The Winterlings

by Cristina Sanchez-Andrade

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m ashamed to be seen without them. I look like a toad.’

  Taking advantage of her open mouth, Tenderlove stuck in the pliers as she spoke, yanking the dentures right out. He held them up to his eyes and inspected them carefully. She instinctively clutched her sore cheek.

  ‘How poorly they make them around here. They think that just putting them in white is the whole job,’ he said. ‘They have no respect at all for the bone. That’s what it all comes down to: the bone. The bone is the beginning of all things, it is love, it is the essence of life. You must scrape and scrape until you get to the bone …’

  Saladina listened, captivated.

  ‘Where did you buy it? They say you two were in England … Never mind. I’ll fix your mouth up like God intended. You’ll have to come for thirty-two days, that’s the number of pieces we have to install, sixteen in each jawbone. Eight incisors to cut through food, four canines which are used for tearing food, eight premolars for chewing, and twelve molars for grinding …’

  The Winterling nodded her head.

  ‘It’s laborious because I have to put them in tooth by tooth, but it’s worth the trouble. You know, there have been people who already had a set of dentures in good condition who decided to change theirs for mine.’

  ‘I heard that,’ said the Winterling suddenly. ‘To be honest, it’s strange that a man like you, who knows how to make these marvels, still has the same set of teeth you were born with …’

  ‘Well, there’s a lot we could say about that. But back to the point: it’s clear you need new teeth. Tomorrow you can—’

  ‘My sister was asking’ — she interrupted again — ‘what the teeth are made of?’

  Mr Tenderlove had an answer ready for her; in fact, it was the same one he had given to all those he had made dentures for previously.

  ‘A friend of mine brings me the material — it’s titanium. It never rusts. It never breaks. It’s extracted from sand at the beach. Here in Galicia, there is plenty of titanium.’

  ‘Ah …’

  The dental mechanic wound up her visit and went on with his task of filing down the teeth. Just as Saladina went out the door, he called to her:

  ‘I remember when you were a little girl. You were very … shy. You were very pretty.’ He raised a hand and brushed a brilliantined lock from his forehead. ‘And you still are. I always believed that behind your shyness there was something, something that made you special and different from the other girls.’

  Saladina gave a start. There was nothing in her sweaty face or bony disposition that indicated that his comment had affected her, but she was boiling inside. She felt deliciously wild. Her — Saladina the Boring — what was happening to her? For the first time in her life, someone had discovered the truth, her truth.

  But then, straight away, she thought that perhaps the dental mechanic had confused her with her sister …

  She couldn’t open her mouth. The words were there, but her mouth wouldn’t open.

  ‘What’s more,’ continued the dental mechanic, ‘I believe that your grandfather was an exceptional person, an intelligent man who just wanted to learn. On many afternoons, he would bring me figs and stay chatting … How good those figs tasted! Do you still have the fig tree?’ Tenderlove shook his head gently. ‘No, he didn’t deserve what happened to him …’

  Saladina didn’t understand.

  ‘My grandfather?’ she spluttered. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was a good man …’

  Tenderlove leant over the table, and got down to filing a little tooth.

  Then Saladina explained very excitedly everything that the old lady on the mountain had told them.

  ‘She says that my grandfather kept staring at her and finally said “Old lady, you’ve got a brain like the Santiago Cathedral.” And then afterwards, he made an offer that she gladly accepted: to buy her brain. He would buy it for his research, and she just had to give it up when she died. The old lady accepted. They set a price and the old lady made her mark on a piece of paper. My grandfather paid her, and she committed to hand over her brain for his investigations when she died.

  ‘What do you make of that?’

  Mr Tenderlove kept filing down the tooth.

  ‘Did you already know that story?’ asked Saladina.

