He believed his father, despite what his teachers at school and the textbooks said, when he told him that Franco was a murderer and was oppressing the people, and that the language that they used at home, which almost nobody in the whole neighborhood spoke apart from the milkman when he came with his donkey, was the oldest and the cleanest of all languages, the language spoken on both sides of the border, because all Basques were brothers and sisters. But that scene left a mark on him that had never gone away. Since then, painful, sad reality had prevailed over his father’s wish not to see what he didn’t want to. He has another memory connected with the flag that is also highly significant. He’s drawing cyclists, probably the multicolored snake of them all on the Tour de France. In this case, he can in fact figure out how old he was at the time, because it’s always possible to work it out with the Tour—that year, the Spanish team wore a gray top, which wasn’t typical, and it had a thin Spanish flag going all the way around the chest. At the time, cyclists used to wear their nations’ flags on their tops, and children would draw them that way. Young Abaitua knows his flags. He draws French, Italian, and Swiss cyclists but doesn’t know whether to draw Spanish ones or not, because he would have to draw the Spanish flag for them. The boy has his doubts. The reality is that Spaniards do take part in the Tour, and so do some Basques, such as Loroño, and obliged by their circumstances, they, too, have to have the Spanish flag on their tops. So he decides to reflect the reality he sees in photos in the newspaper and on the roads from time to time, as well, even if he doesn’t like it. And that’s what he’s doing when his father comes up to him. He puts a hand on the shoulder of the boy, who then feels his father’s thick beard up against his cheek. The father says nothing, but the son knows he doesn’t like what he’s seen, and he regrets that. His father takes his pencil and colors over all the Spanish flags on the cyclists’ tops. He makes no sign of reproach, he makes the correction gently, not at all like the way he corrects his mistakes in arithmetic, and the child, though convinced he’s in the right, does not dare to defend his decision, because he’s so upset at having hurt his father by making him look at things he didn’t want to see.
They’ve hardly spoken since leaving Ziburu, probably checked by the thought that they’re about to say goodbye to each other. Kepa’s breathing is deep once again, as if he were about to fall asleep once more, and the girl rests her head on the window, looking out onto the sea. Abaitua can’t think of anything to say, and he doesn’t think it appropriate to turn on the radio or play music.
A sports field lit up brightly in the middle of the darkness reminds him of pictures of the Bronx. Dirty areas, the shame of the city. It seems Abaitua isn’t the only one who wants to get through the area as quickly as possible; the traffic speeds up where the different roads join up and go into the tunnel together. The Intxaurrondo barracks with their sinister mist. First he’ll drop the girl off in Martutene. The beltway there’s quicker, but above all it’s because he doesn’t want to be left alone with her.
It’s a sad goodbye. Kepa is serious but also affectionate. When he kisses her goodbye, he puts his arms around her. Now it’s his turn. The two of them kiss each other on the cheeks, and he smells her scent. A slightly acidic perfume, there’s some lemon in it. He and Kepa wait by the car while she jogs across the yard, to not make them wait too long, he thinks. There’s a light on over the door, and in a window on the second floor. She turns around at the top of the stairs and waves to them. A nice girl, Kepa says.
After putting the key into the lock, he waits before turning it. On the one hand, he’d like for Pilar to have already gone to bed, in order to avoid her inquisitive look; on the other, he’d be glad to get that step over with as soon as possible. There’s light in the living room, and the television’s on. Pilar’s sitting on the sofa with the newspaper spread out on the coffee table, she’s leaning over it in her usual position. Did he have a good time? He says it wasn’t bad. They went all the way up to Bordeaux, because Kepa wanted to get a book all of a sudden. Tell the truth as far as possible, that’s the strategy. His wife, though, takes a quick glance at him, and he doesn’t know how to interpret it. “Bordeaux?” Her tone suggests she’s a little surprised, or curious. He supposes she’s wondering what two men on their own could be doing in Bordeaux. But it’s too late to put it right. He says he’s tired. They’ve been eating and drinking nonstop. You know what Kepa’s like. It’s the second time he’s said that. He tries to remember something he might be able to tell her. She’s normally interested in knowing where and what they’ve eaten, but he can only remember the waitress laughing at Kepa’s silly comments about the aphrodisiac properties of chocolate. He thinks it could be amusing to say that as they get older, waitresses treat them better and better, but he changes subject to avoid the possible risks there. They’d been thinking about going to Blaye, but in the end they didn’t. They both like Blaye, and the restaurant in the castle with its spectacular views of Gironde.
“And what about you, what have you been doing?”
He can’t avoid asking the question, even though he knows it will mean having to face up to her reproachful look. The answer in the way she looks at him is, “And what do you think I’ve been doing?” He, too, can tell what she’s thinking. Pilar looks back at the newspaper and starts turning the pages sharply, almost hitting them, noisily, as she usually does when she’s nervous, and it drives him up the wall. Finally she says that she spent Friday and Saturday putting some papers in order and Sunday with her father. She lifts her eyes once more on finishing the sentence. This time she holds his gaze, wanting to see how he reacts to hearing that she’s wasted another weekend. Abaitua, too, takes his time examining her expression of bitterness, unable to avoid seeing that her cheeks droop downward to either side of her mouth, until he realizes that she’s seen what he’s thinking. He imagines she’s thinking, “See my wrinkled mouth, my bitterness—it’s your doing.”
