The Winterlings (24 page)

‘Shut up!'

The priest jumped in fright when he saw her. Saladina, however, carried on as if nothing had happened.

‘And so her husband Tomás, the fisherman of octopus and pout whiting …'

‘Shut up!' Dolores screeched again.

Saladina looked at her. Suddenly, she seemed to have taken in her presence, and she lowered her head.

‘Yes, shut up,' she mumbled.

‘Put up and shut up!' they shouted in unison.

The priest didn't know how to react. On the one hand, he wanted to keep asking questions, but on the other hand, Dolores was already looking at him murderously.

‘No!' He heard suddenly. Saladina had stood up and was looking at her sister intensely. ‘Enough of shutting up. We've kept quiet long enough. Leave us, Dolores. I need to talk to the priest
alone.
'

For the first time in a long time, Saladina scolded her sister. So that's what the docility was all about. Dolores realised that her sister's pretending for all these previous days was nothing more than a vile betrayal. She should never have told her about Tossa de Mar.

With the priest looking on inquisitively, she had no other option but to go out of the room and leave them alone.

She thought about putting an ear to the closed door to hear what they were talking about, but in the end she didn't do it.

She went down to the kitchen and sat down to wait.

17

Our little secret.

Or perhaps now she should say,
her
little secret
.

Sitting in the kitchen, waiting anxiously for the priest to come out of the bedroom, the Winterling couldn't help but remember that tragic day in 1948.

Not long after her wedding, Dolores had left her Tomás under the pretence of having to care for her sister. She had already been in Coruña with Saladina for several weeks, sewing in the workshop. The dry, sunny season arrived, but the fog of worry never left her face.

‘Do you remember what our grandfather used to say about how a bad thought or an unfulfilled desire always ends up festering until it becomes an illness?' said Saladina one day.

Dolores nodded with tears in her eyes.

‘Well, I don't want you crying or worrying over that fisherman any longer,' she continued. ‘Tell me what I need to know. I'll keep it under lock and key, and everything will go back to how it used to be.'

And so Dolores had no other option but to tell her sister everything. In a soft voice, without anger or sadness, she told her about how little affection she had received from her husband in the time they had been together, how badly he treated her, how he insulted her. One day, he found a hair in his coffee and slapped her. Another day, he told her she was worthless and locked her in the basement. By God, he snored. And he stank, not of farts, but of fish. She told her about his threat to come and find her then kill her.

‘I don't want to hate him, Sala, but I've got so much pain in my heart—'

‘Don't get carried away. Hatred doesn't come from the heart, it's made in the belly,' Saladina interrupted.

They spent the whole night reflecting. By dawn, the plan was ready. The Winterlings took the first bus in the morning to Ribeira.

When Tomás saw the two sisters come in together — tall, gangly, and nervous, locking the door behind them — he began to tremble.

But they calmed him down. He had nothing to be afraid of, they told him. One Winterling took his shoes off and sat him down. The other one hurried off to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.
Tomás, Little Tomás, we've come to look after you.

In the blink of an eye, they'd tidied the whole house. The room they found themselves in was clean and homely, the curtains drawn, the floor swept. It smelt good.

Very good.

And so Tomás, seeing the smiling and conciliatory gestures of the sisters, calmed down and began to feel at ease. At the end of the day, he thought, it's just my wife and my sister-in-law …

‘Are you tired?' they asked.

‘Exhausted,' he replied.

One Winterling rushed off to get his slippers, and the other fetched a bottle of whiskey and a glass, and served him.

‘We'll make dinner for you, Tomás. What have you got in the house to eat?'

‘Octopus,' he said, a bit confused. ‘But it's no good, it hasn't been cured.'

‘It's a shame that a man like you should have to go out fishing so early. Tomorrow, you'll rest up like a king. Have some whiskey. What did you say you had for dinner?'

‘Octopus,' answered the other Winterling for him. ‘He said that there's some octopus in the basement for dinner. It hasn't been cured but that doesn't matter, we'll cure it ourselves. What else would an octopus fisherman have in his cupboards?'

That was when Dolores got up and walked across the room. She felt nothing.

Slowly, she went down the stairs and into the basement. What lay down there below in the basement had always been tempting. Down there was the kingdom of shadows, but also all the cast-off odds and ends, the hidden treasures. Down there were all the household knick-knacks, little bits and bobs, hooks, lines, nylon, old tackle boxes, the remains of some whale-like creature, the uncured octopus. Down there was the most remote, the most dust-covered stuff: there lay everything rotted by brine and dampness, the forgotten and the feared things, the things that should remain hidden. There lay the most opaque shadows, and while Dolores searched for the light switch that day, she thought that sooner or later, we all go towards them.

She found the octopus on a table. She picked it up and went back up the stairs.

When she arrived upstairs, she saw Saladina's smiling face as she sat next to Tomás.

‘You have to cure the octopus,' he said as he stared at the ground. ‘It's all hard, you can't eat it like that.'

‘Yes,' said Dolores with a dry voice. ‘Turn around.'

‘Turn around?' he said. ‘What for?'

Dolores had gone quiet. She trembled next to him.

‘It's a surprise,' said Saladina.

Tomás turned around. No one had ever been so attentive to him.

Then Dolores smacked him over the head with the octopus so hard that he stumbled around and collapsed onto the floor.

‘The octopus is cured,' said Saladina, seeing how the slimy legs of the octopus hung down by her sister's knees.

