The Map

by T. S. Learner

  Gabirel, who’d been lounging on an armchair that sat along with its battered companion, an old leather couch, in front of the fireplace, stood awkwardly, filling the room. His lanky frame seemed to knock against the low ceiling.

  ‘Please come in, we have been preparing food.’

  ‘It smells delicious.’ August ducked his head to avoid the beam of the doorway as he went in. Señora Aznar sat at one end of the table slicing tomatoes. Spread before her on the table were plates covered with slices of sweet green pepper, a wheel of hard yellow sheep’s cheese, a platter of snails cooked in an onion and tomato sauce, olives, some dried figs and a loaf of talo bread.

  August’s hunger gathered up and rumbled loudly through his body.

  ‘That looks delicious.’

  Señora Aznar shrugged. ‘Humble fare. I apologise, there is no fish or meat, but the rabbits have been quick this last week, and it’s too early for river trout. Any other produce the government confiscates and sends south. Please sit. Gabirel, txakoli?’

  With the slopping grace of the deeply self-conscious, the adolescent walked over to a carafe of the young green wine and began pouring three glasses. Señora Aznar pulled out a chair for August.

  ‘Please sit, you must be exhausted after your long journey.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied. Her formality was infectious and for a moment he felt like bowing.

  Gabirel placed the glass down in front of August, then drew up a chair eagerly beside him, the boy’s shyness radiating off him like heat.

  ‘I’ve ne … ne … ver travelled,’ he said, in slow, faltering Spanish. August wondered if perhaps the boy spoke only Euskara – some still did in the more remote areas – but then realised the boy had a heavy stammer.

  ‘Basques ar … are not allowed,’ Gabirel explained. ‘Franco thinks travel wi … wi … will give us ideas, but he for … for … forgets imagination has wings.’

  ‘Gabirel!’ Señora Aznar snapped then smiled apologetically at August. ‘Forgive the lad, he thinks too much. One day he will think himself into an arrest.’ She glanced over at Gabirel, a small missive of something far more complex than disapproval. August lifted his glass to break the tension.

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’ He wanted to say more but instead looked over to Gabirel, who was now flushed with a rage August recognised from his own distant youth. ‘You have a beautiful home, Señora.’ As soon as it left his lips, he regretted the platitude.

  ‘It’s an empty home, Señor. Once it was full, many years ago. In a different time. My great-grandfather was a great traveller. He made money in South America, then came back. My grandmother, his daughter, was born here, then my mother, but eventually she brought a husband into this house – a Spaniard from the South. My father. She was not liked for that. There are many in the village who still have not forgiven her for not marrying a Basque.’ Señora Aznar lapsed into a sudden silence that he was beginning to recognise as a quirk of her personality, the stillness closing over her, sending her somewhere else, somewhere distant.

  ‘You are from America, no?’ Gabirel broke in.

  ‘I am indeed, from Boston. But I haven’t lived there for many, many years.’

  ‘Why not? If I were American, I would li … li … like to live there. Actually, I would li … like to live there now. New York, Chicago, where the gangsters live.’

  ‘There aren’t so many gangsters there any more, unless you count the industrialists.’

  ‘Gabirel is obsessed with all things American. He even likes their noisy music. Negro songs.’

  ‘Jazz, I love jazz. Eddie Cochran, Charlie Parker … I even have a record a man once bought my mother —’

  ‘Gabirel, you talk too much, the professor is tired.’

  ‘No, not at all. I love jazz also. I have many recordings.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Enough, eat your food.’ She rapped the boy over the knuckles.

  ‘Do you have a record player?’ August asked, tentatively.

  ‘We do, but it’s very old. Sometimes I can find jazz on Radio Amsterdam on the radiogram.’

  Now August noticed that the large 1920s radiogram sitting on a low table to one side of the fireplace. It was in pristine condition. Aware that radio provided the only access to real information about what was happening outside of Franco’s Spain, he looked at Señora Aznar, who met his gaze defiantly.