They spend some time sitting there in silence, watching the television with the sound turned off. There’s a commercial on. Pilar changes channels two or three times, but there are commercials on all of them.
She says she’s spoken with Loiola, he says he’ll come by and see them soon. Abaitua thinks their son is avoiding them, avoiding the atmosphere of tedium and sadness in their house. As with so many things, they don’t talk about it, but he knows that Pilar, too, has that sensation.
He went through the same thing as a child. He liked having people come to visit. When they did, his parents, above all his father, were able to control their irascibility, there would be a better atmosphere in the house—at least apparently—so that their visitors wouldn’t notice their usual malaise. Thinking about that doesn’t make him especially sad. He says, maybe for the second or third time, that he’s very tired and is going to bed.
She says she’s going to bed soon, too.
He turns the light out right away. He thinks about Lynn. How she said “bihotzean min dut” when he opened the door. He’d taken her by the hand and led her to the bed. What else could he have done? He remembers how he followed her lead and, playing off her “doctor, I’m not feeling well,” said, “Let’s see what we have here.” Not much more than that. What’s more, Pilar’s left the living room, and although it’s improbable, almost impossible, that she’ll come into his room, the mere thought of it makes him nervous. She normally walks past his room to leave something in the ironing room or to go to the bathroom they both use, which means going down the long narrow hallway. Often, like now, she walks around with an electric toothbrush stuck in her mouth as she does the final chores before going to bed—lowering the blinds, putting a pot or two in the dishwasher—and he hears the sound of the brush’s engine as she walks up and down, and that always makes him slightly uneasy.
He knows that she got undressed without any particular ceremony, as people do when they’re alone and preparing to hop into bed or the bath. He remembers seeing her sit
ting on the edge of his bed, and himself wondering whether he should take his pajamas off before hugging her. Her skin was bluish in the moonlight. He was surprised that her breasts were larger than he had thought. She laughed when he dared to kiss her feet, because she found it ticklish. That’s what he remembers. And he regrets not having been more patient. The girl put a hand on his chest and said, “Just relax,” and he wasn’t able to keep his desire in check, and that kept him from committing to memory the details he needed now to be able to relive the moment. So he goes back a bit, to the moment when she first scratched at his door.
In Montauk, the writer says that each time you’re with a woman for the first time, it’s always your very first time again. “Toute première fois avec une femme est de nouveau la première fois.” He also remembers what Bárbara used to sing about being able to open your arms a hundred times to someone and always have it feel like the first time: “Tu peux m’ouvrir cent fois les bras, c’est toujours la première fois.”
Nevermore. There won’t be a second time. There are very few women he’s only made love with once. One of them is now a good friend of his. An old friend with whom he does not mention the chapter they turned the page on. What would be the point? Problems always arise on the second occasion. He doesn’t want that to happen with Lynn. He doesn’t regret anything, but he promises himself that when he sees her at the hospital, he will behave normally with her, as if nothing’s happened between them. In reality, nothing has happened, he tells himself. Lynn is an open, uninhibited American girl who’s willing to have experiences, and he’s a man who’s still in his prime. As the Spanish say, quien tuvo retuvo—he’s still got it. It’s true. The thought makes him feel good.
9
It’s around nine o’clock. Julia doesn’t need to look at her watch to know that, because the Romanians are already on the platform with their shopping trolleys and their sticks for poking around in the trash cans. The train they’re waiting on is the same one that the Catholic schoolgirls arrive on, wearing their ugly green uniform sweaters and pleated maroon skirts, when classes are in session. There aren’t many people waiting, mostly elderly individuals with very few obligations just trying to squeeze the most out of their public transportation passes—they won’t mind too much if they miss the 8:47.
Finally, when the convent bells ring out nine o’clock with their tinny sound, the writer says, “The girl upstairs must have really tired herself out up in the mountains.” He says it with some irony, but his irony doesn’t cover up the fact that he’s not entirely pleased. He got up early today, and it’s the third or fourth time he’s mentioned that the American girl hasn’t come down yet. Then, heading toward the stairs, he makes that gesture of his, patting his pants, hips, and buttocks with both hands as if he were looking for something, which normally turns out to be right in front of his nose, whether it’s his wallet or the coffee pot. Julia realizes he’s bandaged up one of his hands completely, presumably so that when his tenant asks him what happened to him, he’ll be able to say that her cat scratched him. In fact, the cat had been meowing on the roof, and thinking it wanted to come down, he—the cat-rescuer who’s never even touched a cat before in his life—put a hand out to it from the tower window, and the animal, scared, clawed him. The scratch was just a surface wound, and Julia thinks it probably didn’t even draw blood, but she resists the temptation to tell him that the bandage is much bigger than the wound. She asks him what he’s lost, even though she already knows that searching around in his pockets like that is no more than an excuse to go upstairs. Going up and down the stairs is all he’s done for the last half hour. “A piece of paper,” he says—it’s almost always a piece of paper that he’s lost—and he goes toward the stairs once more, but when he puts one foot on the first step, the girl’s feet can be heard upstairs, and he rushes back to sit in his chair, like a pupil who doesn’t want to be caught away from his place.