  ‘It’s a story that lives on in this village,’ answered the dental mechanic after a while. ‘Everyone has heard it told — minding the cows in the meadow, baking the bread in the oven, in the tavern, at the entrance to the cemetery or by the stone cross — and everyone tells it too. They say the contracts are in a wooden box. The whole story could’ve been forgotten by now or left floating in someone’s house if it weren’t for that old lady who just won’t die. Take no notice of her!’

  The dental mechanic suddenly went silent.

  ‘I have to get back to work now,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll be waiting to put in your first tooth.’

  Saladina nodded, confused.

  ‘Winterling, I forgot to tell you … For your next visit …’

  Saladina smoothed her skirt and ran her hands through her hair.

  ‘Yes?’

  For a few seconds, all that could be heard was the sound of the file. While she awaited his response, the Winterling’s gaze dropped slowly to the floor. Then she noticed that from the cuff of the dental mechanic’s pants, the tip of a shoe was pointing out. A red, woman’s shoe.

  ‘Don’t eat any garlic or onions.’

  17

  Dolores was resting her temple against the cow’s flank and staring off into the distant countryside when she saw her sister arrive, looming large then small as she advanced through the cornfields.

  Saladina entered the house like a flash of lightning, showing all the signs of great excitement. Dolores finished milking, and followed her with the pail.

  ‘It’s true!’ said Saladina.

  Dolores left the milk in the kitchen and hurried to attend to her sister. She Saladina was radiant, her cheeks burning from the journey. She took her bag, removed her shawl, helped her put on her robe, and knelt down to put on her slippers. She accompanied her into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s true, woman?’

  ‘All that business about our grandfather. He bought brains, it’s a story everyone knows. Not just that old lady from Bocelo; the whole village sold him their brains.’

  Dolores started up the Singer sewing machine. While she sewed, she listened carefully, both perplexed and doubtful.

  ‘The contracts are in a wooden box. The dentist told me.’ Saladina began to look about wildly from side to side, her hands in the air. ‘Let’s look for them!’

  Dolores said that they’d already searched, and that the story about the brains was outrageous, nonsense from a crazy old lady. The priest himself had said so.

  ‘But the priest sold his brain too!’ Her sister was screeching and stamping her feet. ‘It was the most expensive one!’

  Saladina was already searching. She looked in the kitchen, in the living room, and in the cowshed. Then she went up to the attic and started pulling at the locked drawer that they still hadn’t managed to open. From inside the drawer came a knocking sound: plonk, plonk.

  Dolores the Winterling kept on sewing downstairs. Clack, clack.

  Plonk, plonk.

  Finally, Dolores got up and offered to help Saladina.

  They turned the house upside down without finding a single thing.

  In the evening, sitting in front of the Singer, they began to doubt Tenderlove’s words. It wasn’t unusual for people in small villages to make things up, or get confused …

  The next day, Saladina returned to the clinic to have the first tooth inserted. That day she had risen early, even before Greta the cow began to moo in the cowshed. Sitting at the kitchen table with
pencil and paper, the tip of her tongue poking out, she set out to make a list of all the names of the teeth that she could remember Mr Tenderlove mentioning. On one side, in the left column, was the name of the tooth, and in the right-hand column, its function: incisor-cut, canine-tear, premolar-grind.

  Next, she climbed the ladder to gather some figs. The sweetest ones were very high up, and she had to stretch from the top rung to reach them. Dolores watched her from below, while she scattered the feed for the chickens. Saladina stumbled and was left hanging from a branch. Dolores let the plate with the chicken feed fall to the ground, and eventually climbed up the ladder and rescued her sister.

  ‘Look, all the feed is spilt on the ground,’ she said once she had got back down again. ‘One of these days you’ll be the end of me. And just so you can take some figs to this dentist-quack of yours …’

  But Saladina’s visits to Mr Tenderlove’s clinic weren’t the only new thing. As the days went by, the Winterlings began to abandon their stifling routine and take on new habits. They began by cheerfully greeting anyone who stopped them on their way to the mountain.

