Free The Wind From the East by Almudena Grandes

that.”
     
    “And who’s going to get your lunch, eh?”
     
    “You.” He smiled, pleased at having found a solution.“You could get it.”
     
    “But I won’t be here. I’ll be going to work each morning and I won’t get back until late afternoon.”
     
    “You!”Alfonso exclaimed, meekly at first but growing more and more angry,“You get my lunch, you, you!”
     
    “Don’t shout, you’ll wake Tamara up. I can’t, Alfonso, I’ve got to go to—”
     
    “You!” Alfonso shouted again and then threw himself on the floor.
     
    Half an hour later, Juan had finally managed to get him dressed, although he hadn’t brushed his teeth.This wasn’t Alfonso’s only reprisal. He refused to accompany Juan upstairs to say goodbye to Tamara, and while Juan was out of the room he threw his cup of hot chocolate into the sink. As it was boiling hot, he managed to burn his hand and the whole drama started again.
     
    “Do you want me to get cross, Alfonso? Do you?”
     
    As usual, the threat triggered a new phase in Alfonso’s onslaught. Even though he’d been up for only an hour, Juan was already exhausted and drove in silence to El Puerto de Santa Maria, while his brother, strapped into the back seat, complained and insulted Juan in equal measure.
     
    “You’re bad, very bad,”Alfonso said one last time, as they parked outside the center.
     
    The day couldn’t have got off to a worse start, thought Juan, as he pushed open the door to the clean, new building, with large windows and spacious, square classrooms that had so impressed him at the beginning of July, when he was arranging his brother’s enrollment. Surprisingly, Alfonso also seemed to like the place, because as soon as he entered the foyer he stopped crying and started looking around with interest. Suddenly the day changed direction, like a ball rising in the air after striking the ground.
     
    Juan gave his name to the receptionist who told him to wait there. She went over to Alfonso and asked him, in the firm but soothing tone teachers use to negotiate with small children, if he’d like her to show him his classroom.They had just headed off down the corridor when a woman in a white coat came across the foyer towards Juan.
     
    “Hello, I’m Isabel Gutiérrez.” She looked about thirty-five, had discreetly dyed hair, wore no make-up, and had a wedding ring on her right hand. She projected a promising air of efficiency.“I’m a psychiatrist and the Assistant Director of the center.You must be Mr. Olmedo. Would you like to come with me? I need to ask you a few questions about your brother, so that we can focus our plan of action.”
     
    As he followed her down a bright corridor, punctuated at intervals with enormous dark-green aspidistras, Juan reflected on the woman’s choice of phrase, and appreciated the nuance that separated it from other terms she could easily have used, such as “treatment” or “program.” This reassured him about the tone of the conversation he was about to have.
     
    “I believe you’re a doctor yourself,” she said, offering him the chair on the other side of her desk and opening Alfonso’s file.
     
    “Yes, but my specialty is broken bones,” he said, and she smiled.“I’m an orthopedic surgeon.”
     
    “We’ll make sure we give you a call if we ever break anything! Now, let’s see.Your brother’s condition is the result of oxygen deprivation during childbirth, is that right?”
     
    “Yes, they didn’t realize that the umbilical cord was twisted around his neck. At some point his brain was starved of oxygen. We don’t know exactly why or for how long.”
     
    “The usual incompetence.”
     
    “Well, yes, that’s true, it was a complete mess. The labor was very quick, it was my mother’s fifth. She became fully dilated in the car on the way to hospital, so when she arrived the doctors sent her directly to the delivery room, but they wouldn’t wait and opted to use forceps straight