The Winterlings

by Cristina Sanchez-Andrade

  Many people in the village said that Esperanza, Little Ramón’s mother, had died a suspicious death. They said that Don Reinaldo, who had employed her as a servant, had something to do with it …

  That’s not how it happened. Or at least, Little Ramón had no memory of the Winterlings’ grandfather being involved in her death. Esperanza (Hope at Nicolasa’s Door) died on a May morning, while making a five-needle crochet on the couch in her house. The kid, who was eating a sandwich and sitting right in front of her, saw how his mother’s hands started trembling and her needlework fell to the floor. A spasm shook her entire body and then stopped, leaving an ironic smirk on her face. Ramón sat there with his eyes popping out of his head, his teeth clamped down on the bread, trying to work out if the expression on her face was glee or terror. His whole life had been like that: an eternal confusion of caresses and clips over the ear, laughter and crying, love and violence.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that!’ he finally exploded. He finished eating his sandwich and got up. He left the house convinced that his mother was dead, but he never knew if she had died of happiness or sadness. A few hours earlier, he had announced that he would be going to sea and would be away for two years, fishing the waters of Argentina.

  Little Ramón let go of the cow’s udders. He couldn’t get comfortable on the stool, because its legs were bumping against the gorse branches. He picked it up and put it back down again.

  ‘He suspects something,’ said one Winterling.

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ said the other, and slammed the trapdoor shut. They began to fidget, like they always did when they were nervous.

  ‘I’m going down there!’

  ‘Don’t go down there, for the love of God!’

  ‘I’m going!’

  They opened the trapdoor again. One of the sisters climbed over the other one’s rump, and they both sat down to watch. Ramón was milking the cow.

  They closed the trapdoor, and Dolores went down to the cowshed as quickly as she could. Ramón heard a noise and turned around. When he saw the Winterling he gave a start, stood up, and took a few steps back.

  ‘So you like milk,’ she said, looking at him fiercely.

  But Ramón didn’t answer. The Winterling’s eyes radiated a strange light that kept him still. In those eyes, Ramón seemed to see tables and chairs; women falling; his mother making crochet in a frosty landscape; a cold February morning.

  At that moment, Greta mooed languidly. She shifted and suddenly kicked out at Ramón, a single blow, right in the neck. He fell to the ground mumbling incomprehensible words about the Company and his friend Tomás.

  The other Winterling, who had watched the whole scene from above, came down as well. Between the two of them, they tidied up the gorse branches and started to attend to Ramón. They grabbed a foot each and dragged him upstairs to the bedroom. They put him down on the bed and called the priest, explaining what had happened.

  As was normal in such cases, the whole village came along with the priest. But the damage had been done, and by the next day, the young man was coughing up blood.

  Eight days later, he was dead.

  PART II

  ‘Perhaps only one winter remains for us’

  HORACE, Carpe Diem

  1

  As a general rule, the nasty business about Ramón was never spoken of again. These things happen — accidents, tragedies. He certainly was very young, not even thirty years old, but life is full of surprises.

  This all changed one afternoon when the Mayor of Sanclás, the parish to which the village belonged, arrived at the Winterlings’ house accompanied by the priest. He came to tell them that a judge in Coruña wished to speak with them.

  They didn’t much feel like talking about anything that a judge would be interested in, so they told the mayor and the priest that they’d go sometime soon. For now, they had sick chickens to care for. They wouldn’t stop fighting, and it had been some time since any of them had laid an egg. It was something that required immediate attention.

  When the mayor left, the priest hung around to speak with them. Between implications and insinuations, he let them know that things were about to get ugly. Now there was a judge involved, and now he too … he too wanted the contract for the purchase of his brain. He also said that he hadn’t mentioned anything to the judge, but that while he was administering the last rites to Little Ramón, he had mumbled something about a certain Tomás. Did they know who Tomás was?

  No, the Winterlings hadn’t the slightest idea who Tomás was.

  Finally, Don Manuel pulled the door open. He said he’d come back later for the contract, seeing as it was just about lunch time, and that they should have it ready for him.

  ‘Woolly bear caterpillar, vai cajar,’ hummed the Winterlings in unison, their eyes on the door, when he was already outside.

  Then Dolores put on her shawl, telling her sister that she was going to the tavern to see if she could find Tristán. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘I have things to do,’ answered Saladina, without further explanation.

  Dolores looked at her in surprise.

  ‘Things?’

  ‘Things,’ replied her sister with an air of mystery, moving towards the kitchen.

  ‘And what exactly do you need to do, if I may ask?’

  ‘Things,’ repeated Saladina from the kitchen, where she was putting figs in a basket.

  Dolores began to lose patience. She looked at the figs.

  ‘What are you doing with those? You know they always upset your stomach …’

  But Saladina didn’t answer. She began peeling the figs and putting them in a pot with water. Then she got out the canister of sugar, took the lid off, and began to throw in handfuls. She was singing to herself.

  ‘We already have enough fig jam,’ said Dolores.

  The other Winterling continued what she was doing without responding. Finally, after stirring the figs and the sugar in the pot for a good spell, singing happily all the while, she turned around to address her sister, who was still standing there with her hands on her hips.

