The Seamstress and the Wind (8 page)

Here she thought the moment of truth had come, but there was nobody there.
Th
e burner was lit however, and two frying eggs crackled in the pan.
Th
e cook must have gone out for a moment, maybe in search of her, if he’d heard her. A large Petromax lantern cast a blinding light through the bastion of containers and foodstuffs.
Th
e pile of dirty dishes was incredible, and there were scraps thrown everywhere, even stuck to the walls and ceiling. A summary glance at the pan indicated that the eggs were almost perfect. On the counter, half a bottle of red wine and a glass. She lost her nerve and hurried out: she burst into the room she’d been in before, which seemed different to her now, as a new odor redoubled her trembling. Following a spiral of smoke with her eyes, she saw that in the ashtray on the end table was a recently lit Brasil cigarette. But there was still no one there . . . How strange.

Delia’s aversion to tobacco smoke was extreme and fairly inexplicable. She couldn’t conceive of smoking inside a house. She had managed to get her husband to give up the habit when they married, a minor but nonetheless remarkable miracle. To a certain extent, she’d forgotten about it. She stood watching with incredulous horror as the smoke rose in the supernatural stillness of the room.

Chiquito came in through the door from the hallway and leaned down to pick up the cigarette. He was in boxer shorts and an undershirt, hairy, unkempt, and with the face of a man who had few friends. He went into the kitchen.

He came back almost immediately with the fried eggs in the pan. He crossed the room and exited through the same door he’d come from before . . . At the end of the hall there was a dining room. Delia, peering out from behind the chair where she’d hidden, saw him sit down at the table, empty the frying pan over the plate and settle down to eat. She recognized him, and the surprise paralyzed her. In an instant, and without being any kind of intellectual, she was suddenly inspired to summarize the situation in an epigrammatic inversion of what she’d been saying up until now: in fact it was she, Delia herself, without meaning to, who had played a dirty trick on her own destiny.

Suddenly Chiquito let out a yelp. He’d put a whole egg in his mouth without remembering to take the cigarette out from between his lips, and the ember had burned his tongue. He spat out a jet of viscous yellow and white stuff, splattering a woman seated across from him. It was Silvia Balero, who had undergone a pronounced transformation since her last fitting with the seamstress: she was black. Down her black face, chest and arms ran the egg slobber, but she didn’t move a muscle. She looked like an ebony statue. Chiquito ran out groaning into the hallway and came back with a band-aid on his tongue. He drank several glasses of wine in a row. Miss Balero remained immobile, unblinking, and completely covered in that bruised black color.
Th
e truck driver finished his dinner, peeled an orange and threw the skin carelessly on the floor, and finally lit another cigarette.
Th
rough all of this he’d been talking to his guest, but with guttural, incomprehensible words.
Th
e black woman shook herself at intervals and let out some senseless phrases. It was incredible that a natural blonde with such a white complexion had taken on that dark veneer overnight. Chiquito, his accident already forgotten, was roaring with laughter; he seemed happy, not a care in the world . . .

Until he lit his third or fourth after-dinner Brasil cigarette and Delia, behind the armchair, couldn’t help a sigh or little cough of irritation (the air was becoming unbreathable): Chiquito heard her and turned his formidable bulk in a violent twist that made his chair creak as the legs scraped together. How strange that someone so solid had gotten that diminutive nickname: Chiquito. Surely they’d given it to him as a child, and it had stuck. To think of antiphrasis or irony would have been out of place given his background.

Delia crawled backwards to the closest door, and as soon as she thought she was out of sight she ran. Luckily there were exits everywhere . . . But that very extravagance only contributed to her running around in circles within the labyrinth, and increased the risk of running straight into the hands of her pursuer. Delia had abandoned any idea of asking for refuge or help in getting home. Not from him, at least. She hadn’t had time to think, with all the surprises and fear, but it didn’t matter. She was discovering that one could also think outside of time.

Chiquito was bearing down on her, shouting:

“Who’s there, who’s there . . .”

“At least he didn’t recognize me,” Delia said to herself, hoping even in her desperation to preserve their coexistence within the neighborhood . . . if she ever got back there.

