The Bird in Last Year's Nest

by Shaun Herron

  “You look tired, Dion.”

  “Yes.”

  Basa sat on the edge of the bed, his forearms resting on his thighs. He fidgeted with the fingers of one hand. “This is a strange situation, Dion.”

  “Yes.”

  “The lady who came to see you … we are going to marry.”

  “I see.” Landing on his feet, he thought, and kept his gaze on the twin towers of the cathedral beyond the roof tops. “Congratulations,” he said, and his tone was sour.

  When he opened the door, Basa had carefully framed in his mind the explanations he would make of his silence. They were not there now. He tried to reframe them: I have been ordered not to. But he could not begin with a self-excusing statement, one that appeared to appeal weakly for sympathy from a man who was kept in suffering ignorance about his missing son. His pride would not allow it. A man does not appeal for sympathy. A man may ask simply for forgiveness, but he does not use a woman’s emotional devices to win sympathy. He heard Mercedes Aloys saying, not machismo, Julio, not you. No, he said to her and to himself—I will keep my pride. He began again: I am caught between … No, it is the same.

  He said, sitting upright, “Dion, I have arrested Mauro.”

  Ugalde uncrossed his legs slowly and locked his hands in his lap. He sat very still. Guard every word. I know, he wanted to say, you have had him for a week and you would have let us rot in misery. How do you know, Dion? The Fifth Assembly told me! What have you to do with the Fifth Assembly, Dion? Come, join your son in jail. The hills rose white and cloudy beyond the mesa, climbing to the high mountains and the frontier.

  “I am not sure that I heard you. Did you say you have arrested my son?”

  “Yes.”

  “For a crime or an opinion?”

  “Crimes, Dion. Bank robberies, armed attacks on Civil Guard barracks, membership in an illegal and subversive organization. Kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping?” Ugalde turned to look at him. “Kidnapping? When Huarte was kidnapped I read about it in the papers. I read about the West German consul. This one must have happened today. I have not seen it in the papers.”

  “Last Saturday, Dion.”

  “But you arrested Mauro today.”

  “Last Saturday.”

  “And still no word of it in the papers?”

  “No. Those are my orders. My superiors say, no word—yet.”

  “But for Maria-Angeles, rotting in fear for her son—there could not have been a word? To ease the misery?”

  Basa could say it now. It explained, without appealing for understanding. “My orders were explicit. I was to have no communication with you. That is why …”

  “Of course. And a friend … what is a friend? You let us rot, Julio, because you were ordered to. And what is the purpose of this peculiar meeting? Was this ordered? In a hotel room?”

  “No, it was not.”

  “You are defying orders today? My God! You could have sent the lady to me last Saturday? What is the difference between this day and last Saturday? A miracle of grace has happened?”

  He could protest that last Saturday he was in a towering rage with Mauro for what he was doing to his father and mother. He could say that today he was bitter because the corps, as jealous and possessive as a nagging wife, presumed to put a grim finger on his love for a rich woman, after all his years of devoted service, and had misinterpreted his disinterested friendship with Ugalde to his professional discredit and that professional humiliation waited for him with ruthless and unfeeling certainty round the corner. But Dion was angry and how can you explain to a man who is angry with you that a wounded conscience and a gnawing sense of injustice make the obligations of friendship easier to fulfill? How can you explain that this meeting in a hotel room is a breach of discipline and a blow struck for your own pride?

  So they passed by one another, like two men pacing backwards and forwards on a sidewalk, looking sidelong at faces that seemed familiar; not trusting enough to speak.

  “No miracle of grace, Dion. I have loved you well, that’s all. I couldn’t let this go on any longer.” It’s part of the truth, he thought. All I can afford.

  Ugalde got up and crossed the room. He did not want to be near Basa. He believed him and believed in his pain; his own persuaded him. He was afraid it would soften his will.

  “Is he guilty, Julio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before he’s tried?”

  “Yes.” Who should know better? he asked himself. Wasn’t I? “In the clothes closet there, I have tapes of their planning sessions. I want you to listen to them.”

