Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  Martin goes to Donostia to collect the Beasain blood sausages he’s ordered and tells them to look after the beans, which he’ll leave on the stove with just the right amount of water. Happy, content; he doesn’t seem to mind that he’s used up the whole morning and probably won’t be able to do any work all day. Julia wants to accept the situation with the best possible goodwill—she won’t be able to translate her daily quota of pages today, either—but before she knows it, she’s sitting down in front of the computer and has taken its cover off. The young American stands up; Julia thinks she doesn’t know where to go, that she’s not at ease. She tucks her hair behind her ears, which is something that Julia herself does when she has to make a decision. She doesn’t want to get in the way. She gives a little laugh. Now that the sun has disappeared behind a cloud, her eyes are darker, and Julia likes the way she looks at things. She’s not in the way, she says, as she covers the computer again; she doesn’t feel like doing anything.

  An occasional translator. That’s how she defines herself when the young American asks her if she’s a writer. A translator once in a while. She’s translating Martin’s latest book of short stories, Historias de náufragos, the title, which in English means “Shipwreck Stories,” being taken from the two longest stories, “Shipwreck Stories I” and “Shipwreck Stories II,” and in fact, all the characters seem to be lost at sea, as well. She’s translating the second one right now and wants to finish it today. It’s about a man who has trouble relating to others—a typical Martin subject—and who’s so timid that when he reaches the beach, half-drowned, and with cramps in both legs, he can’t bring himself to wave his arms around and shout for help, because he’s afraid of looking ridiculous and prefers to hang onto his dignity and poise. Something that could easily happen to Martin himself. He won the Premio Euskadi for the book, it came with a sum of money earmarked for translation, and Martin made her a generous offer in exchange for her doing it, giving her the prize money itself as well as the money just for the translation, so she enjoys the working conditions that translators really need and don’t normally have. (Her eyes wander over to the little bronze statue that came with the prize—it’s a tree, maybe a yew, with a face at the top, and because it’s heavy and has felt stuck to its base, they decided to use it to hold the gallery door open, but she decides to leave it to the prizewinner himself to tell her about that, so that he can enjoy showing her how unimportant he thinks prizes are.) With regard to a question he’s often been asked, about why he doesn’t translate his work himself, Martin usually says it’s impossible, citing as evidence his experience with a couple of short stories. He found the work of translating them tiring and uninteresting, because being the author meant he was free to betray the text continually, and in order to avoid difficulties, or to make improvements, he took it so far away from the original text that the final result was a re-creation of the text, perhaps better than the original version, but it certainly wasn’t the original version. He found it impossible, more than anything else, because he had work waiting for him that required greater creativity. That’s what he told Julia when he convinced her to accept the job. He’s a writer, probably a crappy writer, but a writer, not a translator. It gave Julia the chance to fulfil her dream of asking for unpaid leave for a while from her job at the regional government office working as an administrator in the translation department. Her job there was as an admin worker, not a translator, she wants to make that clear right away. She didn’t have the necessary qualifications. Her life story’s quite complicated, and for one reason or another, she doesn’t have any official qualifications, so her only chance was to apply for admin jobs. Of course, translating work, with a few exceptions, especially when it consists of translating boring administrative texts that nobody will read from Spanish into Basque simply in order to comply with laws about bilingualism, isn’t very rewarding in any case.