  ‘The jam isn’t for you or even for me. There are more people than us in the world, you know?’

  And so Dolores ended up going to the tavern alone. Alone and confused.

  But the rooster raiser wasn’t alone; he was downing a few wines with a big group of people who were watching the door, waiting for Uncle Rosendo to arrive. As they told her, it was the big day: the country teacher had gone to Coruña to face his ‘moment of truth’.

  ‘His “moment of truth”?’ asked Dolores.

  ‘His moment of truth,’ they responded, without taking their eyes off the door.

  Besides the theories he had about the labyrinths of his wife’s mind, Uncle Rosendo had many other philosophies he would expound in the tavern. For example, there was the theory that one is the exact opposite of what one purports to be: that is, if someone were to insist that they were shy, they would clearly be outgoing, and if someone purports to convince us that they are wise, then they know little, or more likely, nothing. He also held to the theory that toothaches always began on Friday nights, and that the ‘pure and simple truth’ is rarely pure and never simple.

  He told the priest that in the beginning there was not the Word but the Lie, and that the Lie often holds more truth than the truth itself.

  But his million-dollar theory was the one about fate. The life and fate of every man, he said, comes down to a single moment.

  This moment could pop up unexpectedly, like a toothache, for example (although not necessarily on a Friday afternoon), but when that moment presents itself, either you give yourself over entirely to it, or it never presents itself again.

  His moment finally arrived the day he had to pass the exam to recertify his qualifications as a country teacher. In truth, he’d never felt like
gaining an official qualification, given that nobody in Tierra de Chá disputed his role as teacher, but he accepted the opportunity with the resignation used to accept unavoidable tasks. He put up a sign on the school that said ‘Closed by Formal Obligation’, and hunkered down in the house to prepare.

  For many days he was nervous, but the week before the test was a nightmare. He prepared for that exam like his life depended on it. At the tavern in the evenings, he told everyone he was constantly studying with books, although Meis’ Widow revealed that this was not true; he spent his day overwhelmed, staring out the window. Lately, all people could ask him about was the exam. They said they had no doubt he would pass, and patted him on the shoulder. These signs of affection made his stomach churn.

  Finally, the day arrived.

  It was the day they’d been waiting for.

  The Winterlings had seen him going, very early in the morning, towards the square to catch the bus, wrapped up in a corduroy jacket and a clean shirt with a stiff collar, breathing heavily. ‘There goes the teacher,’ they said to each other while they threw the feed to the chickens. ‘Yes, there he goes.’

  Throughout the whole day, the entire town had been gathering to wait for him. And just a little after Dolores arrived at the tavern, he came down cautiously along the road.

  ‘Here he comes!’ yelled someone standing by the door of the tavern. Everyone rushed surreptitiously to the bar, and a ring of attentive listeners formed around it. Hanging on the results of the exam was the future of their children’s teacher and the school in Tierra de Chá. But it was more than that. In fact, having a teacher and a school was the least important part.

  ‘It all turned out for the best!’ yelled Rosendo to the gathered listeners, very serious as he pulled at the shirt-button restricting his neck.

  The townsfolk let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘Thank goodness! And what did they ask you?

  ‘First allow your teacher something to drink,’ he said with affected restraint. ‘I’m as dry as a bone.’

  They put a glass of wine on the bar. Uncle Rosendo knocked it back in one gulp. The others looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Well, they asked me,’ he said after burping, ‘if you buy three pine trees for one peso each, how much does it cost? That sort of thing, you know.’

  ‘Yes, yes, we know, three pesos! Easy! And what else?’

  Uncle Rosendo became very serious. He gestured for more wine with one hand.

  ‘Well, after that,’ he continued, stroking his chin, ‘it was a difficult exam, I’m not going to lie to you; next they asked me what elements might constitute a forest. And I answered “trees” or “wild beasts”.’

  The men in the tavern burst into applause. They howled with pleasure and celebrated his response, toasting it with their glasses of wine. They were truly proud of everything their country teacher knew.

  ‘Well said, Uncle Rosendo, well done! And what else did they ask you?’

  ‘Next they asked me how much is seven by seven.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, here I didn’t realise we’d gone back to mathematics, I thought we were still on geography, and my answer was the Miño River.’

  There was a general silence. A fly landed on the teacher’s nose. He opened his palm, caught it, and pulled one of its wings off.

  ‘So of course, I put my foot in it there …’

  He let the fly go. Everyone watched it walk along the counter. Because it couldn’t fly, it skittered from side to side.

  ‘But at least you passed?’

  Uncle Rosendo hiccupped twice.

  ‘I passed.’

  Despite the general excitement and all the toasting on account of the teacher’s story, Dolores managed to pull Tristán aside to talk. As was usual, the rooster raiser was in a hurry (I have to get home much earlier than you can imagine) but she managed to convince him to come by and have a look at the chickens.

  And so, in the middle of the afternoon on the next day, Tristán arrived at the house just as he had promised, followed by one of his capons and a rooster with white legs. As he explained, he was short on time because he had to take the rooster to Arzúa to sell it, and the capon was with him because it was still very young and would need to be fed soon.

