The Winterlings

by Cristina Sanchez-Andrade

  They each took a long swig. Then they sat there pensively, contemplating the lime trees.

  ‘It doesn’t taste the same, you know?’ said the dental mechanic.

  ‘I was just about to say the same thing. It’s a bit tainted …’ Saladina hiccupped twice. ‘It tastes like … it tastes like cork, or dirt, or—’

  ‘Disappointment,’ interrupted Tenderlove. ‘Everything tastes like disappointment, especially those things we’ve been waiting a long time for.’

  They got back on the road. Saladina had gone quiet; she wasn’t laughing and she’d stopped talking. But when they arrived at the church, she began to squirm in her seat, to clutch at her pockets and search from side to side, as if she wanted to get out.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘I’ve left my list …’

  Alarmed by the tone of her voice, Mr Tenderlove stopped the car by the vestibule.

  ‘Your list?’ he asked, thinking that it might be an important list, with her medications, or something of that kind.

  Anxiety was written on Saladina’s face, and her eyes glistened.

  ‘My list.’

  ‘Your list of what?’ asked Mr Tenderlove. Suddenly, he thought it had been a bad idea to give spirits to a sick woman.

  ‘The list of the Gothic kings.’

  ‘The mad kings?’

  ‘That’s the one. And my little scissors too. My God! I must have left them in England!’

  When they got home, Tenderlove told Dolores at the door what had happened. She said that Saladina had many lists, and didn’t lend too much importance to it. Mr Tenderlove held his tongue.

  ‘Winterling,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Weren’t they waiting for you to make a movie somewhere? I heard something like that in the village.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘You should go then.’

  Dolores looked at him, taken aback.

  ‘My sister is sick. I can’t go anywhere.’

  ‘That depends.’

  For a moment, Dolores and Tenderlove considered each other in silence.

  ‘I already told you that everyone just wants to forget,’ he said.

  ‘And they haven’t forgotten yet? We burnt the contracts of sale!’

  Through the half-open door, Tenderlove cast an eye over the inside of the house.

  ‘To forget, we need you two to leave …’

  Dolores slammed the door in his face.

  From then on, even if Saladina felt much better in the stomach, she began to behave in a strange manner. She began to do things she had never done before, like leave pieces of knotted string all over the house, or to refer to people that Dolores had never heard of like ‘poor Dennis’ or ‘stupid Margaret who is equally pure and virtuous as a cat’.

  It was true that she had many lists — she had spent half her life making them — but now anything and everything was susceptible to becoming part of some new classification. There were cockroaches, bedbugs, and dead mosquitoes in the attic, and they were very different things, so she made a new list entitled ‘Insects with and without shells.’ To-do lists, thoughts. She classified and organised ideas, groups of dogs, cars, and cleaning products, while she explained to her sister that not all men are fathers whereas, on the other hand, all fathers are men.

  Lists here and there. There was nowhere left in the house to stick up another list.

  In a box on the windowsill, next to a pot of geraniums, she kept a cricket that she had found in the fields. She would be doing one thing, and then the next minute she would jump up, spin around, and be overcome with uncontrollable despair.

  She said that she had to leave.

  ‘Where exactly do you have to go right now, woman?’ her sister asked her as she sewed.

  ‘To feed the cricket and water the geraniums.’

  Dolores put down her work and looked at her sister sadly.

  To be stressed about feeding a cricket and watering some geraniums wasn’t all that strange for her; after all, Saladina had always been a bit of a frantic woman. What worried her sister were the little slips of the mind. For example, she would sit down at the dinner table with a brassiere on her head, convinced it was a tiara. Hadn’t Uncle Rosendo told them once that their grandfather did those sorts of things in his final days?

  Although she had never been religious, Saladina set her mind on seeing Don Manuel for confession. And one day, in the middle of confession, she suddenly went silent, as if she had just remembered a mortal sin. She stuck her head through the curtain in the confession box and began talking, peppering the air with her onion and garlic breath.

