The Screech of Cold Brakes

The tarp covering the corner of the shed was so stiff from the frost that it looked like a sheet of zinc forgotten in the open air. Jimena pulled on a corner with both hands, huffing against the green wool collar that had been itching her throat since early morning. The frost chipped off in fine shavings onto the floorboards, crunching like coarse salt under the soles of her wooden clogs. Beneath it, half-buried among three crates of overripe quinces and two caked sacks of grain, her grandfather's bicycle lay sleeping.

The mountain cold does not break things all at once; first it strips away their shine, and then it waits for someone to try and bend them.

Jimena knew this well. She pressed her bare palm onto the hardened leather saddle and checked that the central spring still gave a couple of millimeters with a harsh squeak. It was a heavy machine, with a black iron frame speckled with brownish dots, a fixed gear, and handlebars wrapped in strips of linen that had lost any trace of dye twenty winters ago. Fastened to the frame by two brittle straps hung the old mail satchel, closed with a buckle eaten away by verdigris.

"If you break the axle on that piece of junk, I flat out refuse to haul you down to the clinic in a wheelbarrow," said Teo Vidal from the doorway, leaning his shoulder against the splintered jamb while blowing on a steaming clay mug. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up over his forearms despite the bitter afternoon air, and a white crust of dried dough stained the front of his vest.

"The piece of junk has better bellows than your arms," she replied without looking at him, struggling with the green buckle. "Bring me the pliers from the bench. The round-nosed ones, not the ones you use to pull tacks out of the boxes."

"The round-nosed ones fell behind the rye barrel on All Saints' Day."

"Well, stick your hand in and get them out."

"There are spiders the size of walnuts down there, Albiol. I'm not risking my fingers before baking tonight's loaves."

Teo took a noisy sip of the infusion, wrinkled his nose, and scratched his burgeoning chin beard with a floured thumb.

"It tastes like scorched nettle. Your aunt insists it cleans the blood, but to me it just seems to clean out the will to stay awake."

"My aunt is eighty years old and climbs the threshing floors at a goat's pace. You suffocate climbing the four steps of the granary."

"I suffocate because it's three degrees below zero and the air cuts like tin plate, not for lack of lungs."

Jimena pulled with a dry huff and the rotten strap gave way with a dull snap. The buckle rolled across the dry straw and struck an old lard tin. Inside the satchel there were no greasy rags or spare wicks. Nor was there El Roncador, that enchanted brass padlock her grandfather always left jammed in the spokes and which used to give off a warm whiff of camphor whenever a stranger laid hands on the handlebars.

There was an envelope.

It was thick, made of handmade kraft paper, with edges stiff and brittle from the freezing humidity of the shed. In the center, sealing the flap folded into three asymmetrical peaks, rested a generous drop of dark, almost black sealing wax, stamped with the mark of a wild pinecone. As she brought her fingers closer, the paper released an unmistakable aroma of toasted pine resin and warm paraffin, the exact trail left by the bellows of a mountain forge when stoking oak coals.

On the front, traced with iron-gall ink that time had faded to a washed-out brown, only one name could be read: For Adela.

The blacksmith's widow. The woman who had spent two whole winters with her shutters nailed shut, without bringing a single glowing coal to the main anvil or allowing smoke to rise from her stone chimney.

Teo set his mug down on the tool chest and took two steps closer, dragging his mud-stained boots. Curiosity sharpened his gaze; he leaned over Jimena's shoulder, giving off that everyday sourdough smell that seemed bonded to his skin.

"That wax isn't from your grandfather's workshop," he said in a low voice, suddenly losing his banter. "It's from the beehives on the high sun-drenched ledges. The ones that were abandoned after the fevers."

"It was at the bottom of the bag. He left it there before putting the bicycle in."

"Your grandfather used to keep crooked nails believing that if he left them in the right drawer they would straighten themselves out at night."

"Teo."

"I'm saying leave it where it is. If Adela hasn't unlatched her door for the valley's bailiffs in two winters, she's going to like it even less when a kid brings her messages that smell like old pitch."

"I'm not a kid," Jimena retorted, sliding the envelope inside the inner pocket of her cloth coat, right against her chest, where the hard wax pressed against her ribs. "And grandfather didn't keep things on a whim."

She adjusted her woolen mittens, biting the tip of her thumb to pull them on properly.

"Beltrán Maza came down from the chapter house this morning," Teo added, resting a hand on the linen-wrapped handlebars. "He was asking about the forge's tax records. If he catches you prowling around that door, he's going to throw the book at you and your aunt."

"Beltrán Maza doesn't notice anything unless it's written on stamped paper."

"That man can smell dry firewood from two leagues away, Jimena. Don't play with fire."

"I'm just riding down the hill."

The descent toward the lower part of the village smelled of burned chain grease, pressed snow, and the wet wool of the blankets that the neighbors draped over cast-iron stoves to dry out the dampness from the roof. The milky mid-afternoon light flattened the chimneys against the slopes, tinging the slate-gray of the houses a thick, leaden hue.

Keeping the fixed-gear bicycle under control on the slope demanded a mix of resignation and a steady pulse. There was no freewheel mechanism; Jimena's legs were forced to spin to the merciless rhythm of the spokes, and every time she squeezed the wire brake levers, the worn rubber blocks shrieked against the rusted rim with a metallic, rhythmic lament that bounced off the masonry walls. Clack-screech, clack-screech.

The freezing air entered her lungs with an iron taste, so pure and cutting that it soured her throat and threatened to split bleeding cracks at the corners of her lips with every deep gasp.

She braked at the turn of Hammer Alley, dragging the sole of her clog over the cobblestone to conquer the inertia.

Silence.

Adela's smithy rose like a block of shadow at the end of the lane. Long, turbid icicles hung from the eaves like stalactites trying to weld the roof to the rubble on the ground. The leaves of the oak double-doors, studded with square-headed nails, wore a grayish crust of dry lichens; no one had bothered to clear away the rotten branches that the autumn wind had pushed against the threshold.

Jimena leaned the bicycle against the frosted trunk of an elderberry tree and wiped her nose with her sleeve to clear the cold drip.

She pulled the envelope from her chest. With her own body heat, the dark wax had released a denser fragrance of pine resin, warm and alive, which clashed almost insolently with the smell of stagnant ash in the alley. She knelt on a slippery flagstone, ignoring the sharp pain of the ice chilling her trousers at the left kneecap. There was a gap of barely two fingers between the warped wood of the double-doors and the worn stone of the threshold.

She was about to slide the paper slowly, taking care not to tear the brittle corners against the sharp edges of the stone floor, when she thought of what Teo had told her in the shed about the nails that—

She pushed the envelope.

It had barely crossed halfway under the dark wood when something pulled it from the other side with a dry, energetic jerk.

Before Jimena could pull away her numb fingers, a resounding metallic click echoed inside: the smithy's interior latch, heavy and long as an iron arm, dropped onto its retainer with a dull thud, leaving the door ajar by barely a millimeter, exhaling a warm puff of stale air.

Jimena started backward, sitting down hard on her heels.

"Well, well, Miss Albiol. I didn't know Adela's workshop was among the authorized stops on your delivery route."

The voice was as dry as a snapped vine branch.

Across the narrow alley, sheltered under the overhang of the curing warehouse, Beltrán Maza did not move. He wore his black cloth coat buttoned up to his Adam's apple, without a speck of snow on his narrow shoulders, and held the municipal minute book firmly wedged under his left arm, with the leather spine facing her like a warning.