Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  Julia catches Harri lifting her hand up to her left armpit. It isn’t the first time she’s seen her doing that, and Martin points it out to her now. Why does she touch it so much? It seems she has a ganglion cyst the size of an apple, and nobody pays her any attention about it. She grabs Martin’s hand for him to feel it, but he doesn’t want to, because it gives him the creeps, he says, and it’s she, Julia, who stretches her finger out to touch a lump the size of a chickpea. She’s already shown Martxelo, she supposes. She has shown him, yes, but it was pointless, he says it’s nothing, he thinks she’s a hypochondriac. “So if your husband doesn’t think it’s anything,” Martin argues, “and he’s a doctor, after all, you should quit worrying and stop touching it all the time.” But he’s a pediatrician, she points out, and not one of the best. She puts her green case down on the floor and tries again to get Martin to touch her lump by taking one of his hands, which he’s hidden behind his back, hugging him as she does so.

  Julia, who’s gone to the kitchen on the excuse of having to clean the tea service, hears the commotion—Martin’s laughing and asking Harri not to tickle him, she’s complaining that he’s too rough and he’s hurting her. Julia doesn’t like their excessive familiarity and waits awhile in the kitchen, and when she goes back to the living room, she sees them sitting there docilely like two young children at the sudden appearance of their evil stepmother. “He doesn’t want to touch my cancer,” Harri complains, pretending she’s about to start crying. At times like that—although admittedly much less frequently now—Julia wonders if they’ve ever gone to bed together. She’s asked them, too, always in such a way that they could take it as a joke, but never one-to-one. “I’m sure you two have done it,” she says as a joke, seeing them playing around. They’ve always denied it, saying it would be like incest, that they are the living proof that good-looking, healthy, and clever men and women can have a good relationship without there being any carnal side to it; but Julia thinks they’ve done it at some point. To be more precise, she’s sure they did it once.

  In the garden, Harri asks Julia, “How’s our boy doing, is he writing?” The question itself is a tautology, because he’s only ever doing well when he’s writing. The main feature of the affliction of writers is that creative work is the only way they can find to be happy. Sándor Márai said something like that very recently. That’s why she prefers him to be writing, it makes it easier to be with him, at least he feels alive, it’s the only time he thinks he’s on the right track. That’s the only reason she wants him to write. She thinks that Harri, on the other hand, would like to share some of his fame as a writer. She’s often said that it’s a pity to let talent go to waste, and she’s always on the lookout to see what he’s writing, to see if his famous novel is getting anywhere, asking when he’s going to finish it. Martin, however, usually gives her evasive answers, if not outright lies, like a bad writer who wants to make her believe that he’s made more progress than he has.

  Julia knows for sure that he can’t stand having to satisfy the expectations of the people around him, whom he fears disappointing if he’s unable to write a successful novel. He’s even said as much to her, and even if he hadn’t, she’s convinced that he believes people admire him for his ability to write and, at the same time, that he isn’t sure whether he has enough talent to write anything that deserves to be called a novel. Julia thinks he does have that talent, and more than enough of it to write a decent novel, but she’d be happy if he took up watercolors if that made him happy.

  She says she’s bored of “our boy” but doesn’t give any details. In fact, she never really gives her any explanations, although she’s more than once been tempted to reveal some secret side of him in order to put Harri’s devotion to him to the test. Later on she’s glad not to have tried that, it wouldn’t have made her feel any better, and if she spoke ill of him, all she would achieve is that Harri would hate her. In any case, Harri puts any negative sides that Martin may have down to the dark part of his genius. And at the end of the day, although Harri’s idealized version of Martin drives her up the wall, she wouldn’t want to tarnish it. She decides to say that she thinks he’s making progress with his novel and that she sees him working on it every day, not mentioning that he spends the days in his ugly robe, sitting down and standing up in front of his computer, up and down, like a punished student incapable of working hard and, after studying, incapable of doing anything else; he hardly goes out, reads very little, wastes the hours away watching trash on television, and drinks a good deal.

