Guernica

by Dave Boling

  “They were Basque and she was Gypsy?”

  “Yes, they were related through a long-past marriage.”

  “And it was your duty to help the orphaned girl feel welcome.”

  “I am a gentleman, after all.” Slight bow of the head.

  “Of course. Did you first wave at her and tell her to sit down without proper introduction?”

  “No. Your eyes are beautiful, as I said, but your ears may be weak; I told you, she worked there, she served me dinners.” Miguel said this with a smile, to assure her he was not insulting her ears, which appeared to be both functional and lovely. “And after an appropriate time, we began seeing each other, and our relationship grew and grew until we were to be wed.”

  “But you would not be here now, talking to me, if you and your beautiful Vonda—”

  “Vanka.”

  “Vanka. You would not be here without your dark-eyed Gypsy if this great love had not encountered some problems.”

  “True . . . for some reason, although she was a Gypsy and supposedly gifted in such things, she would never look into my palm to tell my future—”

  “Did you consider that she might not want to touch someone who handled fish all day?”

  “—until the night before we were to be wed . . .”

  He leaned closer, took the girl’s hand, and lightly dragged a fingertip across the tender valley of her palm.

  “By a candle’s light at her uncle’s taberna, she finally looked into my palm. She was silent for a moment, but her huge, dark Gypsy eyes grew wet, and a single heavy tear dropped into my hand.”

  He hesitated, allowing the image to ripen, and also because he simply did not want to release her hand.

  “She said that I was destined to find great love with a beautiful, dark-eyed girl . . . but that girl was not to be her. Then she ran from the taberna and I never saw her again,” he said, sadly triumphant. “This is what I know of Gypsy fortune-tellers, and what I know of the secrets in their beautiful eyes.”

  Miren pulled back her hand. “That is pure nonsense, of course, but it is a good story. And living with my father, I’m a fair judge of such things.”

  She stood and announced, “Stay here, I’ll get us some wine.”

  Miguel turned his chair around and leaned back with his hands behind his head. Vanka? God in heaven . . . Vanka? Where did that come from?

  Before Miguel could finish congratulating himself, the girl returned with a piece of waxed paper stacked with barquillo bread cookies and a small carafe of wine.

  “Thank you, these are just like Vanka used to bring me,” he cracked, causing her to wince. “Are you from Guernica?”

  “Errotabarri, a baserri on the hill above town,” she said, pointing in the direction of home. “I am Miren Ansotegui.”

  Miren Ansotegui? Ansotegui? A relative of Josepe, no doubt, he thought. He wondered if he had met her when they were much younger, thinking he would have remembered this girl.

  “Can you tell me the truth long enough to give me your name?” she asked.

  “I am Miguel Navarro, freshly arrived from Lekeitio. I just started working with Mr. Mendiola. Learning carpentry.”

  They both took bites of the soft, rich cookies and sips of wine, regrouping, strategizing, and wondering if they had said the right things, wondering what they could possibly say next. Miren knew one thing that she wouldn’t tell him: Her walk in his direction that evening was not a coincidence.

  At the wheel of his powerful and commodious Hispano-Suiza, Picasso motored from Paris along the coast toward Spain. With his mistress Marie-Thérèse told to await his return, the artist was accompanied by his wife Olga and their son Paulo. He passed through the Basque Country, stopping at Saint-Jean-de-Luz before crossing the Bidassoa River and once again entering Spain at Irun.

  “I know many Basques,” he told his son, now fifteen. “Nobody works harder or is more dedicated to his family. We used to say, ‘Straight and tall, there goes the Basque.’ The ones I know could be stubborn and suspicious, but to have a Basque as a friend is something you can count on for a lifetime.”

  At San Sebastián, Picasso and his family dined at the Café Madrid, where he was buttonholed by supporters of the rightist movement in the Spanish government. To add the noted Picasso to their list of allies would be worth a great deal to them, they said. They stated it as a reference to his renown and influence, but they would not have been offended if he also wished to donate some of what was reputed to be a considerable fortune.

