Everyone in their professional environment, including Abaitua, both at the hospital and elsewhere, was convinced that he was going to be made the permanent head, thinking that because of his reputation and professionalism, nobody else would even stand for the job. There was a consensus that the job was his, and although he enjoyed declaring the opposite, he was pleased by that. For mostly aesthetic reasons, he felt obliged to say that he was taking the post against his will and that it was going to be a great sacrifice for him. He complained to those above him and those below him, everywhere, about all the management work he was going to have to do, which would rob him of time to study and to practice medicine, but of course that wasn’t the whole truth, because being the head of the department would also bring considerable rewards: as well as pleasing his vanity more than anyone could imagine, he also imagined that the position would enable him to put into practice the improvements he had in mind.
On the very day the position was officially announced, Arrese turned up at his office and said he was applying for it himself. Abaitua remembers the details of the conversation very well, he’s relived it hundreds of times. First, as soon as he came into the office, and before saying what his visit was about, before saying what needed to be said, he spoke to him, seemingly offhandedly, about Teresa Hoyos. Apparently, she was being treated by Arrese now. Very few women have ever left Abaitua’s care without giving a reason, but Hoyos is one of them. She’d called to cancel an appointment of hers and hadn’t returned. It wasn’t because she’d forgotten it, or because of any sort of negligence on her part, and in fact, she wasn’t that type of person. According to the nurse, she hadn’t accepted the alternate appointment date she was offered. Abaitua is sure about that, because he’s often asked the nurse to tell him what happened over the phone with the woman, to remember the exact words used, whether she noticed anything in particular while they were talking. He asked her so often that once, overcome by nervousness, she even started crying; Abaitua decided at that point not to mention Teresa Hoyos’s name ever again, in order not to make the nurse nervous, and because he thought she might be starting to have strange suspicions on seeing him so affected by losing a patient. But when he heard that she’d started going to Arrese, he lost not only the shred of hope that she might come back one day but also the precarious hypothesis he’d formed about why she’d left. In fact, ETA had just killed her father, who’d been a colonel or a lieutenant colonel of logistics, and Abaitua thought that it was because of that sad event and due to an understandable feeling of rejection toward nationalists and their kind that she wanted to have nothing to do with people in any way connected with them, including himself, even though he was a long way from sharing the ideology of her father’s assassins; she would definitely consider him to be a nationalist, and so he was, though not a very fervent one any longer. It wasn’t the sort of behavior he would have expected of Teresa Hoyos, but he wanted to hold onto the theory, because it was the best one he could come up with. However, her going over to Arrese completely invalidated it, because the man was a confessed, open, proud nationalist.
He asked, in a straightforward way, how she was, and the answer he gave was that she was as beautiful as ever. He added that he thought her a very sensitive woman. “Sensitive and fragile,” he said, and Abaitua, even though he thought the description correct, was astonished. So she was, he agreed. He realized that Arrese’s mentioning the woman was motivated by more than just the pleasure of rubbing his nose in the fact that he’d stolen one of his patients, and suddenly he felt all the symptoms of an acute spike in blood pressure—his blood beat fast in his veins, he felt his neck go tense, a thudding in his ears, a tingling sensation in his fingers and toes, saw little lights in his clouded vision. So, it was undeniable that Hoyos had left him, and she’d probably done so because she felt mistreated somehow. He felt lost, defeated. For the first time in his life, he felt lessened in the presence of that clumsy fool. It was also the first time he heard that only a certain amount of intelligence was needed in order to serve as a department head. Less so than to be a doctor, in fact. Then he mentioned bureaucratic inertia, the prevailing lack of professional commitment, politicians’ negligence—all the things that Abaitua usually complained about. He understood that for Abaitua—sensitive and delicate as he was, and with such different ambitions than himself—being the head of the department would be a thankless task. That’s what he’d come to say, that Abaitua was a research man, a scholar, too demanding and too much of a perfectionist to be able to handle people, while he, on the other hand, had broad shoulders and really enjoyed giving orders and in fact that was all he was actually good for. “I understand why you’re not happy, this isn’t really for you,” he said with great conviction, placing a paternalistic hand on his shoulder. Abaitua felt profoundly demoralized but forced himself to say that he wanted to cure the sick, that that was his vocation and duty, and he had no intention of putting himself forward as department head.
