The Bird in Last Year's Nest

by Shaun Herron

  They met him in the kitchen. Villar and Concha sat on their stools by the wall, silent and watchful. Ugalde had begun to think of them as vultures.

  The priest took from a kitchen cupboard a sea bag stuffed with clothes. There were fishermen’s clothes for Ugalde and Mauro, and nuns’ habits for Maria and Pureza.

  “Your women will wear the habits and carry a basket on board. Two women will already be aboard. They will put on the habits and come ashore at once with the empty basket.” He took Ugalde’s hands in his and the doctor feared a blessing. The priest said, “You and your son will keep your hands in your pockets. Those are not fishermen’s hands. I will come for you at nine tomorrow night and walk with you to the boat. After that we hope and pray. Sometimes they get nervous and search the boats.”

  “These women who will be on board, Father. Are they in danger if they are stopped?”

  “No danger. They are nuns. They have done it before.”

  “What time do we sail?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Your name?”

  “Father Leopoldo.”

  The priest went anxiously away.

  “We’ve seen a lot go,” Villar said. “Two got caught.”

  “Where does the priest live?” Ugalde asked him.

  “Next door to the church on the other side.”

  All that day Ugalde did not speak. He lay on his mattress, staring at the ceiling, and once or twice Maria saw his eyes moisten, and came beside him.

  “You will not forgive me, Dion?”

  “Oh, yes. I will forgive you. I believe in forgiveness, my love.”

  “But you will not love me?”

  “I have loved you all my life. I will love you till its end.” He took her in his arms and cried.

  When it was dark, he put on the fisherman’s jersey and trousers and sea boots and beret.

  “Why?” Maria asked him.

  “I want to get used to them. You have to wear them like a fisherman.” He went to the water closet and in a moment, slipped quietly down the corridor and out to the street. The priest’s house was close, the night’s promenade around the bars was in full flood and the streets were crowded. He lingered on the edges of walking groups and reached the priest’s door. It took him no more than two minutes.

  “You’re a fool,” Father Leopoldo said and pulled him inside. “There are other priests here. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Father,” Ugalde said. “I need a telephone. You must have one here.”

  “You can’t have a telephone. You can’t see anybody. You’ll get back to Villar’s and stay there.”

  “I have a sick friend. I must say goodbye to him.”

  “You’re a fool. You’ll say goodbye to nobody. Get back to the house.”

  “Father,” Ugalde said, “I have been threatened and blackmailed by the Fifth Assembly and I’m tired of it. I have a simple need, to speak to my sick friend. I am going to speak to him. If you say no, I’ll do a little blackmailing of my own.”

  “You’re in no position to blackmail anybody. You couldn’t do it without risk to yourself. Now get back to Villar’s.”

  “Has it occurred to you that I no longer care?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Where is the phone, Father? or I’ll walk out of here and you don’t know what I’ll say, but you can be sure two words I’ll use will be ‘Father Leopoldo.’ Now where?”

  “Come this way.”

  Angrily the priest took him to the end of the corridor, to a phone on the wall. Ugalde fished from his pocket the visiting card Señora Aloys had given him. “Leave me,” he said to the priest.

  “No.”

  “Leave me.” It was loud. “Do you want the other Fathers to know what you are?”

  The priest withdrew from the corridor. Ugalde supposed he was around the corner, trying to listen. It was not a dial phone. The operator had difficulty hearing the number. There were delays through the Pamplona exchange. There were delays at the house of the señora where the servant who answered the phone had difficulty hearing his voice.

  But when the señora took the phone the difficulty appeared to resolve itself.

  “Señora. It is Ugalde. Please give Julio a message for me.”

  “He is here.”

