The Winterlings

by Cristina Sanchez-Andrade

  To Spain?

  Ava Gardner coming to Spaaaaaain?

  Sometimes, the sea was like a cornfield, with waves that ebbed and flowed. Dolores was in the middle of it. It smelt of salt, and the smell impregnated her clothes, her hair.

  Her head was full of sand, bubbles, and chickens. She fell asleep to this aroma, and woke up hearing sighs in her own chest, the deep and heavy swell of the sea.

  She was the sea.

  21

  Ever since Dolores had dropped the plate of feed while she was rescuing her sister, the chickens hadn’t stopped pecking at the ground beneath the fig tree. They became troublesome. They stayed under there all day, and it had become a filthy pit of excrement, dirt, stones, feathers, and feed in which the chickens even pecked at each other, scrapping and scuffling fiercely among themselves.

  A sense of violence, of strange and pointless aggression, hung in the air until, one day, they woke up to find that one of the chickens was dead. Since then, for some reason, none of the others had laid an egg.

  They spoke about it in the tavern, and everyone recommended that they go and speak with Tristán, the rooster raiser, who was also quite good with chickens.

  Tristán was a tall and taciturn man. He had a magnificent house, near the fountain with only one tap. He spent his days with his birds — still, silent, and solitary.

  The rooms on the lower floor were entirely dedicated to the chickens that roosted there comfortably, with the air of landholders. On the upper floor, in a large room whose walls were so covered in filth you could hardly see the mouldings or fixtures, the capons were locked up in cages in which he fattened them up with amoados, or pancake batter, to sell at market. Three times a day, at nine, three, and eight, Tristan would lumber up the staircase, open the cages, and stuff a ball of bread and cornmeal dipped in water and white wine into their beaks.

  The younger capons needed softer balls of feed, and the older ones tended to shed their feathers, so Tristán was always kept busy. That’s without even mentioning Christmas, when at least three or four times a day he had to get the capons drunk with a spot of cognac so that the meat would be tastier.

  The capon is an awkward animal, stupid and quick-tempered, and there could be no doubt that some of this had rubbed off onto Tristán. What’s more, due to living in such close quarters with these birds, he had begun to resemble them physically as well. He had the same cloudy eyes, the jowls, and long, sharp fingernails. Just like them, he was fat and unfit, with bruised skin and fine hair all over his body.

  Tristán and his capons looked like they had hatched from the same egg.

  Sitting by the cages all day long, either in silence in order to avoid spooking the animals, or listening to music by Chopin to fatten them up, he began to develop odd habits. He became awkward and solitary. If the poor birds didn’t swallow when he put the feed in their mouth, he’d beat them and insult them. The terrified capons would keep their heads down and scurry off to a corner of the cage. So then Tristán would have to go in, on all fours, and pull them out. He’d put the dough back in their mouths, and they’d spit it out. Tristán would slap them, and then start with the insults.

  That’s how he spent his life.

  A lot of things were said about him: that he fed the capons cyanide, that he warded off the black dog of depression by drinking the cognac that was meant for the birds, and that he let his own mother die so he could cash in on an insurance policy and buy his house in Tierra de Chá. In fact, he’d inherited the obligation to tend to the bird business, and he’d never really liked it.

  Gossip.

  ‘Chickens are pretty clever even though they’re stupid,’ explained Tristán — without looking up, putting a ball of bread-dough in one of the capon’s beaks — when the Winterlings went to see him to explain their problem. ‘They want you to know something. If they’ve been scratching at the ground there for days, it’s not just for the spilt feed. Something is lurking beneath the fig tree that you don’t know about.’

  He agreed to have a look at the chickens when he got an opportunity. His work barely gave him a chance to leave the place.

  Once they got home, Dolores got out a broom and got to sweeping all around the fig tree. Barely five minutes had gone by before the broom hit something hard. The Winterling bent down to look. The ground had already been well turned over, so she barely had to dig at all. No, it wasn’t a root, or a stone either. What was that doing there? Was it one of those treasures from Cuba that her grandfather had told her about on cold winter nights?