  “Tapes? How would you get tapes?”

  “A Lieutenant Mieza in Bilbao called Mauro in and when they took his possessions, his gastronomic club key was among them. They bugged the place without really believing they would get anything important—and on the tapes in the flat below they had the plan to kidnap Señora Aña Anson and give her back in return for Vincente Hierro and ten million pesetas.”

  “Let me hear them, please.”

  Ugalde went back to the window and sat down. He listened, half-watching the honey-colored roofs that climbed tier on tier to the cathedral towers. To the left, a high building was under construction. The workmen went about their business behind great cane mats that sheltered them from the wind. Below, in the street, traffic policemen changed shifts, walking in line in their white helmets, black coats, white belts and gloves, with white traffic coats carried neatly under their arms. Workmen spread by cold, cold hand sand and gravel from the wide baskets suspended from their shoulders. The slippery streets shone in the cold sun. The voices on the tapes argued on. Mauro’s voice stirred him to a singular excitement. He wanted to cry out support for his son’s arguments against the man with the coldly bullying certainty in his voice. And when a disembodied voice threatened Mauro with what had happened to the young priest of Guecho, Ugalde shifted urgently in his chair, restraining his anger, his eyes blind with a wish to have been there to answer the threat.

  “He didn’t want to. He was coerced by threats of murder,” he said when the tapes ended.

  “He didn’t do it.” It was good to come to something that enabled them to touch one another as they passed. “He robbed them of their plan.”

  Ugalde asked carefully, “What does that mean?”

  Basa told him.

  “So the State owes him some gratitude?”

  Basa wanted to say, It owes me some also but states do not feel gratitude. “There are the other crimes, Dion. He admits them on the tape.”

  “How long will he get?”

  “The Señora Anson wants to testify for him and the girl and his friends. She’s a brave woman. She knew she was to be taken. She went into it with courage. We asked her to. She said she would. The State owes her something. As for me, I’ll do all I can.”

  “What can you do?”

  What was there to tell? That anything he said in Mauro’s favor would make his own cause worse; would appear to confirm the charge that an unwise friendship outside the corps had marred his judgment and bent his obligation to the force? “I can speak for him,” he said. “I have given my life to the corps. It should count for something.” It tasted sour in his throat.

  “How long will he get?” Ugalde asked again.

  “If favorable testimony is taken seriously, anywhere from three to ten years. We should hope for three. Perhaps.”

  “And when he comes out, the Fifth Assembly will kill him?”

  “You heard how they spoke on the tape.”

  “Julio, I want the truth.”

  Basa smiled sadly, “What is that?”

  “Was my son a police spy?”

  “Most certainly he was not. I have told you the truth.” About that.

  “Will you speak for him at his trial?”

  “Yes.” But he’ll be safer in Aña Anson’s mouth.

  Ugalde was close to tears. “Thank you, Julio.”

  Basa embraced him. “I’m sorry, my f
riend, I do not understand this life. I have become a bewildered old man.”

  “I have loved you well,” Ugalde said.

  “In my country,” Basa said, “they say ‘He loves you well who makes you weep.’ I do not understand that either, but I feel it.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Burguete.”

  “Has he a bed, a bucket? You’ll not let that camp commandant …? You’ll look after him, Julio?”

  “I’ll look after him.”

  “How is he?”

  “He seems well. And angry.”

  “He has an angry inheritance. When may I see him?”

  “You may not see him. Those are my orders.”

  “Goodbye, Julio.” Ugalde brushed past him clumsily. “Do not send for me again.”

  “I can’t. Those are my orders.”

  “In future, stick to your orders.” He rushed from the room and slammed the door behind him.

  11

  One does not ask pears from an elm tree.

  SPANISH PROVERB

  It was snowing again. It was snowing too much too soon this year. With the sort of luck I’ve been having, Ugalde thought, it won’t snow for days before and after we break Basa’s jail—that night the weather will be still and white and as easy for tracking as the reading of large type.