“Hi.” They give each other two kisses, something they don’t always do. Julia’s truly glad to see the girl, she’s eager to hear about her weekend, how it was, where she went, what she saw; she’s more curious than usual. “Hi.” Her cheeks are cold, and she’s changed perfumes. The one she’s wearing now is sweeter. “You’re wearing a new perfume,” but what she doesn’t dare to tell her is that just for a moment, as she passed in front of the window when she was coming down, with the magnolias and hydrangeas behind her and the glow from her copper-colored hair, she looked like a Pre-Raphaelite model. She’s very beautiful in her flowery dress; the blooms are large and leafy, mostly green and yellow. And upon hearing this praise, the girl takes ahold of one edge of the dress, stretches it open, and lets it fall. The cloth is thin, like muslin, it falls gently. It was a gift. She turns around and makes it float in the air, her arms held up like a dancer. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
The girl is glad to see them, as well, you can see it in her face. She says she has the feeling she’s been away for a long time. She’s brought them gifts. Three bottles of a wine she’s been told will be very good to drink the next time they have beans; a gâteau basque from Dodin, also for them all to share; a book about Ravel, and Montauk in French, both for Julia; and a poster of the first page of the manuscript of Madame Bovary and Frisch’s Récit I et II for Martin. On receiving his gifts, Martin shows her his bandaged hand, and she asks what happened to him. “Just a little accident,” he answers with a pitiful smile but unable to hide a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. As if trying to make light of it, he tells her it happened when he was trying to save her cat from danger—it was stuck up on the roof. Julia’s ashamed to listen to him. He tries to calm the girl down, saying that it’s probably nothing, but then he shamelessly goes on to say that the doctor’s recommended he get an anti-rabies shot.
Julia is pleased with her gifts. It’s not hard for her to find the paragraph in Montauk beginning “check out: Car que faire après le petit déjeuner? Se promener avec un parapluie? On pourrait rester assis dans la loggia et regarder la pluie tomber sur la mer . . . Puis il s’irrite de ce que Lynn, étant donné qu’elle s’est occupée de la réservation, sache à peu près ce qu’il est en train de payer pour deux nuits. Elle est déjà assise dans la voiture. Il paie presque le double de son salaire hebdomadaire : l’argent de l’homme, qui dans le contexte marital devient si naturel . . . .”
As for the “velluda y blanca chaqueta,” the shaggy white jacket is a “veste blanche à poils” in French. The young tenant guesses what part she’s reading and says in a low voice, but with her eyes wide open and her index finger held upward, “You should translate it.” She looks like a strict teacher giving a pupil work to do, so Julia happily answers, “Yes, teacher,” because she thinks she’s up to it, although, of course, the girl has no way of knowing that. The writer, on the other hand, says nothing. Julia figures it’s because he’s jealous of the way they understand each other, and she finds that funny.
She didn’t recognize Ravel at first sight, but there he is, with his piercing eyes. He must be around thirty in the photo. He looks handsome, the moustache and sideburns make him look a little arrogant, he’s as elegant as ever, wearing a suit typical of the period—a short, wide jacket and tight pants—and pointed white shoes, probably made of canvas. He’s wearing a bow tie and a beret that look great on him. Cosmopolitan Ravel with his Basque beret on. You want to know if I love the Basque Country—“Si j’aime le Pays Basque?”—he once said. “C’est-à-dire que je n’aime vraiment que le Pays Basque, mais je voyage beaucoup et j’essaie d’être Russe en Russie, Espagnol en Espagne et Chinois en Chine,” he’d gone on—the Basque Country is the only thing I really do love, but I travel a lot, and when I go to Russia, I try to be Russian, and Spanish in Spain, and Chinese in China. Julia hadn’t heard of the book and can’t wait to read it. (Above all because she was very disappointed by Echenoz’s fictionalized biography in which the musician is portrayed as being stingy with money and unlikable in general, only really in
terested in his clothes.) Perhaps it’s because the writer thinks her gratitude for the gifts she’s received is over the top, but it’s clear he’s not well pleased. She thinks it could also be because, among other things, he already has two of Frisch’s diaries. In any case, seeing him there with his arms folded and the two volumes sitting in front of him—to make it clear he has no intention of opening them—she suddenly thinks he’s like a spoilt, envious child glaring at everybody else’s presents. It seems the girl, too, has thought something like that. She asks him if he already has them, he disappointedly confirms it with a nod, and she says she’s sorry and adds that because she bought them in Bordeaux, she can’t exchange them, to which the writer, quite astonished, almost shouts, “In Bordeaux?!” He thought she was going to the mountains. Like a suspicious lover? Or like a father worried because he doesn’t know what his daughter’s been up to? Julia is about to tell her there’s no reason she should tell the silly man anything at all, when she starts explaining that they were planning on going to the mountains but had to change their plans because bad weather had been forecast.
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