  With the feeling that there was something important buried there, she pulled out a little hoe and called her sister.

  The Winterlings squatted down to watch. They stayed there with their eyes fixed on the ground, in silence, for a few minutes. They got back up again. They hugged, then got back down on the ground on their knees.

  ‘For the love of God, let’s see what’s inside!’ clamoured one of them.

  ‘I’m scared!’ said the other, dancing on the spot.

  ‘Me too.’

  Saladina bent down to dig with the hoe, but she soon stopped.

  ‘We’re disturbing the past,’ she said. ‘Do you think it’s worth it, after all the sacrifices we made to be here? We’ve been here a while and still no one suspects a thing about our little secret … It’s not worth it. Besides, whatever is in there doesn’t belong to you.’

  ‘It’s not yours either!’

  The first sister jumped on the second one. She tried to grab hold of the hoe. But the second one struck back, pouncing on her like a panther. For a few minutes, they struggled like that on the ground. Finally, Saladina took control of the hoe and got back down on all fours. She shook the dust off herself. She was panting, her hair twisted and crazy, like snakes writhing over her eyes. She covered up what they had just found with dirt.

  ‘Not a single word to anyone about this,’ she said almost breathlessly.

  Dolores panted.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  22

  A few days after they had been digging under the fig tree, the whole town was turned upside down by the first in a series of events that were more or less linked together.

  It all started when Ramón died in the Winterlings’ cowshed. But it didn’t occur to anybody that what happened that day was merely the beginning of everything that would follow. No one knew that things, like people and animals, yearn only for eternal repose, and that it would have been better not to disturb the murky soil of the past.

  Little Ramón had announced that he would return to Tierra de Chá, and he was true to his word. During his first visit on shore leave, he passed by the tavern. There he met Mr Tenderlove, who was asking Don Manuel if Violeta da Cuqueira had come back down to the village.

  ‘That witch?’ asked the priest. ‘God help us … She would only come down here to prophesy someone’s death.’

  Then the dental mechanic asked if the old lady from Bocelo had died yet.

  ‘What do you mean is she dead yet? Good God!’ complained the priest. ‘I told you already! I head up the mountain just to head back down again. I’m Sisyphus reincarnate! But instead of a rock, I’ve got holy oils. Condemned for the rest of my days …’

  Tenderlove had no idea who Sisyphus was, and he didn’t really care; he just shifted in his seat. He asked how old the lady was.

  ‘At least a hundred,’ calculated the priest.

  ‘Well …’ answered Tenderlove. ‘Isn’t it about time to administer something to that old Methuselah?’

  The priest looked at him, horrified.

  ‘No one goes until their time comes, and when the time comes, they go! Since when have you been so interested in little old ladies?’

  But Tenderlove lowered his head, finished his wine in one gulp, wiped his mouth, and said not a word more.

  That’s how Little
Ramón found out that the old lady from Bocelo was still around, a sack of skin and bones, telling everyone that soon she would have the piece of paper concerning the sale of her brain, which, according to her, was as magnificent as the Cathedral of Santiago. He also realised that each and every inhabitant of the village must have a contract of sale signed by Don Reinaldo.

  He went about making some enquiries, and the next morning, before sunrise, he arrived at the Winterlings’ house.

  Dolores was alone. Saladina had woken with her mouth aflame. Since the evening before, her dentures had felt strange. She didn’t eat, she devoured; she seemed as if overcome by a whirlwind that tore through food and made it disappear down her gullet, only to then search for more.

  There was no point sealing her lips shut, or asking her sister to take the chorizo and bread out of her sight. Her neck, her arms, and her body were enslaved to her mouth. If Saladina tried to keep it shut, she ran the risk of eating her tongue, and whenever her sister tried to intervene, she was bitten ferociously. Other times her mouth lay still, playing dead until suddenly, snap, it opened and closed, or she started cackling like a madwoman.