  That’s her life. Because she is incapable of translating nonstop for long, she also took on the job of classifying Martin’s books and, at the same time, transcribing the sentences that he has underlined in them, filing them away in order to build up a nice “base” for his library, and so it was perhaps fitting that they were kept piled up against the baseboard at the back of the closet. Martin envies writers and speakers who are able to give out appropriate quotes on the spot; having a bad memory, he finds it hard. He’d say that he always reads with a pencil in his hand, like a chicken pecking around in the grass, waiting for clever, precise, special sentences to turn up, to be able to grab them, and that practice of keeping these quotes in the computer, if not in his head, whether or not he ever uses them, serves to console him. Julia doesn’t think this “base”-building work is much use, at least she’s never seen Martin ever using any of it, but she enjoys transcribing, especially when she doesn’t feel like doing anything else. She doesn’t follow any particular criteria for choosing the books, sometimes picking them up without even looking at the covers, other times being guided by her tastes or mood: Proust, Rousseau, Beckett . . . They’re the authors she has on the table right now. She always finds the underlined parts interesting. Often they’re things that Martin himself could have written, normally sentences that express his own ideas, things he might say, or wished he had said, or in some way or other has in fact said. She admits that it’s because of this job that often, when she’s reading, she finds herself trying to guess which lines he would underline, and she thinks she normally gets it right. And then, sometimes, she’s surprised that he hasn’t paid attention to certain ideas, reflections, or points of view that she would have chosen, that his eyes have slipped over them and he hasn’t used his pencil, and discovering these moments still surprises her.

  August 31, 1813. The liberators of Donostia set fire to the city during the Peninsular War. Who needs enemies with friends like that?

  September 13, 1936. Navarrese Requetés took Donostia during the Spanish Civil War. People always say that they lost the greatest number of men when they tried to get into the regional government headquarters through the revolving door.

  September 27, 1975. The last Franco-era executions, including those of two Basques: Txiki and Otaegi.

  Relevant events because she’s decided to finish her translation by the end of August; because September 13, as well as being her son Zigor’s birthday, is when her unpaid leave from her job with the regional government finishes, so she’ll have to decide at that point whether or not she’s leaving the job for good, and, if she isn’t, the twenty-seventh of September is the day she’d have to go back to work, at eight in the morning, that’s when she’d have to clock in.

  She doesn’t know why she’s telling the young American about how Martin’s offered to continue paying her to translate another book of short stories, which would allow her to gain more experience in literary translation that she could then make use of to get a professional position in the field but that she doesn’t know whether to accept or not because it’s difficult to give up her job with the regional government, seeing as it’s a permanent position, and seeing as how she’s also begun to feel like a kept woman, and especially seeing as how continuing to work in that house would mean maintaining a link with Martin that just prolongs her ambiguous relationship with him. Their professional relationship gets mixed up with their other one, it props it up considerably, and she imagines that if it were to end, she would find it easier to know if she should remove herself from his entire life, as well. Does she understand what she’s saying? The young American looks carefully at Julia’s lips as she talks, as if she could read them. Why has she dared to bring up this fear that she hasn’t told to anyone else? Why tell this foreign girl and not Harri? She’s not sure. Perhaps Julia doesn’t care what she might think precisely because she’s a young foreigner, but she feels tenderness for her when she asks if she understands and the American girl nods her head up and down like a schoolchild.

  Another train goes by. Now it’s an express, or a high
-speed train—she doesn’t know the difference, it’s one that doesn’t stop here, anyway, one going slowly in the direction of Irun, and its slowness means that another express or high-speed train will come the other way in less than a minute. She keeps quiet, listening, against her will, to hear if the train bound for Hernani—bound for Madrid, in other words—really does come, and it becomes clear to her that she hasn’t said anything to Harri about her doubts because she knows Harri would advise her to carry on as translator, secretary, maid, or whatever else to Martin, because she thinks it’s what’s best for the boy, for him to be able to finish his novel, and that’s what matters most.

  They both keep silent for a while, for quite some time after the train that justified their not speaking goes by. Julia thinks that she’s put the young woman in a difficult position by telling her things that are fairly intimate, and thinking that makes her feel ashamed, and she blushes. She’d like to break the silence with conversation leading away from personal matters. But she can’t think of anything to say except that she’ll soon get used to hearing the high-speed trains go by. A stupid thing to say, and the girl replies to it in a way she finds strange.

  “The ability we have to get used to things can be a problem.”