  ‘Father, you haven’t seen a list around here, have you?’

  Don Manuel knew of her passion for lists.

  ‘No, woman, I suppose you’re looking for the list of the Gothic kings? Did someone take it from you?’

  ‘Yes, the commies robbed me. And they took some nail scissors too.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, I’m sure they’ll turn up.’

  It was the end of October when Dolores knew without a shadow of a doubt that something was not right. She was making filloa pancakes in the kitchen when Saladina came over and lingered distractedly in the doorway, snapping the elastic of her knickers underneath her nightdress.

  ‘Can I get you anything, Sala?’ asked her sister.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Saladina looked calm and happy. ‘I was just thinking. You remember the list of the kings? The one I had put away in the drawer of the desk?’

  Dolores looked at her thoughtfully. In her face she saw something more than the wrinkles and the aquiline nose. She saw vertiginous landscapes, a foggy morning, the back of a woman striding along the dock, nightfall, the intense sea, powerful and deep blue, colourful flags, and again the grey fog climbing over the houses. Rain. Birds and rain. Then, without knowing why, she thought of Albert Lewin’s promise that she would be the lead actress in his next film. The director had told her that he didn’t quite have it all figured out yet, but that he intended it to be something exotic, filmed somewhere like Morocco, Syria, or Egypt, and that she would be perfect for the lead. Dolores realised that the letter would never arrive in a remote village like Tierra de Chá. She kept watching her sister, who was waiting for an answer, clicking her tongue against her teeth, like she always did when she was worked up.

  ‘The list of the Gothic kings? How could I not remember!’ said Dolores finally. ‘And the nail scissors too!’

  ‘Do you think I left it in England?’

  Dolores stopped stirring the filloa pancake batter.

  ‘No,’ she pronounced. ‘I don’t think so.’

  But her answer left Saladina unmoved. After a moment, she asked again.

  ‘You see, yesterday, when I was making up the bed in room 504, I put it on the tray so I wouldn’t lose it. Sometimes, when I’m cleaning a bedroom—’

  Dolores didn’t let her finish.

  ‘Saladina!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s been over twenty years since you’ve set foot in England! It’s been centuries since you cleaned rooms in that horrible hotel in Eastleigh where they made you work like a slave!’

  Saladina stopped what she was doing. There was a mixture of surprise, worry, and terror in her eyes. She clutched at her stomach and had to sit down.

  ‘I think …’ continued Dolores, blowing a lock of hair out of her eyes and getting back to stirring the filloa batter, ‘I think that the commies stole it from you.’

  Suddenly, Saladina’s contorted face relaxed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with relief. ‘No doubt it was the commies.’

  16

  The whole village was concerned, not just about Saladina’s illness, but about everything that was going on.

  For some time now, a hint of menace had been floating in the air, and you didn�
��t need to be too clever to realise that soon it would boil over into something terrible. You could see it in the worn and worried faces of the villagers. You could smell it in the air and you could see it at dusk, when the sky was cut through with orange. You could sense it in muttered remarks, in contained smiles, in stifled laughter.

  Often, moved by a morbid unease, they came by the house looking for answers like lost animals. They popped their dirty faces in the window and asked after the patient. But Saladina was just an excuse; Dolores had the feeling that they all wanted them to leave the village, and, for that reason, at any time they might come along looking for a quarrel. Many times, she thought of packing her bags and leaving, disappearing just as easily as they had appeared (how nice it would be to take a boat and leave for America!) but Saladina wasn’t in any shape for travelling.

  And she would never leave her sister alone.

  One day, Dolores went into the forest. Passing by Tristán’s house, she was surprised to find him sitting in the doorway with his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees. She asked him what he was doing, just sitting around; didn’t he have to feed one of his capons?

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’ he answered. ‘The whole village saw it …’

  ‘Hear about what?’

