Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  She met up with the young man in a café a couple more times, to talk about everything and nothing—he wanted to know how things were going for her with Martin, and she replied they were going well—but she soon decided not to see him anymore; having secret meetings made her nervous, Martin wouldn’t be all right with her meeting the other man like that. Obviously, there was no way she could have suspected he would have such a pathological reaction and suffer so much because of it—he had sudden mood swings, going from fervent love to rough attacks, and that compulsive sexuality of his was not normal. But she had to admit that, to an extent, she was glad that her short relationship with the young man had had such an impact.

  For the first time in a long while, they started going out every day, even though it didn’t always suit Julia. He would hook his arm into hers, which he hadn’t ever done even in their best times, and he talked to her nonstop, as if they had just met. Julia deferred to him in everything, only making one request—that they not go to Sagues, which was a neighborhood he liked going to, because the young man—and she had told him this, obviously—frequented the bars around there and it’s where she and he had gone the one and only time they’d gone out together. So they started taking their walks along the Pasealekua Berria, in order not to risk running into the young man, but one day—an afternoon with a south wind, a sea as flat as a plate, and a sky so clear you could see as far as the Matxitxako headland—they saw him standing right beside the Oteiza statue. He was with a young woman, and Julia didn’t mind that. Quite the opposite, she was glad that the young man had restarted the relationship he’d told her about. Martin said hello to them with a smile, and Julia thought that he even started to move toward them, but she took his arm in a mute request for them to continue walking. “Well, your poet’s rebuilt his life quickly,” she remembers he remarked ironically.

  They went walking on the Pasealekua Berria three or four more times, and they always came across the other couple, who seemed glad to see them—they both seemed glad, the young man and his girlfriend, as well—and said hello as if they were old acquaintances who often went out to dinner together and wanted to exchange the simple words that couples say to each other when they happen to meet when out for a walk. It was obvious that Martin didn’t like that attitude of theirs—once, he said, “I hope that idiot doesn’t want the four of us to go out dancing together”—and Julia, too, thought that being so very courteous was a bit much, even though being civilized was fine by her. She doesn’t know how many times it happened, because she also sometimes dreamt about it, and in Martin’s story, as usual, the time factor is far from clear. In fact, it seems to her as if everything that happened—from the day she ran to catch the train on that last afternoon, and the only night she spent in the young man’s apartment, to when Martin gave her The Woman in a Red Jacket Sitting on the Edge of the Bed—took place in a single afternoon.

  The last time, they came across them in more or less the same place as always. They were right in front of them, the man leaning against the railing and facing away from the sea, holding the girl by the waist. They saw them from a distance, and Julia was tempted to suggest to Martin that they turn around, but thinking that might be insulting, she resisted. Forward they went, seeing the other couple smiling, as usual, as they got closer, and when they were almost up to them, Martin muttered, “Fucking wannabe.” In the story, the young poet didn’t even stop smiling. Julia only knows that she pulled on Martin’s arm and managed to get him to keep walking. They didn’t say a single word until they got home, and there, making himself the center of the universe as always, he started calling her a fool because that so-called poet had seduced her without her ever realizing that the young man hadn’t been attracted by her mature beauty but by the fact that she was his, Martin’s partner; he had taken her to bed to humiliate him, to humiliate Martin. Those words really hurt her; she began to realize that there was some truth in them, and to feel guilty about having fooled around so unthinkingly, without considering the pain it might cause Martin, pain that seemed to grow as the days went by, and then she couldn’t take it any more. She started crying. It was she, now, who kneeled down in front of him to beg for forgiveness, for him to forget what had happened, and she might even have spoken that one sentence—“Don’t spoil the story for me”—because that was exactly what she felt just then.

  But what she asked for just made him insult her more.

  He made fun of her, using the details that she herself had given him. Ridiculed her for cheating on him with a premature ejaculator who smelled of garlic (she’d told him that though he wasn’t quite a naturopath, he did believe firmly in that particular plant’s therapeutic effect, and also that he’d told her, to excuse his lack of sexual control, that he always had difficulty whenever he’d gone a long time “without being in a relationship”). For feeling proud that a man young enough to fuck whoever he wanted hadn’t turned his nose up at her cellulitis-covered behind. For allowing a pathetic wannabe to fuck her “because men apparently can’t go without it” (she had told him that, as well). For making plans to go off to Turkey in a van. For putting up with his corny poems.

  He shouted at her that he would have accepted her cheating on him for some noble passion, but not just because she didn’t know how to spend her afternoons.

