Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  Back home, and even though I had decided to give up smoking once and for all—not to have a healthier death but to at least have one without coughing up phlegm, a smoother death—I sat in front of the television and smoked all the cigarettes I had left, one after another, influenced by the petit bourgeois spirit I had inherited from my mother, which meant not throwing anything away.

  Julia wouldn’t be able to say what she felt after reading that. Disappointment, sorrow, anxiety. Disappointment because while she didn’t expect him to come up with anything sublime, she had hoped to find something a bit different from his usual stuff—a story, characters who think of things and to whom things happen, life. Sorrow, as in all his texts, because it’s him and only him in them, only he suffers. Anxiety because she doesn’t know how to take what she’s read, whether to take it seriously or not.

  She’s ordered the original version of Frisch’s diaries—his Tagebücher—published by Suhrkamp. And she’s photocopied Fragebogen and the second volume of the French edition of Verhör, to look at them all together. Fragebogen, Questionnaires, “Questionaires,” and Verhör, Interrogatoires, “Interrogatories,” she’d say. Unlike the Questionaires, the Interrogatories include the author’s answers and some political contents, in the widest sense of the word.

  FIRST INTERROGATORY

  What is your attitude to violence as a tool for political struggle? There are bespectacled brainiacs like yourself who would personally rather avoid confrontation but who accept violence as part of political struggles.

  Theoretically.

  Do you think social transformation is possible without any recourse to violence, or do you condemn violence categorically, like Tolstoy, who you are reading right now?

  I’m a democrat.

  Julia thinks the interrogatories are as interesting as the questionaires in Tagebuch 1966-1971 and deserve to be compiled in a book. In the interrogatories, we see the author on the other side of a false mirror, powerful spotlights shining into his eyes, forced to give short, direct answers, and seeing that makes us anxious.

  “Apart from in extreme situations when seized by blind anger, have you ever wanted to kill somebody?” Julia would have to answer yes.

  She vaguely remembers that Frisch confesses in one of his books that he once felt guilty about not having killed a German man. Julia leafs through Journal II again and again, she thinks the passage has to be there somewhere, but when she can’t locate it, she goes through his other books, truly anxious now to find it. She thinks she’s got it when she sees, in Pages from the Bread-bag, that on a car journey through Ticino Canton, he says he sees some German troops. But in the end, it isn’t there. She gets confused, because the passage she’s trying to remember also takes place during the World War on a mountain in Ticino, and she thinks Frisch had been called up. If she isn’t mistaken, the writer is walking up a snow-covered mountain when he comes across a strong-looking German. The German asks him about the paths in the surrounding area. At the time, because of the war, both the sale of maps and their public use were restricted for security reasons, to make things harder for spies. Frisch gives the German the instructions he politely asks for, in the normal way any hiker would, but later on, when he spots him from above walking through a gorge, it occurs to him that he could be a Nazi spy, and that he should catch him from behind and throw him off the cliff. Then he loses sight of him and regrets not having done it. Although Julia can’t find the passage, she’s convinced that he mentions his feeling of guilt at not having killed the German in at least one book, and probably in more than one.

  So when Martin appears, he finds her flicking through Tagebuch 1966-1971 furiously, obsessed with her search, unable to master her urgent anxiety to find the text, and when he asks her what she’s doing, she says she isn’t doing anything, because it seems to her that he’s reproaching her for not translating Bihotzean min dut at that moment, and she looks above his eyes at his scarce, weak hair, which is nevertheless miraculously stiff, standing on end as if electrified, because she knows he can’t stand that, and when he realizes where she’s looking, the poor man lifts both hands up to his head and pulls his hair backward to try to make it stay flat.

  He says he hasn’t slept a wink.

  “Have you been having your nightmare again?”

  “It’s the girl upstairs that’s the nightmare.”

  He says Lynn’s the reason he hasn’t been able to sleep. She came home with a man the night before and kept him awake all night. He says she howled like a cat in heat, it was scandalous. He whispers it, as if he were scared or truly scandalized. He says again and again that she made an incredible noise, and Julia beings to think he’s not joking, he really is shocked. He says her lover left in the early hours. He admits he got up and went to the window, but he only saw him from behind, and not too well at that, because there wasn’t much light. It could have been Abaitua, but then it could have been anybody else, too.

  He asks, “Do you think it could have been Abaitua?”

  Julia thinks not, she can’t imagine him with her, even though Harri says Lynn’s in love with him and there’s no doubt it was him she spent the weekend with in Bordeaux. She says she doesn’t care who Lynn’s lover might be, but it isn’t entirely true that she’s indifferent.

  “I don’t care who it is, either,” he says with an expression of disinterest, of looking down on the whole matter, “the problem is, she keeps me from sleeping.”

