The Winterlings (18 page)

‘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 always 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, lining 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 …'

But very seriously Tenderlove explained that this wasn't a costume. He said that this was who he was, and that before things got more serious, he wanted her to know, because he had grown very fond of her. Sometimes, not always but more and more often, he felt like a woman. ‘Now you know why I never quite fit in with them … the resistance fighters.'

Saladina listened without blinking. Her blood tingled in her legs and stomach. Finally, she began to mumble.

‘But you're dressed up … you … you like to play at … you kissed me.'

Tenderlove explained again that this wasn't a costume, and that sometimes, not always but more and more often, he felt like a woman.

Saladina's chin began to tremble.

‘Poofter!' was the only thing she could manage to say.

That was when she returned home. After drily greeting her sister, she spent quite a while without moving, her arms hanging down by her sides, her chin on her chest. She was thinking, what was she thinking?

Shortly after, she climbed up the fig tree.

8

Although she had been very confused and worried during the four days that Saladina was missing, especially when they were combing the mountain for her, Dolores also made the most of that time to gather information about the obscure acts that took place during the war.

Every time they spoke to her about ‘what happened back then', there was such an air of distrust that someone ended up recommending (almost demanding) that it was best not to talk about it.