  Julia is tempted to ask what she means, but she’s stopped by the fear of knowing just what she’s trying to say. Even so, there isn’t any apparent irony when she says it, and her smile now shows the opposite of having any bad intentions. Just to say something, she says she hopes that at least in the case of the noise from the trains, she’ll find the ability to get used to things helpful, and the girl nods her agreement. Then she says, “I hope you’ll make the best decision for yourself on September thirteenth.”

  What makes her speak about herself once more when she hears that date?

  Why does she feel the desire to tell her about the important decision she has to make before Zigor’s birthday? Fifteen years old. A man already. The girl, of course, doesn’t know that she has a son. Julia explains that Zigor is a name from the Middle Ages and that in Basque it means “whip” or “punishment.” It’s true it’s a name that sounds nice for men, but right now she doesn’t think it appropriate. A name that can mark you. Because it was Zigor’s father’s nom de guerre. She doesn’t know how to explain that and, to keep things short, decides to tell her it’s a nickname, when she sees Harri and Martin walking up the garden path toward the house.

  “That’s some happening he’s put together with the bottles,” says Harri as she comes in and throws her small green briefcase and a couple of Auzmendi bags on the sofa. She looks lively. In fact, she always looks lively, or at least as if she has something to tell you. “What luck, the doctor says the boy’s all right,” she says to Julia. She, of course, remembered that he had an appointment. She’s brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate, she knew they weren’t going to find anything wrong with him, and she doesn’t pay any attention when Martin says he’s still waiting on some results to come in—the most important thing is that the doctor didn’t find anything wrong with him during the checkup. “Did you go with him?” she whispers in Julia’s ear as she kisses her hello. A bit of smart aleckiness on her part—she knows he always likes to go by himself—and Julia almost replies that she’d happily accompany her if she ever decides to get her lump looked at, but in the end she just says, “He’s a grown boy now.” Harri gives her a look as if to say “geez, what’s with you?” and then she turns toward the American lodger. “So you’re our penthouse girl.” She takes both her hands and sits beside her on the sofa with that warmth of hers that Julia finds so intimidating. She’s a torrent.

  “What did you say your name was? What do you do? Don’t you get bored here? Why have you come to this crazy country?”

  She says that her name, Lynn, could be a man’s or a woman’s, it’s a short form of Linnet, Lynnette, Linda, or the ending of names such as Madeleine and Carolyne—Lynn, Lin—or it could come from the German name Lynna, which means waterfall. With regard to why she’s in the Basque Country, she mentions the San Fermín festivities and her friend’s research again. She works, as Martin and Julia know, as a teacher at the Columbia University School of Public Health. “How interesting!” They’re almost colleagues, because Harri’s an epidemiologist, a civil servant in the Basque government’s Department of Health. She adds, with a gesture of regret, that she chose an easy lifestyle, and that she’s not sure if she did the right thing.

  The beans. Julia doesn’t remember the beans until Martin gets up to see how they’re doing—“Let’s see those beans!”—but she beats him to it, throwing out the excuse that she wants to drink some water. It’s the beans that need the water—they’re dry, as hard as stone, and about to get burned. She adds more than a quart, turns the heat all the way up and then down again when the water starts boiling, all the while listening to the voices from the living room. Now it’s the young American who’s asking about work—it turns out Harri’s organizing a research project about labor and birthing practices, and the American girl keeps on saying “how interesting.” Even though Julia can’t understand what they’re saying very well, she’s glad they’re talking quite loudly, because that way Martin won’t realize she’s cheating with the beans, mashing up a few in a cup in order to thicken the sauce.

