The Wind From the East

by Almudena Grandes

  Doña Sara was thinking of a white dress, in a short modern style, the same color as the evening dress she had worn at her own coming-out ball. She’d always known that her god-daughter would never have such a ball, but when all was said and done, the birthday party that she so desperately wanted was the first social event of any importance arranged in her honor. Had Sara been aware of her godmother’s musings, she would have burst out laughing. It had never occurred to her or any of her friends that they might have any kind of “coming out” ceremony. In 1963 there was nothing more ridiculous, old-fashioned or tacky as the idea of a “debut” in society. So when the mellifluous manageress of the large, luxurious shop began showing her dresses, Sara chose an Italian design with a loud, multicolored and radically modern print. At a strategic moment when the saleswoman and her assistants had left them alone in one of the little rooms reserved for their best clients, Doña Sara made one plea for the white dress, while Sara defended her first choice. For once, their disagreement didn’t lead to a real argument; instead they hurriedly compromised on a yellow raw silk dress which was as far from the dull, home-grown standard of elegance as it was from the suspect, imported extravagance. Sara was very moved by her godmother’s generosity. Doña Sara had had to embark upon a complicated operation to keep her husband in the dark about her plans. His friend, Don César, had volunteered to join in the scheme, but moving Don Antonio anywhere was complicated, even though the estate in Toledo where he got together with his cronies was less than an hour and a half away by car. Doña Sara, for her part, had decided that she would do everything she could to make sure that Sara enjoyed this special birthday. She didn’t waver from this decision, even when the manageress of the shop took it for granted that they would be ordering shoes made of the same fabric as the dress, even though she knew that Sara would get much more wear out of a good pair of black leather dress shoes and pointed this out. But before the corners of Sara’s mouth drooped with disappointment, she added quickly: “Well, if you want shoes in the same fabric, you shall have them, darling, and that’s that.”

  On July 19, 1939, Sebastiana Morales Pereira paused for a moment between the pair of marble lions at the front door to the Ochoa household. She took from her bag a dark scarf with which she covered her head, knotting it firmly beneath her chin. She normally never wore scarves, but she wanted to look as similar as possible to the way Señora Ochoa had looked when she rang at the door of the attic room on the Corredera Alta, three years and four days ago, on 15 July 1936. In those days, the rich would never have dared to wander about the working-class neighborhoods of Madrid without disguising their wealth, so at first Sebastiana didn’t recognize the woman dressed in a worn grey coat, her face half-hidden beneath a black scarf.“We’re leaving for San Sebastián this afternoon,” Doña Sara told her as she accepted the coffee that Sebastiana offered her, her head now held high.“My parents have been there for the last six weeks, since the beginning of June.They go there every year, but Antonio insisted on staying here until the situation is resolved. He didn’t want to just drop everything and go. Everything we own is here, our house, our possessions, everything, but now, after the business with Calvo Sotelo . . . I don’t know, to tell you the truth I’m scared. I don’t think things are going to get any better, they’re just going to get worse.Anyway, we’re leaving Madrid today, so I wanted you to know, and I also wanted to ask you a favor . . .” There was a different concierge now. Sebastiana didn’t know the strange man who rushed up to ask what floor she was going to and sent her to the tradesmen’s entrance. She obeyed meekly. As she went up the steps she wondered what had happened to the previous concierge, a friendly man from Asturias who always chatted to her when she went to check on her employer’s apartment, to make sure that the document that she herself had nailed to the front door was having the desired effect—keeping the apartment safe. This piece of paper had caused a tremendous row with her husband. She could still remember Arcadio’s every word:“You’ll never learn, will you, Sebastiana? No, you’re still at their beck and call, you don’t know how to live without a master.” And the contempt with which he threw into her lap a typed sheet bearing the words These premises have been seized by the Metalworkers’ Union of Madrid, General Union of Workers—two lines with no signature followed by a stamp in red ink, large and clear, with the three powerful capital letters symbolizing the General Union of Workers beneath it: UGT. But that humble piece of paper had now become the life insurance of Arcadio Gómez Gómez, sentenced by a military court to be executed at dawn. At least, this was what his wife hoped as she rang the bell on the fourth floor, though it didn’t prevent her from feeling a thick, anarchic rage that made her want to tear down the door with her bare hands.When a maid answered, however, she simply said that her name was Sebastiana Morales and that she needed to see the lady of the house. Doña Sara received her and listened in silence right to the end.“Help me, Sara.You can help me now. He’s a good man, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He doesn’t deserve to die. Remember, when our side was winning, you asked for my help and I helped you. Now you can help me, Sara. Please save him. He’s a trade unionist and a revolutionary, but he’s not a murderer. He never went about waving a gun at people, he was only interested in politics. He doesn’t deserve to die, he’s never killed anyone, he hasn’t done anything.” “Now, now,” said Señora Ochoa, after a while.“He did do something—he fought.” Then Sebastiana Morales Pereira stood up and raised her voice.“It was the same war your husband fought in, Sara,” she said, with her fists clenched.“In war, people kill and people die. Arcadio didn’t do anything your husband didn’t do.” Señora Ochoa looked at the woman and stubbed out her cigarette with a sharp tinkling of gold bracelets. There was a silence. Her soul on tenterhooks, Sebastiana counted five, ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, until the bracelets tinkled again as Señora Ochoa picked up the phone. Nine days later, a guard fetched Arcadio Gómez Gómez from his cell and took him to an officer. The officer didn’t ask him to sit down.“A notification has arrived for you,” he said simply.“I’m going to read it to you.”This was how Arcadio found out that his death sentence had been commuted to thirty years in prison, with a possible reduction in the sentence if he undertook hard labor. He was so scared that he didn’t dare tell the lieutenant that he could have read the document himself.

