When she arrived home, she decided to sew in order to stop thinking about her sister. But while she got her work out, she couldn’t stop thinking about what the rooster raiser had told her. Jealousy? Hierarchy? Chickens don’t have the brains to feel jealousy! And the piece of paper! Tristán wanted his contract too! She was sick of this business about the brains!
Just as she was about to start the Singer, she heard something outside that sounded like footsteps on the staircase; she’d thought she had heard them the previous night as well, but they had been rats. ‘Good God, what’s in store for us?’ she exclaimed. And just as she finished saying it, she heard the creaking of the back door.
Saladina came home like a nocturnal fog, with her brow furrowed and her face twisted into a grimace of ill humour, lean and haggard.
As soon as she had walked through the door, her sister sobbed and hugged her, telling her they had combed the mountain looking for her, that both Meis’ Widow and Tristán had come for their contracts … Most of all, she wanted to know where she had been, what had been so important that she’d taken off like that with no notice, that she had been sick with worry.
‘I love you very much, Saladina, and I don’t care that you’re seeing the dental mechanic. I’m not jealous. I’m not going to start pecking at you, but tell me where you were …’
‘Shut your mouth!’ replied her sister.
Dolores obeyed.
Saladina told her to leave off with the lecturing, that she wasn’t a chicken and that she too had her own private business, and to leave her alone, because she had a sore stomach.
‘Were you eating figs out there?’
‘No!’
From then on, there was no more discussion. Dolores turned on the Singer and began to sew. She’d barely had a wink of sleep in the four days her sister was missing, and now, happy and relaxed, she fell asleep hunched over the machine. She woke up feeling that a large amount of time had passed. She heard voices in the orchard.
‘Get down, woman, don’t be silly! You’re too young for this.’
‘I’m killing myself! There’s no other way!’
‘Get down!’
‘My guts hurt!’
She went to the window. At the very top of the fig tree, among ripe figs, astride a branch that was about to snap, Saladina sat perched like a big, ugly, dishevelled bird.
From down below, a woman from the village was yelling up at her.
‘What if you stopped talking to the sheep?’
There was another woman, who from her voice sounded like Meis’ Widow.
‘We all want to change, oh yes, to be different, how nice that would be. But think of your sister, all alone. Have a think about it. Do you want her to die of sadness?’
Dolores heard a rustling in the branches. Then came Saladina’s voice.
‘I’m killing myself! There’s no other way! Nobody loves me!’
Beneath the fig tree, next to the spot where the chickens scratched and fought, more and more people were gathering. Some of the women were crying, although, in the depths of those moist eyes, you could tell that they were having a great time of it. Uncle Rosendo, who was also there, had a hint of song in his voice.
‘You’ll have plenty of time to kill yourself. Look, here comes your sister …’
When Dolores appeared, everybody went quiet. Then a voice like thunder shattered the silence.
‘Sweet Mother of Jesus! And what the hell are you doing up there?’ She waved her hands about four or five times to get the chickens off her feet. ‘Missing for four days, and then as soon as you’re back, you climb up the fig tree and say you’re going to kill yourself!’
Silence. The chickens pecked at each other more than ever. Uncle Rosendo kicked out at one, which flew off into the air. After a while, Saladina’s voice could be heard again.
‘I’m killing myself, Dolores. I’m jumping. Nobody loves me. I’m miserable!’
‘You’re going to jump? After all that time I’ve spent looking after you?’
A fig fell off the tree, splat, and burst all over the ground like the insides of an animal. The bystanders, thinking that Saladina could end up like that too, let out a gasp.
But Saladina was clinging to the branch, and she didn’t fall.
‘You looking after me? More like the other way around … Remember all that about your Tomás. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be there, eating octopus with him, in that horrible house. Don’t you remember? All men are the same! All men are shameless! They’re bastards!’
‘You should remember, Sala, how lonely you were when I left.’
‘And you should remember, Dolores, how that bastard was going to kill you but …’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Dolores from below.
‘Yes, shut up!’ answered Saladina from above. ‘Now I think we should both shut up.’
‘Put up and shut up!’ they yelled in unison.
Just then Don Manuel, the priest, showed up.
‘My little sheep who has gone astray!’ he yelled to Saladina. ‘But what is this that they’re telling me you’re going to do?’
Hearing the priest’s voice, Saladina redoubled her efforts.
‘I’m not coming down — no way! I’m going to jump! Anyway, my stomach hurts!’
Don Manuel pulled out a bottle from under the folds of his cloak.
‘Come down for a drink, and you’ll see how you’re an entirely new person, my girl,’ he yelled.
But Saladina wouldn’t see reason. Between sobs, she began to ramble on about how cruel men are, and how undeserving they are of women’s love. Because they always do the same thing, they wait for the woman to give in and then — ow, ow, my stomach hurts! On the count of ten I’m jumping. And then she began to count: one, two …
Everyone on the ground joined in: three, four, five … The chickens scratched at the ground. Right at that moment, Mr Tenderlove came running down the road.
‘Sala!’ he yelled from a distance. ‘Forgive me! I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings!’
When she heard his voice, Saladina began to tremble nervously.
