Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (19 page)

‘And so you see,' Nicanora's mother would finish the tale, ‘I wanted to save you from the same fate as Alicia-Maria,' a decision for which Nicanora could only feel extremely grateful. Genara died
of fright two months later, after meeting Alicia-Maria on a darkened path at night on her way back from visiting her bereaved brother.

Her mother hadn't told her the story for many years, but since Nicanora had started her predictions the story had begun to go round in her head. She could hear, at first dimly and then with increasing clarity over the following days, an argument between two unmistakable voices. ‘Don't you believe any of it, my girl,' a croaky voice kept repeating, ‘there never has been and never will be a toad in our family,' while a quieter and sharper voice would reply, ‘It was the finest impression of a toad that I've ever seen.' The argument continued all day long with no change or interruption, only stopping occasionally when answers to the townsfolk's questions were required. By the end of her second week of giving predictions, the quarrelling had grown so loud that Nicanora could hardly hear her neighbours speak.

‘That's enough. I don't care whether you're a toad or not,' she shouted at them finally, as her neighbour's niece approached to ask whether she was going to give birth to a boy or a girl. The woman burst into a flood of tears and, screaming ‘Witch,
bruja
,' rushed home from the plaza to tell her husband. But it wasn't the arguing in her head that woke Nicanora the following morning, it was the sound of a large crowd of neighbours who had gathered in the yard of her mother's house to air their grievances.

‘She put a spell on my niece,' her neighbour was saying. ‘She told her she's going to give birth to a toad. She doesn't want a toad, she already has five daughters.'

‘Well, I wouldn't count on what she tells you,' another shouted back, ‘she's a fraudster. I've been waiting two weeks for my goat to give birth now. I haven't even left her side to eat. My chickens have
all disappeared because I haven't been able to watch them, and even my husband is threatening to leave me if I don't return to my bed at night.'

‘If you tell me about your stinking goat one more time I will go and strangle it,' one of the men shouted back. ‘What do I care about your goat when I've lost a week's wages to a group of travelling vagabonds? She told me Don Aurelio's team would win for sure.'

‘A week's wages?' another said. ‘What is a week's wages to you when everyone knows you sleep with a stash of money under your mattress? And you still owe me a hundred pesos. I put my entire savings on Don José's Jaguars.'

Through the chaos of voices Nicanora discerned that, so sure had each of the men been that their particular team would win, they had allowed a group of travelling Indians to enter the annual football contest, hoping to make a quick peso. For the first time since football had reached the town, the title of Champions of the Swamp had been carried away to the mountains by a group of itinerant pot sellers.

‘And what were you doing, gambling away all our money?' a woman's tearful voice screamed back. ‘We've lost everything. How are we supposed to feed our children now?'

Nicanora peeped out through the slats in the wall and saw the woman starting to hit her husband with her fists as some of the men tried to separate them. She lay down again and buried her head under her pillow to stifle the noise. She heard her mother's voice raised above the crowd, trying to appease her neighbours.

‘I'm sure there must be some mistake,' she said. ‘Even fortunetellers need practice. She usually gets things right. You heard it for yourself, Doña Maria, when she predicted that Doña Ignacia would fall over in the plaza only last week.'

‘Well, what does that tell anyone?' an angry man shouted back. ‘Doña Ignacia falls over most days. Everyone knows she has a bottle of
aguardiente
hidden under her skirt.'

‘Don't you talk like that about my mother,' Doña Maria replied.

‘I only speak as I find,' the man said, belligerently.

‘She told me to take my fruit to the monthly market in Rosas Pampas,' a woman shouted over the din, ‘and my donkey got stuck and tipped it all into the swamp. I've lost everything and your daughter is to blame. She must explain herself to us.'

The crowd started to chant, ‘Nicanora, Nicanora.'

Nicanora was forced from the safety of her pillow by her mother, who grabbed her by the arms, pulled her to her feet and demanded to know the meaning of the chaos in her front yard.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I must have got some of the predictions wrong.'

‘Wrong?' her mother yelled. ‘How? How could you have got them wrong? You were getting them right before.'

‘I told you I didn't have the gift,' Nicanora said defiantly. ‘You're the one who forced me to do it. You told me to set up the stall.'

‘You've made a fool out of me and all our family. I'm not getting you out of this. You go and explain yourself to them.' Her mother grabbed her by the hair and pushed her towards the door.

When Nicanora hit upon the idea of giving false predictions she hadn't considered the effect her answers might have upon her neighbours. At first she had planned to make slight mistakes, enough to ruin her mother's confidence in her gift but not enough to do any real harm. As the days wore on, she had become so bored with the monotony and predictability of her neighbours' questions that she had let her imagination have free rein and her fabricated answers had become more inventive and further from
the truth than she had intended. Now, it seemed, the crowd were discussing whether or not she had been practising witchcraft on them and whether or not she should be banished from the town for ever. When Nicanora appeared on the front step, a hush descended on the crowd. ‘I am truly sorry for any trouble I may have caused,' she began.

‘Don't listen to her,' one of the women shouted. ‘
Bruja
, witch!'

‘Be quiet,' Don Bosco called from the back. ‘At least let her speak, let her explain herself.'

‘It seems,' Nicanora continued, clearing her throat, ‘that I may have made a few mistakes.'

‘Mistakes – you call losing all my money a mistake?' Don Pedro heckled. ‘You need to explain yourself better than that. If you offer your services as a fortune-teller, then we expect you to tell us the truth. You should have told us to beware of a group of vagabonds who would come and steal our cup from under our nose.'

