The Wind From the East Read Online Free PDF

ground, because I’ll leave here at one, do four hours over there so the house is all clean and tidy when they get back around five, and then off I go to put my feet up, because I’ll be knackered after all that. But I won’t have any more money worries, at long last. I’ve been thinking that, if I keep cleaning the stairwell I’ve got in the village, what with your house and the doctor’s, I’ll be earning as much as a builder! The problem will be Christmas, and then next summer, because the retard’s school—his name’s Alfonso—has holidays the same way normal schools do. The doctor’s already warned me, and he doesn’t dare leave him alone all day with his niece, so I’ll have to be there for longer, but anyway, we’ll manage somehow, won’t we, Andrés?”
     
    Maribel turned to the boy and gave him a long, solid look, like a bridge between them, forcing a smile that seemed strangely independent of her face. Sara, who had witnessed such scenes before, was struck once more by the mysterious, secret intensity of the relationship that bound Maribel to Andrés. Beneath the cleaner’s overt preoccupation with painting her toenails and other trivia, beneath the apparent indifference and even contempt with which she sometimes treated her son, ran a violent undercurrent that occasionally forced itself to the surface. At times like this, Sara came to doubt her incipient theories about Maribel’s moral weaknesses and came close to understanding the truth of her brutal history, symbolized perhaps by Maribel’s childish addiction to the shiny things, cheap cosmetics, and fripperies that made life worth living, that made her feel human. The little boy was so serious, with such a strong sense of responsibility towards his mother, that he was capable of playing for weeks at a time with one of those small toys you get inside a chocolate egg. Sara was sure he had never felt neglected, but that didn’t stop her feeling protective when she saw him every morning, a skinny little kid with neatly combed hair, looking uncomfortable in his hand-me-downs, a ridiculous pair of flowery trunks that were too long for him and a green T-shirt so tight you could count his ribs through it. Now she took advantage of the first gap in Maribel’s monologue to include him in the conversation.
     
    “So, that little girl will probably be in your class, won’t she?” she said, smiling at the boy.
     
    “Maybe,” he answered.“She’ll be in my year, but they might put her in a different class.”
     
    “Does she seem nice?”
     
    “Well . . .”Andrés thought a moment. “Yes, but she sounds very posh.”
     
    “Like me.”
     
    “Yes, but with you it doesn’t make me laugh.”
     
    “What is he talking about?” his mother interrupted harshly.“He didn’t laugh at her, he didn’t even open his mouth.This son of mine’s an idiot. Can you believe he didn’t go anywhere near Tamara? I was so cross with him. The little girl kept on showing him things and he wouldn’t say a word, acted as if he was deaf and dumb. God, this kid’s such a pain!”
     
    “Well, she didn’t want to play either,” complained Andrés, sitting up in his chair. “Her uncle made her, otherwise she wouldn’t have got out a single toy. And it’s not true, I did go and look at them.”
     
    “Rubbish! You didn’t show an interest in anything!”
     
    “But kids are like that, Maribel,” Sara intervened.“Children can be very shy, it takes them a while to make friends.You shouldn’t be angry with him for that.”
     
    “That’s right, go on, defend him! You always side with him! It’s quite incredible, because, no offense, but you spoil him more than his own grandmother, all day long doting on him, so he’s always ‘Sara says this,’ ‘Sara says that,’ arguing with me from the minute he gets up till he goes to bed at night.You’re going to spoil him if you keep giving him so much attention.”
     
    “Don’t be ridiculous,