‘What are you doing here, you little poofter? Where did you leave your wig, you fag, you hairy wart?’ She yelled until the branch began to crack, and once again everyone down below gasped! They kept counting: six, seven …
‘Poofter?’ asked the priest.
‘A bottle, you say?’ answered Saladina.
‘Of local wine,’ said Don Manuel.
‘Eight, nine …’ continued Saladina. Then, suddenly, she stopped. ‘Fine, I’m coming down,’ she said. ‘For a drink.’
With great difficulty, Saladina managed to climb down the fig tree. But when she touched the ground, she doubled over in pain. Before the Winterlings could make it into the house, several of the women came up to Dolores and said that they wanted their contract of sale. Again? That’s enough! Sick of it all, Dolores yelled that they didn’t have the contracts and that they wouldn’t speak of it again. Never again!
The women took a step back.
There was a general silence.
With a movement of her hands, Dolores shooed off the chickens, and took her sister inside the house.
6
Once she was inside, Saladina told Dolores what had happened between mouthfuls of anise. Or rather, some of what had happened.
She had gone back to Tenderlove’s clinic, because he had told her that at last he had the remaining teeth to complete her mouth. And so, during this final visit, the dental mechanic had finished the job. The new teeth had turned out spectacularly — there were three slightly yellow teeth, but what did that matter? Saladina was more beautiful than ever before. That’s exactly what an exultant Tenderlove told her as she went up to the mirror to see.
‘You’re back to your old self,’ he told her. ‘I a
lways had my eye on you, not your sister.’
‘I’ve got some money here to pay you, Tender,’ she said without taking her eyes off the mirror, making a dreamy come-hither look in the style of a Hollywood actress. ‘How much do I owe you?’
‘We’ll talk about it later. That’s not what interests me at the moment …’
That Tenderlove, Saladina thought to herself. Always with his ambiguous answers …
‘Did you bring me what I asked for?’ asked Tenderlove shyly.
Saladina began rummaging through her handbag.
‘Now then … let’s see … did I bring it?’ she said, pretending to look.
Saladina was so nervous that she decided to ask for permission to use the bathroom, where she would be able to catch her breath and look at her new teeth in peace. The dental mechanic explained where it was, and she drifted out as if on a cloud, opening and closing her mouth like a piranha to make sure that the teeth matched up — in fact, they didn’t match up at all. Suddenly, she found herself in a room that was totally different to all the others in the house.
No, it certainly wasn’t the bathroom.
It was a room that stood in stark contrast to the simplicity of the clinic. It was ornately decorated with velvet curtains, pink walls, and a faint aroma of roses or jasmine — the same sweet fragrance that Tenderlove gave off some mornings. It was so intoxicating, especially when he leant over her to work on her mouth. Everything in there was feminine; there was an open wardrobe from which dresses of every colour hung, long ones and short ones, of all different styles. There were frou-frous, overblown wigs, and necklaces. There were also high-heeled shoes. Saladina’s heart skipped a beat. What was all this? Was Tenderlove married? Perhaps he had a lover? No, she told herself immediately. They would have said something in the tavern. That couldn’t be it. They would’ve seen her around Tierra de Chá. She kept looking. By the window, there was a dressing table covered in bottles of perfume, lipsticks, powder compacts, and oils.
She got out of there as quickly as she could. In the clinic, she went to get her bag and leave. She was so distraught she didn’t know where to look.
‘Are you looking for something?’ asked Tenderlove.
The night before, spread out on the bed under the sheets, Saladina had fantasised about that day’s visit. Finally, she would have a whole set of teeth, and he would remind her how beautiful she looked. She would reply with some or other compliment, something daring and rapturous, a little bit obscene perhaps, and then Tenderlove would come towards her.
Without the necessary period there ought to be between modesty and excessive familiarity, Tenderlove would say to her: ‘I want to see you naked.’ And since she wouldn’t react, but would stand there with her mouth agape, shocked with incredulity, the dental mechanic would grab her firmly by the waist and pull her towards him, and then tear at her skirts and undergarments with sensuous impatience. With one hand he would reach for his scissors and cut away what he could of the mishmash of knickers and brassiere, slip, blouse, pouch, pinafore, and cardigan, and tear off what remained with his teeth. A wild beast. Her stockings ripped. A clog flying through the air.
At last, when he had her in front of him with her breasts standing erect and her thighs vibrating, he would let out an animal howl. That was when she would take the opportunity to throw him down on the table, sit on top of him, and beat down on his chest with her other clog, until whoosh, it would fly through the air and out the window.
She had envisaged all of this while lying down on the bed. Feverish, burning with desire. Her fantasy was so real that when she came out of it, it took a good while for her to figure out how she had got from the dental mechanic’s house back to her own bedroom.
‘My handbag,’ she said with a mere shred of her voice. ‘I’m looking for my handbag …’
Her handbag had fallen behind the chest of drawers.
Saladina had just caught sight of it and was bending over to pick it up. He was standing behind her, and when she stood up they brushed cheeks.
