The Wind From the East (5 page)
Read The Wind From the East Online
Authors: Almudena Grandes
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Contemporary Women
“There he is again . . .” Having consumed half her cigarette in three or four greedy drags, Doña Sara barely disguised her displeasure. “I’ve told your mother, let her come to fetch you, not him, I really can’t bear that terrible man. She pays absolutely no attention to me. Every week, I have to put up with the sight of him standing there, damn him. Really! The things one has to endure.”
Sara didn’t like her godmother talking like this, breaking her own rules with a vehemence that was disconcerting. At the house in Calle Velázquez, nobody ever mentioned Sara’s parents, whether to speak ill or well of them.When the lady of the house referred to the child’s mother she used her Christian name, as if she were merely an acquaintance—“Years ago Sebastiana washed a pair of curtains like these and she ruined them; Sebastiana used to cook a delicious roast chicken; Sebastiana used to clean windows with water and bleach and despite the smell, they were marvelous,” and so on. When her god-daughter came back on Sunday afternoons, Doña Sara never asked the girl if she’d had a good time or if they’d gone for a walk or had a nice lunch—the smiling interrogation she always subjected the child to when she got back from a birthday party or a school outing.Those hours remained outside time, suspended inside a parenthesis of silence, detached from a reality that paused at midday on Sunday and recommenced eight hours later with a bath, supper, and prayers, just like every other night.These were the rules that governed young Sara’s life, strict and immutable except on the days when she returned from eleven o’clock Mass, in the hundred meters of pavement that seemed to give way beneath her feet, registering the crack that her godmother’s uncharacteristically harsh words opened up in her comfortable existence. She didn’t like it when Doña Sara spoke like that, as if every syllable was an invisible knife peeling away the good, kind woman Sara had always known, to reveal a harder, drier, hidden skin, like a vague threat that made her ask questions of herself that she didn’t want to answer.And she was even more disconcerted by her godmother’s sudden return to courtesy and correctness, for she couldn’t imagine which button Doña Sara pressed when she wanted to switch back to the charming, polite lady they were all accustomed to.
“Hello,Arcadio.”At the decisive moment, nobody seeing the genuine freshness of her smile would have doubted her sincerity.“How are you? How is Sebastiana? And the children?”
“Well, they’re all fine, thank you,” he would mumble, holding out his rough, dry hand in the direction of the light, tapering glove that extended from the sleeve of her coat.
Arcadio Gómez Gómez never wore a coat. In winter, when it was very cold, he wore a thick, dark green, woolen jumper, hand-knitted and expertly darned in several places, under a strange cape with a vaguely military look despite its plain, black buttons. It was made from a thin, cardboard-like fabric and when it rained Arcadio turned up his lapels, exposing the underside which was made from a less unusual type of cloth. Once, his daughter dared to ask him where he’d got his odd coat from, but he was reluctant to answer at first.
“It’s not that odd,” he said eventually, when she’d given up hope of an answer.“The thing is, your mother took it apart and turned it inside out. This used to be the lining.”
“Ah!” accepted the child.“Why did she do that?”
“Just because.”
Arcadio didn’t talk much, but he expressed himself in other ways. On Sundays, once Doña Sara had left him alone with his daughter, he always lifted her up and looked into her eyes, before hugging her fiercely but also with just the right amount of gentleness. He would put his arms right round her until he was touching his own sides with his fingertips, and hold her tight as if he wanted to absorb her, carry her inside him, merge with her so that they were a single body, but he was always very careful not to hurt her. Then, when the child crossed her legs firmly around his waist, he’d rest his face against hers and say very softly,“Sari,” using the pet name that infuriated her godmother and which Sara hated until she heard his hoarse warm voice whisper it in her ear—Sari—two syllables that later, when she was a grown woman, would always bring a lump to her throat. But not when she was a child.Then she just looked into his watery eyes, which changed color depending on the light, sometimes grey-brown, sometimes chestnut, but always vaguely green, and saw a tremor in their depths. Those eyes would have been a perfect replica of her own had it not been for the dusty lines, as deep as scars, that ran from their corners, joining those on his cheeks. In that ashen face, that barely differed in color from the curly hair—two white hairs for every black—that framed his face, only the mouth, with its thick, fleshy lips (which she was lucky enough not to inherit) showed his true age.Arcadio Gómez Gómez was not yet forty when, in 1947, his youngest daughter, his fifth child, was born. He had wanted to name her Adela, after his mother, but the little girl was named Sara after her godmother. She always believed that the person she went to meet every Sunday morning was an old man.
