The Wind From the East

by Almudena Grandes

  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.”

  “And when it’s calm?”

  “In winter?” For a moment, it was the boy’s turn to be confused.“No, in winter, you never notice it. It’s never calm. It’s like the west wind, it can blow or not blow, but there’s never any warning that it’s going to start, not in winter or in summer.With the south wind, it’s the same. Of course, in winter, the south wind’s worse than the west wind, because it’s a lot colder, but in spring, the west wind . . .”

  At this stage Sara surrendered, holding up her hand as if she were waving a white flag.

  “Don’t worry, Andrés, it doesn’t matter. However much you explain, I’ll never understand.”

  “What?”And he burst out laughing, feeling more important than ever. “But it’s so easy!”

  Sometimes it was the boy who started the conversation. Crossing the living room en route to the garden, he’d point at one of the large illustrated books that occupied the lowest bookshelf. Sara would carry it outside and show it to him, at last finding a use for all the heavy tomes she had begun to accumulate over the past few years—The Prado Museum, Spanish Fauna, The Hermitage, Nature Reserves of Europe, The Masterpieces of Michelangelo, Australia, Picasso—since her godmother had tired of giving perfume or scarves to an old spinster like herself. It made Sara feel useful, reading out the names of the paintings or statues or monuments or places in the photos, although she sometimes felt overwhelmed by Andrés’s omnivorous curiosity.

  “And the duck-billed platypus?” he’d ask suddenly, as if she knew what he was talking about.

  “What?”

  “The duck-billed platypus. It’s a disgusting animal that’s got boobs but it lays eggs, and it’s got a duck’s beak, I think. It lives in Australia, but it isn’t in this book.” />
  “Oh, yes?” Sara cast her eyes over the list of illustrations several times, but in vain. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe it never lets anyone take photos of it. Or maybe it’s extinct.”

  “No,” he’d answer, suddenly as sure of this piece of information as he was of the direction of the wind.“I’d know about it. But it must almost be extinct, which is a shame, because I’d really like to see one. In my science book last year there was only a drawing of it.”

  “Well, I’ll try to find a photo of it in another book.The thing is, it isn’t easy here, but remind me about it the next time I go to Cadiz.”

  “Or Madrid,” suggested Andrés, his eyes suddenly shining, because he liked to imagine that, one day, she’d take him with her and show him the city she came from.“It’d be easier in Madrid.”

  “Yes, but the thing is I don’t think I’ll be going back to Madrid.” Sara tried to let him down gently.“At least not for the time being.”

  “Ah!”Andrés acquiesced, never daring to ask her why, and then he was off again, saying he’d love to see the photo of the strange mountain that was so flat it looked as if the top had been lopped off with a knife.

  Andrés was a quick learner, and he’d repeat the names over to himself so that he wouldn’t forget them. Sara would watch him, recalling how much energy it took to deal with all that information, all those names and titles, dismantling concepts with the tools of the mind and then nailing them into memory through sheer will, and every time the boy managed to link one concept with another, or dared to voice a correct supposition, it pleased Sara even more than it did him. She felt that Andrés was a special boy, that his seriousness, his focus and his melancholy nature were symptoms of an unease that bordered on anguish. Perhaps it was simply that she was too old to kneel down on the floor and play toy cars with him, but the wound seemed to go deeper than that. Difficult lives produce difficult children—she knew that herself—and Maribel’s lot was not an easy one.

  “Well, what can I tell you?”When Sara finally got Maribel to confide in her, almost unintentionally, about the boy’s father, it took only a few sentences to clear up the mystery. It was a banal story, like so many others. “What a disaster. I left school at fourteen. My teachers said I was bright but my family wasn’t well off, so I went to work in a supermarket, as a messenger at first and then in the produce department. That’s where I met Andrés’s father—he’s called Andrés too, he’s the son of a hauler and he drove a small truck. I saw him every day, because he delivered the bread and rolls.They called him ‘Tasty Bread’ because he was so good-looking.You should have seen him, gorgeous, not very tall, but so handsome it wasn’t true. He had a really good body, and he was cocky, that’s for sure. He always went on about having a good time, saying he’d only had three hours’ sleep, how he’d been to a bullfight in El Puerto, he’d gone for a big night out in Jerez, that he’d burned himself out at the Trebujena fair, he was friends with flamenco singers—Paula, Camarón, all of them. Anyway, I was just crazy about him. I loved to listen to him and the way he could convince anyone he was important. He seemed to live life to the full. I even liked the way he pulled so many girls, always bragging about this one or that one, and showing off about how many tourists he’d scored. God, I was stupid. I thought I could change him, that with me it would be different. He knew I had plenty of blokes after me too. It’s true, I really did, I had to push them out of the way just to get into my house.And with all the men I had running after me, I had to go and pick the worst one.When I think about it now I could kill myself! Anyway, I started going out with him, and we got engaged. He gave me some coral earrings, and took me round the festival on his horse. It was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me, that’s for sure, but the minute we got off that horse, I got pregnant. Until then, it had all been very nice, but then . . . He didn’t want to marry me, and my dad was livid.You should have heard him, and Andrés’s father was the same, so in the end we got married. He never spent three nights in a row at home, even in the first week we were married, and when the boy was eighteen months old, he cleared off for good. He moved in with another woman, two streets away, and when she got fed up with him and threw him out, he took up with another one, who runs a bar and puts up with everything. She must be at least ten years older than him. So anyway, there he is, living on the Chipiona road.”

