The Winterlings Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked you for wasn’t for me, it was for my teeth.’
    â€˜You’re just jealous of me. Who’d ever want to marry you?’
    â€˜Oh, woman! Don’t talk nonsense! If I wanted to, I could have them by the handful. It’s just that I don’t want to settle down …’
    â€˜You? Ugly and toothless?’
    As soon as she’d said that she regretted it. Her sister stopped the sewing machine, clack, and raised her head slowly. She wore huge glasses while sewing, with frames made of mother-of-pearl and lenses that magnified her eyes. Her chin was trembling.
    â€˜What did you say?’ she said.
    But the other sister didn’t want to repeat it. Behind those eyes protected by lenses there was only fragility, and she knew it.
    They went their separate ways without exchanging another word, noses in the air. Shortly after, Dolores went to live in Ribeira with the octopus fisherman.
    But one morning, only eight days after the wedding, someone knocked at the door. It was Dolores. She was much thinner, vaguely frightened, and the childhood pockmarks stood out more than ever on her scrawny cheeks.
    A poor soul in a terrible state.
    Her sister brought up her hand slowly, hesitantly, moving through the air and trying to reach her cheek in the gesture of a caress, or perhaps a slap.
    â€˜It’s me …’
    â€˜Yes, yes, I see …’ replied Saladina. With great coldness she let her in, hiding the flush of happiness that had lit up her cheeks.
    They looked at each other in silence. The Winterling who had returned was hunched over and lost in her thoughts. The other one was all blown up like a toad at the sudden presence of her sister.
    â€˜My husband is at sea,’ she said. ‘I want to sew with you again.’
    No one asked her what had happened, and, because she wasn’t given over to explanations, her eight days of marriage remained shrouded in the darkest of mysteries.
    She may have marched off haughtily, but the Winterling returned with humility to the daily chores of the household. By the end of the month, she was riven again to her comforting routine, and was once again the same old sister.
    But after a while, especially at dusk, a shadow of worry descended upon her. Her sister came into the room to speak with her.
    If she asked what was worrying her, Dolores would let out a long and doleful moan, like a wounded whale, from the edge of the bed.
    She said that nothing worried her because she was happy as she was: a seamstress.
    And if Saladina asked her if she ever regretted coming back, Dolores said she felt better now: a seamstress.
    And when she asked her, her voice trembling with fear (fear of the answer) if she would ever see Tomás again, Dolores would work herself into a complete panic, start bellowing, and then break down in tears.
    Her weeping came from deep inside and rose up in waves, filling her mouth with the immense sound of the confusion and emptiness of her soul.

9
    But this was all a part of the past, and now, at last, they were back in the village, just as they had always wanted: the distant little house, green meadows beneath the rain.
    In the morning, the procession formed by the two Winterlings, the cow, and the four sheep crossed the square in silence. They passed under some apple trees in blossom, past the priest’s house, and then further on past the communal oven. Then they tramped through the flowerbeds, and into some fields that led on to the mountain.
    The potholes and the stones on the road unbalanced them, but the Winterlings kept on walking straight, unshakable like the animals. ‘Look, there go the Winterlings and their cow with its swinging gait,’ people said as they walked by.
    The tall one and the not-so-tall one; the pretty one and the ugly one; the one who has coffee for breakfast and the other who has bread and wine; the one with teeth and the other who lost them all biting into bread made with stones. The one who