She was looking for the bedroom she’d first come in through, to get out by way of the hanging screens . . . but she came out somewhere completely different, in a dark and intricate jumble of metal. She was helplessly caught in its twists and turns. As if the inertia weren’t enough, she insisted on continuing forward, sticking a leg in, and then another, an arm, her head . . . It was the truck’s engine, asleep for the moment . . . But what if it turned on?
Th
ose iron pieces, in motion, would grind her up in a second . . . She felt something sticky on her hands: it was filthy black grease that covered her from head to toe. It was the finishing touch. She could hardly move, neither backward nor forward, caught in the machinery from all sides . . . And Chiquito’s shouts and footsteps were getting closer, they boomed in the mastodonic pistons . . . she was lost!

At that moment a great jolt shook everything. For a moment Delia feared the most horrible thing had happened: the engine was starting. But it was not that.
Th
e agitation multiplied, and the whole truck danced clumsily on its thirty wheels. A deafening whistle enveloped it and passed through the metal walls. All the smells came back to her, and then vanished. A current of cold air touched her.

“
Th
e wind has picked up,” she automatically thought. And what a wind!

Chiquito’s reaction was surprising. He started to scream like a lunatic. It was as if his worst enemy had appeared at the very worst moment.

“You again, damn you! You damned wind! Son of a thousand whores!
Th
is time you won’t get away! I’m going to kill youuuuu!”

Th
e wind’s response was to increase its force a thousand times.
Th
e truck shuddered, its metal walls rattled, the whole inside crashed together . . . and, most importantly, it seemed to expand with the air forced in under pressure — into the engine parts too . . . Delia felt herself get free, and immediately a current of air snatched her up and carried her away, bouncing and sliding in the grease, toward a vortex in the radiator, in the grille where the whistles refracted like ten symphonic orchestras in a gigantic concert . . .
Th
e chrome grille flew off, and Delia jumped after it, and now she was outside, running like a gazelle.

19

SHE WAS SURPRISED
how fast she was going, like an arrow. She often boasted, and rightly so, of her agility and energy; but that was inside the house, sweeping, washing, cooking and so on, hurrying through the neighborhood with short little steps when she went out to do her shopping, never running. Now she was running without any effort, and she was eating up the distance.
Th
e air whistled in her ears. “What speed!” she said to herself, “
Th
is is what fear can do!”

When she stopped, the whistling dropped to a whisper, but it persisted.
Th
e wind still wrapped itself around her.

“Delia . . . Delia . . .” a voice called, from very close by.

“Huh? Who . . .? What . . .? Who’s calling me?” asked Delia, but she corrected her somewhat peremptory tone for fear of offending; she felt so alone, and her name sounded so exquisitely sweet. “Yes? It’s me, I’m Delia. Who’s calling me?” She said it almost smiling, with an expression of intrigue and interest, if a little fearful as well, because it seemed like magic.
Th
ere was no one nearby, or far away either, and the truck was no longer in sight.

“It’s me, Delia.”

“No, I’m Delia.”

“I mean: Delia, oh Delia, it’s me who speaks to you.”

“Who is me? Pardon me, sir, but I don’t see anyone.”

It was a man’s voice: low, refined, modulated with a superior calm.

“Me: the wind.”

“Ah. A voice carried by the wind? But where is the man?”

“
Th
ere is no man. I am the wind.”

“
Th
e wind talks?”

“You’re hearing me.”

“Yes, yes, I hear you. But I don’t understand . . . I didn’t know the wind could talk.”

“I can.”

“What wind are you?”

“My name is Ventarrón.”

Th
e name sounded familiar.

“
Th
at sounds familiar . . . Have we met before?”

“Many times. Let’s see if you remember.”

“Do you remember?”

“Of course.”

She tried to think.

“It wasn’t that time . . . ?”

“Yes, yes.”

“And that other time, when . . .?”

“Yes! What a good physiognomist you are.”

He wasn’t joking. It must have been a figure of speech.

“So many times . . .! Now I remember others, but it would take me hours to mention them all.”

“I would listen to you without ever feeling bored. It would be like music for me.”

“Millions of times.”

“Not so many, Delia, not so many. It’s just that I’m unmistakable.”

He was very friendly, really. But poor Delia was in no condition to carry her courtesy to the point of launching into Proustian record-keeping, so she moved on to a more immediate matter.

“You’re the one who saved me from the truck driver?”

“Yes.”

“
Th
ank you. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.”

“I’ve been looking after you since you came here, Delia. Who did you think saved you from those rough-housing winds that were dancing you all over the sky and set you down safely on the ground? Who stopped the truck door when it was about to cut off your head?”

“It was you?”

“Yes.”

“
Th
en thank you. I didn’t mean to be so much trouble.”

