Page 12 of The Last Postcard

I had never liked those men.

I smiled as I portioned the tails and plunged them into water. I smiled as I cut onions and burst ripe tomatoes into fleshy pieces, and smashed cloves of garlic with the heel of my hand. I smiled as I rolled up my sleeves to get the stove going, though I feared I might keel over from the heat of it. By the time I tipped the tails into the stew pot, threw in bay and peppercorns, I felt like a true witch, brewing strong magic while the rest of the world slumbered away the afternoon.

Though it sounds superstitious, ridiculous, I still can’t help but wonder whether what happened next was my fault. How do we know the slaughterman wasn’t right about the bull; that its meat carried a bloody violence, which I brought to life?

A good rabo de toro takes at least three hours to cook. Mine stewed quietly at the back of the stove, its powerful scent of meat and bone filling the kitchen. I tried to ignore it and work on other things; wafers of sweet-salt jamón and dishes of toasted almonds, platters of tiny fish ready to fry in oil, and bread to soak up wine. But the stew kept catching my attention. It was as if there was another person in the room, who disappeared every time I turned to look.

All too soon, the sun was sliding towards evening, the church bells were tolling nine and the first guests were arriving, demanding to be served. Aside from sangria, Ifrahim had never shown much interest in drink. After a lifetime within the inn’s walls, I felt differently. Beer was like fuel to some men, wine like blood. Brandy could make them lose their heads and break down crying, sherry could corrupt like a slow poison. Gin was what the girls often drank when alone in their rooms, hard and clear as tears. Drink was a potion, as much as food, and if I could control it, I could control them, the men who came here to satisfy themselves.

It became almost a game to me: how to keep them drunk enough to sing and empty their wallets, but not so drunk they would grow violent or collapse. I diluted wine with lemon soda, to make them drink slower, longer. A canny merchant from Jerez taught me how to make a Rebujito – sherry and soda and a sprig of mint, cool enough for any hot head. In one of Elena’s discarded fashion magazines I even found a recipe for a cocktail, called a Marianito, which I longed to try. But it belonged to another world, to inconceivable places like New York or Paris. It could never exist at the inn. Nevertheless, I kept the torn-out page next to my bed so I could daydream the impossible: that one day I might sit in a bar, in a city far away and order myself a drink, as easily as breathing.

I thought of my dream that evening, as customers hollered for wine, more wine, more raciones, more sherry and I ran to and from the kitchen, trying my best to give them what they wanted, to control them before they went crashing into the night. I was so busy, I almost forgot about the strange, bloody day and the rabo de toro seething on the stove. Until he arrived.

The moment I heard his voice the hairs on my neck rose despite a layer of sweat. My guts turned cold and kinked themselves once, twice as the Señor and his friends sauntered into the inn.

I stopped in the kitchen doorway, waiting for them to pass, to fill their eyes with the sight of the girls in their tight dresses and crowns of flowers and lace. But the Señor didn’t look at them. He looked straight towards me, and smiled.

It was then I understood: he had not ordered the rabo because he wanted it, but because I would have to make it. I would have to pour time and sweat into the pan. I would have to serve him at the table with my own hands. I had thought that cooking was a sort of freedom, a way to gain an ounce of control over the people who dominated my world. But I was wrong. I was not Ifrahim, able to drift and charm and cook my way across a continent. I was a woman, and the Señor only had to flex his will to remind me – to remind the world – what that meant. I would never be free.

By the time I returned to the kitchen my palms were clammy with fury and nerves. I swiped them down the apron, trying to think, my mind cloudy as old fat. He might have ordered the rabo but he didn’t know about the bull, about the blood. Did that make it my weapon, or his? I wasn’t sure. All I knew in that moment was that it was a weapon, and that it was dangerous.

I busied myself with whisking oil and garlic, with dredging fish in flour. I didn’t want to think about him, but I couldn’t stop, the smell of the stew kept getting in my nostrils. Before, the Señor had been content to eat and drink like anyone else, to grasp Elena’s waist and throw the occasional leer my way as I crossed the patio. Why did he now …?

My hands stilled. This was the first feria without Ifrahim; the first year without his quiet presence, filling the kitchen. Perhaps he had spoken for me, all these years, in more ways than one.

I took a breath. I would serve the rabo de toro. I would leave them to their drinking. I would be the cook, nothing more. I told myself all of that, but I also picked up one of the kitchen knives and dropped it into the pocket of my apron. I was no longer a child. I’d do more than vomit on the man if he tried to touch me.

A flicker of movement in the doorway made me start. It was Elena. She was wearing the pale flowered silk dress that the Señor had given her, the year before. It was girlish, but then, that was how he liked her. The lace mantilla, his first gift, fell around her face, over her shoulders and down her back. It made her look like she was on her way to communion. Morales wanted her to seem that way for him, the man who paid to have her clean and to himself for the feria.

We stared at each other, Elena with her soap-scrubbed skin, me soaked in sweat and reeking of the stove. For a moment, the kitchen seemed to fill with the smell of gelatine and roses.

‘Mama sent me to check on the rabo,’ she said. ‘Is it ready?’

I pulled the stew pot towards me and gave it a stir. Rich, viscous and silky with marrow. A piece of the bull’s tail rose, tender around its star of bone.

‘Almost.’

‘Well, hurry up,’ she said. ‘They are drinking imported whisky. It’s making them impatient.’

I glanced over at her. There was something odd about her manner, something furtive. She was worrying at the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger, worrying it red.

‘The Señor seems different tonight,’ I said.

Her round face flushed. ‘What do you mean?’

I could hear the nervousness in her voice, barely held back. I left the stew and took a step towards her, my eyes on the door.

‘What’s going on?’ I whispered.

She looked at me for one shallow breath, two.

‘I’m leaving.’ Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it over the din coming from the courtyard. ‘He’s going to take me with him, after tonight. He said … he told me that when I turned eighteen he’d take me away from here, set me up in my own apartment.’ She pinched at the skin of her hands. ‘I’m eighteen now. So he’s got to take me with him tonight.’

The lace mantilla, the sherry, the Turkish Delight, they weren’t what had made her bow her head and follow him into a bedroom, four years ago.

‘Elena—’

‘He has to.’ There was a tremble of panic in her voice. ‘He swore he would.’