Read The Wind From the East Online
Authors: Almudena Grandes
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Contemporary Women
The Wind From the East (6 page)
“Have you brought your Mariquita Pérez doll?” she’d whisper in Sara’s ear as she led her to the kitchen. When Sara shook her head Socorro stamped and frowned and glared at her, screwing her eyes up into two furious slits.“You really are horrible!”
“But they won’t let me,” Sara would mumble defensively.
“You’re mean, and nasty and . . . God! It’s not as if I’m going to eat your silly doll, or break her. I was looking forward to seeing her. I bet she’s got a coat just like yours, hasn’t she, with the same kind of fur collar, and a hat.”
Sara managed to smuggle her possessions out of the house on the CalleVelázquez only three or four times during her childhood, the most popular being the famous doll with straight dark hair and big round eyes that was dressed like a real little girl. But though her sister Socorro’s joy—the sincere hugs and kisses with which she rewarded Sara—was much greater than she’d expected, she couldn’t help feeling a pang of guilt at the thought of her godmother, who was in bed with a temperature, missing her, not suspecting how her god-daughter had made the most of her illness or how quick she’d been to betray her.This was why, after a while and although she’d always had too many toys to grow fond of any one in particular, she ended up snatching the doll from Socorrito and carrying it around all day. She didn’t feel happy until she’d placed it back on the little chair beside the trunk where she kept all her clothes, near the head of her bed, which is where it stayed for the next two or three weeks, until one afternoon she thought of playing with it again.
The emotional chaos churning inside Sara squashed her spirit as if it were a ball of bread, something soft and breakable that could come apart in your fingers, or else harden, becoming dry and unyielding. She almost never knew what she wanted, and she felt guilty about being so indecisive, but she kept going, always kept going, and so on Saturday nights she always slept badly, then on Sundays she felt the warmth of her father’s embrace, and tears trembled in her mother’s eyes as they did in her own, but she was disgusted by the chicken and rice that her mother always served for lunch, though she ate it and said how delicious it was, and she liked it when Sebastiana made her come and sit on her lap after lunch, and she found it revolting seeing a loaf of bread just sitting directly on the table, but she broke off a piece just like everyone else, and she thought her two brothers,Arcadio and Pablo, were oafs, a pair of dirty rude idiots, but she tried very hard to be nice to them, and her sister Sebastiana was ugly and already as fat as her mother, but Sara was pleased when she let her come into the bathroom and watch her apply her turquoise eye shadow, and she knew that she was going to be bored when they all set out for a walk dressed in their Sunday best, but she’d lay her head on her father’s arm and fall asleep on the sofa, and she got tired walking around the Plaza Mayor, but she liked holding a different person by the hand on each side, and she couldn’t wait for it to be seven o’clock, but she was dreading it, and she breathed a sigh of relief when it was time to head for Sol metro station, but she didn’t want to arrive at the station, and she hugged her mother with all her might and with tears in her eyes when she said goodbye to her at the foot of the stairs, but she was relieved at not having to see her again until the following Sunday, and she felt regret with every passing station, but she counted the remaining stations with excitement, and her father looked darker than ever when she saw him again on the pavement in the Calle Velázquez, but she never felt so sure that she loved him as she did then, and she couldn’t have wanted to get home more, but she couldn’t have wanted to get home less, and as she glimpsed the bars of the entrance to the house she realized with blinding clarity that the Gómez Morales family were strangers to her, but the bars at the entrance insisted on shouting with deafening clarity that she was a Gómez Morales just like them, and she was upset when Arcadio left, but she was pleased when Arcadio left, and the marble lions at the front steps in the Calle Velázquez looked at her like old friends, but she didn’t recognize the marble lions, and she kept going, she kept going, letting go of her father’s hand to take the hand of the maid waiting for her, not looking back, always looking ahead, because she would never have known which home to return to.
