by Dave Boling
“Merry Christmas,” he mumbled to himself, spitting blood and pulling from a pocket the slice of bread that Dodo had forced upon him. He had to break the bread into small pieces to wedge it between his tender jaws. He shivered through the frigid night in a three-sided notch in the rocks covered with gull dung. Shortly before dawn, the Egun On arrived on the seaward side of the island, blocked from view of the land, and picked up the suffering Miguel. Onboard were his father and a surprisingly cheerful Dodo, pleased to have drawn blood in the skirmish. They had deduced Miguel’s whereabouts and apologized for not being able to retrieve him earlier.
The frigid trip to Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the nearby French coast didn’t calm Dodo, who was excited to explore mischief in the old pirate town. Even inside the protected harbor there, flexing waves caused the Egun On to bounce against the bumpers as Dodo accepted a wobbling embrace from his father and then his younger brother.
“Try to stay out of trouble,” José María Navarro said as he handed Dodo a small envelope.
“Keep it, patroia, I will be fine,” Dodo protested, looking down at his father’s scarred hands.
“I know you will, but you’ll need to get settled here and find work.”
Miguel thought of jokes about wine being more expensive and women being more demanding in France, but his mouth was swollen and talking was painful; his vomiting on the trip to Saint-Jean had ripped open cuts on the inside of his mouth. He was too angry to joke.
Dodo stepped up onto the dock and, turning to wave good-bye, saw his brother’s critical look.
“Miguel . . . I’m sorry,” Dodo said sincerely, but then pointed to his brother with a grin. “I wouldn’t doubt if I’ve done you a favor. You’re going inland now; you were never meant to be on the water.”
Miguel, for the first time, added up the consequences: He would leave his home, lose his good job, and have to move to a strange town, always keeping watch over his shoulder in case the Guardia was around.
“Thanks,” he said with as little movement of his mouth as possible, “appreciate it.”
José María Navarro piloted the Egun On back out to sea. “I must have set a fine example of fishing as a way of life,” he said. “It looks like neither of you will be on board with me for a while.”
Miguel didn’t answer, patting his father on the shoulder and then hugging him with one arm from the side as both looked out over the bow.
By evening, the patroia had ferried his son as far as possible up the estuary. Miguel disembarked at a high-tide pier, and although he knew he was on firm ground, the earth still bounced and dodged beneath him with every step.
PART 2
(1933–1935)
CHAPTER 7
Dearest Miren,
I hope you all are well, and you and your mother have been keeping my big brother in his place. A bear of a man like him tricking your mother into marriage is one of the great acts of deception.
I wanted to tell you of a friend who is moving to Guernica. His name is Miguel Navarro, and I have known his family for many years. You may remember him from your visits to Lekeitio when you were much younger. He is one of the boys who lived across the street in the family of my friend José María Navarro. I have already contacted Mendiola in Guernica, and he has the need for a helper in his carpentry shop. A change in locations will be good for Miguel. He is a fine young man.
I’m hoping you will meet Miguel and can help him settle in there. I’m sending this letter to you rather than your father because I fear Justo would end up scaring the boy. I can trust you to help him make friends and meet people if you get the chance. Miguel is about your age, or a little older, perhaps twenty, and my daughters have assured me that it is not a chore to have to look at him.
Thank you, Miren.
Love to your beautiful mother and that big brother of mine.
Osaba Josepe
* * *
Finally absorbing the importance of Alaia’s message—that becoming a pest is not charitable—Miren fought her instincts to bring food and help with cooking and cleaning and all those jobs she was certain were easier for a sighted person. A protocol evolved: She visited Alaia’s cabin only when invited or by prearrangement. But they saw each other every Monday at the market as Miren jumped in with making change and packing soaps when business was brisk. She also served as Alaia’s unofficial ambassador, telling everyone in town of the wonders of her products. They ate together one night each week, usually at Errotabarri, where Mariangeles cooked her specialties and Justo entertained with his stories, always happy to perform before a larger audience. And once a week Miren cooked at Alaia’s, baking and preparing some items that would keep for meals later in the week. Within this unspoken arrangement Alaia grew increasingly independent.