  She doesn’t say that from what she’s read of, she’s not sure you could say if what he’s writing is a novel or not. She has to keep that quiet, among other things because she looked at his computer in secret.

  “I think he’s making some progress.”

  Harri looks at her in an inquisitive way, Julia thinks she’s trying to see to what extent she’s given her an evasive answer, and deciding to be more truthful, she says that she thinks he may have been a little stuck recently. Because of his perfectionism, she adds, so that she doesn’t think she’s doubting his talent, rather just the opposite.

  “If one could only help.”

  “He’s alone in his work.”

  “I’d do anything.”

  Turning toward the writer’s home, moving her head from one side to the other in order to confirm how much she means it when she says “anything,” so much so that it’s almost comical, as if saying to Julia that she has no idea just how serious she is.

  Julia knows she’s truthful and, perhaps because of that, cannot help being sarcastic. “You’d do anything, apart from putting up with him every day.” She says that in spite of herself, not much liking letting everyone know that she’s the unhappy companion of a genius, but it’s too late now to take it back. That’s what Harri thinks: Martin is a real genius whose talent should not be wasted, and the duty of all of those around him is to help him bring his work to the world. Julia’s the one whose good or bad fortune it is to be the writer’s main support. Everyone—Harri, Martin’s mother, sisters, and friends—tells her that he seems to be better with her, more balanced, more at peace, and that she must need a lot of patience because, as they all know, it’s no bargain living with an artist.

  There’s an enormous, tank-like machine moving around in front of Harri’s car, blocking the way out. So she has to wait. Every single day, they can see the lengthening of the channel that’s being cut into one side of the bottom of the valley to open the way for the high-speed train. Another hara-kiri, says Harri, looking gloomy. They’ve talked about that before, about how the house is going to end up right in the middle of a huge transport tangle, about the contradiction between wanting to protect your surroundings and wanting to have Paris at your doorstep. The two women are brought together by their nostalgia for the landscape. They never knew the surroundings at their finest, but they had known them when there were still baserris, large apple orchards, rich kitchen gardens that were fertilized using waste material brought from the tobacco factory—which had a smell they still haven’t forgotten—and elegant Belle Époque mansions with beautiful gardens.

  Now you hardly see a real piece of green land until you get to Antondegi hill. “Sagastizabal does not exist,” Harri says. The Sagastizabal baserri had been on the other side of the road, where the Elektra factory is now, and Julia had lived there until she was seven, until most of their land, which went all the way down to the river, got expropriated; her father had no choice but to sell the rest of it. He didn’t get much money for it, on the one hand because the land was only reclassified later on and the fixed price was nothing like the market value and, on the other, and most of all, because he had decided that whatever he got through this rejection of his primogeniture would be shared among all members of the family, because the obligation that came with being the firstborn was to keep the house going, which he had been unable to do.

  Julia has always bee
n proud of his decision, which then led him to become a coastal fisherman—he had always loved the sea, and the sea was his destiny—but regretfully, when he finally made his dream of owning a boat come true, at the age when other people usually retire, he had to start working in a foundry, because her mother could no longer bear the recurring nightmare in which her husband was found drowned. With inevitable irony, while working at the foundry, he bought a small boat for fishing baby squid after work and on the weekends, and then one Sunday morning, with fine weather and a calm sea, he went out, and the boat was found off Ziburu, empty. Julia remembers her father to have been an honest man. He was proud of having divided up the money from the sale of Sagastizabal among the family, and she had thought her mother was proud of that as well, although she had recently heard a few bitter comments about what he’d done, for instance about how they’d had to pay the price for his fine behavior and things along those lines, and seeing her mother’s frustration made Julia extremely sad.

