago. They went to the forest to gather kindling, made fig jam, listened to their soap opera, had dinner, and then got ready for bed.

  But before she got into bed, while she was putting on her nightdress, Dolores felt a shiver run down her spine. A tingling like spiders ran through her bones and up her back, right into the inside of her head.

  She didn’t want to pay any attention to it.

  But once she was lying down, she cou
ldn’t stop tossing and turning. She didn’t get a wink of sleep. Finally, she sat on the edge of her sister’s bed and watched her in the darkness. She thought that Saladina looked even more ugly asleep than awake.

  ‘Hey, Sala,’ she whispered after a while, seeing that her eyes were open. ‘Do you know where Tossa de Mar is?’

  Saladina, who had no idea at all about geography, took a while to answer.

  ‘Where do you think it is, you dummy? By the sea, of course! You can tell from the name: Tossa de Mar.’

  They fell silent.

  Dolores went back to her bed and covered herself in blankets.

  Suddenly, Saladina woke up again.

  ‘Tell me the truth,’ she squawked from her bed. ‘Why did you ask that question in the middle of the night?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ her sister responded fearfully from beneath the covers. ‘It just crossed my mind to ask you. Things pop into my mind, I have a brain, you know, I’m not a chicken …’

  She lay in the darkness with her eyes open. The house was calm, and surges of heat wafted up from the open trapdoor. The smell of manure comforted her.

  She could feel her heart thumping in her ears.

  Greta Garbo the cow mooed languidly in the cowshed.

  But that night, while they slept, a sea grew in the sisters’ bedroom.

  20

  It was a sea that looked like the one Dolores had seen off the English coast, or off Coruña, or maybe even like the one in the port at Santander where they had been abandoned with their cardboard suitcases. But it was a strange sea, because the chickens scratched in it, and actors and actresses from Hollywood lived in it — Greta Garbo, Frank Sinatra with his powerful voice, skinny little Audrey Hepburn, and Clark Gable, the King of Hollywood.

  Throughout the following days, Dolores heard it while she went about her daily chores — immense and powerful and ever nearer, turning her actual world into a narrow and boring place — an ocean pulling at her, calling her: ‘Did you hear that Ava Gardner is coming to Spain?’