house, I felt something I had never felt before: utter helplessness, such loneliness as I wouldnât have believed I could possibly hold inside without dying too. Iâm not sure how long I cried, but it must have been a long time because next thing I knew I realized I was hungry and couldnât remember when I had eaten last.
So, what with my grief and my self-pity and my shame at feeling hungry with Papá barely two days dead, I decided that I had to keep going, had to serve myself some of the vegetable stew that I still had stored away and get back to doing the piecework that Yuyo had brought me and keep breathing and washing my face and going to sleep at night in the bed that wasnât mine, in that house that was too big for me by myself, where everything reminded me of Papá and the two short years we had lived there.
Then all the days merged into one: getting up, buying a little bread and milk, sewing, sewing, sewing. Sometimes by myself,sometimes with the Italian girls, who would laugh and gossip around me until they remembered that I was in mourning and fell silent again.
I had no news from El Rojo and one fine day I realized that Iâd never even asked whether he knew how to read and write.
Once a week I would go to the shipping company to collect his wages, lining up with all the sailorsâ wives, then go by the market and return home. I rarely went to church because it was full of sad, lonely women, all in mourning like me. The few saints in the church were also sad and poor and looked as lonely as we did.
Winter came, expenses went up, coal was dear, and I had to make do with a small charcoal brazier to warm my legs while I sewed. I had heard nothing about Diego. I would have fallen apart with embarrassment if I had tried to ask Yuyo about him, and after Papá died I no longer had an excuse for going to UxÃoâs shop. He was still stuck inside me, like an infected thorn. I was often overcome by dizziness, walking home from the market, when I would turn a corner and see a man who reminded me of him, the way he moved, the play of sunlight on his hair.
I was going soft and sad, like a fig in the fruit basket that no-one feels like eating. I noticed it and felt sorry for myself, but I didnât know what I could do to change.
So that morning, when I went to collect the wages, it took me a long time to react when Don Julián, the shipping company bookkeeper, asked me into his office, because I had gone slow andlost the habit of speaking and listening to what I heard around me.
âWhat?â was as much as I could say. I groped blindly for a chair to sit down.
The man rounded his enormous dark wooden desk, pulled out a straight-backed chair for me, adjusted the pince-nez on his crooked nose, and mumbled something like âIâm sorry, madam,â which for some reason sounded completely out of place to me.
âExcuse me,â I said when I felt able to speak again, âI donât think Iâve properly understood you.â
The bookkeeper returned to his spot behind the desk, straightened his white oversleeves, and played for a few moments with the black rubber eyeshade he had set on the desk when he saw me enter his office.
âWe donât know for certain what happened. We were expecting the
Southern Star
to reach Salvador da Bahia on the fifteenth, but it never arrived. We have learned that it set sail from Tenerife on the anticipated date, but after thatânothing. It disappeared. We didnât say anything to the families until now, because there was still a possibility that a storm had thrown it off course or pushed it toward the coast of Africa, but by now â¦â
It was so hot in that office. I noticed I was suffocating in my tight-collared black dress, with the long mourning veil pushed back over my shoulders. I would have given anything for a glass of water, but it didnât occur to me to ask for one. I looked at the clasped hands
So, what with my grief and my self-pity and my shame at feeling hungry with Papá barely two days dead, I decided that I had to keep going, had to serve myself some of the vegetable stew that I still had stored away and get back to doing the piecework that Yuyo had brought me and keep breathing and washing my face and going to sleep at night in the bed that wasnât mine, in that house that was too big for me by myself, where everything reminded me of Papá and the two short years we had lived there.
Then all the days merged into one: getting up, buying a little bread and milk, sewing, sewing, sewing. Sometimes by myself,sometimes with the Italian girls, who would laugh and gossip around me until they remembered that I was in mourning and fell silent again.
I had no news from El Rojo and one fine day I realized that Iâd never even asked whether he knew how to read and write.
Once a week I would go to the shipping company to collect his wages, lining up with all the sailorsâ wives, then go by the market and return home. I rarely went to church because it was full of sad, lonely women, all in mourning like me. The few saints in the church were also sad and poor and looked as lonely as we did.
Winter came, expenses went up, coal was dear, and I had to make do with a small charcoal brazier to warm my legs while I sewed. I had heard nothing about Diego. I would have fallen apart with embarrassment if I had tried to ask Yuyo about him, and after Papá died I no longer had an excuse for going to UxÃoâs shop. He was still stuck inside me, like an infected thorn. I was often overcome by dizziness, walking home from the market, when I would turn a corner and see a man who reminded me of him, the way he moved, the play of sunlight on his hair.
I was going soft and sad, like a fig in the fruit basket that no-one feels like eating. I noticed it and felt sorry for myself, but I didnât know what I could do to change.
So that morning, when I went to collect the wages, it took me a long time to react when Don Julián, the shipping company bookkeeper, asked me into his office, because I had gone slow andlost the habit of speaking and listening to what I heard around me.
âWhat?â was as much as I could say. I groped blindly for a chair to sit down.
The man rounded his enormous dark wooden desk, pulled out a straight-backed chair for me, adjusted the pince-nez on his crooked nose, and mumbled something like âIâm sorry, madam,â which for some reason sounded completely out of place to me.
âExcuse me,â I said when I felt able to speak again, âI donât think Iâve properly understood you.â
The bookkeeper returned to his spot behind the desk, straightened his white oversleeves, and played for a few moments with the black rubber eyeshade he had set on the desk when he saw me enter his office.
âWe donât know for certain what happened. We were expecting the
Southern Star
to reach Salvador da Bahia on the fifteenth, but it never arrived. We have learned that it set sail from Tenerife on the anticipated date, but after thatânothing. It disappeared. We didnât say anything to the families until now, because there was still a possibility that a storm had thrown it off course or pushed it toward the coast of Africa, but by now â¦â
It was so hot in that office. I noticed I was suffocating in my tight-collared black dress, with the long mourning veil pushed back over my shoulders. I would have given anything for a glass of water, but it didnât occur to me to ask for one. I looked at the clasped hands
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