The alarm went off on the oven clock, but Filipa was slow to emerge from her stupor. Faraway lands and people had installed themselves in the now-broken silence of the room, disrupting her rest and discomforting her with their clarity. She’d begun to examine her recent behaviour and found explanations that had escaped her at the time. She didn’t feel the need to justify herself, but she did wonder how deeply the memories that were now emerging had been buried, and whether they’d been unconsciously influencing her day to day actions for some time.
Why had she become so involved in cooking a turkey on her day off when the hotel chefs could easily have rustled her one up? Everyone loved her special recipe, but that didn’t mean she had to sacrifice what little free time she had by making it. Her contribution to her daughter’s birthday party could have been something far less demanding, indeed her mere presence should have been present enough. She felt irritated with herself for insisting she would cook, as well as for succumbing to Mate’s emotional blackmail and Bia’s flattery, for her semi-sister never tired of proclaiming her roast turkey the best in the world.
Every year Matilde would go for a birthday lunch with her friends and Filipa would lay on a birthday dinner in the evening, but it seemed this would be the final year the tradition was observed: Matilde had announced that next year she would like to spend the evening with her boyfriend and her classmates at the school café. This dinner would therefore draw a line under Matilde’s childhood and launch her, aged fourteen, into adolescence. Filipa felt cheated by time and by the fact that she was to be denied the opportunity to celebrate a special occasion with her girl in future. She would have to think up other excuses for dinner parties.
Her mother cooking her favourite meal was supposed to be a big treat for Mate, but whether she appreciated it was hard to say: she lived her life in such a state of frenzy that ideas, habits and tastes had no chance to form. Her relentless activity was infectious. Even Bia, a fiercely independent twenty-three-year-old, would get swept up in Mate’s to-ing and fro-ing and end up proclaiming her admiration for her niece’s energy, something Filipa discouraged for she didn’t want her daughter getting big-headed. At the same time, Filipa knew she and Mate were important to Bia. She didn’t want her semi-sister to grow up finding families as disposable as she’d experienced them to be.
Bia’s mother was Filipa’s fifth and final foster mother. Filipa had been through so many foster mothers she could never understand why the hotel philosopher-porter liked to declare that good things in life took a little fostering. What had gone wrong? A foster mother was just a person, as was a birth mother. Doubtless it was the same thing with fathers. She’d been through a few of those too, and although she had no real cause for complaint, none of them had lasted. Had her foster parents not liked her, or just not liked her enough? Either way she couldn’t blame them: sometimes, quite often in fact, she didn’t like herself much either. What she liked even less was the way her long line of foster mothers, fathers, uncles and aunties had all panicked when they’d first met her and she’d asked them what she should call them. Once, when she was eight, she’d thought about running away and trying to find Jerónimo, but decided to put up with things as they were until she was older and better equipped to track him down.
Why did some animals let themselves die out? Why didn’t they fight and resist, kick and scream like mad and do whatever it took to prevent their own destruction? The Madwoman of Serrano knew how to defend herself. Where was she now? In what tree, spring or mountain would she be spending Christmas? Filipa thought about the hint of a smile that lurked in the madgirl’s dark eyes, her gentle caresses that sometimes invaded Filipa’s sleep and dreams. Images from her childhood in Serrano came flooding back, images of green fields and leaves falling to the ground so softly they made only the slightest vibration. She thought of Serrano’s history, which the madgirl had recounted to her and which Filipa, without realising it, had stored away so carefully in her mind that fresh details emerged every year.
Each morning was a brand new beginning in the village, experienced on its own terms with very little questioning and even less answering. This perhaps partly explained the rather childish nature of the villagers: too afraid to look at their past, they existed without memories, scars or consequences, without even knowing their true history. In their defence, they knew they were beholden to a terrible curse, and that this was the source of the terror they felt whenever they accidentally entertained an unpredictable thought.
The dangers the village faced and sought to ignore – and thus postpone – were many. The few villagers who were prepared to reason with the present and the past therefore had much to contend with. The fate of Serrano lay in their hands.
One of these villagers was the midwife, a woman who turned old the moment she was appointed to the post, who had a cure for everything and a word of advice for everyone. Everyone except Filipa, that is. As a girl, Filipa could never understand why the midwife never spoke to her the way she spoke to the other children, although when she handed out sweets and herbs she made sure Filipa got her share.
At first Filipa put it down to her muteness. Presumably the midwife didn’t want to waste her time trying to understand her. But when Filipa started talking, there was no change in the midwife’s attitude: she never spoke or even looked at her, though she didn’t snub her either; it was just as if Filipa were invisible to the midwife. The Madwoman of Serrano said it was because the midwife couldn’t read Filipa’s soul, which for the most powerful person in the valley was not only a source of shame, but also failure.