  And so, despite the fact that Tenderlove had given her strict orders not to return to the clinic until he himself sent word, Saladina had no other option but to go there.

  Without anyone inviting him in, Ramón opened the door, made a path through the chickens, and sat down on a bench. In the kitchen, the fire was roaring, and above it, in a pan, the breakfast was bubbling away. Among the strings of chorizo and blood sausages, wet shirts and knickers hung by the fire to dry. The light of the fire reflected off the pan and fire tongs.

  Looking around and smelling the odour of the house, for the first time in many years, Ramón felt a pang of nostalgia. It was an odour in which he could distinguish the things he was made of. The smell of chorizo hanging by the hearth, of an animal sleeping nearby in the cowshed, the smell of the bleach his mother used to clean the floors.

  How much time had passed since he used to spend every afternoon here with his mother? Twenty-five years. But twenty-five years was nothing, because it felt like just yesterday that the women around the hearth were telling him jokes and stroking his hair, when his mother would unbutton her shirt and take out her breasts to feed him.

  When he spoke about the people and the stories they would tell there in winter, his voice broke. Then, when he recalled how his mother had weaned him at the age of seven, he began to laugh. Unable to control himself, he covered his mouth with his hand, cackling with nervous and sometimes overwhelming laughter. He laughed or he cried; as much as she watched him, Dolores couldn’t figure out which.

  Finally, Ramón wiped away the tears. He breathed in the smell again.

  ‘He bought my mother’s brain as well. That old hag hid the money, without telling me where, until the day she died. Tristán told me. But my mother was capable of anything …’

  He choked off a loud chortle that spooked a chicken. But the tears kept rolling down his cheeks.

  Then, out of the blue, and in a different tone, he began to talk about his friend Tomás, the fisherman of octopus and pout whiting from Ribeira.

  ‘To tell the truth, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Tomás. At the Company nobody’s heard a word from him … He didn’t even come to collect his wages. They’re very surprised.’

  ‘Tomás?’ Dolores stood up suddenly. She didn’t know who Tomás was. They’d already told him they had only been in Ribeira a short time. Too damp for the bones. We prefer Coruña, which is a real city, with streets, lamps, car, shops where women’s perfume and gentlemen’s tobacco lingers in the air. But now we’re here: werewolves, ghosts, and lost souls. That has its charm as well. Would you care for a drink?

  ‘Milk,’ declared Little Ramón pointedly, as if he’d already prepared his answer.

  ‘Milk,’ said Dolores, bumping into his legs as she turned around, her arms stiff in the air, looking from side to side. ‘Right-o then …’

  Just then she heard singing in the distance, a voice that for the moment was still unidentifiable yet familiar, coming in from the orchard. She looked through the window and saw Mr Tenderlove carrying a huge sack on his back. She looked closer: that huge sack was, in fact, the monstrosity that was her sister.

  What was Saladina doing riding Tenderlove’s hump like that, singing and cackling like a madwoman?

  Opening the door, Tenderlove disposed of his cargo abruptly. Saladina fell to the floor without missing a word of ten green bottles, laughing in fits and starts with bits of snot blowing out her nose.

  ‘What have you done to my sister?’ asked Dolores, horrified.

  The dental mechanic explained timidly that he’d done nothing out of the ordinary: he just gave her a bit of brandy as an anaesthetic. It turns out Saladina hadn’t had any breakfast and so …

  ‘You quack! You shouldn’t be fixing people’s mouths!’ screeched Dolores in a rage. ‘You’re not qualified!’

  ‘Qualified, whoop-whoop!’ began Saladina from the floor, rolling over with laughter. ‘Quaaaaalifiiiiieeed, whoop-Tender-green, green bottles, bada-whoop-qualified hanging on the wall!’

  Dolores dismissed the dental mechanic, who, put out by such a slight, lit out for the main road as fast as he could, slightly stooped over. Then she helped her sister get into bed. Saladina went upstairs without missing a beat in her song, whoop-Tenderlove-bada-whoop qualifieeeeeed.

