The Winterlings

1

They came past one morning like the thrumming of a hornet, swifter than an instant.

The women.

The Winterlings.

The men bent over the earth straightened up to watch. The women stilled their brooms. The children stopped playing; two women with big, tired bones, as though worn down by life, were crossing the town square.

Two women followed by four sheep and a cow with a swinging gait, pulling a covered wagon filled with provisions and utensils.

Still standing at the end of a path that zigzagged between clumps of turnip-greens was the grandfather's old house — their house, too — covered now by the branches of a fig tree.

Bats and owls crashed into each other, flying in loops. Ivy had invaded the house, and the chimney, bursting with foliage, had acquired the dimensions and appearance of a crumbling tower. The house had an orchard with a lemon tree, and bushes that sheltered butterflies and rustling noises; at the bottom, a river coursed with slender and succulent trout.

Beyond the river, the forest sprang up in thick trees. The greenery, taut and dense, wove itself together from the ground to the crowns of the trees, surrounded by vegetable gardens and tiny tilled plots.

It was raining, and they went inside.

The women and the animals.

They swept the floor. They pulled down the cobwebs. They put away the provisions they had brought. They made soup. The light dwindled, and the cold sharpened.

A domestic, familiar smell enveloped them; it reminded them of the sweetness of certain summer days, lunches in the orchard, and their lost childhood. But the smell also spoke to them of the war, of dampness, and of laughter. Of mice. Of anger.

One of the women sat down next to the other.

‘We'll be fine,' she said.

‘Yes,' came the reply.

They whiled away the time sipping at the soup, immersed in their conversation.

‘We'll be fine.'

It wasn't fear. Perhaps it was suspicion, a strange intuition.

‘We will.'

2

Away from Tierra de Chá, they had managed to adjust themselves to other climes and customs, but had never stopped dreaming of the house and the fig tree, of green meadows in the rain.

Apart from the fig tree that had grown twisted and sprawling across the roof, the house remained just as they had left it when they fled almost thirty years ago.

Now, sitting at the table, they took in everything with tears in their eyes, while the soup began to go cold.

And they remembered.

Coming into the house, on the left, after the cool hallway where the dogs always slumbered, was the kitchen that opened onto the orchard. The orchard would bloom extraordinarily in spring, with pear trees and apple trees, a lemon tree, bougainvillea whose exquisite aroma filled the rooms, hydrangeas, a pigeon loft with no pigeons, a haystack and flowerbeds.

When the pears fell, their booming could be heard from the back of the house, and the chickens would run about terrified.

In the house, there was neither running water nor a bathroom. They used some holes facing the cowshed as a lavatory, and covered them with gorse branches to camouflage the smell.

Then there was the attic. In the attic, they kept sewing machines, spools of thread, candles, trunks, books, papers, bed linen, and potatoes with thick purple sprouts.

In the attic, children used to cry, and there were dead birds, umbrellas with broken stretchers, spider webs, and bats.

They remembered that very clearly.

They remembered as well that animals and humans lived together, inside the house. An altogether pleasant cohabitation — a wild and furious rampage, the real purpose of which was to keep warm. The cowshed was very close to the kitchen, just below the bedrooms.

When night fell, both the lowing of the cows, and the men themselves, drifted up the stairs.

Well-lit by the fire that crackled in the hearth, the kitchen in that house had always been a place for the folks of Tierra de Chá to meet.

While corn was shucked, chestnuts roasted or sweaters knitted, outlandish tales were told: a she-wolf that came into the village to carry off newborns; a snake that suckled gently from the udders of a cow; mythical stories of donkeys laden with saddlebags filled with gold … (Do you remember? Of course I remember, woman!)

By the hearth, they also spoke of Cuba. Many people from the village had emigrated there, mostly to avoid being sent to the war in Morocco as conscripts, and in Cuba there was money dangling from the trees, with gold coins and pearl necklaces instead of pears or apples. In Cuba, they ate parrot stew and stuffed hummingbird, and the women strolled naked through the streets.

Directly in front of the hearth sat Don Reinaldo, the Winterlings' grandfather. One of the wisest and most influential men in the village, he was dressed as always in corduroy, with his scraggy tobacco-stained beard and his eyes as blue as the sea. On winter nights, he would insist that there had always been many madmen in the village. Then he would tell the story of the man who came back from who knows where and declared himself a chicken. He was so deranged that he even laid eggs, and the family put up with his madness just so they wouldn't miss out on fresh eggs.