  ‘The radio is our only luxury.’ It was a neutral statement of fact. She continued, a little apologetically, ‘Much of the furniture was sold off during the war. Then, during los años de hambruna when there was only the two of us again, I had to sell many of my family’s heirlooms for food. But I kept the record player, and a few basic essentials. One day I will fill the house again, I am determined.’

  He studied her, recalling the bare walls, the lack of photographs, the single painting of the family’s patriarch – her grandfather. This was unusual for a Basque household, where often a wall would be dedicated to a gallery of family photographs, usually arranged chronologically. It was as if a whole era of the house had been deliberately erased.

  ‘You speak very good English, nearly faultless,’ he commented, reaching for a piece of bread.

  ‘When I was young, living in the village was an English-woman my mother befriended. She arranged lessons for me. My parents had high hopes for me. In those days we had money. The woman came from Bexhill-on-Sea – do you know it?’

  ‘I have visited once. It’s pretty, very English.’

  August felt increasingly uncomfortable. Had he stumbled accidentally into a family he might have fought against fifteen years earlier? Had they been Carlists or Falangists – Franco supporters? The facts seemed to point that way – the wealthiest family in the district, daughter with a private English tutor. But where were their privileges now? For surely they would be benefiting from preferential treatment or at least protection from the fascist police. If anything, August had sensed repressed hostility from the local policeman towards Señora Aznar – the man might have feared her but he certainly didn’t respect her. On the other hand, if they were fascists it was very likely they would be spying on the local community and reporting back to the Guardias Civiles. He knew well that the regime thrived on local informants, using threats of imprisonment to blackmail people into betraying their friends and family. But it was also a case of divide and conquer – in every small town and village families and neighbours were split by political allegiance dating back to the Civil War and before. Some had betrayed and even murdered their relatives, co-workers, people they had eaten with, sung in church with, gone to school with. After the war the winning side had prospered – the houses and businesses of the exiled and executed had been appropriated, officially and unofficially; whole communities lived on, existing over these unhealed, unmentioned scars that ran through them like the subterranean fault lines of earthquakes. It served Franco to perpetuate a local climate of constant fear and distrust this way. August had to be careful, very careful. If she were a spy, he would be in terrible danger.

  ‘The war caused a lot of upheavals, I’m sorry you lost your family. Those were difficult days both for Spain and the Basque country.’ Around him the air wound up tighter and tighter. Now Gabirel was looking anxiously in his mother’s direction.

  ‘What makes you so sure I lost my family because of the troubles?’ she snapped.

  ‘Sorry, I just assumed —’

  ‘Assume nothing, Professor.’

  ‘Please, call me August.’

  ‘As far as this family is concerned, 1939 is Year Zero. Nothing existed before then. Gabirel and I would drown in ghosts if we did not believe that, and we are survivors. Isn’t that true, Gabirel?’

  ‘It’s tr … tr … true.’

  But the youth’s back was rigid with emotion as he stabbed at his cheese with a fork. Somewhere in the house a clock struck two. Señora Aznar stood and began clearing the table of dishes. August sprang up to help her.

 
‘No, please, you are our guest,’ she said, insisting that he sat back at the table. She picked up an old tin bucket that sat in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Meanwhile, Gabirel, you will go collect snails.’ She thrust the bucket towards the boy.

  ‘But it’s afternoon!’

  She glanced out of the window. ‘It’s just rained, they will be out. Go.’

  ‘I’ll help.’ August stood. I will get more out of the boy than the woman. She’s already closed up towards me. ‘Four hands are better than two. Besides, it will give Gabirel a chance to show me your impressive grounds.’

  ‘Farmland and forest, although much is now lying fallow,’ she said, now washing dishes.

  ‘Don’t forget my vegetable garden,’ Gabirel added, proudly. ‘I grew the tomatoes you just ate.’

  ‘We have a field of maize, an apple orchard and a small field for our cows, and this family is guardian of part of the mountain, nothing of historical value. That is your expertise, isn’t it?’ The sarcasm in her voice was evident and August wondered whether she’d already guessed that he wasn’t entirely who he claimed to be. Let her keep guessing. They were equal, but her beauty was an irritant. He wasn’t used to having a woman not respond to his own charms. And, to his secret chagrin, there was that old ache of desire, habitual, undeniable and now more intense as she appeared unattainable. That’s all I need now – to get involved with a possible fascist.