Nobody was surprised by his decision. In fact, he even got the impression that nobody was expecting anything else. Pilar thought it was a coherent decision. “Good for you, let someone else put up with those idiots,” she said, adding that she hoped he would have more free time from then on. He doesn’t know to what extent his son, who was still a teenager back then, felt disappointed by his lack of ambition, and he tried at least to explain why he didn’t want to be a boss. Fortunately, nobody could imagine just how frustrating it was for him to see everyone accept so relaxedly the fact that he’d renounced the position, and to an extent, that relaxed acceptance bothered him, and it still does, their understanding that he turned his nose up at the difficulties, power, and even the money that come with leadership when absolutely everybody else would have killed to rise up in the hierarchy. Apparently, he’s “like that.” And because he’s apparently like that, he’s forced to behave accordingly. So he works well beyond his official hours, often does post-operative checkups at night and on public holidays, and that seems perfectly normal to his colleagues, who might easily leave a patient lying open on the operating table for him to deal with so that they can rush off to their own private practices, because that’s “their thing,” just as golf is some other people’s thing, a hobby. Pilar’s often said that he’s an addict to the practice of medicine. He wonders what she would say if she saw what he’s really like—he, as Arrese knows, does everything out of weakness and cowardice, out of guilt.
Every time Arrese looks at him with that mocking half-smile, as he’s doing now, Abaitua becomes afraid he’s going to say something about Teresa Hoyos. Normally Arrese leaves after giving his peculiar introductions. That’s what he always does after greeting everyone, puffing himself up a bit, telling a joke or two, and then quickly, when he gets bored, pointing upward at the ceiling and saying that he has a meeting with “the man upstairs,” the director, in other words, and then he leaves Abaitua to lead the meeting. Abaitua figures he’s staying on longer today because Harri Gabilondo’s there. They have a strange relationship. Harri Gabilondo always speaks poorly of him. She says he has a lack of style and a coarseness that’s fairly common among Basque men, but Abaitua thinks she also finds him attractive. Now, while Gabilondo is explaining certain technical considerations, Arrese listens to her with a smile on his face and his hands behind his neck, almost lying down in his chair. He’s wearing his usual green scrubs with no coat, although he seldom goes into the operating theatre, because he saves all his strength for operating on whatever they throw at him at Pilar’s father’s clinic, of which he’s a shareholder. He’s a strong, healthy man, physically attractive, although also very uncouth, to tell the truth. You can see from his body—muscular arms, a bit of a belly (though not too much of one), supple movements (thanks to exercise; he switched from pilota to golf several years ago)—that he both leads an active life and likes to frequent cider houses and grills. Although he’s a little younger that Abaitua, he doesn’t think he looks it, maybe because hi
s hair’s completely white. Harri Gabilondo says he perfumes himself with testosterone. Abaitua finds his blatant masculinity revolting—the mass of hair coming out the wide neck of his scrubs, his habit of taking his feet out of his shoes and massaging them, his shameless scratching of his genitals, which he’s exhibiting now, leaning back with his legs stretched all the way out, his arms above his head, showing off his hairy armpits without a care in the world. But many people like him a lot, because he lets people get on with things and because he’s a nice man, an uncomplicated man.