One Monday at the market, Alaia invited Miren to come to her cabin.
“Is there a surprise?” Miren asked when she arrived.
“Yes, I am giving you a present . . . your own soap,” Alaia said, handing her a stack of yellow-green bars separated with waxed paper. Miren inhaled and was enthralled.
“I love it; what’s in it?”
“Miren . . . it’s a secret.”
“It’s like no soap I’ve smelled . . . it’s like . . . what . . . Erro-tabarri?”
“That’s what I was looking for.”
“This is so different.”
“It is,” Alaia said. “I wanted something that said ‘Miren.’ I tried combinations of things, and this was the one I settled on. The older women like the florals, the jasmines and lilacs; the younger women like the citruses or the mixtures, oats and honey or almonds and strawberries . . . not as powerful, but they still smell like soap.”
Miren inhaled the scent again.
“Don’t keep it a secret; what is it? I promise I wouldn’t tell anyone about my soap.”
“I’ll give you some hints,” Alaia said, enjoying the game. “It’s made with a little oil extract so that it will serve as a lotion, too, and keep your skin soft and moist.”
“There’s more.”
“Yes, that’s the secret. I heard about it from a wise man one time.”
“I can’t wait to try it out.”
“There’s a pot of water that I warmed; strip off your blouse and give it a try,” Alaia said.
“Alaia!”
“Miren, I’m blind, you couldn’t have more privacy in the convent. Besides, you don’t have anything that I don’t have . . . except for eyes.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve actually got less than you’ve got, if you have to know the truth.”
Self-conscious against logic, Miren turned and tentatively removed her blouse and soaped her torso. She breathed in the fresh fragrance, splash-rinsed herself, dried off with a towel near the sink, and replaced her blouse.
“Oh, I love this, thank you so much,” Miren said. “How could you know this would be so perfect for me?”
“Because when I smelled it, I thought of you.”
“I’ve never heard of anything so thoughtful,” Miren said, hugging her friend. “Now when I come near you, you’ll be able to identify me by my smell.”
“Miren, I can usually hear you chattering with people long before I can smell you.”
“But now when you hear those people talking to me, I’m sure they’ll be saying, ‘Oh, there goes Miren Ansotegui—doesn’t that girl smell nice?’ ”
They hugged once more and Miren, without thinking, began tidying up Alaia’s worktable.
“Miren . . . stop it.”
“I’m sorry.” Miren put down the mixing bowls Alaia had been using. “I have a question for you, and feel free to tell me no if you are uncomfortable with it: Would you mind if I shared some of the new soap with my mother? I think she would love it, too.”
Mariangeles did love the soap. And so did her husband, Justo.
The Guardia Civil may have dispossessed Miguel Navarro in Lekeitio, but it did him the service of creating a job opening for him in Guernica. Raimo
ndo Guerricabeitia, assistant carpenter in the shop of Teodoro Mendiola, was stolen off by armed guards one day on his walk home from work. No explanations were given to his family; he simply did not arrive home that evening. Without the formalities of charges or a trial, the Guardia planted Guerricabeitia in a prison. Was he a criminal? A revolutionary? Or did a neighbor betray him with a false claim to the Guardia?
While not uncommon in other areas of the Pays Basque, such an abduction was still rare at the time in Guernica, where the Guardia mostly tolerated cultural displays and acted incursively only on tips. All that Mendiola knew was that Raimondo was a serviceable carpenter who gave no outward indications of political leanings. But someone may have said something, someone with a grudge. And he was gone as if erased.