  They cared only for the good of Spain, they stressed, for returning it to its state of glory. They were the best means to that end. They could make Spain what it had been, they promised. They could make it a nation of which Picasso would be proud. He would want to return there to live.

  Picasso enjoyed the meal in the scenic coastal city but declined the political overtures. He was an artist who wanted nothing of politics. Art was about other things. Politics, he told them, bored him more than any other talk.

  The matter was dropped, but the trip was one Picasso would remember until his death; it was the last time he would visit Spain.

  Dodo had never had to work so hard to get into a bar fight. But that’s how these French Basques were, he’d heard, soft and submissive. They hadn’t been hardened by years of Spanish oppression.

  When he lived in Lekeitio, Dodo had a great deal of casual contact with French Basques, as the crews from Lekeitio or Bermeo or San Sebastián often met at sea with those from Saint-Jean-de-Luz or Biarritz. As much as they ignored the border on land, there was even less of a boundary on the water.

  He had been told that they were sympathetic and helpful to their cousins from Spain if the personal costs were not too great. And he loved hearing the stories of Saint-Jean’s history of privateering and smuggling; he appreciated a town where profitable lawlessness was a source of great civic pride. But his acclimation to his new home did not go smoothly. He objected to the French reverence for degenerate royalty, as half the town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz was named after Louis XIV because he happened to be married there almost three hundred years earlier.

  While eating and drinking in a musty fishermen’s haunt next to the quay in Place Louis XIV, Dodo felt compelled to stand and enliven the evening by sharing a few of his thoughts with the locals.

  “Real Basques would never name anything after a king,” he announced. “To real Basques, every man is his own king.”

  This was met with a chorus of indecipherable shouts, and a few hard bread crusts were thrown in his direction. He turned and scowled when one bounced off the back of his head.

  “Do we need a Spaniard telling us how to act?” one called from the far end of the bar.

  “Whoever called me a Spaniard must die now, of course,” Dodo said into the crowd, spitting slightly when he pronounced “Spaniard.”

  All laughed.

  “It’s natural that the Spanish would want to at least try to control our provinces; we have great riches in ore and timber and industry. The French have no reason to covet this place since you are famed only for your pastries. They are very good pastries, I grant you, but not really worthy of an armed invasion.”

  All laughed again.

  “It is obvious that you have all gone soft, since nobody here is man enough to rise and fight me.”

  More laughs arose.

  “Stand up and fight . . . somebody . . . anybody.”

  More bread flew in his direction.

  Frustrated but reassured of his superiority, Dodo returned to his table.

  His plate was empty. Someone had eaten his fish.

  “Hey . . .”

  Conscious of being watched, he swallowed back his ale in a long gulp and slammed the mug down on the table.

  This, too, struck the bar’s patrons as extremely humorous.

  Dodo rose to leave, hoping there was enough of a path to the door that he’d be able to swagger out.

  “Arrête, monsieur!” the barman shouted. “P
ayment.”

  Dodo reached into his pocket and found it empty. He tried the other pocket. Empty. He must have misplaced his bills.

  “I’ll be back with money,” Dodo said. “You can trust a real Basque.”

  As promised, he returned within an hour with payment for the fish and ale. He had calmed down, sobered somewhat, and was greeted by cheers when he entered the bar. Three men who had thrown bread at him invited Dodo to join them at their table.

  “Thank you for the fish,” the tallest said, licking his lips. “It was delicious.”

  Dodo nodded and smirked.

  “Thank you for the money that I found,” said another, not removing the pipe from his mouth, “sitting there in your pocket.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “While you were telling us how weak and soft we are,” the tall man said.

  Dodo ordered a bottle of wine for them all, and they talked without hostility of life on both sides of the border.

  “That you would stand and offer to fight everybody in the bar told us something about you,” the tall one said.

  “That I’m stupid?” Dodo asked.

