The Winterlings by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade Page B

thought to herself, it was just women’s nonsense.
    Other times, however, she thought that whatever she was waiting for was already right there, along with her sister, Greta the cow, and her simple life, beneath the stars and the sky, in the house with the fig tree in Tierra de Chá.
    The sun was coming up on a warm day when her feelings began to take shape. The earth gave off a damp smell, and the chimneys puffed out a dirty white smoke. The whole countryside resonated with the chirping of insects and the crackling of grass. The time had come to reap the corn and shear the sheep. Dolores went out to the orchard to feed the chickens. The kitchen window was open with the radio on. Just then, the announcer’s voice interrupted the music with breaking news. News that would disrupt their whole routine. News that would destroy the monotonous safety the two sisters had been clinging to since their arrival. Ava Gardner, the famous American actress, ‘the most beautiful animal in the world’, was coming to Spain to make a movie. Soon she would be arriving in Tossa de Mar to shoot Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.
    The announcer said it was great news, because the film would create jobs for many local people on the coast. ‘Ava Gardner is coming to Spain,’ the Winterling told the chickens.
    She shrugged her shoulders and threw more breadcrumbs.
    She didn’t think of it again until nightfall.
    Her sister came back from the tavern, and they took the animals up the mountain. She spent the afternoon sewing the hem of a dress, a commission that the Winterlings received every year from a certain family in Santiago. They went to the forest to gather kindling, made fig jam, listened to their soap opera, had dinner, and then got ready for bed.
    But before she got into bed, while she was putting on her nightdress, Dolores felt a shiver run down her spine. A tingling like spiders ran through her bones and up her back, right into the inside of her head.
    She didn’t want to pay any attention to it.
    But once she was lying down, she couldn’t stop tossing and turning. She didn’t get a wink of sleep. Finally, she sat on the edge of her sister’s bed and watched her in the darkness. She thought that Saladina looked even more ugly asleep than awake.
    â€˜Hey, Sala,’ she whispered after a while, seeing that her eyes were open. ‘Do you know where Tossa de Mar is?’
    Saladina, who had no idea at all about geography, took a while to answer.
    â€˜Where do you think it is, you dummy? By the sea, of course! You can tell from the name: Tossa de Mar. ’
    They fell silent.
    Dolores went back to her bed and covered herself in blankets.
    Suddenly, Saladina woke up again.
    â€˜Tell me the truth,’ she squawked from her bed. ‘Why did you ask that question in the middle of the night?’
    â€˜There’s nothing to tell,’ her sister responded fearfully from beneath the covers. ‘It just crossed my mind to ask you. Things pop into my mind, I have a brain, you know, I’m not a chicken …’
    She lay in the darkness with her eyes open. The house was calm, and surges of heat wafted up from the open trapdoor. The smell of manure comforted her.
    She could feel her heart thumping in her ears.
    Greta Garbo the cow mooed languidly in the cowshed.
    But that night, while they slept, a sea grew in the sisters’ bedroom.

20
    It was a sea that looked like the one Dolores had seen off the English coast, or off Coruña, or maybe even like the one in the port at Santander where they had been abandoned with their cardboard suitcases. But it was a strange sea, because the chickens scratched in it, and actors and actresses from Hollywood lived in it — Greta Garbo, Frank Sinatra with his powerful voice, skinny little Audrey Hepburn, and Clark Gable, the King of Hollywood.
    Throughout the following days, Dolores heard it while she went about her daily chores — immense