  “No, no, don’t bring him. Tell him I will surrender only to him. If he will come to the Bar Klink in Guetaria tomorrow night at eleven, I will surrender myself to him. That is all.” He put the phone on its hook. The priest was not around the corner. He was not to be seen. He was probably in a common room with the other priests, listening fearfully for any sound that might make them curious. Ugalde slipped to the street and back to Villar’s. On the way, he passed two Civil Guards, heavily armed and they looked now like soldiers from Pancho Villa’s army. They looked hard at him. They walked the streets looking hard at everyone.

  Maria said, “Where have you been, Dion? We were worried.”

  “I went for a walk.”

  “You what?”

  “I went for a walk. I tested this outfit. I’m a country doctor with a red face and pale hands, so I put my hands in my pockets and joined the walkers.” He lay down on his mattress. “I passed two Civil Guards who studied me, but only the way they study everybody. And I came back.”

  “It was too dangerous, Dion.”

  “It was easy. We’ll reach the ship without any problems.”

  She lay down beside him and put an arm across his chest. “My Dion.”

  “Tell me the life we lived was a good life, Maria.”

  “It was, it was. You know it was.”

  “And it is over.”

  “There’s a new one.”

  “And you want that one.”

  “I will not let them debase us. To act once against them, then live our lives in poverty—that is defeat. We do not accept defeat, Dion. I will not accept defeat.”

  Mauro crawled to his father’s side. “You went out and walked.” It was not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Father, I was angry …”

  “I know.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “I love you, Mauro. Of course, I forgive you. You’ve changed your mind about how I betrayed you?”

  “It was not betrayal in that sense. It was just circumstances. How could you know what your friendship with Basa would come to? And they’re not supposed to have friends in the places where they serve. It was bound to go wrong.”

  “Of course.” Nothing has changed, he thought.

  “Father.”

  “Yes, Mauro.”

  “Please. Can you understand me? You did what you believed, when you were my age …”

  “No. When I was younger. By the time I was your age, I knew I was wrong.”

  “But I mean—you lived your life according to your judgment.”

  “Yes.” They had been talking while he was out. He knew it.

  “Let me do the same.”

  “Yes. I’m going to. Will you allow me the right to do the same?”

  “How could I have the right to do anything else? Isn’t that why we want to fight them?”

  “Do you know what atonement means?”

  “I think so. I should. We’re Catholics. Why?”

  “All I want to say to you is that when you fight evil with its own methods you create more evil and become part of the evil you fight. Will you think of that, some day?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t. But keep it in your memory.”

  “Father, you know I love you.”

  “Yes, I know. There is really nothing else of value in the world, but I don’t know how it works. Never, never, never the way you think it should. But I know we love one another. That will have to do us, won’t it? Let me sit up.”

  He took their money from his pocket, a thick stack of thousand-peseta notes that looked more impressive than it was. “I shouldn’t carry all this. We should split it. If one of us loses
a third, there’ll be two-thirds left.” He divided the stack in three. “Now we’d better sleep.” He held them to him, and swallowed his tears, and lay down again and did not sleep till it was morning.

  The basket came in the afternoon, full of bread and sausage and wine.

  Father Leopoldo came exactly at nine. “We will walk slowly,” he said. “I will walk with the nuns … the women, in front. You will walk immediately behind us. There will be many fishermen walking at the harbor tonight. Some of them will greet you as if they knew you. Greet them.” He looked at them critically. “Hide your hands.”

  Maria took a loaf and a sausage and a bottle of wine from the long basket and left them on the table. “Thank you,” she said to Concha.

  Concha said, “Seeing they’re not yours …” and nodded her head in ungrateful acknowledgment.

  They went into the night into the cobbled street and turned down the hill into the tunnel that ran under the church, down the steps and on, down to the harbor. The fishing fleet was sailing. It would be on the fishing grounds by dawn. Wives and children and fishermen crowded the harbor. Three pairs of Civil Guards wove their way slowly among the people, peering into bars, staring into faces, and whenever a pair of them passed and peered at the nuns and the priest and the Ugalde men, from somewhere close by, a greeting was called and an arm waved, but a name was never uttered.