  ‘So, what are you up to? Heading to the mountain?’

  And they would always reply:

  ‘We’re heading up there, yes, and why wouldn’t we?’

  They soon learned as well that each village has its own foibles, its moods and rules for belonging, and that company has its price: they had to bend to the customs of the community and all that entailed. Visiting certain places meant always visiting those certain places, or they’d remain alone.

  To be a part of the community in Tierra de Chá, you had to go every evening to the tavern, a dive smelling of must and loneliness with a low roof, attended by a redhead and his wife who were always leaning on the worm-eaten bar. There was no point passing by every once in a while. At six o’clock every evening, either you were in the tavern or you weren’t. Among the sticky fly-strips that hung from the walls, folks got together to play card games like la brisca or tute, have a few drinks, watch the television, and tell each other stories.

  On the counter there was an oil lamp, and hanging from the wall there was a calendar with a faded photograph of the Pope. The redhead, leaning forward slightly, listened carefully to the conversations around him. His wife, her eyes on the television, rinsed out the empty soft-drink bottles in a bucket, gesticulating to herself.

  There were only two television sets in the whole village: one belonged to the priest (although he denied it and kept it hidden), and the other one was in the tavern. It was an old piece of junk that gave off a blurry picture in black-and-white that worked well enough to bring in the customers.

  Uncle Rosendo used to sit at a nearby table, on a cask or an old crate. He’d arrive at around four o’clock, when his classes finished, and begin ordering drinks. Little by little, his cheeks lit up, his nose went red, and his eyes went shiny. He began to recite poetry and talk nonsense. At seven o’clock on the dot, the cask he’d been sitting on would roll backwards with a crash, and he’d be laid out on the ground like a toad.

  That was when the innkeeper would send word to Meis’ Widow.

  Every afternoon went the same way.

  Boom, and the innkeeper would send word to the Widow, who in fact was no longer a widow.

  His wife would come in their wagon, loaded with freshly cut grass, pulled along by the cow.

  ‘I’m telling you I saw her myself last night, she was flying!’ sputtered Uncle Rosendo, referring to his wife, who was coming through the door. ‘Flying above our marriage bed!’

  ‘You ought to stop drinking!’ yelled Tristán from another table. ‘Christ, if I had as much free time as you … If my birds didn’t keep me to such a tight schedule … The amount of things I could get done! Don’t you realise that the booze is making you see things?’

  ‘That’s not true, we only see what we already know,’ replied Uncle Rosendo solemnly.

  Tristán, the other man, would never be able to understand such a deep philosophical thought.

  ‘You shouldn’t be drinking; you’ve got your exam soon. Have you studied all the lessons?’

  For a moment, Rosendo was transfixed. He thought of his wife’s face, which looked like a bedbug. He realised that the worst thing in the world that could happen to him would be to fail the exam, because he’d never have the courage to return to Tierra de Chá. He’d have to sleep in the flop-house, in a room that smelt like used towels.

  But after a moment, he came out of his trance.

  ‘There are those who do things, and there are those who tell others what they should do. You, Tristán, belong to the second group. I’m telling you I saw the Widow flying, just like a witch.’

  ‘How about a bit of respect for your wife!’ came a call from across the tavern.

  But Uncle Rosendo had no respect at all for his wife. He was convinced that the Widow was pleased that he got drunk every afternoon, because deep down, he knew that what pleased the Widow most was exactly what she said displeased her.

  He had all kinds of theories for explaining life, and for exploring the labyrinth of his wife’s mind — it was himself that he failed to understand.

  In the first place, he couldn’t understand why he had married a woman like her — so different to him — who did nothing but talk about her deceased husband. Meis’ Widow: if people still called her that it was because, in truth, that’s how she behaved. Sometimes, when she wasn’t paying attention, he followed her around the house. When she went into the living room, she would speak to the portrait of her dead husband and blow him kisses.