Saladina took fright. What you experienced beneath your bed sheets was one thing, and harsh reality another. And in the harsh reality of life, everything to do with the world of men filled her with confusion: it was a wasteland of frost and wolves. She became confused if she saw a bull mount a cow in the countryside, and if sex ever came up in conversation, she would block her ears. The very word itself made her think of moistness lurking in the attic of the house.
But that wasn’t sex nor would it be. No. It was nothing; perhaps a gesture, an approximation, a butterfly, a movement in the air. It seemed so natural that, for the first time in her life, she wondered how she could have existed up to this point without ever having been touched by a man.
Suddenly, Tenderlove pushed her against the table and sought her lips. She steadied herself and brushed off the tool tray with her hand. The spatulas, callipers, and bones fell to the ground with a sound like broken glass. Was this happening under the covers? She didn’t know. She turned her face away: she turned it into his.
It was the first time a man had kissed her, and, although she enjoyed the kiss — it was soft and wet, and had the sweet flavour of figs — she immediately confused it with sex.
A kiss was sex, and sex was a sin.
Sin was illness.
She grabbed her bag and prepared to leave. Before they separated, Tenderlove spoke.
‘You went into the pink room, didn’t you?’
Saladina nodded.
‘It was my mother’s room. It’s exactly as it was before she died.
Saladina left the clinic flushed. Sex. Sin. Mother. Not only was he a cultured, attractive man, but also warm and shy and sentimental. How she adored men with secret gentleness! His mother, and there was me thinking the pink room belonged to some woman. A blur of feelings crowded her mind.
She was so happy, so sure of herself, that she decided that she too would throw herself into the crazy notion that had been swirling through her mind ever since Dolores had told her about the Ava Gardner movie.
Now she could do it too. What did her sister think? That she liked sewing ball dresses for little rich girls?
Once she got home, she put the bare minimum in a suitcase, and took the money that the old lady from the mountain had given them, and that Tenderlove didn’t seem to want. She took a bus to Coruña, and from there, a train to Madrid. Nearly a day later, she arrived at Tossa de Mar with the intention of being chosen as Ava Gardner’s body double.
But she didn’t reveal this part to Dolores. Instead she told her that she had gone to Coruña to speak with the judge, and, despite much searching, she was unable to find him.
The pretty one and the ugly one. She still recalled that incursion into the world of cinema with bittersweet emotion. Many afternoons, sitting in front of the Singer, images of the filming swirled around in her head. How beautiful it had all been in the beginning! The two sisters strolled through the streets of a small English town while the camera followed them. Everyone fussing over them. They met up with people, picked flowers, bought bread … The dialogues were confusing — they were in English, and the sisters never quite understood the script. But everything took place with such naturalness that nothing seemed out of place to them. Then one day, during a break, while they were being made up for the next scene, someone asked Saladina if she was the pretty one or the ugly one. She was arrayed in a fitted dress with pleats made of nylon, with several strings of false pearls, and matching earrings, and plenty of rouge on her cheeks. ‘The ugly one?’ asked Saladina, puzzled, adjusting her pearl necklace. ‘Yes,’ the other person said, ‘the ugly one.’
‘Because you certainly aren’t the pretty one …’
7
But the trip to Tossa de Mar had been a failure. After waiting in the bay — the place where Pandora and the Flying Dutchman was being filmed — for a whole day, l
ining up with the other women who had come to the casting call for body doubles, dying from the heat and loneliness, they didn’t even give her the chance to display her acting skills.
Perhaps it was the last opportunity she could find in her wounded heart, or perhaps she was guided by the same ancestral instinct she had felt the last time she was there, but without knowing why, Saladina returned to Tenderlove’s clinic as soon as she arrived back in Tierra de Chá. She had no reason to go there; her teeth were complete. Seeing her come in, Tenderlove could sense his knees going weak. He knew straight away that she wasn’t there on a professional visit.
‘Sit down in the chair and I’ll take a look,’ he said nonetheless.
Saladina was feeling docile and dazed. She sat down, her legs firmly crossed. The skin on her face was sallow, full of fine cracks, like a crumpled-up piece of paper. From the dust on her clothes and the tired look on her face, you could tell she had been halfway around the world, but Tenderlove didn’t want to ask any questions. She opened her mouth the way she did every time she sat down there. As the dentist leaned over her, she sensed his haze of jasmine. Or was it the scent of lilies?
Tenderlove, too, sensed the stench coming from Saladina’s mouth: garlic and onions.
‘No,’ said Tenderlove, jerking his head away. ‘Better not. Phwoah, what have you been eating? Close your mouth!’
She closed her mouth and awaited her second kiss, but Tenderlove disappeared. From somewhere she heard him speak: ‘I’m coming back now, don’t open your eyes until I say. You have to know the truth.’
After a while, when she was beginning to grow impatient, she heard his voice again: ‘You can open them now.’
And so Saladina opened her eyes slowly. Before her stood a smiling Mr Tenderlove, dressed as a woman.
He was wearing a flowered dress, high heels, and stockings (his hairy legs underneath). He had made up his face and put on a wig. He was smiling timidly.
‘You’ve dressed up again, you rascal. Let’s see if I can guess …’
The Winterlings Page 13