Filipa’s recollections of Serrano led to thoughts of her own house and the need to impose some order on it, and on her daughter. In fact she made the same resolution every January, only to give up on it by February as Matilde and Bia made a mockery of her good intentions. Sometimes she felt she overindulged her daughter to compensate for what she’d lacked, or had taken away from her, when she was a girl. She would decide she was too lax as a parent and resolve to be firmer. So why did she never change? And why did she cling to habits that meant less and less to her? She did not like turkey, to cook or to eat, yet just because she knew a good recipe she’d dedicated the last three days to the bird. She was a good chef and had enough of a repertoire to run the hotel kitchen, but that wasn’t her role. She limited herself to checking the menu to make sure it was practical and economical and keeping up with the latest trends and tastes, for the restaurant was one of the main reasons for the hotel’s success.
Filipa’s ex-husband had been a great chef. She’d studied hospitality and catering at college, but learned everything she knew about food from him. Including how to cook turkey. She’d bought it three days ago, soaked it in salt water and lemon juice overnight, then in a marinade of wine, oil, salt, rosemary and pepper the next day, before leaving it to dry for a couple of hours and smearing it with lard, paprika and chilli ready to go in the oven.
Cookery had been the best thing to come out of her relationship with Garcia. Matilde looked nothing like him. She bore more of a resemblance to Bia, or to the school friends who came to the house for parties, lunches and gatherings.
Matilde was the image of Filipa from head to toe, though her skin was a touch lighter. But there the similarities ended, because Matilde was like a snare drum, her voice a constant rattle that cared neither what it was saying nor where it was going, while Filipa was like a stopped clock that ticked only for work. If Matilde ever switched off in the same way, it meant she was missing her father.
Garcia had been full of energy too; just listening to him had been exhausting. Filipa had forgiven him most things because he’d been a cornerstone in the rise of the business, and because she was still very fond of him. The separation had been a pity because Mate never got used to it and often complained about Garcia’s absence. The same thing happened with a boyfriend Filipa later got engaged to but split up with. Mate accused Filipa of not allowing her to have a father.
Sensing signs of emotional bullying in her daughter, Filipa decided to put her straight about a few things, without realising how cruel she was being: she told Mate that the people we seek happiness through are just crutches we lean on, and they may not be strong or reliable enough to take our weight.
Mate had been shown love by everyone. This had certainly not been the case for Filipa, growing up in a place where feelings were used sparingly or kept hidden lest they spoil. The only people who had offered her affection and care were Jerónimo and the young madwoman, who had treated her like a sister, though only when no one else was around.
Garcia had been upset when she said she wanted a divorce. Attempting to salvage some control of the situation, he had begun to theorise on the fragile nature of relationships, concluding that theirs had failed due to their opposing temperaments.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Filipa had said, unconsciously repeating the Madwoman of Serrano’s favourite word. Their marriage had run out of steam because she’d learned his recipes and he’d acquired enough money to set up on his own and break free of the supposedly undervalued status he suffered in their joint venture.
What Garcia couldn’t seem to comprehend, or simply wouldn’t admit, was that Filipa had always been the one with the debts and doubts. She was the one who’d spent sleepless nights thinking up ways to avoid having to sell the guest house, which would become their hotel and was her only resource, her only means of getting on in her then young life and her only connection to memories of happier times.
Her husband had never been interested in the administrative side of things. He let her take care of that, while he concentrated on consistently surpassing himself in the kitchen, creating ever more elaborate dishes until he was considered the best chef in town. He seemed blissfully unaware of the difficulties the business occasionally experienced. He had no notion of the sleazy propositions she’d had to entertain from those she owed debts to, nor of how hard she’d had to work to meet deadlines and avoid having to make good on her compromising promises. She told her friend, Renata, that it was sometimes only a matter of hygiene that prevented her from giving these men what they wanted, but if it had come down to it she may well have sold herself to keep the business afloat. Renata hailed her sangfroid.
Garcia had been her first love. If it hadn’t exactly been a head-over-heels affair, nor had it been a simple marriage of convenience. Filipa was fond of saying that together they combined just the right amount of the right ingredients. They were young and had dreams that coincided at the time, and then they’d had a child. Naturally Garcia’s word hadn’t been final in their home in the same way that Jerónimo’s had been in his, but nor did Garcia have the same sense of responsibility Jerónimo had, that blend of seriousness combined with laughter flickering behind his gaze, something Maninha claimed Filipa had sole access to when she raged about Jerónimo only having eyes for the little mute girl, the foreigner’s daughter.
Filipa did not like Maninha, so when she’d been sitting by the spring one morning and Maninha had come along and screamed in her ear that her mother was a foreign bitch, she’d laughed with joy. Her eardrum had nearly burst, her head ached so much that she couldn’t sleep for the pain and she spent the next three days hunched with her hands over her ears, but she got through it because of the happiness that flooded through her: Maninha was not her real mum.