  “No, that we are different,” the tall one said. “None of us would have challenged every man in the place. I would just warn you that because we choose not to fight you does not mean we are incapable.”

  He reached below the table and pulled from his boot a silver knife that looked to Dodo like a small pirate sword. He pointed it at Dodo’s navel and ran it upward through the air in front of his chest in a motion that mimed the gutting of a fish.

  “What you need to ask yourself, when you deal with those who wish you harm, or with the Guardia or the gendarmes, is this: Is it more profitable to bloody their nose or to steal their wallet? I think you would be surprised to find more satisfaction and less risk in stealing from them. Besides, it makes them feel foolish and leaves them with even less dignity.”

  “I like that,” Dodo admitted. “I think I can learn a few things from you.”

  “More wine, monsieur.”

  “So, do I get my money back?” Dodo asked his new friends.

  The one with the pipe shook his head. “That, ami, is the cost of the first lesson.”

  The tall one introduced himself as Jean-Claude Artola. “My friend with the pipe here is Jean-Philippe, and this petit homme we call J.P.; his name is Jean-Philippe also, but it would be confusing for us to have to call them both Jean-Philippe all the time.”

  The three would give him more lessons, as they agreed that Dodo, with his connections with fishermen on the Spanish side, might be valuable to their unofficial international commerce. But he would have to be examined by the leader of their group.

  “There is someone else you need to meet, but not just yet,” Jean-Claude said. “After a few trial runs in the mountains, if you have what it takes, you’ll have to pass her inspection.”

  “Her?”

  Artola smiled and nodded. Dodo thanked them with handshakes and then exaggerated hugs before leaving, shortly before dawn.

  “I’d like to thank you for not eating my fish or stealing my money,” Dodo said to the small man, J.P., who had said little during the evening.

  The three laughed again, harder this time.

  “Where’s the joke this time?” Dodo asked.

  “While you were standing up to fight,” Artola explained, “our little friend here pissed in your ale.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The women jabbed their sticks at the ground as if hoeing weeds from a row of vegetables. Miguel had never seen anyone work the fields with the grace of these costumed dancers, though. Of the dozen women, he watched only Miren, although one older dancer shared her easy elegance.

  A lone man, exaggeratedly intoxicated, entered this dance from off to the side of the courtyard. He carried a large flour sack on his back. As he stumbled about, the hard-working women set upon him in choreographed redress, scolding him and pounding at his sack with their sticks. Even in dance, the image of the avenging Basque matriarch was reinforced.

  Miren alone was the focus of the next dance, and cheers rose when she gathered a glass off a nearby table, filled it with wine, and placed it in the middle of the dance area. To a quickening beat, she stepped lightly on all sides of the glass. Without looking down, she stepped over it and beside it, side to side, front to back, barely missing it as her feet wove an intricate pattern. The breadth of her skirts at all times impeded her vision of the glass, making her avoidance of it an act of unfathomable precision. Then, impossibly, she rose and seemed to hover before gently landing atop the glass, one slipper on each side of the lip. And she was off again, levitating, flitting on each side, and then once more leaped back onto the glass, alighting softly with bent knees.

  Miguel was stunned to watch a girl so feathery and deft that she could dance on the lip of a wineglass. It was not stemmed crystal or a delicate flute, but it was nonetheless glass, and she danced so joyfully atop it, oblivious to the possibility that it could shatter beneath her. She not only didn’t break the glass but didn’t spill a drop of wine, either.

  A final leap, on and off, coincided with the last bar of music, and a greater cheer echoed across the courtyard. Accepting the applause with a deep curtsy, Miren retrieved the wineglass and drained the deep-red contents in a single gulp. She saluted the cheering crowd with the empty glass and licked her lips in theatrical enjoyment of the wine.

  Miguel closed his eyes and reminded himself to breathe.

  The night had cooled and the dancers broke off into smaller groups for a frenetic jota, joined by villagers of all ages. Miren approached Miguel at his table, bringing with her the lovely older dancer who led the troupe.