Evenly-suspended attention. He likes the term, which psychoanalysts use to describe the technique of listening to things in a mechanical way without paying any special attention to what’s being said. Abaitua, however, has another way of listening: as a child, he would have his in the clouds but without leaving the world completely behind, a technique he used for listening to what the friars were saying, and when suddenly one of them would demand “So, Abaitua, what have I been saying?” he’d be able to repeat their last sentence. Nowadays, too, in uselessly extended meetings like this—the type in which some people feel the need to repeat what they’ve already said and others indulge their belief that time is better spent in meetings than working—he still uses that way of not paying attention to what’s being said, listening to just the words and doodling on a piece of paper meanwhile. He’s still good at drawing and remembers Guyton’s manual on physiology. He keeps himself entertained drawing the figure of a woman seen from the front, marking her arteries, ligaments, muscles, nerves and veins, celiac artery, ureter, uterus, vagina, ovarian artery, lower vasa vasorum, cephalic artery, femoral artery . . . until he realizes that the young American sociologist’s looking at him, and they exchange a look of mutual understanding that says that they’re fed up, bored. And then a smile. He remembers that when Harri Gabilondo said that she was going to bring an American sociologist with her, Arrese said it wasn’t going to be helpful having one of those feminists who believe women should give birth sitting down and that sort of stuff sticking her nose into things. He laughed at his own comment, as well. Her skin is quite white, maybe too white, but she looks healthy.
Two hours to sort out what could have been done in half an hour. A way with words is not a strong point in our country. In general, people approach even the simplest matters in circular movements that close in on the issue little by little, and Abaitua finds it annoying. It seems the young American sociologist doesn’t like it, either; she shows her impatience a couple of times when people are unable to define an issue and take their time about it. “Anyway,” she says, using both hands to tuck a lock of hair behind each ear, unable to hide her impatience. Then she expresses herself directly and clearly, although also apologizing for her lack of linguistic skill. It seems it isn’t a matter of her mastery of the language, more that she knows how to use her linguistic resources well, limiting herself to expressing her ideas in a simple way and without using any rhetoric. She doesn’t make many gestures. She rests her forearms on the table and holds her hands together, a little raised up, showing no sign of being irritated. Her fingers are very thin, and when she talks, she looks at the pen she’s playing with, but she’s also able to look people in the eye. There’s no doubt that she’s clever, and she uses biochemical terms correctly. She also seems to have that lack of inhibition that Abaitua envies so much in foreigners when it comes to things that affect her personally, when she wants to clarify where she’s going to be, and what her specific role is. One of us wouldn’t dare to be so open and direct on their first day, and we’d end up letting loose our stored up irritation later on, too late.
She must be under thirty.
The young American sociologist says, “This is probably a stupid question.”
But she’s having a hard time believing that people are expected to be able to list all the last names, both paternal and maternal, of each of their four grandparents—eight names in total—on official forms in the Basque Country. Her remark causes a stir. All of them compete to recite their own long list of last names, to show the American sociologist that it’s quite possible. Arrese, too, says all of his, all of them Basque names, of course. It’s a cultural trait of ours, being proud of our roots. They’re all saying things like this to explain their attachment to their last names. Abaitua decides to turn off even his evenly-suspended attention in order not to hear things that may irritate him, and he starts reciting to himself all the last names of his own that he can remember. There are exactly eight of them: Abaitua, Segurola, Zubia, Gabilondo, Rezola, Zabaleta, Galarraga, and Aranburu. He knows more—Mekolalde, Juaristi, and Aranguren, for instance—but he doesn’t remember what order those ones go in. He remembers a man from Azpeitia, he thinks he was a dentist, who owned a restaurant in Madrid that might have been called Gure Etxea—or “Our House”—and which was advertised as being one hundred percent Basque; the man put twenty last names on his business card, all of them Basque. Being over-proud of having Basque blood was not seen as being at all suspicious in the sixties, and even in Madrid people used to say that any self-respecting person’s second last name was Basque. Basques were well thought-of, and their being proud of their family names was considered natural because, among other things, all of them, as everybody knew, had their own family coat of arms and were entitled under the historical charters to noble status. He remembers that when he was a child, he heard his father say that one of his friends, who ran a clothing shop downtown, used to get tearful after he’d had a few drinks and even start sobbing, all because his last name was Calvete—a Spanish name. His father said they used to try to console him by saying that being Basque is something that comes from the soul, but Abaitua could see how pleased his father was with his own situation—he was just a simple worker himself, but at least he didn’t have to bear the weight of having a name like Calvete. He was proud of his family names—Abaitua, Zubia, Rezola, and so on—in that they were Basque, and he wouldn’t have minded others—Goikoetxea or Perugorria—as long as they, too, were Basque. That was what his father was proud of. Abaitua, as well, though more so previously than now. On the other hand, he doesn’t think Pilar cares too much about last names; she wouldn’t mind being a Calvete, and their son doesn’t care much, either. Young people in general don’t worry about these things, not so much, at any rate. They can each project whatever origin they choose to through the way they spell their last names, Basque-ifying them, so to speak, if they wish, particularly by using an initial K instead of a C—he’s sure one of his father’s friend’s grandchildren must be a Kalbete by now—and in any case, they tend to display their identity more in their first names than in their last names, or more obviously so.