Maninha avoided her, fearing Filipa might point the finger at her when Jerónimo asked what was wrong, but Filipa was too thrilled at her discovery to care. It was her first victory. Why spoil it? Aged three, she began to build an imaginary narrative around her real mum, one she told nobody about because she couldn’t speak. It was wonderful to imagine mothers who did not abuse their daughters, pull their hair or scream in their ears until their heads exploded.
Garcia liked to complicate the simplest things and sought to justify everything, right down to the colour of his socks. He could humour himself with talk of opposing temperaments all he liked; the fact was that when Filipa asked him for a divorce they hadn’t slept together for over a year. Not at the same time, not in the same bed, and not even in the same room. They’d become experts at avoiding each other at bedtime, slipping off to different rooms when the other one wasn’t looking. ‘His fault, of course,’ Filipa told herself.
She’d never been the one to lure him into bed, but she’d stuck to the rules of the game. She’d always been available for him when he wanted her, and she’d never been caught with another man in the back of the storeroom, or anywhere else for that matter.
She’d come upon him one afternoon in the far corner of the storeroom, clasped in an embrace with a female staff member – an excellent receptionist, as it happened. Filipa had been especially struck by how ridiculous and uncomfortable they looked in the position they’d adopted, and by their exaggerated writhing and groaning, like a scene from a porn film. She also thought about what a coincidence it was that she’d decided to go into the storeroom at that particular moment, then realised it hadn’t been her idea at all, another colleague had suggested it.
She was shocked by what she saw. Not, if she were being honest, by the betrayal – it was only normal Garcia should feel the need for affection – but by how ludicrous he was making himself look. She thought of the gossip he was courting, the stain on his reputation and that of the hotel’s, which was still trying to establish itself at the time, and she pitied him for subjecting himself to such a sordid encounter in a glorified cupboard. Jerónimo had always said that a man had to have principles and that was why he kept his promises and faced up to his responsibilities, even though they took their toll. Her father and her husband were different breeds, she concluded as she backed out of the storeroom, unmoved by what she’d seen.
‘She just said she’d come back another time,’ Filipa overheard a storekeeper telling a colleague, ‘there was hardly even a tremor in her voice.’
The affair had been going on for over a year and her staff had thought that having her catch the couple in the act was the best way of alerting her to it. It didn’t occur to them that she might not have wanted to know, that their marriage might have been based on other factors, or that they’d agreed to live that way as a couple.
‘What do they know about my marriage? What right do they have to interfere in my life? Do I pry into their affairs?’ Filipa had asked Renata at the time, with some irritation. Afterwards, once she’d calmed down, she’d said there was no sense in getting rid of an outstanding head chef during peak season and she wasn’t going to jeopardise a project she’d put everything into over something so trivial. Renata had remarked that Filipa clearly no longer had any feelings for the man.
Filipa and Garcia had begun to sleep apart when Matilde was born. The poor little thing would cry all night and Garcia would move into the spare bedroom to get some sleep. As the baby grew and adjusted to life, the crying stopped, but Filipa forgot to call Garcia back to the marital bed and he seemed reluctant to give up the comforts of the spare room with its view on to the patio.
As soon as the time was right, Filipa hired a new head chef and informed Garcia of the terms of their separation.
‘If divorce is this simple, why bother getting married?’ she said with a sigh of relief, thus concluding their three-year relationship.
Detaching from her memories, Filipa went over to the fridge and took out a lump of goat’s cheese, wolfing it down before she had a chance to think about the calories. She decided she fancied a glass of red wine and poured herself one. The phone rang: a friend was going away for the holiday period and wanted to wish her a happy Christmas before she left. This reminded Filipa of the turkey. She peeked into the oven and was disappointed to find the bird still there.
The hotel market changed the same way people changed. Filipa often thought she was the one thing that remained constant, for although she might change the way she looked or dressed, and sometimes might wear a smile and other times a frown, she always felt the same: powerless against the relentless rhythm of life.
December. Where were all her friends? Where was Jerónimo? And where was his Fernanda, the woman who’d deserted him? Maninha had called her a mad bitch. Filipa felt sorry for the woman, her mother. She always felt sorry for mad people.
Jerónimo had got angry when she’d asked him why the other kids said the foreigner was mad. He lost his usual calm and railed against the village and its people with a vehemence she hadn’t seen before. After he’d settled down, he said people often went mad so as not to suffer too much.
Perhaps that was what had happened with the Madwoman of Serrano, Filipa had wondered a few years later.
Filipa had always wanted to meet her mother. She’d kept the hope buried and focused on leading her own life, but this Christmas, for a variety of reasons, she’d been yearning for a different kind of warmth and affection. It was a strong urge. It had proved impossible to hide from Renata. She and Olavo, her eternal fiancé, had promised to help Filipa track down her family, or what was left of it.
Filipa wanted to be reunited with Jerónimo too, but that was an old wish, one that she hadn’t so much as buried as allowed to bubble away beneath the surface.
She took a sip of her wine. The sofa was calling her and she felt powerless to resist.