The Wind From the East

by Almudena Grandes

  “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.

  “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, he
r 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,