  Julia let him insult the young man, insult her. He shouted at her that she was a whore, and she sat there just as he described Flora Ugalde, curled up on the sofa with her hands over her ears and begging him to forget the whole thing. Why even bother pointing out that he’d also had affairs? Those were only men’s affairs. It’s peculiar how she came to believe that men’s and women’s infidelities are different. He was so moved, displeased, and angry, and she was so surprised by it all that, to an extent, she grew to accept that her silly little affair—which, when it came down to it, had been a result of her pain—had been an enormous sin in terms of disloyalty. What’s more, the affairs he undoubtedly had were always kept hidden, including the one that led to her having to take antibiotics, because she closed her eyes to his fooling around rather than spying on him. He, on the other hand, had evidence, as well as her own confession. How many times had he held that Villa Flores card in front of her and sarcastically recited those clumsy lines—“You are loyal, more loyal than anyone”? He asked her what those words meant, but she couldn’t give him an answer, she didn’t understand them, either, didn’t know what they meant. Once, she dared to answer that he would have to ask the poet, and he hasn’t brought it up again since.

  She even ended up hating the young man for writing that stupid line.

  And she’s also often thought that what Martin really finds insulting is the fact that she went to bed with a bad poet.

  He suggested they should go spend a few days at the Argi Eder. They would rebuild their relationship again, from scratch. Julia knew that wasn’t possible, but she accepted anyway. It started raining the day after they reached Ainhoa. The Parisians fled, but she didn’t dare cancel the reservation they’d made for the week. There wasn’t much to do there. Martin went into the village one afternoon. He brought a composition book back with him and started writing with an intensity that Julia had never seen in him before and has never seen since. He spent five days writing nonstop, night and day, taking care to write legibly, not at breakneck speed but also never stopping, as if his inspiration only dried up on the last line of the notebook, or as if that were the exact length of his story. He gave it to her to read. It was the first time he’d ever done that. Until then, he had always read her his manuscripts. She thinks he likes using his intonation to bring out certain passages and make sure the text is well received, and in fact, he does read aloud very well, in particular his own texts, and when it comes down to it, she always finds it disappointing when other people read his texts. “Read it,” he said to her, “but not while I’m here.” And he went into the village.

  When he came back and went into the room,
he saw that reading the notebook had made her cry. She asked him not to use it, and he answered that he had no intention of publishing it, he had written it for her.

  “I fell asleep,” Flora says, as if she were arriving late from work. He couldn’t have chosen a more painful, bitter, hurtful sentence.

  “Who is he?”

  “I felt abandoned.”

  The red jacket had a large hood. She never wore it again.

  Now, having read that pathetic version of events, it’s clear to her that for Martin, it isn’t so much a matter of any love he might feel for her, it’s about him feeling like a wronged owner, and that wrong will never be redressed, and the young man was right when he said that she would never be happy with him.

  She can’t get to sleep.

  Memories that she should reject keep coming back to her, and none of them are pleasant. Why did she usually distrust the stories that her father told her as a child, she wonders. She remembers very well that he spoke to her about whales, about their incredible bodies, nothing else like them in nature, their majesty, and with such imagination and eloquence as she has only ever seen replicated by Michelet in La mer, when he described how all fear and anguish gave way to limitless emotion as he moved past those incredible bodies heaving with the joy of life. She thought that they were fantasies, stories, and she never believed him when he said it was possible to sail among whales. But it was true. Even the posters for the Bilbao-Portsmouth ferry mention whalespotting as an added attraction. Some years after her father died, she asked a friend who’d spent time at sea if it was true that you could see them, and he said it was. A few miles from the coast—she doesn’t remember the distance he said—they’d passed right by them; but he didn’t tell her that with the excitement her father had. (Michelet says they’re shy and sometimes even get frightened by a single bird). Perhaps she felt sad then that she hadn’t believed him. She thinks she probably did, but she also thinks that it must have been his fault, as well, to an extent, that she doubted the truthfulness of his stories. Be that as it may, the story about the whales is the only one she’s been able to confirm.

  10

  Abaitua is dressed and ready to leave the house when he goes into the kitchen. Pilar is holding a piece of toast balanced on the fingertips of one hand and has a cup in the other. She looks straight at him and, after putting the piece of toast down on the plate, says, “I’m not going.” As if it were a decision she’s just made. There isn’t much for her to do at the clinic. That’s a good idea, he replies. And adds that he’ll come back for lunch. Pilar picks the piece of toast up again and, as she spreads some jam on it, tells him she’s going to go out to lunch with Loiola. They haven’t seen each other for a long time, and what’s more, he has to give them the car back. Abaitua doesn’t know if it would be appropriate to say that he’ll go along, as well, but he’ll be leaving the hospital too late for that. In any case, the fact that she doesn’t suggest it to him doesn’t encourage him. He decides to ask her to tell him that he, too, would like to see him one of these days.