Don Manuel, the priest in Tierra de Chá, used to sit between the two Winterlings, who were only little girls back then. He was short and fat, an absolute glutton. He was always somewhere between dinner and Mass. As soon as he finished the sermon, he'd be out and into the street. With great strides, pulling up his cassock to keep the manure off it, he would cross the square to eat his lunch. While the maid was tying a napkin around his neck and serving him, he positively burbled with pleasure. His mouth watered at the sight of what lay before him: a hearty broth, complete with turnip greens, potatoes, and bacon, spicy sausage and ribs, then a couple of chops or some eggs fried in bacon fat, a hunk of bread, and half a litre of local wine. And for dessert, rice pudding made with butter that left the sticky traces of kisses from his mother on his palate. And he never skipped the brandy and the coffee.

No one ever wanted to sit next to him because he gave off a certain smell. It wasn't the smell of the cowshed, or of sweat, or even of cooking: the priest smelt of musty clothes and of priest. It was a brown-coloured smell — in any case a smell that was somehow linked with pious old ladies and steamed cauliflower.

Opposite him sat Mr Tenderlove, a dental mechanic, as well as Uncle Rosendo, the country teacher. Then a bit further round the fireplace, next to … What was his name again? asked one of the Winterlings. I can't remember, answered the other … well, that fellow, the man who raised capons, a type of rooster for eating, and the women of course, few or many of them, depending on the day. (Tristán. The man who raised capons was called Tristán.) The one woman who was always there was Meis' Widow; ample of thigh and scarce of calf, with the shadow of a moustache on her upper lip, like nearly all the women in Tierra de Chá. She would throw seductive glances over at Uncle Rosendo, seated at the other end, and he would respond by removing his cap and sighing.

Don Reinaldo's maid, who went by the name of Esperanza, also sat by the hearth with her son, Little Ramón.

Now they remembered, yes; Little Ramón, with a big head but tiny little ears like cherries, who liked to take the breast by the shelter of the hearth, in those warm and peaceful surroundings where the faint but pleasant odour of sausage and the smoke from gorse-bush roots were always in the air. (Do you remember? How could I not remember?) After siesta time, he would run off to fetch his stool and curl up near the women to listen to their stories.

Tierra de Chá was a very remote village, and its inhabitants were known to be very poor. But, as people used to say around those parts, they were also known to be very attached to their mothers.

The one who really was a mama's boy was Little Ramón. At the first little whimper, his mother would unbutton her blouse and wedge him up against her huge, veiny breasts, which tasted like curdled milk. The boy sucked the first nipple, then the second one, and his mouth was so full of breast that the milk dribbled out the corners of his mouth and ran down his neck. Only every now and again, when the boy bit on a nipple with his teeth, would that woman, sitting as still as a rock, give a little jump of surprise.

Oh, Ramón, Little Ramón; everyone knew who his mother was, but very few folks knew his father.

One day, the Winterlings' grandfather came in and sat by the hearth. When he saw the boy, who must have been at least six or seven, could already talk the hind legs off a horse, and could already read books by himself, he put his hands to his head in disbelief. He said to Esperanza:

‘Look, woman, that kid isn't a suckling anymore. You'll have to do something about it.'

But the maid just shrugged. She said if it wasn't for a nipple, the kid never opened his mouth. In reality, it was not because of poverty but because of her own pride that the kid carried on with his vice: she didn't want her son to have to bear the same cross of suffering that she had.

Her cross to bear had been the following: she was abandoned very young, and a poor woman by the name of Nicolasa had found her by the door of her house when she came home from the hot baths at Lugo. She had been wrapped up tightly and left in a basket with a bottle of sweet wine and some freshly prepared
filloa
pancakes. The woman picked up the basket and while she ate the pancakes she thought about a name for the girl. She came up with the name
Esperanza a la Puerta de Nicolasa
— Hope at Nicolasa's Door — and for years fed her with the milk of a nanny goat, letting her suckle directly from the animal. The goat grew fond of the girl, and each day, when she came down from the mountain, she'd rush ahead of the flock, nudging the door open with her muzzle, searching for the girl in the house and then raising a leg to offer her an udder.