  That was why the barracks at Burguete and Zubiri were so important. That was why they were always on his mind. How do you shut them up without killing? If they, or Basa’s Summerhouse, get one chance to speak, the Civil Guard and the army will be so thick on the ground there’ll be no chance for anybody to get away. Everything’s modern, the mechanic at Zubiri said. This was no Arrabal raid of the simple hit-and-run days.

  There must be no killing. The thought rhymed in his head. It had to be done without killing. And it came to him all in one piece, how it would be done. It would amuse Basa if they were on the same side. Even his obsession, “timing,” fell away as a problem. The thing was perfect, simple and obvious. Everything’s modern—doctors as well as radio techniques. He felt near to omnipotence and could see no possible objection that anyone might raise.

  He was wrapped up, hunched on his horse like a Mongolian nomad, the snow gathering on him as he climbed the mountain to the farm of Carlos Echiverri. There was no hurry. Urbina would be there. He was curious about anybody else who might be at Carlos’ machismo supper. They would eat and sing and dance and drink first. He could do very well without that; he was in no hurry even to talk to them till he had gone over the scheme that came unbidden or out of some psychic reservoir, and understood its details and its needs. It would smash Basa’s professional pride; it would take them in and out without leaving a trace. I’m a bewildered old man, Basa said. Not that old, but plainly wounded and far more moved and distressed by having Mauro in jail than Ugalde had believed possible. Gaunt. Like a mask, his face was. I had to run from it, Ugalde remembered.

  He shook the snow and the thought away. The thought was disabling. He wrapped his will around him like a defence against friends, and turned his horse from the dirt road onto the track to Carlos’ farm. If they reject my plan, I can do it alone, without them, and leave Hierro in jail, he thought. It was a threat to use when the arguments began. He could hear the music of the homemade fiddles across the deep silence. Higher up the slope the dim lights of Carlos’ windows were like a cluster of candles. The snow was up over his horse’s hocks. The beast was slow, stepping high, laboring. He gave it time. The meeting itself made him nervously impatient. There’d be argument and his life had been spent without argument; decisions were made, serious decisions, in mutually loving survivors’ talk with Maria-Angeles. This would be different. He took more time in the byre, giving his horse a long rubdown with straw. There were four other horses. Two of them were Urbina’s, two belonged to Carlos. Who used one of Urbina’s horses? The men were dancing when he opened the kitchen door, Urbina making a great leap in a small space, facing the door to the byre.

  “The savior is come,” he shouted as he landed, signalling silence.

  Ugalde felt the venom boil in his belly. That was the man who seduced his son from the invincible family front. He was sure of it. The Basque language lessons he gave them were Urbina’s cover, and he had never seen it, never even suspected it. And Urbina had been laughing at him all the time. He hated the vet for his own blindness and the man’s disdain. This was the one he felt like killing, for Maria-Angeles’ pain, for his own suffering, for Mauro’s folly, even for Basa’s dilemma. Mauro was his vulnerable flank and this man found it. Survivors ought to forego children. He had never thought so before, but wasn’t poor old Mendez in the same boat, fighting for breath and life and his son in jail—for what? For wanting a trade union to be run by and for its members. His offence—how could it be an offence among reasonable men?—was righteous compared to Mauro’s. And who could help old Mendez? Ugalde stood in the kitchen doorway, blinded by his thoughts.

  Carlos elbowed Urbina aside, “Welcome to my house, doctor. Come in and eat. We kept food and wine for you.” He took the doctor by the elbow and steered him toward the kidney-shaped stone fireplace. “Get warm first. The dancing’s over.”

  “I had more leaps to show you,” Urbina protested petulantly.

  “Leap out of your skull,” Carlos said sharply, and the vet sat down at once on his bench behind the kitchen table. Where the power lay was made clear.

  Ugalde ate and drank crouching on a low stool, his earthenware dish of chickpea stew balanced on his knees. Carlos took a pair of bellows from among the pots and dishes keeping warm on the top slab of the fireplace and blew on the fire. It was unnecessary; the fire in the knee-hole well was blazing. Then he pulled a stool close to Ugalde and sat on it.