‘Yes,' said Dolores, still out of breath, dropping it to the ground. ‘And my husband is dead.'

The wait was dragging on forever. How long had they been talking in the bedroom? Five minutes? Three hours? Hearing the door, Dolores got up quickly. Don Manuel came down the stairs heavily. His face gave away nothing, but Dolores thought that in his eyes danced an inchoate but rotund victory.

The priest limited himself to saying only that Saladina had made her peace with the Lord.

18

Unhinged by her mental breakdown, Saladina wandered about the house all day. She was always watering the geraniums and feeding her cricket, whom she had affectionately begun calling Adolf Hitler. She babbled in English about ‘stupid Margaret who is equally pure and virtuous as a cat' and ‘poor little Dennis'. ‘What can we do, Dolores, to make him feel better?'

In the mornings, they sat down to eat breakfast together. But Saladina, who was immersed in the production of her interminable lists, barely even spoke.

‘Sala, do you remember much about our grandfather?' Dolores asked her one day.

Saladina was absorbed in her list, her tongue hanging out as she wrote.

‘Oh yes. I remember grandfather.'

‘What was he like?'

‘Grandfather? Well … He was a delight.'

Dolores sat in silence as her sister crossed out and added new names to her list.

‘And do you know who I am?'

‘You're a delight as well,' said Saladina, without looking up from her list.

‘Yes … But who am I?'

‘Well … you …' Saladina looked up at her sister with surprise. ‘You're … you're my sister.'

‘Yes,' said Dolores. ‘But what's my name?'

‘How would I know?' exclaimed Saladina, and went back to completing her list.

Dolores sat there looking at her. For just a moment, while she contemplated the tatty locks of hair covering her sister's face, her fragile hand filling up the piece of paper with useless classifications, a hint of an idea flashed across her mind.
If Saladina were dead … nobody would find out about
our little secret
, and then nobody could stop me fulfilling my destiny.
Two seconds later, the terrible weight of regret came over her. The same weight she had known for years. How could she have such thoughts when her sister was ill, very ill? How could she think of leaving so selfishly when Saladina needed her more than ever? And then, she had confessed to the priest. What could she have told him? Thinking about that drove her mad. She was sure that the priest knew everything, and that he was just waiting for the right moment to reveal it.

She brushed the hair out of her sister's eyes and kissed her forehead.

‘Would you like me to tell you a story?' she asked. Saladina looked up from her list.

‘Yes, a story.'

‘Once upon a time, there was a very bad wolf who lived in the forest. One stormy night—'

‘No, not that story.'

‘I've told you the one about the Taragoña Express about a thousand times. Why don't you let me tell you the one about the wolf who gets struck by lightning?'

‘No, not that story.'

Dolores sighed.

‘Once upon a time, there was a man who was all skin and bones, with a long scraggly beard just like Jesus Christ who …'

Then Dolores thought that no matter what happened in her life, she'd never become an actress.

Doing that would be worse than betraying Saladina. It would kill her.

And so life went on: care, patience and warm embraces. Soon, visitors began arriving.

One afternoon when Dolores had gone off to the tavern, Saladina sat on the bench by the door to wait for her. She heard footsteps on the road and got up to receive her sister with a hug. She took a few steps forward, intending to surprise her by meeting her at the end of the road, but instead she stood there staring. Dolores wasn't coming back alone. She and her companion, who was none other than Albert Lewin, the director of
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
, stopped a few metres from the house and started kissing. Saladina went upstairs quickly and hid under the covers. Dolores came up twenty minutes later and kissed her on the forehead.

‘How are you, Sala?'

‘I'm fine.'

Saladina felt strange.

The next time, Saladina opened the door to find Dolores tangled in the sheets with Mr Tenderlove, who smiled at her over her shoulder.

First thing in the morning, her hair in a mess, she told her sister all this, over and over again in English.

‘I had visitors last night, Dolores,' she also said. ‘Lots of people walking around my bedroom … You were there too. What were you doing in my bedroom?' she added in a serious tone.

She forgot how to sew.

She let Adolf the cricket die, and the geraniums dried out.

She forgot how to write and no longer made lists.

She prayed. She prayed endlessly, and ate omelettes with cheese.

Don Manuel, the priest, came to see her every day. He brought the sacraments and prepared her for the Last Rites.

She was a frail thing. Her skin had shrivelled up; she was barely a bag of bones.

Violeta da Cuqueira was right — the illness had come back with a vengeance.

She died a few hours after the cow. Greta too had gone from bad to worse. Ever since the day she had woken up bleating like a sheep, she had barely eaten and spent most of the day sleeping. One night, Dolores was surprised that she couldn't hear shuffling and mooing in the cowshed. With a terrible premonition, she went down to the cowshed. Greta had keeled over on her side, lying dead on the bed of gorse.

Dolores crouched down and sat there for a while breathing in her scent. She felt her warmth and the thrumming of flies around her. She went upstairs for a sheet and some cord, then wrapped her up completely and tied her off. She cleared the gorse away from one side of the cowshed, and, with the pick and the shovel, dug for quite a while until she had a decent sized hole. She covered her with earth and branches.

When she finished, she looked out the window. The world at dawn revealed itself to her: the burbling of the river, distant echoes from the forest, sharp and terrifying shrieks from little creatures. She doubled over, trying to contain her sobbing.

She burst into tears.