When Josepe Ansotegui sent to Mendiola a young shipbuilder in need of quick employment, the timing worked for all concerned. Josepe was delighted when he heard that he was actually filling a manpower void. Raimondo, though, was experienced and well past the apprentice stage. Mendiola ran a small but well-established business. His helper usually felled the trees and milled the lumber with a ripsaw and planer, while Mendiola constructed the furniture, cabinets, and hardwood flooring. The felling of the soft pines and cypress used for cabinets and inexpensive furniture was simple, but dealing with the old-growth oaks required greater exertion. At the least, the young man who delivered himself for work looked healthy and fit enough for the challenges of handling the obstinate hardwoods.
“The recommendation of Josepe Ansotegui is enough for me,” Mendiola said when Miguel arrived. “I’ve known him and his brothers, Justo and Xabier, for a long time. Justo is filled with pride and hot air, and Xabier is filled with the Holy Ghost. Josepe’s word—now that, that is solid as oak. And Josepe tells me you are a fine shipbuilder from a good family. That is all I need to hear.”
Mendiola anticipated a period of unprofitable adjustment. But that was not the case, not even in the first days. Miguel’s experience at the shipwright’s in Lekeitio translated well to his new duties. Miguel had worked with quarter-sawn oak when building ships; he was acquainted and comfortable with the planing and joining and finishing of wood.
The construction of boats is a marriage of utility to function, with the conservation of space and weight being key. There was little need for ornamentation or the fashioning of the wood into pleasing and comforting forms. Making furniture was about little else. But the young man impressed his new boss with his indefatigability and, as an unexpected bonus, with his creativity.
Mendiola, hands darkened to sepia by years of applying stain, started Miguel’s lessons with the construction of a traditional Basque chest of oak, with heavy hinges and an ornate flap lock. After a look at the plan for the standard measure ments, Miguel confidently set about building the chest.
“It won’t look like a boat, will it?” Mendiola needled.
“No, but it might turn into a very attractive bait box,” Miguel answered.
When Miguel returned to the shop with sturdy oak timbers one day in the first week, Mendiola commented on their size and potential for larger furniture pieces.
“I thought you’d like it,” Miguel said. “I know I’m new here, but I found this huge oak with a little fence around it next to that assembly building, and I thought I should go ahead and cut it rather than go all the way up into the mountains looking for timber. People made a fuss, but I got it down anyway.”
Mendiola stuttered in panic before grasping Miguel’s joke. He elaborated on the story in each of the tabernas he visited that night, commenting that he was sure he was going enjoy working with the new man.
After mere weeks, Miguel stopped reading the printed designs for the furniture and began creating works of his own vision.
“Where did you get the idea for the lines of this?” Mendiola asked Miguel after he finished a chair that had an appealing bend to the back supports.
“When I was felling the tree,” he said.
To Miguel, an arching branch might ask to be the arms for a rocker, and stout bole wood sought to become the central pedestal for a dining table. The cypress, with its delicate, persistent scent, called out to be a drawer for clothes or the lining of a chest. The wood also seemed to speak to those who purchased the furniture. Miguel would incise a delicately curved notch in the arms of a chair that invited hands to rest there, or he would rout a bevel on a tabletop that insisted that all who passed must drag their hands across the edge.
Mendiola found his net income rising because of Miguel’s growing clientele. In turn, Miguel discovered a job that suited him even better than shipbuilding. He could be productive, creative, and expressive, and be gratified that his work would last long after he was gone. He inhaled the smells of fresh wood chips and sawdust and varnishes and stains, not fish. And the ground had finally stopped rolling beneath him.
The txistulari, playing his small black flute with his left hand while beating his tabor drum with the right, created more sounds than seemed possible for one person. The woman on the accordion joined in, especially for the jotas, along with a boy who finger-drummed a tambourine. They provided music, without stop, all afternoon and evening at the Sunday erromeria, attracting nearly everyone in town.