  “Sagastizabal doesn’t exist.” Harri sounds moved when she says that, as if she’s guessed Julia’s feelings, and she puts her hand on her shoulder, which moves her in turn, because they aren’t usually very affectionate toward one another. The expression has become almost an aphorism for them, an aphorism about how to accept one’s inability to do anything. Something between the French c’est la vie—that’s life—and the Spanish se acabó lo que se daba—all things come to an end. “Gureak egin du, this is it for us. Sagastizabal doesn’t exist.”

  The small stone buildings that were once the stable, barn, and storeroom, as well as the apple orchard that gave the baserri its name, are still there; they don’t know who they belong to now. “There’s still something left,” she says, for the sake of saying something, and Harri slowly shakes her head. “Not much.” Once, Julia had even been jealous of her straw-colored hair. Now she wears it very short, in layers, which makes the disproportion between her head and body even more pronounced, because she does have a small head, and she moves it all the time to underline her words, in short movements, like a bird Martin often says. But she sees herself as a typical Basque woman, like the ones Arteta used to paint, thin from the waist up and strong from the waist down. Julia thinks she’s beautiful. After a certain age, and also because it’s more comfortable, she thinks it’s better to have short hair, because having long hair shows a pathetic desire to seduce, but she always puts off cutting her own hair, which is curly, black, and has a few gray hairs, mostly at the front, that she doesn’t want to dye.

  Julia doesn’t know whether to mention it or not when she sees Harri making a hidden movement to touch the lump on her armpit, under her coat. She thinks it would be better for her to find a specialist to remove it, but she doesn’t want to add to her worries, and at the end of the day, Harri isn’t a child. She takes ahold of her hand to pull it out of her coat. She says it’s probably best if she stops touching it so often and suggests she should get an appointment with Abaitua, “although if your husband thinks it’s nothing, there’s no reason for you to think otherwise.” She doesn’t answer immediately. “My poor husband”—she sounds tired and resigned—“he’s a master at not seeing what he doesn’t want to. He wouldn’t even notice if a tomato grew on my nose.” After another pause, she admits that lately, the more affectionate he is with her, the less she desires him.

  If Harri’s sincerity is not only obscene but also a little uncomfortable for Julia, it’s because, above all, she’s asking for something in return. Julia doesn’t want her to talk about her relationship with her husband, because she, Julia, would then have to tell her about her relationship with Martin, and she doesn’t want to. “But I’m not sad,” Harri says, with a smile that shows quite the opposite. “Now I’ve got something to be excited about.” Julia doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “That’s great. What is it, may I ask?” Another smile comes with the answer, and Julia really doesn’t know if she’s joking or not. “The man I met at the airport, of course!”

  “You don’t believe me, either, just like that idiot,” and she points toward the house. “Because he doesn’t believe me, does he?” In spite of what the question might suggest, Julia’s incredulity doesn’t hurt her as much as Martin’s; she doesn’t care about hers. “I don’t know,” she says to avoid the issue. The enormous caterpillar tractor has turned around and is throwing up a thick burst of black smoke from its vertical exhaust pipes, and now Harri can move her car. “It really is late now,” she says as she opens the door, but she doesn’t get in, as if she were looking for the right words to say goodbye with. They’re at the top of the stairs that lead down to the road. Julia hasn’t used them for some time, even though it’s the shortest way to get to the house. For some time, there’d been a chalk outline of a human body a couple of steps away from where she is now. She doesn’t remember if more than one person died in that attack, which wounded several. At least the one worker from Elektra, of course, on his way to work at the factory. It had been an enormous explosion. The roar that shook the house had been terrible, but the silence that followed it had seemed even crueler to her, and then screams, and later on police sirens, and ambulances and fire engines. She imagines she must have followed the daily reports at the time on how the wounded were doing, but now she only has a vague memory of it, like the residues of a nightmare.