“Children always live in the moment,” her godmother would say when Sara got back, seeing traces of sadness and confusion on her face, the fissure dividing her self.
And for a time, Sara managed to convince herself that her godmother was right, because for the rest of the week she barely thought of Arcadio or Sebastiana or her brothers and sisters. Doña Sara would take her to the bathroom and undress her in silence beside the bath, as if she knew that the companionable warmth of the water and foam would warm up her heart until it was the same temperature as her skin, and this was indeed what happened. By the time her godmother came back to help her into her nightdress and comb her hair and cover her in too much eau de cologne, which she always loved, they could talk and joke about any old thing, back in the comforting intimacy they had always shared. Later, on the kitchen table, she always found a plate of freshly cooked croquettes, or a large slice of potato omelet, or a bowl of
cocido
soup with noodles and
picadillo
, her favorite dishes. On Sunday evenings she never had to eat green beans in tomato sauce, or vegetable stew, or garlic soup, things she hated.
cocido
soup with noodles and
picadillo
, her favorite dishes. On Sunday evenings she never had to eat green beans in tomato sauce, or vegetable stew, or garlic soup, things she hated.
But not even the supper on Sunday nights could entirely erase the effects of that single moment of shock that paralyzed her on the doorstep of the only place she could consider as home, when the door opened to reveal the figure of Doña Sara, slim, smartly dressed, with a double string of pearls at the neck of a pale angora sweater, her hair done up in a bun and backcombed so that it resembled a cloud of candyfloss, looking as she always did, yet suddenly unfamiliar. Her shock lasted only a second but had as its source the stranger at the door and the form of her husband, whom Sara could make out through the living-room door, sitting in his wheelchair, impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, a permanent sneer of contempt on his lips and a glass of brandy warming in his hand.Then, just for a moment, she wondered who they were, and felt a bitter, impossible pang of regret for another family, another house, another life, one that she had never lived.
It was something she could never forget, either on school days or holidays, when she was happy or when she was sad, alone in her bedroom or surrounded by dozens of guests. However hard she tried, she never quite managed to escape the fleeting shadow of melancholy, and yet, when her godmother, who acted as if Sunday were a day like any other, put her to bed and told her a story in which there was never a wicked step-mother, and turned off the lamp on her bedside table, and kissed her goodnight, images of the day filled the horizon as she closed her eyes, and, just before she fell asleep, Sara realized that she could remember nothing more than odd images in black and white, like figures cut from old photographs, people and objects the color of things that only half-exist,
Sara Gómez would never have declared out loud that she loved children, but she was always emphatically on their side. She hadn’t had any children of her own, and she had never spent much time with any of her nephews or nieces, so she had never experienced even the basics—what they weighed, how they felt, their unique smell—but when she saw a baby in the park as she sat enjoying the sun, she liked to observe the way it became fascinated by its own hands or by the leaves on a tree fluttering in the wind.With babies of friends or family, she was more circumspect; it terrified her that a confident mother might try to please her by depositing the surprisingly warm, light bundle in her arms, a creature with a fragile head and soft skin that scratched the air with its ten delicate little nails and waggled its tiny podgy legs. She preferred older children, who didn’t disconcert her by asking to be helped onto the toilet, but who still faced the world with the wide-eyed puzzlement that optimistic parents took for innocence. Pre-adolescents, with their sudden mood swings and ability to go from hysterical laughter, violent anger to torrential tears all within the space of a minute, scared her as much as babies, but she almost always found a way of understanding the sharp edges of their sadness. Then, when they turned eighteen, she lost interest in them, as she did with most adults.