  Once she had lain her sister down, the Winterling set about attending to — or rather, getting rid of — Ramón, who had been greatly amused by the spectacle, and was still waiting for his glass of milk.

  The Winterling explained that there wasn’t any milk because the cow hadn’t been milked yet; in fact, it was high time to do that but between one thing and the other, she hadn’t been able to do it. Jesus, couldn’t he hear her mooing? No, Ramón couldn’t hear it. Well, just when you arrived, I was getting ready to milk her. There’s no milk, but I can offer you anise. Dolores hurried to explain that a doctor in Coruña had prescribed anise to cure Saladina from a bout of flatulence, and what do you know, she took a liking to the remedy, and now is something of a drinker. So you see … but Ramón wasn’t laughing. He was lost in thought.

  ‘I want the piece of paper,’ he said suddenly. ‘You might as well go and get it because that’s what I came here for.’

  He got up quickly, and said that while she looked for the contract from the sale of the brain, he’d milk the cow himself, and that it would bring back fond memories.

  It was early, one of those bright mornings close to summer. Smoke over the tiled roofs. The pealing of bells. Lately, there had been heavy storms that had forced them to stay indoors. But that day, all was calm in the countryside. The sun had that brilliance that shines through after a storm, when the air is clean and fresh. From time to time, they could hear Saladina singing and sobbing, although more and more faintly each time. Finally, she seemed to have fallen asleep.

  Through the window, Dolores saw Ramón rummaging around in the shed. Among the rusty plough and the other farm tools, he was searching for something. She saw him go back into the cowshed, the milk pail clinking against his leg.

  As children, before the outbreak of the war, the Winterlings and Little Ramón had been playmates. Even though he was a few years younger, they would go together to the forest to look for gentian and ladybirds. They teased the donkeys by pulling their tails, and swam together in the river. In winter, when it was very cold, they liked to go into the cowsheds in the village, especially the very big ones, and lie down among the cows. The three of them needed warmth, and the cows gave it to them. Sometimes they lay among the cows until dawn broke.

  Little Ramón’s mother, Esperanza (Hope at Nicolasa’s Door) had been their grandfather’s maid. She hadn’t found work since Don Reinaldo disappeared, and she lived off charity from the villagers, and from the pro
ceeds of shawls she crocheted that she sold at the markets and festivals. Her son had grown up with barely any education, and when he turned sixteen, he went off to Coruña and sailed away on the first ship that offered him work.

  Little Ramón went into the cowshed, and the Winterling went upstairs to see how her sister was doing. Saladina wasn’t asleep, but she had calmed down, so Dolores decided to explain to her that they had a visitor in the house: Ramón, Little Ramón, and that right now he was in the cowshed trying to milk the cow.

  ‘I was sure he was going to kiss me when he was carrying me like that, and I was holding very still and close to him, my breasts in his back — I was paralysed, Dolores! I didn’t want to move a muscle so that we could both take in that moment,’ said Saladina, clutching at the covers.

  Dolores looked at her in desperation.

  ‘What are you on about, you idiot! You’re drunk! I don’t want to hear one more word about that quack. Didn’t I tell you Ramón is here in the house?’

  Saladina was silent. Suddenly, she appeared to emerge from her trance, and jumped out of bed.

  ‘Little Ramón is here? In our house?’

  The window was open, and the fresh morning breeze blew in. In the distance, bent over the earth, a group of women worked in the fields. They broke the earth and slashed the grass with their mattocks. The breeze transported the smell of gorse piled up to make manure. A murder of crows crossed the sky slowly.

  They opened the trapdoor. Straight away, the rancid smell of cow dung floated up at them. Down there was Ramón — they could see him, but he couldn’t see them — looking for the perfect place to sit down. Finally, he placed the stool down next to the cow. The Winterlings let out a sigh of relief when they saw that all he wanted to do was milk the cow. Greta had woken up; she lifted her neck up to the sky and stared straight ahead, her mouth half open and her eyes drooping as if she were confronted by ancient memories, blowing white breath out of her nostrils.