  Maribel had told the whole story in one go, folding and re-folding the yellow cloth that she used to wipe the worktops, and not taking her eyes off her son, who was reading a comic in the garden. Sara understood everything except the woman’s apparent calm, the neutral, flat, almost casual tone with which she had told the simple tale of her small wretched life, the brief smile that appeared on her face as she recalled the glory of a morning at the festival. Then, in the silence that followed, she tried to smile again, but her lips just drooped, and she kept passing the cloth from one hand to the other as if it were on fire. Then suddenly she turned round and threw herself into wiping the same marble surface she’d just cleaned with an energy that shook her entire body.

  “On the Chipiona road,” she said again, thickly. “Cocky bastard, that’s exactly what he is.”

  And with that the conversation ended. Sara never dared to bring the subject up again, but she gleaned other facts from the anger in the eyes of Jerónimo, the obliging gardener who found jobs for people, as his cousin Maribel clicked around the kitchen on her high heels, in Andrés’s scowl of displeasure as his mother put on a dress that was too tight when she changed out of her pink housecoat, in the hard look in the eyes of the cashier at the supermarket as she ignored Maribel when she and Sara went shopping together, and in the smile with which her cleaner greeted the wolf whistles of the traders at the Wednesday street market. Maribel was very young, Sara thought, and she wasn’t doing anything that any other thirty-year-old woman wasn’t doing: going out in the evenings, going to clubs, flirting, having drinks, wearing make-up, not wearing a bra with a low-cut dress, sleeping with lots of different men, maybe ones she didn’t want to see again but keeping her sights set on a different, better kind of man, one she could stay with forever. None of this had anything to do with her son, or with those cheap rings tarnished by bleach, but Sara was sure that Andrés’s interest in Madrid, the way he begged her again and again to tell him what the streets, the houses, the soccer fields were like, sprang from a desire to escape, to blend his tracks with thousands of others, though perhaps his mother’s social life pained him less than the absence of his father, who rushed into the nearest bar to avoid him if he saw him in the street. Sara could do nothing for the difficult boy other than to love him cautiously and pay attention to him, encouraging him to keep going, always keep going.

  It was through Andrés that Sara finally got to know the Olmedo family. As the dying days of August stole light from the evenings, and the car parks began to empty, the boy, who had continued to go to the beach with Sara every morning, even after his mother started working for the new neighbors, suddenly announced that he was fed up with salt, sand, and having to walk back at lunchtime, and anyway his lilo had a puncture, so he’d much rather stay by the pool.“You can carry on going to the beach, if you like,” he added, and Sara found his equivocal remark so amusing—both possessive and tolerant—that she decided to go with him to the pool, although now it was she who trailed him, and not the other way round. So the two of them got used to seeing Tamara, who usually arrived at the pool around mid-morning, almost always on her own, with her towel, her bikini-clad Barbie, and a fabulous water pistol the size of a machine gun, with two water tanks and three cannons on different levels that Andrés coveted from the moment he saw it. Sara told him he should ask the girl if he could have a go, and after they’d had their first water battle,Tamara began laying her towel next to Andrés’s every morning. But the little girl, who was almost unbearably pretty, didn’t much like talking about herself, or her home, or her family, and she hardly ever asked Sara to explain when she didn’t understand
something Andrés, her future schoolmate, said, as he spoke very fast and with a strong Andalusian accent. Her Uncle Juan, who sometimes came to fetch her and have a quick swim before lunch, confirmed the different impressions that Sara and Maribel had formed on seeing him for the first time. An attractive but serious man, extremely polite but distant, calm but with an anxious expression, mysterious yet ordinary at the same time, deliberately restrained yet seductive almost despite himself, tall, dark and slim, looking much younger than his forty years, there really was no reason why he should stand out, but for some reason he did.

  And yet, as September wore on, Sara began to see the Olmedos in a different light, possibly suspecting that they all—both she and her neighbors—were destined to live side by side like the only survivors of a shipwreck, tossed onto the beach of a desert island by a capricious sea.The development, which only a few weeks earlier had been full of children, pregnant women, tanned pensioners, and fathers in shorts, suddenly turned into a model of itself, like a giant film set with fake houses, their shutters firmly closed, their gardens deserted, this picture of abandonment seemingly confirmed by the few disorientated people remaining, their presence compounding the worrying thickness of the air instead of dispelling it. The startling arrival of the west wind, bringing autumn to what should have been a peaceful summer afternoon, crashed against the dozen or so remaining parasols like a sudden full stop.