  The other three men were across the kitchen, Urbina behind the table, leaning on his forearms, watching the doctor; Paco, from the truck garage in the village, sat on a homemade chair in front of the table. Paco? That was interesting. How often have I patched Paco’s hands when he’s cut them at his work? Ugalde wondered. They were like the political police, this Fifth Assembly crowd. Who were they? Who knew? The third man sat on a stool near the door into the byre. Yes, they were like the secret police. Everything’s modern, this young man said to him when they drank coffee in the service station down at Zubiri. Like calleth unto like and the politicals and the Fifth Assembly circled one another like wolves before a fight. Poor Mauro, a lamb between wolf packs. Only the fire made a sound in the kitchen. Only Urbina appeared to watch Ugalde. The others stared patiently at the stone-flagged floor, and at the onion and garlic strings slung above, and at the homemade fiddles back on their hooks on the beams, and with their peripheral sight, at the doctor, nearing the end of his chickpea stew. He put his dish on the fire-top, took a long draught of red wine from an earthen pitcher and set the pitcher at his feet. Carlos washed his dish and spoon and put them in a heavy cupboard against the wall. They waited for Carlos and the silence remained. Ugalde studied their dark, weathered faces. Paco was a handsome man with grey hair under a beret, and a short moustache. The young man from the Zubiri service station had a narrow sharp face and a blue chin. His black hair was greased straight back. It shone, under the old lamp hanging from the beam above his head, like black leather.

  Ugalde felt his strength grow. There were no doubts in his mind. He knew exactly how to open the Summerhouse without a shot. It would be done his way. He would make small concessions to their experience, whatever it was, but it would be his way. He knew where he intended to begin and how he intended to proceed. He said to Urbina, “What experience have you of this sort of thing?” His right hand stroked the back of his head and his fingers dipped under the collar of his heavy coat on which melted snow was still drying. His tone was the edgy tone of a man trying to pick a fight.

  “Experience? You are asking me?” the vet said, pushed upright in derision, his big hands flat on the table.

  “Any?” Ugalde said, his hand on the back of his head.
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  “Tell us about yours,” Urbina said, “in France.” The theme seemed to stay on his mind.

  Ugalde bent suddenly forward and his right hand whipped from the back of his neck past his right ear. A knife slammed into the doorframe of the bedrom behind the kitchen. It was no more than two feet from Urbina’s head.

  Only Urbina moved. He was flat on the table, his head turned, watching the knife quivering in the frame.

  Ugalde stood up and took off his coat. Inside it, just under the collar and nestling in the sheepskin lining was a white sheath sewn against the white lining. He laid the coat along the back of the fire-top and walked across the kitchen to the doorframe.

  “Doing that makes me feel juvenile,” he said as he wrenched the knife from the wood. “I haven’t got a melodramatic nature.” He could feel his stomach trembling. I planned that, I provoked him for an excuse to scare him and shut him up and it was cheap and childish, he thought. After half a lifetime of gentle care, his own display stirred feelings of self-dislike. He went back to his stool and laid the knife at his feet. Do it as you planned it, he told himself. Mauro is the prize; these men are the tools. “My father-in-law taught me to use a knife,” he said. “If you will look at the supports on the stalls in my stable you will see that I have kept in practice.” He said to Urbina, who was upright again, “Urbina, bring your clownish mouth under control. You got my son into the Fifth Assembly. Why you did it I don’t know, but I suspect your patriotism is as thin as your courage. I think, in fact, that you had no better reason for doing it than childish jealousy because you are a vet and I am a doctor and by getting my boy into this you scored against the doctor …”

  “Doctor …” Carlos said.

  “Hear me out, Carlos,” Ugalde said. “I don’t talk much but if you want into Basa’s Summerhouse you will hear me out. Or I can leave now. Which will you have?”

  “Go on,” Carlos said, defeated by astonishment.

  “Urbina,” Ugalde came back like a challenge to his question, “what experience have you of this sort of thing?” He felt the effort on his nervous energy as if he had lifted a great weight too many times.