  When she goes back to the living room, Martin’s clearing the table of its stacks of books, which are laid out in categories, and the other two are still talking about work. Harri can’t find anyone to be her temporary assistant for collecting data at the Donostia Hospital registry office, apparently the people who would be good at it all have jobs already and wouldn’t be interested in the pittance being offered anyhow. But the Columbia University sociologist is interested. At first Harri thinks she’s joking, but she says she’s not, she’s serious—she doesn’t have anything else to do until her friend comes back, and the job would be good for her, a chance to be around other people and see how hospitals here work. She’d be happy to do the work unpaid. Harri says she’s delighted and checks two or three times that she’s not pulling her leg—it really would be very interesting for her to get the chance to observe her work—and after hugging her several times, Harri tells Martin to open the champagne, they’ve got a lot to celebrate.

  The champagne isn’t cold enough yet, and Martin prefers to start with the 2001 Le Pin he’s set aside for lunch. They toast the Columbia University lecturer and the fact that Martin’s check-up has gone well.

  “Do you like the beans?” All three of them think they’re fantastic. While they eat, Martin talks about the art of getting the amount of water right. It seems he doesn’t remember that he told the young American all the secrets about how to cook the beans already when he first put them on the stove—sometimes Julia finds his repetitions worrying—and of course he hasn’t realized that they actually needed more water at the last minute. Julia thinks that although he knows about gastronomy—and he should, he’s gone to excellent restaurants often enough—he doesn’t have much idea about the basic principles of tasting food, the exact way to evaluate sauces, stews, and the ripeness of fruit that comes from sharing your meals with a father who knows how to distinguish between tomatoes that are local and ones that aren’t, who knows where peas and runner beans come from, and who can tell with his eyes closed if what he’s eating is a sea bream, a common two-banded sea bream, a common pandora, or a gilt-head bream. Julia’s father wouldn’t have had any doubt that the beans were going to need more water at the last moment. She has a theory about it, at least to an extent: the children of wealthy families are brought up in more Spartan conditions—with the maids in the kitchen or the friars at a boarding school—than those of working-class families, who are normally brought up by mothers whose only job is to take care of their families, slaves who cover their children with affection. If that’s right, then the children of well-off families have more need for affection than families that would be classified as middle class o
r working class. Remarkably, Martin—who says he didn’t sit down to eat with his parents until he was sixteen—agrees with her theory completely.

  The young American says she was brought up by her mother, although she doesn’t say why. Women who are brought up like that are responsible, but they may distrust men. Julia thinks that, but of course she doesn’t say it. Harri starts talking about the problems she’s had as a mother. She doesn’t know if she’s done the right thing in exiling her daughter to England. She doesn’t think she ever gets it right with her, starting with giving her her own name, Harritokieta. Apparently, giving children their parents’ names limits their development, and that’s not even taking into account the heavy burden of the name itself. She has to explain that harri is “stone” and harritokieta is an “outcropping,” so that the American girl can understand the joke, and that makes Julia think of Zigor and of what having been given his father’s nom de guerre must mean for him, how he deals with that particular inheritance. Meanwhile, Harri’s giving a highly comic version of the trouble that her name, which was handed down to her by her mother, as well, like a condemnation, has given her. People often ask her if the shortened version of her name isn’t a man’s name, or say it reminds them of Dirty Harry, and it’s even worse with her full name, Harritokieta. What a difficult name, they usually say to her, and what does it mean (obviously, barbaric names must mean something—Sitting Bull, White Eagle, and so on), and of course, when she tells them what it means, they raise their hands to their heads in astonishment. And this might easily be coming from someone called Pilar, Pilarica, Piluca, or Pilarin, all of which come from the Spanish word for “pillar,” and that’s a name that receives complete impunity. She’s sure it’s a very Spanish attitude—how many times has she heard someone being described on the television news as “de nombre impronunciable”—having an unpronounceable name—and that never happens to her when she’s abroad. In London, nobody makes the excuse that her name’s too long or difficult, and they certainly don’t make stupid comments. The young American laughs heartily when Harri imitates other people’s gestures, and unexpectedly, she has no difficulty saying Harritokieta, and she thinks the shortened form that her daughter uses, Harritxu, is very pretty.