Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  Knowing Arrese, Abaitua is absolutely sure that he must have done all he could to find out why she’d left his, Abaitua’s, practice, and judging by his insinuations, he’s sure he found something out.

  The end of his confession comes at the same time as a long, slow train to Madrid goes by. He’s told her what he’s never trusted anybody with, something he didn’t think he’d ever confess to anyone. Lynn, too, is silent. She pulls her shawl around her, as if ashamed of her nakedness, and he notices it. It isn’t that he doesn’t mind what she thinks; in fact, he thinks he’s glad to have shown her his worst, dirtiest side. That’s all, he says, because she seems to be expecting something more, lying there silently staring at the ceiling. He’d like to see her face, see to what extent she’s been affected by his confession, which he doesn’t regret having given her, but he doesn’t dare look. It’s she who turns on her side and holds onto him. She strokes his belly, and he’s relieved to find out that at least she doesn’t find touching him revolting.

  “Fly away from here.”

  They stay still in the half-light, holding onto each other, until Lynn turns to rest on her elbows and looks at him. “You know what?” She talks without showing any particular feelings, as if she were talking about something unimportant. “That poor woman.” She says the poor woman ran away because she was frightened about what she felt for him. She ran away from him because she was in love with him.

  Abaitua asks her not to talk such foolishness, his expression—not put on—says that he’s had enough. He finds her excessive devotion to him a bit much; she seems to belittle his confession, make it banal by not acknowledging how important it is. He wants a more impartial judge. Could Pilar be that? Pilar would have called him a pig, asked him how anybody could sink so low.

  And what if Teresa Hoyos had actualy been in love with him? Would that have made him innocent?

  Abaitua turns around quite brusquely, facing away from her. They hear the whistle of a passing train, it sounds like Morse code and lasts quite awhile. “Hey, man.” She knocks on his back as if it were a door.

  He’s become more prone to showing his feelings over the years, he cries more easily. He likes feeling the tears run down his cheeks, showing his sorrow, at the same time as he realizes that it might be rather obscene to see a tearful old man. So he tries to hide it, hide his head, but she hugs him, makes him turn his head around and kisses his tears away. She whispers in his ear that she’s sure the woman doesn’t have anything to forgive him for.

  He sits up, and she, on her knees, hugs him from behind. He should stop punishing himself. “Believe me,” she says. That woman knows he’s an upright man. He disagrees; he isn’t upright, he says, trying to break away from her, but she stops him by holding onto his neck. Then she holds onto his forearms and forces him to lift them up. She forces him to lift his arms up and then lower them as if he were flying.

  “In the arms of an angel.”

  Lynn takes ahold of him by the armpits and tries to lift him up. Obviously, she can’t. Up on the sofa, crouching behind him to be able to use her strength, her arms under his armpits, she pulls him upward, and he slowly gets up, as if she were actually lifting him.

  “Fly away from here.”

  He isn’t ashamed to look at her. He asks her to forgive him for having opened up to her like that, trying all the while not to cry again. She gives a smile. She stays quiet for a while and then takes ahold of his arms again, opening them up and making him fly with them again. He shouldn’t let himself be weighed down by feelings of guilt, that doesn’t do anyone any good. Hasn’t her strength helped him?

  She says she’s serious, with a little impatience in her voice, as if she were telling off a child. He has to rid himself of that load, it’s stopping him from living.

  He says it’s late.

  He picks up the cat in both hands—he doesn’t dare take it by its scruff—and puts it down on the floor so he can get his pants. There’s no need for him to say that he has to go, but he does. She consents by putting her hands behind her back. It’s the gesture of a child, meaning she won’t do anything to keep him there. It’s what she always does. Then she goes into her bedroom, and when she comes back, she stands against the wall in her green pajama top with the little animals on it and watches him getting dressed. He puts his cufflinks, tie, and watch in his pocket to finish quicker, even though he’s in no hurry and nobody’s waiting for him at home. In the hallway, too, she does as she always does and opens the door just enough to stick her head out and check that there’s nobody there, standing to one side against the wall to make way for him as she opens the latch. They usually give each other a glancing kiss to say goodbye. He gives her the kiss, and she puts her cheek out for it. They say nothing.

  Today is different. He doesn’t want to leave without saying anything. He steps back onto the first step, but he doesn’t know what to say. It’s she who talks. He should try to comfort the mother whose child has been left disabled.

