The north wind blows, and with one last push, Blanca falls asleep before she hears the baby cry. Milk cascades down the slopes of her exhausted body. In the darkness, she looks at the cradle. It is empty. The midwife has taken the baby to feed her, but the mother sleeps with her eyes half-open, in the deep sleep of dark nights. The fluttering of her eyelids pushes her towards the window. A pungent smell sticks to her throat, not horse manure, but a smell wrapped in smoke that comes from the bowels of metallic devices that slide like iron worms.
The horns fill the air with fear, and there are no carnations on the balconies, no geraniums, no rosebushes. In the street, men in green helmets fill the corners with silent threats. The women walk quickly, heads down, seemingly oblivious to their presence. And the children? Where are the children? Their voices, their tiny footsteps, their laughter playing in a circle are not heard. Suddenly, a metallic sound like the sharp edge of a knife, long and deep like a bull's horn wound. The women run like ants scared by a giant's stomp. They disappear into the earth that opens into hundreds of moist holes.
Blanca runs with blackened feet. Inside, eyes shine in the darkness, but they seem not to see her. No one speaks to her, no one touches her. No one offers her a piece of bread or a bit of water. There are no words. Only the breaths of fear pass through the air and crash against her nape. She feels bodies of all sizes and shapes around her, some robust, defiant, others old and broken. All clinging to the damp walls of the hole.
In the darkness, Blanca rubs her eyes, wanting to shake her flesh, but her hands seem unable to reach it. Then, from the depths, a hot murmur rises, like the buzzing of bees. Someone desperately says that the "lords" of war have come and they have come to stay. Silence quells the buzzing, strangling it in the air before it settles on the ground, before it sinks into open hearts. Time in the hole passes as if it does not pass. Heads bowed beneath icy whistles. Outside it is snow-cold. Nights merge with days that last for weeks, as if in the slow motion of an eternal scene. Finally, one morning without a date, footsteps of relief resound. They bring the warm wind from the south, which melts the snow and warms the earth.
Blanca wakes up. Time has rolled back a hundred years. Her blonde hair reaches past her waist, and the icy pallor of her cheeks is regaining the velvet of a freshly cut rose. Blood laps at her temples with soft, continuous beats like the waves of a calm sea. Her shoulders awaken from their lethargy, leaving a gentle indentation on the mattress with traces of warm milk. The boom, boom of a locomotive heartbeat returns to her chest.
Her languid hands regain their pianist's flight. Spring has burst in with the bustle of a hundred years of absence. Her gaze takes her to the cradle, her tiny feet follow. There lies the baby, her baby. She will name her Austra, which means southern wind. Outside, horse-drawn carriages stroll by, and there are carnations on the balconies, and geraniums, and rosebushes.
Susana Muñoz Cuenca.
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