  The problem with Maruchi was that she had always been an envious bitch.When she started to make excuses about the record player, young Sara Gómez Morales could think of a long list of similar offences, going right back to the very beginning of their friendship when they were children. Maruchi couldn’t stand it if anyone was better off than herself. Sara was well aware of this and she was sure that, however much Maruchi promised she’d lend her the record player for the party, she never actually would. Fortunately, a friend of Juan Mari’s had one that was even better, newer, and he was happy to lend it to her in return for an invitation to the party. Sara agreed, delighted. If Maruchi wanted war, then she’d get it. Already the battle of the guest list had been won. Sara would be having at least twenty more people at her party than her friend had had; the Ochoas’ apartment, with its three interconnecting living rooms, the dining room, her godmother’s little sitting room and Don Antonio’s study, was twice as big as Maruchi’s parents’ flat. And then there was the dress, of course. True, Maruchi had worn a lovely outfit at her party, but it wasn’t new. Sara knew this because she’d been invited to Maruchi’s older brother’s wedding, and she’d seen her wear it then. She, on the other hand, was increasingly pleased with her new dress; the color really suited her and the cut flattered her figure. Of course, Sara had a very good figure anyway, while poor Maruchi, although she had a pretty face, had a bottom as big as two soccer balls.As for the food and drinks, there wasn’t much she could do, because Maruchi’s party had been magnificent, but Doña Sara tipped the scales once and for all in her god-daughter’s favor when she ordered a dozen centerpieces of yellow roses and lily of the valley, thus decorating
the house with flowers that matched the hostess’s dress and the pearls Doña Sara would be lending her for the occasion. Sara was deeply grateful to her and, for once, she forced herself to admit, aloud, that her godmother definitely had style.

  When General Franco led the uprising that began the Civil War,Arcadio Gómez Gómez was a very strong man. Before he became ill, Antonio Ochoa Gorostiza had been too. On more than one occasion, Arcadio’s strength and skill had proved invaluable to the artillery brigade to which he was assigned when he enlisted with the Spanish Republican Army. Antonio’s toughness also became legendary amongst the rebel ranks, though he never had to demonstrate it assembling and dismantling a cannon weighing several tons at top speed.When he enlisted with the rebel forces, only a few days after the early fall of San Sebastián, an uncle, who was a general, immediately made him an officer. Second Lieutenant Ochoa never had to wield a pick or a spade, or drag sandbags, or carry the wounded, but he wasn’t a coward and before long had accumulated as many ribbons on his uniform as Captain Gómez would earn on the other side of the Ebro. Nor did he ever seek to obtain a safer post in the rearguard, and he quickly realized that his daily flirtation with death made him horny. From then on, he made the most of any leave, breaking his own records for sexual exploits, which had already made him famous with the most exclusive whores in Madrid before the war. “Bloody hell, Antoñito, who can keep up with you?” his colonel would say when they bumped into each other leaving one of the improvised bordellos that followed the soldiers from place to place, despite the denunciations of the army chaplains. He always answered with the same thing, “I’m just a Spanish gentleman,” and the sentence became famous. Captain Ochoa took the teasing about his sexual prowess with good humor, not guessing how bitter a memory it would later become. The former Captain Gómez, on the other hand, soon came to regret his own excesses.When the soldiers came for him, Sebastiana was pregnant again, two months gone. The baby was their fourth and Arcadio wondered if he would ever see the child. By the time it was born, Arcadio was in a prison work battalion rebuilding the access roads to Madrid. This was where he ceased to be a strong man.The person in charge of the battalion was not at all happy with his lot. A card-carrying member of the Falangist Party, with several honorable mentions for his conduct in the field and even a medal, he considered this shitty posting (to which his wife had refused to follow him) a humiliation. He was therefore intent on delivering outstanding results at any price, so he saved all he could on the prisoners’ rations and extended their working day, until, after three years in exile, his brilliant management at last earned him a decent office in Madrid. His successor was a good man who took several measures to improve the prisoners’ lot, re-establishing the right of the convicts to send letters to their families even though stamps cost money. Arcadio wrote two identical letters to his wife. He sent one to their old address on the Corredera Alta, even though he thought Sebastiana probably hadn’t been able to go on living there, and the other to the house on the Calle Velázquez where his wife had been employed when he first met her, hoping that someone there would know where she was. She answered by return of post, telling him that in February 1940 she had given birth to another girl, whom she’d called Socorro after her mother, that the older children were well and all going to school, that they’d moved to an attic flat on the Calle Concepción Jerónima, very near the Plaza Mayor, that she’d gone back to work for Doña Sara, spending about nine or ten hours there every day except Sunday, that Doña Sara treated her very well and let her bring her youngest to work, that the poor woman had had very bad luck because her husband had a very strange illness that made his right leg useless, that Arcadio shouldn’t worry about anything, some old friends were helping her as much as they could, that she didn’t need to see him to go on loving him, and that she loved him.