The fat resident doctor says his extended family name has Etxebarria in it twice, “in the Biscayan fashion,” he specifies. On his coat pocket, it’s embroidered with the Spanish ch spelling in the place of the Basque tx, which Abaitua thinks might be one of the reasons he doesn’t like the man. He scans in search of his fat face at the other end of the table and then realizes that there’s sudden, complete silence and that everybody’s looking at him expectantly.
“What do you say, Doctor Abaitua?”
Maite Leunda, a pediatrician who’s about to turn fifty, is addressing him, and it’s obvious she’s now repeating herself. So he apologizes to her and asks her to repeat the question. She asks him meekly, with that calm voice that many women of firm spirit possess. Her question—and it’s something she asks herself, as well—is to what extent there may be a hidden agenda, beyond the project’s stated objective, to uncover the genetic blip, the particular polymorphism, that makes the Basques a separate race. She’s probably trying to be ironic, and Abaitua realizes that one way to reply would be to express indignation, but he’s prevented from doing so by seeing Arrese making a show of looking offended, holding his head in both hands and shaking it from side to side as if he can’t believe the stupidity of what he’s just heard, and perhaps he genuinely is
upset by it. The fact that the young American sociologist is there is another reason for Abaitua to give a measured response. Finally, he decides to ignore Leunda and speak directly to the sociologist, to explain three points. Firstly, and obviously, the objective behind requiring eight Basque surnames is to select subjects with the greatest number of distant ancestors born in the region, in order to run proper differential analyses. And that’s necessary because there are some very real distinguishing features: genotypic differences, for example the high instance of the Rh-negative blood type; the increased prevalence of certain unusual genetic diseases, fatal familial insomnia, for one, as well as less unusual ones, such as muscular dystrophy, or Parkinson’s disease, which has a Basque variant. From a healthcare point of view, it would be irresponsible not to take all of that into account. And lastly, even knowing that this type of general data about the genetic makeup of populations has the potential to be manipulated politically, he hopes and believes that they’re in a more aseptic setting than that here.
Enthusiastic expressions of agreement. Arrese mimes applause, and Gabilondo, sitting next to him, says that nobody could have put it better. Leunda looks at him in silence, like a martyr who’s declared her faith and now has nothing left to do but wait for her turn to be thrown to the lions.
After the meeting, Harri Gabilondo takes him by the arm and says, “Hey, you, let’s all go grab some coffee and lay into them a bit!” The young American sociologist is standing next to her. She’s wearing a rather old blue leather jacket and a white shirt unbuttoned down to the top of her cleavage, the skin covered with freckles. He suggests they get their coffee from the machine and go to his office; at that time of day, the cafeteria will be crowded. Harri Gabilondo agrees that it’s like some sort of bus or train station canteen. As she normally does, as soon as they’re two steps out of the meeting, she starts giving a comic report on it. She doesn’t hold back. What does Abaitua make of Martínez Leunda’s outburst? She emphasizes the Martínez. It seems she’s the daughter of one of those Navarrese Requetés, the Carlist militiamen who used to steal furniture and sheets from the houses of those who’d fled Donostia. She kept her Martínez well-hidden until a short while ago and has just recently started using it openly, now a proud Spaniard. “¿Qué te parece?” She keeps on repeating that question, which, though rhetorical, makes him feel put on the spot and uncomfortable when he has nothing to answer, or when, like now, he’s finding it difficult to listen.
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