  First up, he wanted to ask some questions about the business at hand.

  ‘Are they cantankerous, your chickens?’ he asked.

  The Winterlings said yes, that when they tried to shoo them out of the corner to feed and water them, they were irritable and wouldn’t move.

  Next Tristán asked if there was a rooster in the yard. The Winterlings replied that they had introduced a rooster a short time ago, but that the local piñeira chickens had been broody since the dawn of time, and that they had always laid eggs without the intervention of any rooster.

  Tristán started nodding again as he looked at his watch.

  ‘How long has this rooster been in the yard?’ he asked.

  Several weeks. The rooster must have been among the group for a few weeks, because Dolores had bought him more or less when Saladina began going to Tenderlove’s clinic. Saladina smiled, showing the gaps in her gums. They also told him that since this rooster had come along, the other chickens had lost the habit of cleanliness. The worst was the poop all over the place.

  The rooster raiser went into the yard and observed the chickens: he went to and fro, hunched over, clucking and crowing so as not to disturb them. He felt them from head to tail, examining their beaks, crests, wings, and feet. He could tell from the touch if there was anything out of place, any damaged feathers or crests, and he touched their bellies and guessed, correctly, what they had eaten. It looked like he felt good in there, as if he were in his element. But then he looked at his watch again (I have to get home much earlier than you can imagine) and said with alarm that he had to get going.

  On the main road, on the way to the market at Arzúa, he came across the priest, flat on his face. Don Manuel was in a terrible mood, on his way back from asking the Winterlings for the contract for the sale of his brain, which they appeared to have forgotten. They made up a thousand excuses: the chickens, their sewing, the curd cheese … and what’s more, they said they had no idea about the whole thing!

  The priest had told them he would be returning, that they would need to speak calmly about many things. He’d also told them that if they were thinking about going to the seven o’clock mass, they shouldn’t, because he wasn’t feeling at all well. While he was walking down the road, he felt such heaviness in his head that it kept pulling him forward and eventually dragged him to the ground — surely it was some kind of flu.

  ‘Answer me this,’ said Dolores, once they were alone again.

  ‘What?’ answered her sister.

  ‘Do you think that woolly caterpillar suspects something?’

  Saladina went over to the cupboard and took out the box of odds and ends.

  ‘The priest?’

  ‘The priest.’

  ‘About our little secret, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, about our little secret.’

  But Saladina didn’t answer. Once again, she seemed to be in another place. She picked out some blue flannel, wondering out loud about the jacket she was making. It’ll look good with this material, won’t it? And where are my glasses, Dólor? Ah, here they are, how silly of me.

  She got out the spool, sucked on the end of the cotton a couple of times, and threaded it.

  2

  July dragged on endlessly in the sticky humidity of Tierra de Chá. The bats flew low, drunk on heat and lust, the meadows glowed yellow, and the cicadas sang. The flies sought shelter in the houses, and bugs stuck to the skin.

  Greta the cow mooed at five in the morning.

  Saladina opened an eye, pulled an arm out from under the sheets and, moved by a habit acquired over
many years, felt the nightstand for her dentures. Then she said to herself, ‘You idiot, you don’t have them anymore!’ She got up. She dragged the porcelain chamber pot out from under the bed and put it in the middle of the room. She lifted up her nightdress, bent her knees, stuck her bottom out ceremoniously, and prepared to relieve herself. As the first jet hit the porcelain, she let out a large sigh.

  The sound woke Dolores, who stayed in the foetal position, pretending to be asleep or dead, her gaze fixed on the leaky roof, an elephant, a star, a flower. The light was streaming into the bedroom, and for a while she stayed like that, intently watching the details and delicate movements that the damp had left on the whitewashed walls. Resting her ear on the pillow, she amused herself by counting her heartbeats. Another day. Another day in the company of her sister. The cow, the mountain, the Singer. Mending, sweeping, pulling down the cobwebs, and scrubbing. The same thing she did yesterday and will do tomorrow. For a while now, she had begun to think that the routine that had offered them so much consolation upon their arrival in Tierra de Chá was now nothing more than a way to grow old.

  While she listened to the numbing stream of urine coming from her sister, she began to think about the movies, and the movies made her think of Ava Gardner. She could already begin to smell the sour, dreadful urine vapours, but she couldn’t get the idea of Ava Gardner coming to Spain to make a movie out of her mind. For that film they’d be looking for body doubles, tall women with wavy hair who could speak English. She was thinking about what a good double she would be, when her sister’s urine splashed her in the face. Why did she have to put up with this life? She covered herself with the sheets, and turned over. Her sister clicked her tongue and moaned with pleasure as she inspected, between her open legs, the abundant foam that floated on top of her urine. She had finally finished.

  Since she had heard the news, that afternoon in June when she was feeding the chickens, Dolores had not stopped thinking about how being an actress was what she had always wanted, and that the film they were shooting on the Spanish coast was her opportunity. Again came the stream, like an open floodgate, Niagara Falls. Hadn’t she finished already?