  So they came safely to five fishing boats berthed gunnel to gunnel, the fifth and outside one the Virgin of Begoña. Seamen hurried to help the nuns aboard, handed them across the plank-walks from ship to ship and they disappeared down a narrow companionway, below decks. Moments later two nuns and the priest reappeared on the deck of the Begoña with their empty basket and were handed back to the wharf. They disappeared in the stream of people. Their work was done. It was half-past nine.

  They sat below on berths in the small fo’castle, fighting the smell of fish and salt water, and oil and stale air. And waiting.

  Ugalde sat beside Maria on the edge of a berth. Mauro and Pureza sat apart, moody and nervous.

  “I’ll be sick,” Maria said, and laughed an uncertain little laugh. “When will we get to Bayonne?”

  “First, they must fish. They can’t come home with empty holds.”

  “It will be terrible.”

  And long silences. Ugalde held her hand. Now and then he kissed it. He watched Mauro from the corner of his eye. What was he, after all, but a boy fighting to free himself from his father? What did Pureza call their family? A hothouse? He had loved his own father deeply, and deceived him to fight with Luis Arrabal. But in the end, I am a kind of version of my father. The young have to be free, not because they have permission to be free, but because they choose to be free. He could not govern their lives. By the same token he could not be responsible for their lives—neither for Mauro’s nor Maria’s—only for his own. He had to pay his own debts.

  But, God, it was crushing. His heart felt crushed. What did Basa say? “He loves you well who makes you weep?” I’m still not sure what it means, he thought, but I feel it as if I understood it.

  Pureza’s coat was lying on an empty berth. He got up and took the coat to a hook on the back of the door and slipped his one-third of their money into a pocket. “I’m going on deck,” he said. “Don’t come up till we’re at sea.”

  “What time is it, Dion?”

  “Half-past ten.”

  “Time is passing so slowly.”

  “It won’t be long now.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Lie down, now. Go to sleep if you can.”

  He passed Mauro and touched his head. His hand lingered and Mauro touched it and smiled; then Ugalde went out and closed the door.

  The captain was in the wheelhouse. He was a small, broad man with dark amused eyes. “If your women are sick at sea, they’re on your hands, doctor,” he said.

  “I’m going ashore, captain.”

  “You’re not.” The eyes were not amused.

  Ugalde took his gun from the pocket of his sheeplined coat and very deliberately checked it.

  “I’m going ashore, captain. I have unfinished business ashore.”

  “If you go ashore or use that ashore, don’t come back.”

  “Do something for me, a small thing.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll not be far away when you sail. Blow a few blasts on your hooter when you clear the harbor.”

  “We all do, when we clear the harbor.”

  “Don’t tell my family I’ve gone ashore.”

  “It’s your family. Maybe they’re lucky.” He did not conceal his conclusions or his contempt.

  Ugalde crossed the decks and the plank-walks and dropped the gun into the water as he stepped to the wharf; then he paused for a moment and looked back at the Virgin of Begoña. A great cry surged up in him. He destroyed it in his throat and walked away and did not look back again.

  There were fewer people now, and the Civil Guards in their pairs looked more numerous, and more watchful. But a long strike was over and the weeks had been tense. They were bound to be watchful and nervous. They looked at him but there was no sign in their faces that they thought more of him than of anyone else they looked at. His confidence grew.

  One of them said to him, smiling, “One last drink?”

  “One more,” he said. The policeman was young, with a clean-looking face and a pencil moustache. He looked like the young man from Seville, outside Basa’s headquarters in Pamplona, who loved his parents and longed to see them in April. The thought hurt him and he hurried away from it.

  The Bar Klink was on a corner where three streets met. It was the point where Miguel dropped them the day they came to Guetaria. He walked past the bar, taking a quick look inside, turned and came back. The streets were very quiet. He went inside. There were only half a dozen people in the bar. It was almost eleven o’clock. He ordered a beer and drank it slowly, at the bar. Basa did not come.

