Read The Winterlings for Free Online Page B

animals in the bath as well?’
    â€˜Is he a bit simple?’ whispered one of the heads in the water.
    â€˜You’ve come to collect the offering, haven’t you?’ yelled the other head. ‘Well, you should know you don’t fool us; we don’t have to pay it. We don’t even go to church.’
    Dolores got out of the water, and got dressed as quickly as she could. From the bush, Don Manuel looked without wanting to look. The first thing he noticed, when she came back fully dressed, was her hair. It was different to the hair of other women that he knew in the area. It wasn’t curly, or straight, but slightly wavy. She had big eyes, almost green, with thick eyelashes, and her skin was slightly pink. A narrow waist, and wide hips. And her breasts — he couldn’t quite take his eyes off them.
    He came out of his hidey-hole. He said he wasn’t coming to collect an offering but rather to settle a small matter that had been bugging him lately, that had to do with the old lady who lived over on Bocelo Mountain. He bent down to adjust the things in his cart, and stood there pensively. He couldn’t keep it to himself a moment longer! The old woman was the devil incarnate. Making him go up every day to see her. And now she had it in her head to get back ‘the piece of paper’. He moved the sugar so it wouldn’t spill from the paper cone it came in, and stole a glance at the cabbage that the baker’s wife had given him. A cabbage?
    Did the Winterlings remember the old lady?
    On Bocelo Mountain, near Tierra de Chá, there was a rueiro, or tiny hamlet, with three or four very humble houses: simple, low to the ground huts in the form of a box, with thatched rooves and beaten-earth floors, inside which there was nothing more than a hearth with a fire always lit, and a few cavities in the wall, dark as a wolf’s mouth, with straw mattresses and patchwork quilts that served as bedding.
    In one of these houses — the Winterlings remembered, how could they not? — lived an old lady with a face like a root, very small and knotty, almost a dwarf, who smelt like smoke and old blankets. She was very sick, and so every day for the last few years, Don Manuel went up on horseback to comfort her, and, if things turned for the worse, to administer her last rites.
    It could be pouring down with rain, the whole valley could be covered in the most insidious mist, but, early every morning, the good man rode up on his horse, zigzagging through the mountain passes, struggling with the inclines to arrive at the hut and administer holy oils, and whisper heavenly words in her ear. ‘Well, old girl, you’re going to Our Lord.’
    And then, trying her hardest to show her teeth, the old lady smiled in thanks. The few teeth she had left were a filthy yellow, like horse teeth.
    That day, the day he encountered the Winterlings in the river, Don Manuel had had to bring his visit forward. First thing in the morning, while he sipped on freshly pressed grape must in the tavern, a fieldworker came in yelling that the old woman on the mountain was barely breathing, and that the priest had to go up and give the last rites. ‘Oh, so she’s ready to die!’ he yelled back from the corner of the bar. ‘I was there just yesterday.’
    â€˜I’m telling you, Father, this time she’s dying!’
    And so Don Manuel had no other choice but to finish off his must, go by his house and put the holy oils in his satchel, and head once again towards the mountain.
    The rain was bucketing down. Before he arrived — and because he thought it might be the last time he climbed the mountain — he couldn’t help feeling a tiny tingle of pleasure in his heart.
    When he got there, he found that, in truth, the old lady was in quite a bad way. She gave off a coarse rasping sound that was almost drowned out by the deluge outside. The priest reflected, with a certain degree