en castellano más abajo
The coffee machine kept on making coffee with its noise although it seemed that it made more and more noise and less and less coffee. Salva had just made coffee for himself and for a lady that Paula had seen earlier but was not sure that she was a volunteer. Jose was inside the store as usual and Josu was entering and was going as usual too, with his eternal smile and his eternal zapatista neckerchief. Luna and Paula put labels to clothes that had just arrived from a container. While working, they talked.
‘How are things in the attic?’ asked Paula.
‘We are in the process of moving in together. We are moving, but very little by little. Every day we transport a few things. I do not know if I am going to spend much time with Jose now.’
‘When we open the shop the person to spend the most time with you will be me, rather than Jose.’
‘The worst thing is that when we are together we speak about this shop and about the other one, and not of our things. It is a little a burden. ‘
Paula would have liked having such conversations at home, but none of his family was volunteer in any of this.
‘At least you go home and have someone who speaks your own language. I do not know if you understand me. ‘
Luna looked at her for a moment in silence.
‘Yeah, I think I understand.’
Luna lifted one of the jumpers to which she had just put a label as if it were showing Paula to sell it.
‘Would you put this on?’
Paula shrugged thinking that the greatest doubt would be if she could fit into it. The clothes seemed to Paula as exotic as everything else in that shop – garage, but Luna had a more definite opinion.
‘I would not. For starters, my head does not even fit in this very small hole that it is supposed to be for the neck. And if it did, it is still so small I would suffocate.’
Salva and the lady with whom he was talking turned to Luna.
‘Because this is how they make their jumpers there.’
‘We are going to have to ask them to make them differently if we want to sell them here’, said Luna staring them through her glasses, in that unique way she looked at every one, and smiling.
‘That is imperialist ‘, said Salva. ‘ We cannot impose our culture on their way of working. Here we think about work and it is separated from our daily life and credence, but there it is quite linked to the culture, to their scale of values.’
‘It is too much great to ask them’, now it was the lady that was speaking. ‘ We change the designs on them and it is like telling them that their culture is worth nothing.’
‘Okay, but this here is difficult to sell.’ The look and the smile of Luna did not change. ‘It won’t with the culture here, It does not go with the culture here’
‘Well, we will need to change the culture here then.’
‘ And meanwhile, we keep on bringing jumpers that are not going to sell instead of bring things that will sell which is what this is about’, Luna thought Moon. But she said nothing.
Paula thought that if there was no reason for the North imposed their culture and values on the South, neither it was for the South to do so, albeit even if in the form of impossible jumpers bottlenecks. But she too said nothing.
Salva approached Luna when his companion of coffee had gone:
‘Luna, I am going to ask you for a thing. I am going to ask you to make Jose a little freer, that you allow him more freedom to spend his hours here as he used to. Since you live together he leaves in a rush … ‘
‘At about ten o’clock, when he should go away at eight? Instead of leaving at midnight as before?’
Salva smiled with the condescending smile with which the priests smile at their female parishioners. But Luna was not a parishioner and she was not even a Christian.
‘We do not live together yet. We are moving our things little by little, from ten to twelve at night, because we do not even have free weekends, because there are always things to be done here. And in any case you didn’t have to talk with me, Jose is free to do as he wants and if you have to ask someone for a favour it is him. ‘
Salva remained in silence, turned around and went to the store but Luna knew that he would not ask anything to Jose and Paula thought that it was possible to cut the air.
La cafetera seguía haciendo café con su ruido aunque parecía que hacia cada vez más ruido y menos café. Salva acababa de preparar café para el y para una señora que Paula había visto antes pero no estaba segura de que fuera una voluntaria. Jose estaba dentro del almacén como de costumbre y Josu entraba y salía también como de costumbre, con su eterna sonrisa y su eterno pañuelo zapatista. Luna y Paula ponían etiquetas a la ropa que acababa de llegar de algún contenedor más. Mientras trabajaban, hablaban.
“Cómo va lo de la buhardilla?” preguntó Paula.
“Pues ya nos vamos a vivir juntos. Ahora estamos haciendo la mudanza, pero poco a poco. Cada día unas cuantas cosas. Lo que no sé es si voy a pasar más o menos tiempo con Jose ahora.”
“Cuando abramos la tienda quien pase más tiempo contigo voy a ser yo, más que Jose.”
“Lo peor es que cuando estamos juntos hablamos de esta tienda y de la otra, y no de nuestras cosas. Es un poco agobio.”
A Paula le habría gustado tener ese tipo de conversaciones en su propia casa, pero nadie de su familia estaba de voluntario en nada de esto.
“Al menos vas a llegar a casa y vas a tener a alguien que habla tu propio idioma. No sé si me entiendes.”
Luna le miró un momento en silencio.
“Sí, creo que te entiendo.”
Luna levantó uno de los jerséis a los que acababa de poner una etiqueta como si se lo estuviera mostrando a Paula para vendérselo.
“Te pondrías esto?”
Paula se encogió de hombros pensando que la mayor duda sería si le cabria. A Paula la ropa le parecía exótica como todo lo demás en aquella tienda-garaje, pero Luna tenía una opinión más definida.
“Pues yo no. Para empezar, la cabeza ni me cabe por este agujero tan pequeño que se supone que es para el cuello. Y si me cupiese, me ahogaría.”
Salva y la señora con la que estaba hablando se volvieron a Luna.
“Pues así es como allí hacen sus jerséis.”
“Pues va a haber que pedirles que los hagan diferentes si queremos venderlos”, dijo Luna mirándoles fijamente a través de las gafas, como miraba ella, y sonriendo.
“Eso es imperialista”, dijo Salva. “No podemos imponerles la cultura nuestra a su forma de trabajar. Aquí pensamos en trabajo y está separado de nuestra vida cotidiana y creencias, pero allí está todo unido a la cultura, a su escala de valores.”
“Es mucho pedirles”, ahora era la señora la que hablaba. “Les cambiamos los diseños y es como decirles que su cultura no vale nada.”
“Vale, pero esto aquí es difícil que se venda.” La mirada y la sonrisa de Luna no cambiaban. “No va con la cultura de aquí.”
“Pues habrá que cambiar la cultura.”
“Y mientras tanto, seguimos trayendo jerséis que no se van a vender en vez de traer cosas que se vendan que es de lo que se trata”, pensó Luna. Pero no dijo nada.
Paula pensó que si no había razón para que el Norte impusiera su cultura y valores sobre el Sur, tampoco la había para que los impusiera el Sur, aunque fuera en la forma de cuellos de jerséis imposibles. Pero tampoco dijo nada.
Salva se acercó a Luna cuando su compañera de café se hubo ido:
“Luna, te voy a pedir una cosa. Te voy a pedir que dejes un poco más libre a Jose, que le dejes más libertad de horas y todo eso. Desde que vivís juntos se marcha a todo correr …”
“Hacia las diez, cuando debería irse a las ocho? En vez de irse a media noche como antes?”
Salva sonrió con la sonrisa condesdendiente con la que sonríen los curas a sus parroquianas. Pero Luna ni era parroquiana y además era atea.
“No vivimos juntos aún. Estamos haciendo la mudanza y la estamos haciendo a cachos, de diez a doce de la noche. De todas formas eso no tenías que hablarlo conmigo, Jose es libre de todo y si tienes que pedirle un favor a alguien es a él.”
Salva se quedó en silencio, se dio la vuelta y se dirigió al almacén pero Luna sabía que no iba a pedirle nada a Jose y a Paula le pareció que se podía cortar el aire.