  A scruffy looking woman kicks up a fuss, because they’re in the way. She shouts loudly in Spanish about the damn cars—“¡Coches de mierda!”—and that’s the most polite thing she shouts, but they pay no attention to her. Harri, before getting into the car, whispers in her confidential way, “People get bitter and demanding because life’s not going well for them.” Julia thinks that maybe she’s got Martin in mind when she says that, as well. In any case, she mentions him before setting off. “Take care of him.” “And you take care, too.”

  Her mother is alone at home. They’ve just come back from Otzeta, and Zigor’s at her sister’s house. “I wasn’t expecting you.” Julia doesn’t think she sounds annoyed, but it is obvious that she isn’t glad to see her. She doesn’t like her mother making it so obvious that she would rather she start living with Martin once and for all. She understands her but thinks her opinion is offensive, because it has nothing to do with having evaluated any of Martin’s actual qualities—which, by the way, she doesn’t think she has a high opinion of; at best she seems to find him strange—and everything to do with the fact that Martin comes from a good family. The best family of all those she knows. Respectable people, moneyed, your classic nationalists. It makes her angry, or rather it disappoints her that her mother thinks that Martin’s mother—a conceited, embittered old woman—has “a lot of class” and that whenever she comes up in conversation, she calls her “Doña Sagrario,” like most people from the neighborhood do.

  She’s annoyed to find the refrigerator almost empty, and she realizes it’s a very masculine reaction. She decides to make an onion omelet, and while she beats the egg, it occurs to her that not so long ago, it would have been unthinkable not to find enough there to be able to get a decent dinner together. As unthinkable as living with a man without marrying him. As a child, the refrigerator had always been full of leftovers. Some stew, cod with tomato, or a bit of potato omelet. She’s hungry. As she watches the egg congeal around the onion, she remembers that Martin bought some Russula field mushrooms, and she feels a little sad. Now she regrets, or, more precisely, she’s frustrated that she wasn’t able to stop getting angry about seeing Martin so happy as he waited for his American tenant to arrive. Because that’s what she felt angriest about. She wonders what he’s doing, whether he dared to invite her out for dinner. She supposes not, his seduction techniques are more slow-moving than that.

  She can see the house from her kitchen window, there on the low hill, standing out against the cobalt, almost black, sky. There are still no lights on in any of the windows, but the one over the door that looks out onto the garden has already be
en turned on. She notices that she misses the house when she leaves it. She particularly misses the piano when she’s in her own ugly house; even if she had one, she wouldn’t be able to play it without irritating the neighbors, not with those paper-thin walls. The same question pops into her mind for the second time recently: To what extent has Martin’s status stopped her from breaking up with him once and for all? At her age, she’s no longer a passionate defender of romantic love, but she is worried that she may have ulterior motives. She’s sure that she read in Beauvoir’s La vieillesse that a person’s money is as intrinsic to them as their nose or the color of their eyes, it’s consubstantial, in fact, and there’s no reason why being attracted by a man’s status and the security, material well-being, and other things that come with it should be less dignified that falling in love with his physical attractiveness; however, after spending more than half an hour looking, she isn’t able to find the exact text. But she has come across a curious word—gribouillisme: fait d’aller au devant des ennuis qu’on cherche à éviter. It means preempting troubles one would seek to avoid, which is one of Martin’s tricks when he deliberately puts himself across as an old man.

  She puts the plate with the omelet on the ugly piece of oilcloth that’s laid out over the table.

  The original white, red, and green squares—there’s always been a weakness in the house for those colors, the Basque national colors, especially in the kitchen—are worn away from having been scrubbed so often. She’s always told her mother that she hates that tablecloth, and oilcloth in general; she’s fed up of buying tablecloths of all colors and types and her mother always using that one. Although she keeps things clean and tidy, she isn’t interested in decoration, she doesn’t think it’s necessary, and of course that’s what she takes changing tablecloths to be. It’s fine in other people homes, at Martin’s, for instance. But not at her house.