Although she could almost never do anything for them and might only ever get a weak smile in return for her efforts, Sara stood up for children, defended them, supported them, silently encouraging them as they passed by the periphery of her life. She observed them from a distance, tight-lipped and alert, never intervening but always trying to anticipate their reactions, to guess what sort of questions they were trying not to ask themselves, and what sort of answers they were avoiding, for Sara was searching for herself in their embraces and their quarrels, in their joy and their boredom, in their identity and in all the people they pretended to be. In all the children she encountered, she tried to find the little girl she had once been and to understand what had happened, what it was she had felt when she had so carefully avoided her own feelings, what had become twisted and broken. She was convinced that in the chaotic recesses of her mind there slumbered an answer that she might never entirely decode, a simple formula for hating or for loving her own memories.
Sara was used to other adults interpreting her interest in children as unfulfilled maternal instincts, and she realized immediately that her new cleaner would be no different. Nor was she surprised when Maribel’s initial joy at her son feeling so much at home in a stranger’s house changed into dark mutterings about how all this fuss would ruin the boy forever. Sara never took Maribel’s fears seriously as she felt that her own experiences protected her from any excess, Andrés from any lack, and Maribel from her own jealousy.And she knew that spoiling a child wasn’t the same as paying attention to it, offering to have a long, open-ended conversation about anything under the sun.
This was the connection between Sara and Andrés, a relationship without expensive presents, empty kisses, or showy displays of affection. While Maribel cleaned the kitchen, Sara and Andrés went out into the garden and chatted. She asked him about the winds, how many types there were, the significance of each one, what effect they had on fishing, on plants, on people’s moods.The locals seemed to plan their entire lives around the east wind, the west wind, the south wind, the hot, cold, damp, or dry wind, making it advisable, or not, to do the washing, go out or stay in, open the windows or shut them to keep out the sand which got into food, ruined kitchen appliances, collected in the gaps between tiles and could never be entirely eliminated, however much one swept. Andrés smiled, as if he couldn’t understand how such a simple thing managed to cause confusion in the mind of such a clever and grown-up woman. He explained it all to her patiently and clearly, savoring the rare feeling of being important.
“Imagine you’re on the beach.”And he stretched out his arms, as if he were holding Sara by the waist at the water’s edge. “Right? If it’s blowing from the left, it’s the east wind, if it’s blowing from the right, it’s the west wind, if it’s blowing in your face, it’s the south wind.”
“And what if I’m not on the beach?”
“It’s still easy.When the east wind’s blowing it’s hot, really hot in summer, and it’s very dry, you can feel it in your mouth and your throat. It knocks all the flies out, but it brings in lots of weird insects, caterpillars, bumblebees, but mainly “diablillos,” which are like big mosquitoes with two long thin wings on either side.They look horrible but they don’t bite. If I see one, I’ll show it to you.That way, when you see one, you’ll know the east wind’s coming.The west wind is cool, but it can be quite sticky. You can feel it on your clothes, because you sweat more.”
“So it’s damp,” she dared conclude for him, wondering how long it would take for her to get lost this time.
“If it’s towards the south, yes. If not, it depends. But it always makes you leave the beach in the afternoons, because it suddenly gets cold. Of course, the south wind’s worse, even colder, and you can feel it on your sheets at night—suddenly they’re freezing.”
“Right.” Sara hesitated, faced with the first difficulty. “And how can you tell if it’s the south wind blowing or the east?”
“Well . . .” Andrés stopped, as if she were being stupid. “Because you can just tell. Because it blows from a different direction.And the west wind is drier, but not as dry as the east wind.”
“The worst one.”
“In summer, yes. Especially when it’s calm, I mean, when you know it’s going to start blowing, but it hasn’t started yet, and sometimes it goes away without blowing at all, like last week, do you remember?” Sara shook her head, but this didn’t discourage him. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, it’s really horrible, because it gets really hot, like a furnace, so you get all sweaty and it just pours off you. Bleuh! You can’t go out, or play soccer, or anything.You open the front door and it’s like you’ve been smacked in the face, and you just want to go and lie down in the dark and not do anything. But in winter, the east wind’s good because it clears the air and dries the washing hanging out on the line, and it’s nice getting dressed for school in the morning without having to dry the edges of your jumper with the hairdryer.”
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