Someone started to throw oranges at Nicanora and shouted ‘Cheat, cheat,' while another demanded, ‘She must be made to pay.'

‘Pay for what?' Don Bosco shouted from the back of the crowd and he pushed his way forward through the flying fruit to stand beside Nicanora.

‘She lied to us,' Don Pedro replied.

‘How did she lie to you? She told you what you wanted to hear, which is all she promised,' Don Bosco continued addressing the crowd. ‘It was you who chose to believe her, don't blame her for that.'

‘What is it to you, Pedro Bosco?' one of the men shouted back at him. ‘She didn't cheat
you
out of your life savings.'

‘Nobody cheated you but yourself,' Don Bosco replied. ‘You took your chance because you thought you would make money out of
your friends. She didn't tell you to let the pot sellers enter the championship, she only told you who might win.'

‘But she told us all different things,' another man replied. ‘From what she said, every team could have won, so what was the point of that?'

‘Then she was right,' Don Bosco replied. ‘Every team could have won. It was only because you thought you would make money from the travellers that you let them enter the competition.' The men started to look confused, unsure why they seemed suddenly to be losing the argument when they were so clearly in the right.

‘She was wrong about my goat,' Nicanora's neighbour piped up.

‘Not that bloody goat again,' an angry man replied, at which moment a young girl came running through the yard shouting, ‘Mama, Mama, come quickly, the kid is coming, the kid is coming.' With the accusation fresh out of her mouth, the woman rushed from Nicanora's yard to see for herself if her goat was finally giving birth.

‘You see,' Don Bosco continued, taking advantage of the situation, ‘you didn't listen properly to what she was telling you, you were so eager to hear what you wanted to hear. Once she left its side, the goat has given birth just as Nicanora said it would. And you men, if you had listened to what she told you one of your teams would have won.'

‘Well, why didn't
you
ask for a prediction, if you thought she was so good?' one of the men retaliated. Don Bosco looked at the crowd, then at Nicanora and then at his feet. The truth was that he had asked for a prediction of sorts. The previous evening, he had waited until all the townsfolk had gone home and had caught up with Nicanora as she packed her stall away. Taking her hand, he had looked into her eyes and asked her to tell him honestly if she
thought he would soon find happiness and contentment. He held her gaze, so that she had no time to respond other than as her heart told her. She replied candidly that he would find happiness one day, that happiness comes in many forms and that he might not find it in the way that he wanted for a long time. Realising what she had said she blushed, apologised that she was tired and not thinking straight, returned home and decided that she was finally through with making predictions, true or false.

‘How do you know that I didn't?' Don Bosco said to the crowd but looking at Nicanora, knowing in his heart that she had spoken the truth to him and to him alone. ‘Why don't you all go home now and put this matter to rest.'

Nobody quite knew what else to say, the steam seemed to have been taken from their argument and people were beginning to want their breakfast. Slowly the crowd started to disperse, breaking up into the usual neighbourly quarrels. ‘You didn't tell me you thought you were going to get such a good price for your oranges in Rosas Pampas,' a woman said to her neighbour as they left. ‘Do I have to tell you everything?' the other replied. Finally, Nicanora and Don Bosco were left alone together in the yard.

‘Thank you,' she said, not able to look him in the eyes.

‘Tell me one thing,' he said, his eyes smiling. ‘Did you really know what the true answers were?'

‘Yes,' she replied.

‘So why did you tell them lies?'

‘Because I don't want to be a fortune-teller.'

Don Bosco looked confused. ‘Well, setting up a predictions stall in the plaza is a strange way to go about not being a fortune-teller,' he said.

‘I know it was wrong of me, but my mother kept telling everyone
I could see the future, and I wanted to put an end to it once and for all.'

‘And can you?' he asked.

‘I think so,' she replied.

‘So, tell me one more thing. Did you lie to me when I asked you my question yesterday?'

‘Yes, of course,' she said, looking at the ground. And she knew that with that she had told her final and worst lie of all.

‘Good,' he said smiling again, and he squeezed her hand and arranged to meet her in the plaza the following Sunday for their usual stroll.

Nicanora sat staring at the letter that Don Teofelo had just handed to her. She had not yet been able to bring herself to read it, the very sight of it filled her with a deep sense of foreboding. She could not get from her mind the look she had seen in Don Bosco's eyes as he had walked away the previous day: the look that in one flicker of an eye had told her that the only man ever to have shown her any real kindness had given up hope.

Her first thought, immediately after it happened, had been to run down the street and beg him to forgive her foolishness. But her pride, which had been the cause of so many problems in her life, had prevented her and this time saved them both from more humiliation. Instead, she decided to pay him a visit the following morning to offer a simple apology for even suggesting he might want to sell his shop. She would thank him for the kindness he had always shown her and invite him to join her for lunch the following Sunday, this time unaccompanied. She went early, before the shop had time to fill up, to be sure to catch him alone. When she arrived the shutters were down and the door locked. She left, telling herself that maybe, for the first time in his life,
he had decided to open late. When she returned a few hours later, the door was still locked, a dark silence seeping out through its closed blinds.

The quiet that hung over the plaza that morning was broken only by the commotion made by Don Bosco's friends, who turned up at the usual time to be met with the prospect that overnight their world had changed irrevocably.

‘Bosco, are you in there?' Don Julio shouted through the shutters. ‘Bosco, it's late, come and open up now, we're ready for our coffee.'