He would take Sara firmly by the hand and squeeze it in his rough palm when they crossed the road on the way to the metro.There, until she was at least nine years old, he would pick her up and carry her down the steps. The woman at the ticket office was used to seeing them every week, but occasionally a curious onlooker stopped and watched the strange pair, unable to guess the connection between the dark man and the luminous child at his side. But the sparks of surprise in strangers’ eyes became fewer with every stop, just as the glow of the platform lights faded from the carriage as the train moved off again. By the time they arrived at Sol, the carriage was so crowded with people all jostling to get out, that nobody looked beyond the end of their own feet. This was Arcadio’s territory; he maneuvered skillfully, carrying her through the air and depositing her safely on the platform, so that she had no idea how they had avoided all the pushing and shoving that made the other passengers stagger. But this floating sense of immunity seemed as natural to her as these mysterious Sunday outings. Before she could even walk, she’d already learned to fly above the ragged outline of reality, holding the edges of her immaculate clothes with the tips of her fingers.
Reality awaited her at the exit of the metro station at the Puerta del Sol but, as long as she could elude its grasp, she never recognized it. She walked along holding her father’s hand not really understanding what the word reality meant. She accepted his tenderness like a sad, lukewarm prize she didn’t feel she deserved, and everything else seemed hazy like the words to a song, or the faces of children in very old photographs, or the rules of a playground game. She moved through the chaos of winding dirty streets as if she had just entered a film, looking around with the mild and transient curiosity of a casual spectator.The district was bursting with movement and color, as busy as a beehive, but instinctively Sara merged all the different tones into an oppressive, uniform sepia, like the dust that gathered everywhere: on the wooden blinds resting over the railings of balconies, in the windows of the tiny shops displaying only a couple of empty milk bottles and a basket of eggs on a cracked counter, on the red and white tiled floors glimpsed through the doorways of bars, and on the clothes of the amputees begging on the pavement. Sometimes, when they saw that she was afraid of them, these men would try to frighten her just for fun, thrusting their crutches out at her, or suddenly raising an arm that ended in a stump and pointing it at her. Her father greeted the people he knew by their Christian names, and smiled at everyone else, but he was careful to avoid the heavily made-up women who gathered in groups of two or three at different street corners.
“Well, here we are.” With these words Arcadio hailed the facade of the Santa Cruz palace, whose ancient, austere beauty jarred with the polished modernity of his daughter’s world. She preferred to wait for him outside on the pavement, staring up at the dark mansion with its pointed towers, like those of a witch’s castle, while he went into a bar to collect his demijohn of red wine. “Right, come on, let’s go home . . .”
Arcadio Gómez Gómez and his wife, Sebastiana Morales Pereira, lived in the Calle Concepción Jerónima next to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a building that was falling apart.The edifice was the indefinable color of dirt and neglect, displaying its wounds with the serene acquiescence of a leper. In some places the stucco had fallen away and deeper gashes revealed patches of a grey amalgam or exposed the building’s brick skeleton. By one of the balconies on the first floor bullet holes were still clearly visible. Beneath it was the entrance, with its wooden door painted brown and a lock so ancient it required a large, rusty, iron key, with one end shaped like a clover leaf.Arcadio, who always carried it in his pocket, had to struggle with the lock for a moment before they could enter a dark, dank hallway. He felt along the wall until he found the switch, and turned on the dim, yellowish light. The staircase, with its steps worn down in the middle and wrought-iron banisters that barely served as a reminder of better times, was at the end of the hallway. On the left-hand side of the third floor, it always smelled of cooking, and shouting could be heard from behind the door.This was Arcadio’s home. But not Sara’s.