Families arrived together and danced, sometimes three or four generations at a time. Grandfathers executed the steps they’d mastered sixty years earlier as little ones squealed in their arms. Old quilts and canvas tarps made a bright patchwork across the grounds around the dance area, where families lounged and ate sandwiches of chorizo and thinly sliced beef tongue. Some dozed beneath trees after too much wine. Others played mus or whist at small tables, or just enjoyed the spectacle of the spinning dancers.
The erromeria served as an outdoor crucible for the selecting and melding of future mates. It was Sunday; all had been to mass, taken communion, and been freshly absolved, guaranteeing this to be a wholesome family-oriented environment where the inquisitive and bored could scrutinize the courting pairs.
Miren Ansotegui rarely stood still long enough for young men to attach themselves. She joined the choreographed folk dances with her group of friends and then broke off to share dances with a random succession of males and females, whoever happened to orbit her sphere at the moment. But she did rest on occasion, now that she was old enough to refresh herself with the wine kept near the tables under the canopy shade.
Mendiola urged Miguel to attend the function as a way to meet the villagers who were their customers. Mendiola accompanied the musicians on the slow waltzes with an old crosscut saw that quivered with his mournful bow strokes. Miguel enjoyed the music and the flowing current of the dancers but found his attention quickly fixed on a young woman with a thick braid that extended past the vee of her white scarf and whipped behind her as she spun. She was elegant and moved with a grace that caused him to stare without realizing it.
After several dances in the encroaching twilight, Miren retreated toward the café canopies where Miguel sat. At the moment she passed his table, a lamp on a nearby post was lit, and to Miguel, it seemed to illuminate only her face. Miguel moved involuntarily. Without offering his name or asking hers, Miguel waved to the girl to catch her attention.
“Can you come here?” he said, surprising himself with how much he sounded like his brother Dodo. “Sit down.”
He fell in love several times each day without making an effort, but the sight of her unsettled him like mornings at sea. When the warm-honey lamp glow fell across her face, he was stunned.
She turned, paused, and took quick inventory. She saw the typical Basque face, varnished by work in the sun; the typical teeth, made to seem whiter in contrast to the burnt-olive face; the typical hair, black and fiercely independent; the typical body, powerful but lean, with ropy muscles knotted by the hauling of nets or the wrestling of stubborn rams. He did not wear a beret, but yes, he was acceptable.
“Why not?” she answered—agreeable, but without any eagerness that could be misinte
rpreted. Her posture on the edge of the chair signaled that the length of her stay would depend on his powers to charm.
Miguel read the signs and sensed the pressure.
“You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” he said without prologue.
She squinted skeptically, then opened her eyes wide and sarcastically fluttered her lashes like frightened butterflies. “Oh?”
“You have . . . the eyes . . . of a Gypsy fortune-teller.”
She groaned. “And what do you know of Gypsy fortunetellers?”
“Are you sure you are ready to hear of such things?” he asked, buying time for a story to come together in his mind. He was distracted from the task by Miren’s wide, dark eyes under her raven-wing brows, and also her delicious scent.
“Yes, tell me now or I leave.” Miren slipped further toward the edge of the chair.
“Fine, then,” he said, turning his chair around so he could fold his forearms across the back. “I was a fisherman in Lekeitio when I met her.”
“A Gypsy?”
“Yes, her name was . . . Vanka . . . and she worked in a taberna at the harbor.”
Miren’s face softened but did not surrender a smile. “Vanka?”
“I visited her every night after the boats came in and the catch was cleaned. We grew to be”—dramatic inhalation—“deeply in love.”
“And she was beautiful, this . . . Vanka.”
“Oh, yes, but not nearly as beautiful as you, although she had huge, dark, mysterious eyes . . . much like yours.”
Lashes fluttered again. Proceed.
“Her parents were killed in a Gypsy tribal feud—”
“A tribal feud . . . the worst kind.”
“Yes, and as a poor orphan, she found her way to the harbor and to the taberna owned by an uncle and aunt.”