Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop
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Authors: Kirstan Hawkins
Hat Shop
Kirstan Hawkins
HUTCHINSON
LONDON
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Epub ISBN 9781407059624
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Published by Hutchinson 2010
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Copyright © Kirstan Hawkins 2010
Kirstan Hawkins has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hutchinson Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London
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To Stanley and Hilary
Doña Nicanora's
Hat Shop
Kirstan Hawkins studied anthropology at Edinburgh University and has travelled extensively in her work in Africa, Latin America and Asia. She carried out fieldwork for her degree among the Ashaninka Indians of the Peruvian Amazon, and for her Ph.D. she spent time in the altiplano of Bolivia.
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I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
The town of Valle de la Virgen lies at the bottom of a deep gorge, which, surrounded by eucalyptus trees on its upper slopes, descends into dark, boggy, luscious forest inhabited by hummingbirds, snakes and howling monkeys. Despite its legendary beauty, the town is largely untroubled by visitors as the buses descending into the valley are in the habit of dropping off the road, making tourism a precarious business for the locals. The church, built by the colonial ancestors of the present-day inhabitants in honour of the Virgin of the Swamp, houses a weeping effigy, and is said to be one of the finest examples of the architecture of its day and an inspiration for the work of the great master, Marrietti.
Travel books on the area have little to say about Valle de la Virgen, mentioning briefly that, while fabled for its intoxicating charm and historical interest, the town remains an elusive tourist destination, reachable only by treacherous road or through dense forest marsh. One out-of-print guide even suggests that Valle de la Virgen is a creation of local legend retold in
occasional travellers' tales, and that the road simply descends into impenetrable swamp.
The town's only foreign visitor arrived one day in the back of Ernesto's pickup truck and, much to the consternation of Ernesto's mother, failed to leave. Doña Nicanora was at first less dismayed by the arrival of the dishevelled stranger in her front yard than by the sudden reappearance of her son, who only three months previously had been given a lavish send-off at great expense and relief to the town. It was her youngest daughter, Nena, who first alerted Nicanora to the return of Ernesto and to the presence of the stranger who was about to be mauled by their dog.
âCome quickly,' Nena shouted breathlessly, running into the kitchen, where her mother was squatting over a basin, peeling potatoes. âErnesto is back, and he's brought a strange man with him. Lucho is attacking him. I think it's because he smells.' Dropping the potatoes, Nicanora ran outside to quell the commotion, calling the dog off whilst trying to find the words with which to begin to admonish her son.
The uninvited guest was standing in the dry dirt of the tiny bric-a-brac-filled yard, surrounded by squawking chickens and looking bewildered. He was dressed in a stained orange shirt and dirty blue jeans, and had a battered red and black bag hanging from one shoulder. His hair was as long as Nena's, his beard looked tangled and he gave off an unwashed, milky odour. He needs to be taken straight to Don Bosco, Nicanora thought. The man was holding a small book, which he was flicking through nervously. A crowd of children had gathered nearby and were nudging each other and
giggling, pointing at the stranger. Nicanora straightened her stained apron and pushed her hair from her face in an effort to appear respectable in front of the visitor.
âThere are plenty more where he came from,' Ernesto said proudly, presenting the foreigner to his mother as the answer to her financial problems before passing out at her feet.
Doña Nicanora had not had an easy life, and the furrows she had dug over the years were beginning to show on her once smooth, dark face. At the age of forty, with one dead husband, two children buried, and her three surviving children remaining at home, things were not getting much easier. Ernesto's desire to build his future in the city had come as a source of great comfort to her. She had begun to despair of his ability to apply himself to anything remotely sensible, and feared that his drunken antics in the town were starting to sully her own reputation.
Having ridden away on a donkey, with a fire in his belly and a determination to seek his fortune in the city, Ernesto had now returned home in an old truck with a fire in his balls and a determination to seek a cure, having received a sound dose of the clap in Dolores's Karaoke Bar in Puerta de la Coruña. Ernesto's ambition to become a city businessman had ended on the same drunken night. By the close of the evening he had exchanged his life savings for the battered truck and acquired the foreigner, who at the time had seemed to be a good business proposition. The foreigner, who had been hanging around Puerta de la Coruña for a few months, was apparently seeking a quieter location in which to spend some time and was offering âtop dollar' for the privilege of sleeping on a
local floor. Ernesto, whose business sense had been sharpened at his mother's breast, could not let the opportunity pass him by.
Ernesto had already sought the help of several quacks in Puerta de la Coruña and was now prepared to place his faith in the traditional cures of his hometown. After a day of berating and beating by his mother failed to relieve him of his symptoms, managing only to elicit a confession as to the source of his ailment, he finally agreed to be taken by her to meet the new young doctor who had recently, and inexplicably, turned up in town. Doña Nicanora, who was always ready to try out an innovation, had been anxious to make the doctor's acquaintance since his arrival. Ernesto's problem presented itself as an opportunity through which to do so. These are certainly unusual times, Nicanora thought to herself as she marched her son off to the clinic, two strangers arriving in town within a few weeks. It must surely be an omen.