“Oh, darling!” cried Sebastiana. She’d come running down the passage as soon as she heard the key in the lock, embracing Sara with hands that always felt damp however much she wiped them on her apron.“Let me look at you.You look lovely! I think you might even have grown! Come here, let me give you a kiss.”
Her mother would kneel down and hug her. A few months younger than her husband, Sebastiana’s sparse, brown hair was badly dyed and scraped back into a bun, exposing a round face with fat cheeks that seemed to squash her small, dark, button-like eyes. Her body had a soft, compact quality to it, making her black skirt and blouse look as if they were stuffed with pillows. But unlike Fray José, Sebastiana Morales always smelled clean, of soap and water, and her plumpness exuded warmth, constancy, an indefinable promise of protection. Perhaps this was why Sara was more affected by her kisses—loud, quick, interspersed with words—than by Arcadio’s solid embraces.When her mother’s eyes softened, as she succumbed to an emotion that she could no longer express in words, Sara felt her own eyes begin to fill with tears.At that moment, just before everything became blurred, her father intervened and drew them apart.
“That’s enough, Sebas. Don’t start.”
Her mother would immediately spring up with an agility surprising in one so heavy, and rub her eyes on her cardigan sleeve, nodding in agreement with her husband. Meanwhile, their daughter stood stock-still in the middle of the tiny hall, never knowing what to say or do, or where to go once she’d quickly fought back her tears. She was never really sure what they expected of her so she preferred to remain where she was, waiting for someone else to take the lead so that she could respond in kind, being careful and polite, just as her godmother told her to be whenever they went to visit anyone. Her Sunday lunches were nothing like those afternoon teas with ladies who ate their cake using dainty knives and forks. She’d learned from the stories her godmother told her—which never featured wicked stepmothers—that poor, very, very poor parents cried a lot when they said goodbye to their children, and that if they sent them out into the world to earn their living when they were small, it wasn’t because they didn’t love them but because there wasn’t enough food to go around. That was why she didn’t like the tale of Hansel and Gretel or any of the adventures about defenseless children who found their way into the castle of a hungry ogre and stole his treasure. In the end, all those children returned home laden with gold, and the parents wept all over again, with joy this time, at their return. But Sara would never have known which home to return to, especially since she had noticed that in the flat on the Calle Concepción Jerónima, they only seemed to eat twice a day.
Although she almost always felt sure she didn’t want to be like them, she sometimes wondered why her four older brothers and sisters lived with their parents while she was so far away, in a different house, in a different part of town, with a different family. But she never dared demand a definite answer, because she realized that Arcadio and Sebastiana were suffering, each in their own way—he, proud, terse but tender at the same time; she, much more humble and tearful. Her brothers and sisters, on the other hand, treated her with an indifference that varied from the distrust of the older ones, whom Sara would always regard as hostile adults, to the curiosity of Socorrito, the youngest girl. Socorrito had been born seven years before Sara, and she was the only one who went near Sara of her own free will, always kissing her before taking her coat and giving her an old smock to put on over her dress, following instructions from Sebastiana that made Arcadio furious. Socorrito made no effort to hide her interest and she liked touching her sister’s things—the hats that always matched her coats, the gloves, the patent shoes, the purse, and a white leather missal with gilded edges and a pair of angels on the title page that Sara almost always forgot to hand to her godmother when they got back from church. Doña Sara made sure to send her god-daughter to the Calle Concepción Jerónima in the plainest outfit possible, and would make her wear a dress from the previous year even though the skirt was too short or the armholes a little tight.This was why Sari, as they called her at her parents’ house, had no choice but to disappoint her sister Socorro, week after week.
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