  The party was a huge success, from start to finish. Not only did everybody who was invited turn up, but at the last minute some college friends of Juan Mari’s arrived, making the number of girls and boys almost even. Sara received many presents, but her favorite came from her boyfriend, who gave her a pair of round black sunglasses with very dark lenses, like the ones the Beatles wore on tour. She was also given several records, so the dancing started straight away, though Juan Mari’s friends, victims of the culinary torture at their halls of residence, were still wolfing down the food. At first, the owner of the record player, a boy from Alicante called Ramón who seemed particularly hungry, looked after the music; but once he’d found a dancing partner, he put a shy, sad-looking boy in charge, telling him which records to play.At first they all danced together in large groups but around eight thirty, as the maids finished clearing away the cake plates and Doña Sara ran out of excuses for being there, the owner of the record player returned to his original station and put on some slow records. Juan Mari took Sara by the hand and led her to the middle of the room without a word. They had been going out for almost four months by then, so he didn’t need to ask her to dance. She put her arms round his neck and clung to him, resting her head on his shoulder.They danced like this for one song, then another, then another, but then some prankster turned out too many lights at once, giving the mistress of the house a reason to return. Juan Mari got nervous and he suddenly let go. But the sound of Doña Sara’s heels, as she advanced in a zigzag switching on lights as she went, was so familiar to her god-daughter that Sara was the only one who remained calm. Moving a step away from Juan Mari, she made him put his arms back round her waist and went on dancing, albeit in a slightly less intimate fashion.When her godmother approached, Sara gave her a kiss and said, “Mami, I’d like to introduce you to my friend.”

  Arcadio Gómez Gómez wrote to his wife every week, and every week he received a letter back. He didn’t have much to say, but he told her everything that was happening to him until, in mid-1945, he began to cough up blood.This he kept silent from Sebastiana.The other news that did not reach Sebastiana was that around the same time as lung disease was sapping the last vestiges of her husband’s strength, the legendary fortitude of a Spanish gentleman was collapsing in spectacular fashion.The process was slow, painfully slow. It began with a few failures in his much lauded sexual potency, but as his condition deteriorated, Don Antonio Ochoa—who could still walk with a single crutch—gradually reduced the frequency of his extramarital adventures until he had eliminated them completely, not because he wanted to, but because he was afraid of looking ridiculous. He didn’t know what was happening to him. His doctor understood as little about the cause of the illness as he did about its progress.“All I know is that it attacks the muscles,” the doctor said many times, “weakening them until you lose the use of the body part they control. But it’s like Russian roulette—you never know what will be next—a finger, a thigh, maybe even your face.” Nobody ever dared mention the penis, but when the tingling spread to the lower abdomen,Antonio Ochoa realized his days as a “Spanish gentleman” were numbered. At the age of thirty-four, Doña Sara’s husband had to make the most of the rare opportunities his treacherous body presented him with, and in the end he would have been satisfied simply with getting his wife pregnant. But he didn’t succeed. By early 1945, he was permanently in a wheelchair, and the couple’s attempts at lovemaking became more and more infrequent, ceasing entirely just after the summer.Antonio Ochoa Gorostiza suffered deeply, and somehow his own shame made Doña Sara’s company unbearable, with the result that he agreed to anything she asked as long as she left him alone. Sebastiana grew used to seeing her mistress crying, spending the afternoons staring out of the window, a crumpled handkerchief clutched in her hand. As for the master, he never left his study. She didn’t understand what was going on, but then, in January 1946, she stopped caring when she received a letter from Arcadio saying that he had been ill for over a year. Don Esteban, the battalion commander, was aware of new measures to give special pardons to prisoners of war who had served half their sentences in hard labor, and he was prepared to request one for Arcadio
. At a rate of three days of prison for every day of labor, in the seven years Arcadio had been there, he had redeemed almost two-thirds, but his original death sentence required additional guarantees. Don Esteban had signed one guarantee. If Doña Sara’s husband would sign the other, he could be free by the beginning of April. That afternoon, Sebastiana wept even more than her mistress. Doña Sara read the letter, went into Don Antonio’s study without knocking, and returned a minute later with the document signed.