  He checked his money. Coin only. All his paper money was in Pureza’s pocket. He had enough money for two more beers. He had no gun. He was twenty minutes from the Virgin of Begoña. He was ashore and penniless and Basa was not going to come. Señora Aloys had not told him. Basa was in trouble; he was bound to be in trouble, a provincial commander drunk on duty among the ruins of his political prison—with the prisoners in the mountains or dead on the slopes, and guards dead, dying and sick. Señora Aloys could not be sure the call was from Ugalde. If Basa was in serious trouble, she would not want him to be more troubled. No, Basa was not coming. And what was he to do if he did not come?

  He left the bar and crossed to the opposite corner and stood in the doorway of a shop. Even the Civil Guards had disappeared. The place was quiet. Trucks passed, cars passed, but traffic was light. He stood, feeling the chill of the night air and it was half-past eleven. He could wait for only ten more minutes. And would the captain of the Begoña let him back on board? It had not occurred to him that Basa would not come, or that Señora Aloys might not tell him. He had made all his plans on the assumption that Basa would come.

  The German limousine came into the street from the direction of Bilbao. It came slowly, at a stealthy pace; driven by a woman, with a man beside her. Ugalde pushed back into the shop doorway as the man and the woman examined the street.

  He didn’t believe at first that the man could be Basa; a long gaunt wisp. But it was Basa, without his uniform. With his rich mistress. Why was she here, why was she driving? The car stopped beyond the Bar Klink and Basa got out. His suit hung on him like a scarecrow’s. He closed the car door and walked slowly back to the bar.

  Ugalde crossed the street and walked to the car on the driver’s side. “Señora,” he said. “He is very ill.”

  “He is where you wanted him, señor. Do not make him wait.”

  “Yes.” She dismissed me, he thought. Basa must hate me.

  Basa was at a table at the back of the bar. He had no drink. Ugalde walked to the table. “Julio,” he said like a guilty
child.

  Basa smiled. “I’m glad you came, Dion.”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Why would you not sit down?”

  “Will the señora drive us back to Pamplona or are there other arrangements?”

  “There are no other arrangements. Please sit down, Dion.” He sounded lifeless.

  Ugalde sat down opposite him. “I did it, Julio.”

  “I know.” He said it very gently, almost kindly, like a tired old man. “I’m glad you came, Dion.”

  He said that before. He is destroyed. He looks like a man destroyed. And I destroyed him. “We should go, Julio. You’re ill. I wanted you to deliver me to them. It was your due. But if I had known you were so ill …”

  “I can’t take you anywhere. We’re on our way to France.”

  “What?”

  “I am not a colonel, I am not a provincial commander. I am reduced to the rank of lieutenant and suspended without pay, Dion. My court martial is pending. I cannot arrest you. I would not arrest you. We are going to France. We shall not be back.”

  “I did this to you.”

  “No, you did not. They did this to me. They had my life, and my loyalty. I denied those even to my first wife. She was a good woman made ugly by ill-use. But it was not enough for this State, Dion.”

  “You are going?” It was twenty to twelve.

  “To France. We shall not return.”

  “You will not deliver me?”

  “We are going to France.” He was not steady in his chair. “We were married this morning. We shall not return. They told me I must be careful of her reputation, as if I was some kind of whoring sergeant. Because she is rich and of standing and I am a policeman. They fouled … they told me I betrayed my trust because of my friendship for you, Dion. They had my life and my loyalty and it was not enough. All for the nation. Nothing of me for me.” He said it almost with spirit. He was too tired; obsessive; wounded beyond sense. “I’m glad you came, Dion. We came this way to see you. Are you safe, Dion?”

  “I’ll walk with you to your car, Julio. To wish you both good luck.”

  “That will be nice.”

  He got up slowly, holding the table. Ugalde took his arm. They walked slowly to the door of the Bar Klink and into the street.