  There is an unbearable noise of crockery in the café, and on top of that, everybody there is talking at the same time. Apparently there’s an article in the newspaper about the increase in the number of complaints being filed against doctors. That’s what they’re all talking about, and about the ways it negatively impacts doctors at work—the ordering of unnecessary tests, the increasing obsession with therapeutic issues, the mechanical application of protocols. In other words, doctors’ main aim has become protecting themselves from vulture-like lawyers and lawsuits as for-profit enterprise. He feels no desire to join in the conversation in order to tell them that they keep mixing up the concepts of human error, negligence, and incompetence. In his experience, when a doctor makes a mistake, it’s a matter of recognizing his or her responsibility and apologizing for it, which usually brings an understanding reply. The problem is when those errors are repeated. A doctor cannot make important decisions alone, decisions that are literally a matter of life or death, without being supervised, without discussing what he or she knows and his or her experience with a group.

  For some time, he’s thought that certain things, or, more accurately, certain realities have become clear to him, things that seem normal and common but tend to go unnoticed. For instance, he is completely sure that if he looked at the people around him, he would see someone who will soon do something they shouldn’t, or not do something they should, something that in the near future, in a few days’ time, will kill someone. It’s undeniable. He looks at an individual wearing a white coat and dipping the end of a croissant into a cup. He’s an anesthesiologist, and he probably can’t read an electrocardiogram. He knows that the director of medicine is aware of that, as well. How many operations does he prep patients for every month? he wonders to himself.

  This particular morning, however, his problem is Lynn.

  The supervisor says that “that American girl” is looking for him. He finds it hard to look into her blue-eyed stare. Although she’s his age and at the same professional level as him, she frightens him. She has an aura of dignity—a serious, responsible woman—and he also feels guilty, because her nephew is in prison. Abaitua knows that she feels unfairly treated because his own son hasn’t shared that fate. When he’s faced with that woman, he feels the same thing he did when he was with his mother as a child, that sensation that she was able to read what was going on inside him, and that she could tell when he wasn’t going to keep the promises he made her, and when he’d lied to her. Every time he sees her, he thinks she’s going to nod her head slowly, regretfully, and say, “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  So Lynn is looking for him. As for Arrese, he still calls her “the American sociologist.” He doesn’t like her sticking her nose in the service and going around asking questions. He imitates her voice and accent—“It’s crazy.” It seems that she had a run-in with one of the midwives, saying that she wasn’t treating some sick person properly. It wasn’t a sick person, it was a pregnant woman, Abaitua corrects him, wanting to say something. He’s already heard about the incident, down in the cafeteria. “The thing is, I don’t want her going around sticking her nose in.” He has to sit through an outburst about stuck-up, ridiculous feminists who now want women to give birth sitting down. “Although this one’s pretty cute.” Arrese looks around with a smile of complicity as he says that. And once more, Abaitua has that feeling he had with the supervisor, feeling like a little child standing in front of an adult who knows everything. Arrese knows that he’s more pusillanimous, and that’s why he treats him so patronizingly. He puts one of his hairy hands on his shoulder. He also knows that he has some weakness when it comes to women, that he gets “mixed up very easily by those bossy women” from time to time; Abaitua’s occasionally opened himself up to the man’s jibes for getting himself into situations he always ends up regretting. Arrese, on the other hand, would never put the partnership of material interests and affection he shares with his wife in danger.

  He realizes that Lynn was right when she said that he spins his wedding ring around constantly when he talks.

  “Hi.” From her greeting, she sounds pleased and surprised. Her smile is happy, as well. She’s been looking for him everywhere. “Too busy?” Abaitua tries to use a measured tone—he’s been in surgery, and he still has a bunch of reports to write. He particularly hates that last job; writing is really difficult for him. He finds it harder to pick up a pen than a scalpel. She’s smiling the whole time as she listens to him, leaning against the wall, holding several files against her chest, one thin-ankled leg crossed over the other. He tries to argue that writing up a report properly is important while the girl listens to him carefully, and while he talks, he notices that his reservations are disappearing. He thinks there’s no reason for them to talk about the weekend they spent together, it must be something normal for a young sociologist from New York to go to bed with a
man unexpectedly, and there’s no reason for him to regret it or to worry. Even so, he promises himself it won’t happen again.

  The material her dress is made of is light, and it hugs her body. He can’t believe he’s stroked that belly.

  They’ve talked about writing on some previous occasion. Difficulty in writing usually comes from not being very sure about your ideas—when they’re no more than soapsuds, they don’t hold onto the paper, they just fade away. The work involved in putting something that’s a mess in your head onto paper. They walk away from the surgery area as they talk in circles about this obvious observation, and now they’ve reached the spiral staircase that almost nobody uses. Even so, there’s a flood of people walking down the hallway toward the exit. It’s almost three, and he could say that as well as having to write his reports, there’s someone waiting to have lunch with him, but he decides that there’s no longer any point in running away. He’d been thinking about saying that it was a mistake, that he regrets what happened, but now that seems too dramatic to him. Really, nothing at all has happened.