  ‘My birds escaped, they flew off!’

  Dolores glanced at the silent, empty house.

  ‘Yes, we saw them,’ she said. ‘But now you’ve got plenty of time — isn’t that what you always wanted?’

  ‘It’s this horrible croaking … It’s been going on all night!’ he said.

  ‘Croaking?’

  ‘I have to make it stop, it’s driving me crazy!’ And he went back to sitting with his face in his hands.

  Dolores continued on to Violeta da Cuqueira’s cabin, hoping to ask her about some matters she was worried about. She found the old lady sitting in front of the fire. Wrapped up in a black cloak that went down to her toes, she looked like a big bald bird. The Winterling told her that although her sister’s stomach was better, she was now sick in the head. Violeta didn’t even look up, but kept raking the coals of her fire.

  ‘That’s the thing with washes and rubs …’

  The old lady explained that the rubs had the unfortunate side effect of certain vapours that rose to the brain and that, in the long term, could cause loss of reason. She also said that the rubs had only a limited effect, and that soon the primitive illness would rear its ugly head again, and that if Dolores liked, she could prepare a ‘liquor of future presence’.

  Dolores got up quickly and stalked over to the door. Suddenly, she spun around.

  ‘Violeta,’ she said. ‘Do you remember, you once spoke to me about my dream of becoming an actress?’

  Old Violeta da Cuqueira shut her eyes. She searched through the sea of memories in her mind.

  ‘How … How did you know that?’ continued the Winterling.

  Da Cuqueira opened her eyes again.

  ‘Why do you think your sister fell ill?’

  Dolores again felt a chill crawl up her spine; she opened the door. She was just about to leave when she heard the old lady’s voice.

  ‘I hope you both get better, my girl.’

  That we both get better? The Winterling turned this over in her mind the whole way home.

  Once she got home, she climbed the stairs to see Saladina, and was surprised by the voice of the priest. Lately, Don Manuel had been coming with his holy oils — just like he had with the old lady from Bocelo — to bring solace to Saladina. This time, seeing that the sister was not there, he made the bold move of going up alone to the bedroom. Through the open door, Dolores listened to their conversation. The priest asked Saladina if she had found her list of Gothic kings, to which Saladina replied, with a distracted and insolent manner, that she had no idea what list he was talking about.

  ‘The one the commies stole from you.’

  Saladina looked at him in confusion.

  ‘You know what, Woolly Caterpillar …?’ she said to him after a while, in English, as if she had never even heard of this story about the list of Gothic kings.

  ‘What did you say, my daughter? You know my English is not what it might be …’

  ‘I just remembered something that might interest you … A tiny detail about my sister, Woolly.’

  ‘Yes?’

  On the other side of the doorway, Dolores went red. From the sound of her voice, Saladina seemed perfectly lucid.

  ‘You know how my sister has this big idea in her head that she wants to become an actress?’

  ‘I’ve heard something like that, yes. She’s quite pretty.’

  ‘And you know that she was married, right?’

  ‘I’ve also heard something about that …’

  Saladina clicked her tongue.

  ‘Do you know what happened to her husband?’

  The priest leant in close to hear better.

  ‘No, what?’

  Saladina smiled maliciously.

  Suddenly, Don Manuel jumped up and began shouting.

  ‘She killed him! His body is in the cowshed, isn’t it? I always knew it! We all knew it! Someone saw you getting it down from the covered wagon that day you arrived in Tierra de Chá …’

  Dolores’ heart was in her mouth. She pushed the door open and burst in.

  ‘Shut up!’

  The priest jumped in fright when he saw her. Saladina, however, carried on as if nothing had happened.

  ‘And so her husband Tomás, the fisherman of octopus and pout whiting …’

  ‘Shut up!’ Dolores screeched again.

  Saladina looked at her. Suddenly, she seemed to have taken in her presence, and she lowered her head.