“I did it because I liked doing it.”

“I just don’t know why all those accidents had to happen to me, I don’t know how I got myself into all this trouble . . . All I know is that I went out looking for my son . . .”

“
Th
ings happen, Delia.”

“But they’ve never happened to me before.”

“
Th
at’s true.”

“And now . . . I’m lost, alone, with nothing . . .”

She whimpered a little, overwhelmed.

“I’m here. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to you.”

“But you’re just a wind! Excuse me, I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just that I want my son, my house . . .!”

“All you have to do is say so, Delia. I can bring you whatever you want. Your house, you said?”

“No!” Delia exclaimed, already seeing her house flying through the air and falling, a pile of rubble, at her feet in that desolate place. “No . . . Let me think. You can really bring me whatever I ask for?”

“
Th
at’s why I’m the wind.”

She would have liked to ask him for just the opposite: to carry her back to her house . . . But, in addition to her fear of flying, she kept in mind that that was not what Ventarrón had offered her. She began to feel suspicious.
Th
e question which came to mind at that point was: “Why me?” But she didn’t dare ask him. What she had heard up until now sounded like a declaration of love, and she didn’t know what intentions this mysterious being could have. She preferred to keep talking along a less compromising route.

“It must be interesting being a wind.”

“I’m not just any wind. I’m the fastest and the strongest. You already saw what I did to that truck.”

“
Th
at was very impressive.
Th
at man was starting to scare me. You know he’s a neighbor of mine, in Pringles?”

Silence.

“Of course I know.”

“What I can’t figure out is how Miss Balero got there.”

“You’ll find out . . ..”

“I hope he won’t think of following me.”

“He will pursue you, he’ll do nothing else from this moment on.”

“Really?”

“But don’t worry, that’s what I’m here for.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I don’t think a wind, no matter how strong it might be, can stop a truck.”

Th
e wind snorted with disdain.

“No one can defeat me! No one! Look how I run!” He went to the horizon and back. “Look how I stop!” He stopped on a dime. “Watch this jump!” He executed a prodigious pirouette. “Up! Down!”

Th
e night was clear, like a dark blue day.
Th
e moon watched impassively. Delia thought she saw it, but she wasn’t sure. If she hadn’t been so impressed, the display would have seemed a little puerile.

Ventarrón returned to her side, and then she was sure she saw him, invisible, strong and beautiful, like a god.

“Now, what do you want?”

She still didn’t know what she should ask for.

“Could I have . . . something to eat?”

“Of course!”

He left and was back in a minute, bringing a table, a chair, a tablecloth, plates, silverware, a napkin, a salt shaker, a chicken-fried steak with French fries, a glass of wine and a pear with cream. It all came flying, loose, the French fries like a swarm of golden lobsters, the cream whipped up into a little cloud . . . But it all settled in an orderly way on the table, and the chair was pulled out for her with the greatest courtesy . . . She didn’t even have to unfold the napkin and put it on her lap, because Ventarrón did it for her.

“It’s only missing the candles, but I couldn’t light them,” he told her. “It goes against my nature. At any rate, the moon, which I’ve been polishing so it will shine more brightly, will be your lamp.”

“
Th
ank you very much.”

He stayed off at a certain distance, whistling, until she finished.
Th
en he pulled out the chair, Delia stood up, and he carried it all away.

“Who knows who he snatched it from,” the seamstress thought. “To think I had to eat what a thieving wind brought me!”

“Now you’ll want to sleep.”

Just then a bed, a mattress, sheets, a fur blanket, and a pillow came flying in from the horizon.
Th
e bed was made up before her eyes in an instant, without a single wrinkle.

“Sweet dreams.”

“
Th
ank you . . .”

His voice had become caressing, as had he. He wrapped himself around her, ruffling her hair and her dress, circling her legs with velvet breaths . . .

“Until tomorrow, Delia.”

“Until tomorrow, Ventarrón.”

Th
ere was a kind of whirlwind of absence, and the wind climbed into the starry sky. Delia stood for a moment, unsure, beside the bed.
Th
e wine had made her very sleepy.
Th
e white knit sheets invited her to sleep. She looked around. It was a little incongruent, this bed in the middle of the plain. And her dress was impossibly greasy. She hesitated a moment, and then said to herself, lying to herself with the truth: “No one can see me.” She stripped, and as she slid under the sheets her body shone in the moonlight.
Th
e night sighed.