  He sees his reflection in the balcony window and tries to comb his hair down with his hands. It’s no use—his hair, weak, scarce, and longish as it is, goes straight back to its place, upright, after he passes his fingers through it. He shrugs his shoulders, which could be out of resignation. In any case, he’ll soon know if it’s Abaitua or not, he says with a cunning smile. Julia is about to tell him that she thinks his habit of watching people come and go is unsavory, but he doesn’t give her the chance, because he quickly informs her that he’s going to meet up with Kepa, that famous friend of his. She finds it hard to believe that after not seeing somebody for so many years, he could get in touch with them again just to find out who Lynn is sleeping with. She confronts him with it: it’s strange that he doesn’t care whether Abaitua is her lover or not and yet he’s prepared to dive back into the tunnel of time to see if he can get something out of this Kepa. He hardly bothers to defend himself. He says he hasn’t arranged to meet up with him to talk about Lynn; ever since the girl mentioned him, he’s been missing that old friendship, and in any case, he’s long wanted to see him again.

  Fortunately, Lynn arrives in time to stop the storm that’s about to break. She’s wearing the green and yellow floral dress she was given in Bordeaux, which looks so good on her. He tells her she’s very pretty, and she lifts her arms up and spins around, making the dress float in the air behind her, just like the first time he told her he liked it, with a dancer’s charm. Her hair is loose, and in the light its looks like orange preserves to him, perhaps because the only thing he had for breakfast that morning was coffee.

  “Did you have the nightmare?”

  Lynn asks the question seriously, not joking at all; Julia finds it difficult not to giggle, considering what Martin’s just told her about the real nightmare keeping him from sleeping, until finally, seeing a mute pleading in his eyes for her to be discreet, she laughs out loud. She finds herself in the awkward situation of having to say that she isn’t laughing about anything specific, which, fortunately, doesn’t last for long; Lynn is very interested in knowing whether Martin’s had his recurring nightmare again—seeing his electrocuted hair must suggest that’s a possibility, of course—because she has a theory about what its origin might be. She’s convinced that every time he’s told her about having his nightmare, he was at his parents’ house the day before. That happening a hundred percent of the time, even on so few occasions, is highly significant, and she recommends that he look into it. Martin’
s face, which expresses absolutely clearly that he can’t decide whether the girl’s serious or not, and his hair, even more electrocuted-looking than ever, if possible, make it really difficult for Julia not to burst out laughing again.

  A young man rests his shaved head against the glass of a window. It seems he’s having trouble seeing into the house, although he’s perfectly visible from inside it as he stands there with both hands open and resting on his temples to shield his eyes from the light. He’s one of Zabaleta’s bodyguards. The other one must be the man with the belt pouch leaning against the car by the iron gate.

  “Perfect weather for mowing the lawn.” Zabaleta, as well as speaking with an Otzeta accent, is always reminding people that he was brought up on a baserri. He also has a great imagination, a quick, malicious tongue—typical of the improvisational poets from his valley—and the ability to identify his opponent’s weaknesses and provoke them in the cruellest possible way. It can be amusing, but if it goes on long, it becomes tiresome for people who aren’t used to it. He has an incredibly thick Basque accent when he speaks in Spanish, and he doesn’t do much to hide it. Julia even thinks he makes a show of it, perhaps to cover up some complex he may have had in the past.

  They’ve already met, he says, when Martin introduces Lynn as an American neighbor. Down at the port, he says in Spanish—“En el puerto.” Maliciously, without saying who it was that introduced them, and Lynn nods quickly as if wanting to prevent him from saying anything more. Martin then adds that she’s working at the hospital, but just for a time; she actually came over as a tourist with her friend Maureen, who, unlike her, travelled to the Basque Country for professional reasons.

  They can’t avoid talking about violence, because of the work Maureen is doing and because of the two bodyguards standing at one end of the garden snacking on blackberries. He says he wanted to do without their protection, but ever since his name turned up on a list penned by one of those madmen who don’t want to let go of the war, he doesn’t have any choice in the matter. He talks about his situation humorously, without ever losing his smile as he mentions sad or tragic circumstances, as if he found it all amusing, probably because he doesn’t want people to pity him, but Julia finds his insistence on smiling worrying, that repeated grinning gesture that shows off his large upper teeth even when he’s talking about his own fear.

  He became a member of the PSE—the Basque socialist party, known by its Spanish name, the Partido Socialista de Euzkadi—after the assassination of Miguel Angel Blanco in 1997. Julia and he had been members of the Euskadiko Ezkerra coalition previously and saw a lot of each other at one time. She thinks the day he told her about his decision to join the PSE is the only time she’s seen him looking truly serious. Since then, it’s always seemed to her a decision that he’s prepared to see through to the end, as if he felt he had to pay back a debt, but without reproaching those who remained—indifferently, understandingly, compassionately, disdainfully, or spitefully—on the other side. He’s never said anything that could give the idea he feels morally superior to people who justify violence, nor has he ever told anybody that they should take the same step he has. On the contrary, he’s always appeared to be understanding and tolerant, suspiciously so, in fact, of the people who should be his enemies. He seemed to understand and accept people looking down at him and seeing him as a traitor; perhaps, to an extent, he saw himself that way, too. Guilty and traitorous for being a victim.