  ‘C’mon, Gabirel, let’s go hunt some snails before it gets dark. I’ll tell you about some of the jazz clubs I’ve visited.’

  Gabirel pushed his chair back from the table and picked up the bucket.

  The glade of ancient oak and silver birch trees was timeless. The tinkling of a nearby brook cut the air and the thin afternoon sun bathed the small clearing in a pale green light. The air washed by the earlier rain smelled both fresh and fecund with wet leaf, flowering chestnut trees and earth, and under the humming of insects there was the staccato croaking of toads. August and Gabirel were both bent over, wading through a small outcrop of ferns that edged the clearing, searching for snails, followed by the pet dog. The forest was vibrant with life, like it had a presence of its own – August had the impression the tall trees and mountain peaks were watching over him, a gaze that did not feel entirely benevolent. Just then he found several snails clumped together at the base of a frond.

  ‘It’s extraordinary. It’s like nothing’s changed around here for centuries,’ he murmured, dropping the snails into the bucket between them.

  ‘That’s the trouble. N … n … nothing has changed, nothing good anyway.’ Gabirel tossed a snail unceremoniously through the air. There was a clang as it hit the side of the bucket, then slid in. ‘Is America beautiful?’

  ‘Parts of it, but here you can actually hear history stretching back. It’s magical.’

  ‘Oh, there is magic.’ The youth’s voice was solemn, as if he were conveying a great truth. For a minute August thought his own comment might have been lost in translation.

  ‘In English, this can mean extraordinary, as in extraordinarily beautiful.’

  ‘I understand, but I mean it. Here we ha … ha … have sorcery and the old gods, they still love us. There is Mari. She li … li … lives in the mountaintops. I saw her once, streaking across the sky in a ba … ba … ball of fire, her long hair burning behind her. Sometimes we call her the Lady of Anboto. Her companion is Sugaar – he is a snake god. Then there is Urcia, he owns the sky and is responsible for the air and the clouds. And Basajaun, he is my fa … fa … favourite. He’s big and hairy and lives in the forest. Oh and I’m forgetting the Lamia, they are be … be … beautiful.’

  ‘The Lamia?’

  ‘Mermaids who live in the streams and rivers. I’ve se … se … seen them myself trout-fishing. Here the world is older. Science and industry have not sep … separated religion from older magic.’

  August looked up from the vibrant green ferns and glanced across at Gabirel’s wide face. The kid was entirely without guile, he was so certain: a chilling conviction that swept August momentarily into the same belief system. He looked up the craggy peak of the mountain above them, a lone hawk etching a lazy spiral. The landscape whispered back and August shivered despite himself.

  ‘But I would still like to go to the Cotton Club in Hamburg just once and hear Charlie Parker maybe with a beautiful red … re … redhead by my side, like Ava Gardner.’ The boy’s voice, gruff and still breaking, brought August back to the visceral. He laughed.

  ‘That could be arranged.’

  ‘How? Young Basque men ca … ca … cannot just leave the co … co … country like that, you know. You have to apply for travel pa … pa … papers and then they never give them to you. Instead they would want to know why you d … d … d … don’t want to dedicate your blood and sweat to Mother Spain. Mother Spain!’ He laughed bitterly, and for an instant August caught a glimmer of the man he would become.

  ‘Doesn’t your mother have important friends she can rely on, maybe a local colonel or captain?’ August kept his voice casual.

  ‘What? You think we are fa … fa … fascista!’ Gabirel scowled at him, then covered the bucket with a slam. ‘That’s enough snails.’

  He started towards a steep path that seemed to lead up the mountain. August followed, but the boy was as nimble as a goat. Straining, August caught up with him.

  ‘Gabirel, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.’

  ‘And it was wrong of me to get angry. How could you know, a to … to … tourist like you, how it is here. I will show you!’ He ploughed through some brambles. August followed him through into a part of the clearing hidden from the path.

