Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (6 page)

‘I've been waiting for the mayor to return ever since I arrived,' Arturo said. ‘I was going to ask him to unlock the church for me to see inside. Do you think he would?'

‘I doubt it very much,' said Ernesto. ‘Because the priest took photographs of the Virgin, people say there is now a curse on the town. This is the reason why our children get sick,' he said, contradicting himself, ‘why people die on the road, why the tourists never come here, and why we remain poor. The mayor says it's because of the curse that he keeps the Virgin locked away. It is said that the Virgin will only weep again once all is put to right, after the foreign priest stole her tears,' Ernesto continued.

The doctor suddenly had a sick feeling in his stomach. He had never experienced loneliness before, and was still struggling to identify the emotion that had been starting to gnaw at him for the past few weeks. As he gazed out at the unforgiving forest he felt more insignificant and more alone than he could ever remember. He longed to be home. He missed his mother. He missed her cooking. He was sick of eating the stewed fish he prepared alone at night on his single-ring gas stove. He was tired of people whispering about him behind his back as he wandered around the market, and he was frustrated by people misunderstanding every word he uttered even though they spoke the same language as him. He even found himself missing the long philosophical arguments he had had with his father about the pros and cons of democratic government and whether the peasants really deserved the vote. He missed going to the
Cine
on a Saturday afternoon and being able to discuss with his friends the latest movies brought over from the United States. Most of all, he missed Claudia, his forbidden love. And yet there was another and far more disconcerting feeling growing inside him that was slowly beginning to compete with his homesickness. It was a sense of a new-found freedom, a freedom to explore who he really was and who he wanted to be. Above anything, he longed to be accepted, to be a part of things, and for the first time in his life to
stop being a stranger. He was growing tired of waiting for the day when a patient might show up unexpectedly at his clinic.

‘So what do people here say about me?' Arturo asked.

‘Well, people here like to gossip. I wouldn't take any notice,' Ernesto said.

‘Really, Ernesto,' Arturo replied, ‘do you believe all this nonsense you have been telling me this morning? You're young and a man of the world, you've travelled – well, at least as far as Puerta de la Coruña. I've been here for over a month now and not a single patient except you has entered my clinic. First you tell me to wait until people get to know me. I've been to the market every day and greeted people and introduced myself, and still nobody comes. Then you tell me that nobody is ill and that I will have to wait for the next plague to hit, and now suddenly you tell me that people are actually dropping down like flies because of some curse put on them twenty years ago because of a priest who probably got drunk and fell into the swamp.'

Ernesto was a little shocked by the sudden emotion that had entered into the doctor's usually placid voice. ‘Well, I wouldn't worry about it, doctor,' he tried to reassure him again. ‘Nobody really minds you being here.'

‘But Ernesto, don't you understand?' Arturo replied. ‘I don't want to be sent home by the authorities for not doing my job properly. My father would never forgive me. Claudia would despise me –' Here he stopped himself. ‘I don't know what I'm going to do.'

‘What's wrong, doctor?' Ernesto asked, suddenly worried that this was the point at which the issue of work was going to be raised. ‘Is something worrying you?'

‘Yes, something is worrying me, Ernesto,' the doctor replied in
a calmer voice, glancing at a piece of paper he had been holding in his hand. ‘Tell me, Ernesto, what's the mayor like?'

‘The mayor?' Ernesto replied. ‘The mayor is a very difficult man.'

The mayor, Ernesto explained, had held his post for the past twenty years, nobody having yet been bold enough to challenge him. He had arrived in Valle de la Virgen as a young man, the great-nephew of Doña Teresa, the señora who lived in the large house set back from the road, whose family owned most of the land around the town. The story was told that he had been sent by his father to help look after his great-aunt, having been forced to leave the family house after an incident that had brought shame to his parents. The elderly people of the area still talked about the times when they had had to bend down and kiss the feet of Doña Teresa and her husband Don Pedro whenever they ventured into town. That was before the peasants' revolt, and the land reforms brought in by the new revolutionary government. Don Pedro had died of a heart attack at the shock of hearing news of the revolution, although this had proved to be an unnecessary response, as nothing had really changed afterwards. Doña Teresa kept her house and most of the best land in the hills surrounding the town, paying the families who worked her estate meagre wages to grow her coffee for her. Only the most difficult and uncompromising pockets of swampland had been turned over to the peasants, so that they could grow their own crops. Living in constant fear of the riots that had swept other parts of the country at the time of the revolution, Doña Teresa had refused ever to leave her house again. This had also been
an overreaction, as the townsfolk had never contemplated rioting, considering it to be an unnecessary ostentation and a waste of valuable energy. Doña Teresa was now an old woman – Ernesto estimated she must be in her eighties or even nineties – but she had not been seen by most inhabitants of the town for nearly fifty years.

‘And the mayor?' Arturo asked again. ‘What sort of a man is he?'

‘Well,' Ernesto replied. ‘He's very large. And he always gets his own way.'

‘What am I going to do?' the anxious doctor said. ‘I've just received a note from Ramon saying the mayor will be returning soon and I must prepare myself for a visit. Apparently he will want to see “what a busy and thriving clinic we have here”.'

Ernesto thought about the situation in silence.

