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By Root 625 0

the fields of hay. Winter could be very long and swallow up autumn and spring. Eyes open in the back of his head, Curtis cautiously felt inside the niche and, aside from foodstuffs, found an unexpected treasure. A bottle of brandy and half a dozen Farias wisely wrapped in a cabbage leaf that had been tied with a straw plait. He smelt the tobacco inside the cabbage, that rude, precious package, and the mixture seemed to him strong and evocative, even though he didn’t smoke, or perhaps because of this, like the fragrance in the corridor leading from the Dance Academy’s sitting-room to the kitchen, where Milagres kept the factory of tastes and smells working round the clock, with the humble, captivating vapour of soup in the background, visible like a family heirloom. Sometimes he thought it couldn’t be. The girl with the budgies from 12 Panadeiras Street had never set foot in that kitchen. But it was the image of a bowl of cabbage soup, her anxiety as she eats it, that made the memory plausible. Milagres’ laugh, a laugh of popular satisfaction at the joy of eating, eating from hunger, of a rich girl, daughter of a cultivated man she admires, who’s turned up out of the blue, from across the border. Yes, it must be true. Can’t you hear them calling for her, Vitola, María, Vitola, thinking she’s hidden in the garden?

‘Look at her eat,’ says Milagres with pride. And with pleasure, ‘Poor girl, she must have been hungry!’

‘No,’ she replies. ‘I wasn’t hungry. It’s the smell of cabbage. Ever since I was little, I’ve always been desperate to try it.’

So that’s what it was. The fragrance of Milagres’ cooking crossing the border between two cities.

He didn’t smoke, but Terranova did. Despite having a small chest, he liked Havana cigars. They sometimes formed part of his payment in kind, his dockside business activities. He’d drink brandy whenever he could before singing. Two glasses better than one to clear his voice. Who’d have thought that today in far-flung Xurés, working as a shepherd in a mountain hut, he’d have good tobacco and brandy as well as food in abundance?

He unwrapped the cigars and savoured the smell. Took a swig of brandy. Looked at him with theatrical eyes, ‘Now I know who you are, Curtis, after so many years. The souls’ mafia boss! You kept that quiet! I’m at your service. I’ll be whatever you want me to be. Your butler. Your servant. Your shepherd. My captain of souls!’

The weather was changing. One morning, the swifts stopped drawing lines in the sky. Curtis crushed a furiously stinging horse-fly behind his ear and then didn’t feel another. The cicadas suddenly fell quiet and the mountains reverberated. The flocks and herds returned to their stalls.

As they were tucking into the salami from the roadside treasure, there came a knock at the door, a tender rap of the thunder’s knuckles.

It was the three seamstresses, each with a sewing machine on top of her head. They’d dropped in before. They travelled from village to village, carrying their little Singers. They stopped in a place for a while, depending on the jobs that needed doing. As well as a bed and food, they received a day’s wages in cash or kind.

The youngest and liveliest was called Silvia.

‘Let us in. The lightning is chasing our sewing machines and it’s pouring down!’

They knew how in this weather the Atlantic climbed up the mountain ridge. Scores of miles inland, the clouds carried a bellyful of sea. Which is why they had specks of Irish moss in their hair and smelt of salt.

Terranova stroked the back of a Singer. ‘I can sew as well,’ he said. ‘Lucho from Mount Alto taught me. He had a little theatre and used to dress up as an Andalusian woman. At night, he’d sew his polka-dotted costumes. He had a brother, a tough guy, who wouldn’t let him. This brother was a stevedore. So Lucho would sew his Andalusian costume at night, when his brother was down on the wharf. He sewed pretty well. Not like me.’

The seamstresses gave him a suspicious look. He could be making fun of them.

‘The thing Lucho taught me best was how to make rude gestures, including