  He makes a point of showing his affection for radical nationalists, and he seems to enjoy their company more than that of the members of his own party. He makes continual references to the former (approving nods to their famed gruffness) and ironic statements about his relationship with the latter, many of whom, he says, seem like Martians to him. He often uses the word españolazo as a way of putting people down, of criticizing overly Spanish loyalties, tastes, or mannerisms, and after sitting down, he says he doesn’t have much time because he has to go to a party social center on the outskirts of town for lunch, and he makes insulting comments about what he’ll be offered to eat there, “You’re better off going to a PNV center for lunch.”

  He hasn’t isolated himself in his situation the way some other people have, nor has he given up the signs of his identity. He says it’s clear to him that the heritage of Basque nationalist history and culture is common to all, like the Basque flag, it doesn’t belong exclusively to one ideology. In fact, Basque patriotism is his natural environment, and he feels its presence within him, perhaps with the guilty resignation of somebody who knows himself to be marked but does not bend to fear and proudly holds onto his feelings and convictions. He still goes, along with his bodyguards, to the same bars as always, and all the same cultural events, and he gladly accepts his role in the expiatory liturgy, welcomes with open arms the people who come to see him in private and say how sad and unfair they think it is that he—he who is “one of us, at the end of the day”—should have to lead a threatened life. He absolves them, comforted by their remote feeling of guilt. It’s funny and also regrettable to hear him telling them how yesterday, some old ladies came up to him to tell him how much they liked him and to advise him to stop fooling around and join the Basque Nationalist Party once and for all. He must be used to putting up with looks of disdain and hate, but he doesn’t complain; he understands that for many people, he’s a traitor, and he accepts that traitors are to be hated. Julia has sometimes thought that an attack on his life would be a dream come true and a nightmare for him at the same time, because he accepts his role as a victim with hope, believing his hypothetical sacrifice would be the irrefutable proof that violence is absurd.

  She’s never heard him talk seriously about fear.

  Anecdotes for the American sociologist. Julia finds a story she’s heard before even funnier when he tells it in Spanish. Once, late at night, “it was his fault” that all the neighbors in his building had to run out onto the street, because somebody left an unmarked package by his door and called the police. The police’s first security measure was to get everyone out of the building except for him, because the package being next to his door, they thought that opening it might be dangerous. His touchy neighbors complained, because the police had gotten them out of bed and made them wait in the street in their bathrobes, pajamas, and nightgowns. The improvised, contradictory behaviour of different police forces: the Spanish police told them to prop their mattresses up against their doors and move back to the farthest point in the house; the Basque police, on the other hand, insisted on removing everyone from the building by bringing them down ladders and out through an inner courtyard. Apparently the argument between the two police chiefs lasted so long that Zabaleta and his wife had plenty of time to get dressed before they were finally given permission to leave the building through the main door, which was an additional reason for their neighbors—who were middle class economically and Spanish more than anything else in terms of sentiment—to look at them with dislike; as well as being to blame for them having to leave their houses, it was he and his wife who were the ones who’d been threatened by the Basque National Liberation Movement and yet they hadn’t been made to come out onto the street in such an uncomfortable, undignified way, wearing bathrobes at best.

  In that situation, and inevitably feeling himself to be responsible for it, he decided to call the owner of a steakhouse on the same street, another guy from Otzeta, and get him out of his bed to ask him to do him a favor and open up so that he and his neighbors—who were missing out on sleep, feeling cold, in an uncomfortable situation, and, above all, complaining about the lack of dignity—could at least get some hot soup and coffee. They spent hours in the restaurant, eating and drinking, getting livelier, and even really quite lively in some cases, until finally the municipal police located the messenger who had delivered the package and learned from him who had sent it. When one of the police chiefs accused him of being negligent and unprofessional, the messenger said in his defense t
hat nobody had ever told him there was a “problem” in the building. That was how they defined it, apparently, in their jargon, and it was obvious who the “problem” was, so he ended up paying for everything his neighbors and all the policemen had eaten and drunk.

  He also remembers that around the same time, his friends from Otzeta told him that if he wanted to continue going to lunch at the cyclists’ association on Saturdays, his bodyguards would have to wait outside. They didn’t want any policemen there. That was a long time ago. Apparently his friends believed that ETA couldn’t attack a member of the Otzeta Bicycle Association—and certainly not at the headquarters itself—if he were surrounded by people whose patriotism was beyond doubt, thus he had no need for bodyguards. The police’s instructions were very clear, he couldn’t spend a single minute without his protection detail, but he managed to give his escort the slip and go down to the association’s headquarters on his own. The anxiety of giving the police the slip, thus offering any madman an easy target, combined with lunches of garlic-covered chops eaten without ever taking his eyes off the door gave him an ulcer, so that his meals there quickly became lighter and blander. But at least on those occasions he had friends to take him back home, some of them over six feet tall and weighing over two hundred and twenty pounds.