‘Don't you think', the doctor continued after a while, ‘that maybe the reason you don't get any visitors to this town is not because of some curse put on you because of a drunk priest, but because the people here are so unfriendly to strangers? Look at how you treat that Gringito of yours. From what you tell me, your sisters tease him mercilessly, and nobody has made any effort to get to know anything about him.'

‘That's true,' replied Ernesto, ‘but he is a little strange. Even stranger than the other foreigners I saw in Puerta de la Coruña.'

‘Well, yes,' Arturo replied, ‘he certainly does sound a bit odd.'

Isabela entered the house in her usual style, tweaking Nena on the ear as she breezed past, making her young sister squeal with pain and look up from her school books. After smiling at the Gringito, who was sitting on a blanket in the corner, she sat down at the
table. Turning to Ernesto, who had just returned home from his morning with the doctor, she demanded, ‘So what has lazy arse been up to this morning?'

‘I won't have foul language like that in my house!' Nicanora shouted from the kitchen. ‘If you want to behave like a tramp, go out in the street and eat with the dogs.' If she could not so clearly remember the morning nineteen years ago when she had given birth to Isabela, after days of life-threatening struggle between mother and infant, Nicanora would have sworn that the girl could not possibly be hers. For one thing, Isabela was extremely beautiful. ‘If you have nothing better to do, come out here and help me prepare the food,' Nicanora called to Isabela, who was performing a little dance for the benefit of the Gringito. Ernesto turned to his younger sister and fondly asked her what she had been up to that morning.

‘Well, the teacher is on strike again,' she said. ‘We've run out of chalk and somebody has stolen all the desks out of the schoolroom, so there is nowhere to write and nothing to write with. So I've been teaching the Gringito how to protect himself if he's attacked by a pack of wild dogs.'

‘How did you do that?' her brother asked. Calling the Gringito to attention, she took Ernesto out into the yard to show him.

‘Stand over there,' Nena demanded of the Gringito, who smiled kindly back at her, looking confused, and continued standing where he was in the front yard. Nena took the Gringito by the hand and led him into the middle of the dusty street that ran between the rows of mud-brick houses. Ernesto followed.

‘Now, remember,' Nena instructed the Gringito. ‘When I shout the word “tree” you must stand like this.' And Nena demonstrated being a tree, standing on one leg and holding her hands above her
head. ‘If you pretend to be a tree, they won't attack you,' she explained to her brother. The Gringito smiled benignly and lit a cigarette.

‘Are you sure he understands what you're saying?' Ernesto asked.

‘I think so,' Nena replied. ‘I tried a demonstration run with Lucho this morning and it seemed to worked quite well.' Lucho looked up from the bone he was chewing on his small patch of turf in front of the house and growled, making it clear that he no longer wanted to play.

‘Now, stay there a minute,' Nena called to the Gringito. She disappeared into the house, and returned a few minutes later with a piece of meat she had managed to steal while her mother was not looking.

Nena gave a piercing whistle. The pack of dogs prowling the lower end of the street stood to attention as she hurled the meat in the direction of the Gringito. A stunned silence filled the air for a few fleeting seconds, before being replaced by a howling and gnashing of teeth as the pack of dogs flew up the street past Ernesto and Nena in the direction of the uncomprehending Gringito.

‘Tree!' Nena shouted.

Nothing happened.

‘Tree!' Nena shouted again. Still nothing happened.

Suddenly, a look of horror crossed the Gringito's face as he realised what was about to strike.

‘Tree!' Nena shouted again.

The Gringito suddenly raised one leg and wobbled precariously, flailing his hands above his head, as the leader of the pack flew through the air and grabbed one of his wayward limbs.

‘
Por dios
, Nena!' Ernesto gasped, as the Gringito tumbled to the ground like a felled eucalyptus.

Ernesto grabbed a handful of stones and ran towards the Gringito, hurling them in the general direction of the pack. Lucho, suddenly awakened from his lethargy, decided to join the party and made for the biggest, ugliest-looking dog, which was just about to take a bite out of the Gringito's leg. The noise of the fray brought Nicanora running from the house, and with a few expertly aimed stones and words she sent the pack of dogs running in one direction and Ernesto, Nena and Lucho in the other, leaving the lone Gringito quivering on the ground.

Nicanora ran up to the Gringito to inspect the damage. There was a bloody gash in one arm, his shirt and trousers were torn to shreds, and he was making a whimpering sound. Nicanora helped the shaking Gringito to his feet and led him into the house, shouting to Isabela to boil up a soothing brew of camomile tea. Nicanora washed the gashed arm with warm herb-filled water and bound it with some clean cloth that she tore from one of Ernesto's shirts. After some time, and several cigarettes, the Gringito calmed down and stopped shaking. Nicanora made him lie down, covering him with a blanket and sat with him until he fell asleep.

Nena and Ernesto did not appear back home for some time. Nena was barred from talking to the Gringito for a week unless supervised by her mother, and Ernesto was made to sew up the Gringito's torn clothes. After a good sleep, their guest appeared to perk up and was even able to eat a large bowl of soup in the evening. Raising his head from his meal, he muttered something appreciatively to Nicanora.

‘What did he say?' she asked Nena.

‘He said that the chicken soup is delicious.' Nena giggled nervously.