  She was as ugly as Satan. Her skin was the colour of ash, and her hair stuck to her face. The worst thing was that she wasn’t affectionate at all. Not even when she came to pick him up in the wagon would she show a hint of tenderness. Every morning, Uncle Rosendo woke up and asked himself what he was doing with this woman who hadn’t even stopped mourning for her previous husband. He’d consider leaving her, and yet, when night fell, he still hadn’t done it. He would get drunk, and she would come and get him in the wagon. Life — not people or things — imposed its way on the world, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t change a thing.

  As a young man, Uncle Rosendo had known other women, but he always knew he would never marry. He got to know the Widow around the hearth at the Winterlings’ house, when Don Reinaldo was still alive. Recently widowed then, she would purse her lips as if blowing kisses into the air, and he would respond by blushing deeply and taking off his cap. After the war, everything happened very quickly. In the afternoons, the Widow would wait for him by the fountain in the square. He was the country teacher, and while they listened to the sound of water falling he would speak to her of poetry, of geography, and even of philosophy.

  ‘Please stop,’ she would interrupt, placing her palm over his mouth. ‘I’ve never been one of those women of letters. I don’t even like books.’

  ‘Well, you should hear one of Rosalía de Castro’s poems, Adiós, adiós, prenda do meu corazón,’ he would reply, winking. ‘By the way — what’s your name?’

  ‘The Widow. Meis’ Widow.’

  ‘I know that’s what they call you. But that’s not a name — what are you really called?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t got another one. You’re not an Uncle either, but everyone calls you that.’

  ‘Give me a kiss.’

  ‘No way! My husband might see us.’

  Back then, Uncle Rosendo thought she was losing her marbles. He didn’t understand why he was attracted to a woman like her, who was only interested in her dead husband.

  ‘Your husband is dead.’

  She wrinkled her brow.

  ‘So what?’

  Uncle Rosendo was made of other stuff; this was obvious to everyone. He was twenty years old the first time he heard a poem. As a matter of fact, it was by the hearth of the
Winterlings’ grandfather that he had heard it. He couldn’t remember who had read it, perhaps it was one of Don Reinaldo’s friends — he was visited back then by mayors, lawyers, poets, and unionists — or perhaps Don Reinaldo himself.

  The poem was about the passage of time, about love and solitude, or something like that. Things that are simple but profound — you never know quite what a poet speaks about, because the poet always speaks of himself. But while he listened to those words (cold, birds chased by the light, lime and liver) he began to feel a strange tingling all over his body. When the reading was over, he remained by the fire, unable to take his eyes off the spot where the man had read, his cheeks flushed. He was startled.

  Until then, Uncle Rosendo had never thought that things like the passage of time, solitude, lime, and livers could move one profoundly. Until that man had spoken of it in such beautiful words, he hadn’t known that love could be a source of disquiet and that life was an extraordinary thing.

  And life was an extraordinary thing. He began to read poetry and teach it to the children. Without realising, he was teaching not only poetry but all kinds of universal knowledge — from the moment when Eve felt the urge to eat fruit in the Garden of Eden and stretched her arm out for an apple, to the time of Napoleon and his tumultuous Carlist wars. There were bits and pieces of arithmetic, the names of the continents, and the names of some African animals, like the lion and the giraffe. Some parents paid him with packages of flour or corn, while others wondered about the point of literacy, given that there was absolutely nothing in the village to read.

  He set up the school in the hayloft of his own house. On the outside he put up a sign that said ‘Tierra de Chá Children’s School’, and beneath that ‘Uncle Rosendo, Country Teacher’. He brought in snakes and bats to show the children. He would tell them: there’s something in my coat pocket for you. And the children, who came from all over, walking on the paths through the forest, would put their hands inside. The only reason he taught was because he himself wanted to keep learning.

  He also discovered that poetry was favoured by the type of woman he had always fancied, but that had never fancied him.