Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop Read Online Free PDF

the precious hatbox in her hand, a baby on her back and her children beside her, she made her way home for good. It was only when she arrived at her mother’s house, beaten and worn after three weeks’ travelling and with sick children to nurse back to health, that she realised she had been cheated. She had tentatively peered inside the box, but it was wrapped so beautifully in soft pink tissue paper and tied with ribbon that she wanted to leave it in its pristine state until she presented it to her mother. When she finally opened the box to reveal to her mother the woman she had become, she found a plain straw hat on which sat a bright pink plastic rose. It was the only possession she had to show for her three years’ toil on the streets of Puerta de la Coruña.
    Several months later, Francisco arrived back from one of his many long absences wandering the area in search of profitable work to find another miserable and hungry family living in their rented room. It took him several hours to recognise that the sleeping children were not his own. It was only when their mother returned home and pleaded with him not to hurt them that he realised they were strangers and that his family had disappeared.

    Nicanora put her mind to feeding the rapidly growing appetites of her children. She continued to weave her shawls, which she hawked around the surrounding villages, but nobody ever again picked them up with such tenderness and appreciation as the man who had shown her that perfection could exist in a single object. She set up a small stall selling fruit and cooked food for the men who passed through the market on their way to and from the estate and their small plots of land. The money she earned was barely enough to pay for the food to feed her family. Her dream and the straw hat were safely locked away – alongside her cherished hopes for her children – in a mental box marked ‘Life’s unfulfilled promises’.
    She saw Francisco only one more time. He arrived suddenly one night at her mother’s house some years later wearing a smart suit, and regaled a wiser Nicanora with stories of how he was on the brink of making his fortune from his endeavours in gold prospecting, pig farming, matchmaking and storytelling. She listened to him with no more interest than she had listened to her mother’s warnings in her youth. He stayed for one last night, a night in which some of the passion of their first few months together was rekindled for old times’ sake, and then disappeared the next daypromising to return with the money to change his family’s destiny. Nicanora sensed that she would not see him again. She did not expect, however, that his body would be found three days later splattered at the foot of the cliff. He had been seen the day he left by one of the townsfolk, who had passed him stumbling drunkenly near the cliff edge, shouting about the great future he was about to give his wife and children. He left one lasting reminder of his visit. Nine months later Nena was born. As Nicanora stared into the eyes of her freshly delivered bloodstained daughter, she knew that Francisco had on his final journey been able to leave her with the most precious gift possible.

    Don Bosco in the meantime resigned himself to a lifetime of bachelorhood and the removal of unwanted beards. He seldom ventured outside his shop, sleeping in the small room above and trying hard to keep himself out of the affairs of the town. His self-imposed isolation was thwarted by his natural good humour and charm, which despite all his efforts to the contrary drew people to him. Within a couple of years the barber’s shop had become known as the place to seek solace and advice for all manner of misdemeanours and problems, ranging from neighbourly disputes to marital infidelities. It was Don Bosco who settled the long-running and deeply felt quarrel between Don Julio and Don Alfredo over whose goat should be allowed to