  In front of them was the low mouth of a cave buried in the foot of the mountain above them, a small open area – almost a circle – broken only by a group of ancient oak trees, the oldest of which sat gnarled, its trunk split in half by a pine tree that had somehow grown up inside it, making a chimera of the tree. The spiky pine branches fused with the lighter green oak leaves and branches. August had never seen anything like it before. It looked disturbingly unnatural, the pine a parasite on the ancient oak. Situated opposite the cave was a tiny simple stone chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. August knew enough about the enforced Christianisation of the region that the chapel would have been built to counteract and in many ways appropriate the old Basque paganism – a failed attempt to fuse Mari, the mountain goddess, with the Virgin Mary, to make Christian beliefs that stretched as far back as the original Cro-Magnon tribes that populated the region even before the invasion of the Indo-Europeans. He glanced over at Gabirel, who now stood hushed and awed in front of the cave. The youth’s pale face was a chessboard of shadow and concentration.

  ‘This ca … ca … cave is consecrated. Akelarre has taken place here.’

  ‘Akelarre?’

  ‘Bruja – wi … wi … witches have met here.’

  ‘There are no witches.’

  ‘One ca … ca … cannot say that they exist, one ca … ca … cannot say they do not exist, but under no circumstances must you enter it. It is one of the houses of Mari and it would be da … da … dangerous to you as a foreigner and a disbeliever. A violation against the spirits of this land.’

  August listened carefully, sensing the boy was committing some great travesty by telling him about the cave at all.

  ‘Gabirel, I promise I will be respectful. But I can go into the chapel, yes? I am Catholic after all, admittedly lapsed.’

  ‘The chapel is not such a problem.’ Gabirel grinned, reverting to a cheeky fifteen-year-old. August turned and walked across the small clearing into the chapel, the cedar pew sweetening the dusty air. Kneeling, he laid his hands along the worn wood. In front of him behind the altar was an ancient fresco of the Virgin Mary praying at the foot of the cross of Christ. Judging by the naive depiction of the faces and robes, it looked as if it dated from the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

  He looked closer. In the painted sky around the h
ead of Christ he could see a small flying figure, a woman in white robes, her long blonde hair stretched behind her, appearing to be riding a ball of fire. August stared at her, wondering if she was an angel why she had no wings. In a flash of insight, he realised this was a depiction of Mari, the pagan Basque goddess, incorporated into the Christian mural. Similarly, another figure caught his eye, almost invisible against the foot of the cross. Crouching there was a man with wild hair who was half snake. This must be her companion Gabirel had talked of – Sugaar the Basque snake god. August had seen this assimilation of local beliefs all over the world, from the frog-princes of Bali to the Romans imposing their gods on the deities of the Ancient Egyptians – it was a well-tried tool of colonialism.

  As August glanced back up at the simplistic and crudely rendered round-faced Mary gazing at her crucified son, he couldn’t help wondering whether Shimon Ruiz de Luna had ever been to this forest, this cave, even this chapel, for it would have existed in his time – the oak trees more slender, more hungry in their green growth back then, the cave perhaps a little deeper, a little more pristine in its mysteries, a little more saturated in the whispered entreaties of the desperate and the believing. He felt the presence of the alchemist, a fleeting shadow pressing against his consciousness, the young physic’s tremendous excitement, and somehow he sensed that one of the secret locations Shimon had written about was close. A spider spilling its web descended from a rafter of the chapel like a tumbling parachutist and August’s concentration was broken.

  ‘We should keep wa … wa … walking before it gets dark!’ Gabirel was waiting for him at the door. Without a word, August followed the boy out and back into the forest.

  They sat on a craggy outpost, the snail pot between them, Gabirel’s thin legs dangling over the rock face, kicking in sullen aggression, the colder afternoon air settling over them as the vast landscape below seemed to recede from under August’s feet. He found the presence of the youth unsettling. Gabirel was a disturbing combination of extreme naivety and a strange precocious intelligence. August wondered if this wasn’t because of the war somehow.