  “How could you possibly dance on a glass?” Miguel asked before she could speak.

  “Well, first you have to get a very strong wine,” Miren said.

  “Actually, it’s supposed to be a man’s dance, but none of our boys can do it,” the woman said. “We went through a lot of glasses and blood before we learned that.”

  Miren gestured formally to the woman. “Ama, this is Miguel Navarro from Lekeitio, a friend of Osaba Josepe’s. Miguel, this is my mother, Mariangeles Ansotegui.”

  “This is your mother?” Miguel asked without subtlety, snapping his head back.

  “Bai, bai, bai, I hear that all the time, I’m proud to admit,” Miren said, hugging her mother as they giggled like sisters.

  “Ah, and you’re the young man so experienced in the ways of the Gypsies,” Mariangeles kidded.

  Miguel bowed his head into his hands, feigning more embarrassment than he truly felt. He was gratified, in fact, to learn that he’d made enough of an impression on Miren that she would mention him to her mother.

  “Well,” said Mariangeles, “I don’t have to be a Gypsy fortune-teller to see some dancing in your future. Let’s see what he can do with those large feet of his, Miren.”

  Miren grasped his hand to lead him to dance. But Miguel sank leaden into his seat, not budging even as she tugged.

  “Come on, Miguel, it’s time to dance.”

  “I am afraid I didn’t learn much dancing on the fishing boat,” he said.

  “What did you learn on that boat?”

  “How to vomit lemon drops.”

  Miren paused and sent a curious gaze to her mother. It was not worth pursuing now. She tapped at his thigh with her “hoe,” as if to shepherd him onto his feet.

  “Better seen as clumsy than perceived a coward,” she warned.

  “Better perceived clumsy than proven an oaf.”

  “Everyone can dance,” Miren said. “Anyone can dance.”

  “I would hate to prove you wrong . . . I don’t know the steps.”

  “You don’t have to know steps; can you snap?” Miren asked, clicking her fingers as she rolled her hands above her head with a fl amenco flair.

  “Snap? Like an angry crab,” Miguel said, snapping slowly but loudly.

  “Can you kick?”


  “Like an angry mule.”

  “Can you jump?”

  “Like . . . uh . . . what ever animal is very good at jumping.”

  “And are you Basque?”

  “Although I do not wear a beret anymore, yes, I am Basque.”

  “Then you can dance,” she announced with certainty.

  In this assumption, she was vastly mistaken.

  As a dancer, Miguel Navarro was energetic, enthusiastic, and so flamboyantly inept he attracted a crowd. He had attended the feast day celebrations with everyone else in Lekeitio and, at times when they were not proscribed by the Guardia, was exposed to many of the folk dances. While his brother, Dodo, had learned to execute a few basic steps, Miguel never connected the music to the moves or managed to translate the steps into dance. He was well coordinated and artistic in other manners, yet it was possible that he was even worse at dancing than he was at fishing.

  But if Miren Ansotegui, the most fluid dancer he’d ever seen, saw fit to invite him to be a partner, who was he to reject her? So he rose, walked to the center of the courtyard, and began moving as if he were on the rolling deck of a fishing boat. He snapped out of time, and he kicked like a palsied goat. Several of his leaps ended in scrambling sprawls from which he bounced back up as if they were not only fully intended but a product of considerable practice and creativity.

  “My, that was graceful,” Miren jabbed.

  “I’ve seen no one else attempt that step,” Miguel responded.

  “True enough.”

  With one high kick to belatedly mirror Miren’s move, he caught the hem of her skirt and lifted it so high she had to push it down to maintain modesty. Another time, he stumbled into her and buckled the knee of her supporting leg, causing them both to tumble.

  Dance was serious to her, but she still enjoyed Miguel’s enthusiastic performance. It was endearingly pathetic, and besides, he had warned her.

  “You dance like a little donkey trying to run,” she laughed, recalling her favorite animals on the baserri. “That’s you, astokilo, the little donkey.”