  ‘Yes, shut up,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Put up and shut up!’ they shouted in unison.

  The priest didn’t know how to react. On the one hand, he wanted to keep asking questions, but on the other hand, Dolores was already looking at him murderously.

  ‘No!’ He heard suddenly. Saladina had stood up and was looking at her sister intensely. ‘Enough of shutting up. We’ve kept quiet long enough. Leave us, Dolores. I need to talk to the priest alone.’

  For the first time in a long time, Saladina scolded her sister. So that’s what the docility was all about. Dolores realised that her sister’s pretending for all these previous days was nothing more than a vile betrayal. She should never have told her about Tossa de Mar.

  With the priest looking on inquisitively, she had no other option but to go out of the room and leave them alone.

  She thought about putting an ear to the closed door to hear what they were talking about, but in the end she didn’t do it.

  She went down to the kitchen and sat down to wait.

  17

  Our little secret.

  Or perhaps now she should say, her little secret.

  Sitting in the kitchen, waiting anxiously for the priest to come out of the bedroom, the Winterling couldn’t help but remember that tragic day in 1948.

  Not long after her wedding, Dolores had left her Tomás under the pretence of having to care for her sister. She had already been in Coruña with Saladina for several weeks, sewing in the workshop. The dry, sunny season arrived, but the fog of worry never left her face.

  ‘Do you remember what our grandfather used to say about how a bad thought or an unfulfilled desire always ends up festering until it becomes an illness?’ said Saladina one day.

  Dolores nodded with tears in her eyes.

  ‘Well, I don’t want you crying or worrying over that fisherman any longer,’ she continued. ‘Tell me what I need to know. I’ll keep it under lock and key, and everything will go back to how it used to be.’

  And so Dolores had no other option but to tell her sister everything. In a soft voice, without anger or s
adness, she told her about how little affection she had received from her husband in the time they had been together, how badly he treated her, how he insulted her. One day, he found a hair in his coffee and slapped her. Another day, he told her she was worthless and locked her in the basement. By God, he snored. And he stank, not of farts, but of fish. She told her about his threat to come and find her then kill her.

  ‘I don’t want to hate him, Sala, but I’ve got so much pain in my heart—’

  ‘Don’t get carried away. Hatred doesn’t come from the heart, it’s made in the belly,’ Saladina interrupted.

  They spent the whole night reflecting. By dawn, the plan was ready. The Winterlings took the first bus in the morning to Ribeira.

  When Tomás saw the two sisters come in together — tall, gangly, and nervous, locking the door behind them — he began to tremble.

  But they calmed him down. He had nothing to be afraid of, they told him. One Winterling took his shoes off and sat him down. The other one hurried off to the kitchen to prepare something to eat. Tomás, Little Tomás, we’ve come to look after you.

  In the blink of an eye, they’d tidied the whole house. The room they found themselves in was clean and homely, the curtains drawn, the floor swept. It smelt good.

  Very good.

  And so Tomás, seeing the smiling and conciliatory gestures of the sisters, calmed down and began to feel at ease. At the end of the day, he thought, it’s just my wife and my sister-in-law …

  ‘Are you tired?’ they asked.

  ‘Exhausted,’ he replied.

  One Winterling rushed off to get his slippers, and the other fetched a bottle of whiskey and a glass, and served him.

  ‘We’ll make dinner for you, Tomás. What have you got in the house to eat?’

  ‘Octopus,’ he said, a bit confused. ‘But it’s no good, it hasn’t been cured.’

  ‘It’s a shame that a man like you should have to go out fishing so early. Tomorrow, you’ll rest up like a king. Have some whiskey. What did you say you had for dinner?’

  ‘Octopus,’ answered the other Winterling for him. ‘He said that there’s some octopus in the basement for dinner. It hasn’t been cured but that doesn’t matter, we’ll cure it ourselves. What else would an octopus fisherman have in his cupboards?’