  After he closes the iron gate, he remembers he came on the midday train and doesn’t have a car. He has the impression that several days have passed since he went through the gate in the other direction. He isn’t sure about what he should do but decides not to call a taxi and turns left to take the walkway over the railway line. It’s night, and there’s a warm south wind rustling the leaves. There’s no traffic on the narrow road up to the hospital.

  The nurse at the desk, astonished to see him there, doesn’t make much of an effort to disguise her curiosity. She seems to be wondering where he’s come from at that time of night, and although he’s only come a short way, it was up a steep road, and his shirt is stuck to his sweaty body. So he tries to improve his appearance by combing his hair back and says it’s very hot outside. Inside, however, it’s almost cold. He’ll have to be careful not to catch a cold. She’s very motherly. A young, healthy-looking blonde who stops smiling when he asks after the mother of the child with choanal atresia. She says the baby’s been operated on, finally, and the mother won’t leave his side. She says it sadly.

  There’s complete calm. The nurse confirms that it’s a quiet night. She watches him with something like a smile as he takes his cufflinks, watch, and tie out of his pocket and puts them on. Then she offers him the towel and comb she has in the staff room. She makes a gesture meaning “you look much better now” when he gives them back to her. He asks her for a smock. She finds one for him without anybody’s name embroidered on it and helps him put it on. It’s too small for him, but not so bad if he doesn’t do it up. The nurse wants to find a better fitting one for him, but he says he’s fine like that and asks her to go with him to see the mother. She replies she’ll be glad to.

  The mother looks completely destroyed. She half stands up when she sees them come in and then slumps down in her chair again as if she didn’t have the strength to get up. Abaitua introduces himself. He sits down next to her and offers her his hand. Her hand is small and very cold, like a dead person’s. He holds it between his hands without knowing what to say. The nurse, standing by the door, mumbles something and starts to leave, but he tells her to stay. He needs a witness for what he’s decided to do. He’s going to tell the mother he’s ashamed and deeply sorry about what’s happened, about what’s been done to her child. She in no way harmed the baby by breastfeeding him, and he promises that he’ll do all he can to see that justice is done as far as possible. She puts her head down on her chest and starts silently crying. The young nurse starts crying, too.

  When he goes through the birthing area, there is absolute silence. He’s thirsty and goes to the vending machine in the hallway. He isn’t sleepy, and he isn’t tired, either. He doesn’t have any coins; he never does, he finds carrying the weight around in his pockets a nuisance and usually puts them into a little box when he takes his pants off. Pilar likes using that money that seems to come from nowhere. It’s typical of Pilar, in fact, to make large
expenditures without a care while being careful about small amounts of cash. Something of a bourgeois attitude. There’s nobody at the desk for him to ask for coins, but he sees a nurse going into a room and decides to wait. She doesn’t close the door. From the hallway, he recognizes the little Peruvian woman lying down and the guy from Sagastizabal sitting next to her. They’re both looking at the heat rate monitor with great attention, the red numbers on it dancing around the seventy mark, hoping for them to stabilize. The nurse impatiently tells them not to call her until it reaches around ninety, and she closes the door behind her. “A first-time mother with a long wait ahead of her,” she says when she sees him, looking for his understanding. She can give him some coins, but the vending machine on that floor isn’t working and he’ll have to go somewhere else to get what he wants. The nurse has just gone to the ICU to get a soup. She recommends the soups from the machines. She looks at him as if weighing up his appearance—he can feel that his shirt is still stuck to his body—and, nodding as if some thought’s just confirmed her suspicions, declares that he could do with a soup, as well.

  A soup and then bed, she says, as she rummages around for coins, and while he waits for her to give them to him, he amuses himself comparing the situation with that of a beggar and some charitable soul recommending he not spend it all on wine.

  What he does know is that if he goes to the ICU, he’ll find Teresa Hoyos there. He believes in omens to an extent. He doesn’t know whether it’s a superstition, the remains of some magical thought process, or just a neurotic tic, but he thinks that the nurse just having gone to the ICU is a sign. In any case, when he sees her sitting there, alone this time, leaning over a book on her lap like the previous time, he isn’t surprised. He knew it was going to be like that.

  He bumps into the duty doctor outside the office. He has the impression, in fact he’s sure, that he’s more surprised by his appearance—the sweat from coming up the hill, his wrinkled pants all covered in Max’s hair, and the remains of a long afternoon of love—than he is by seeing him there at such an unusual time, but he doesn’t try to explain himself. He asks after Teresa Hoyos’ husband, and the answer is that he’s showing signs of waking up, in fact, he was just coming out to tell the wife. He agrees to let Abaitua be the one to tell her. In any case, she can’t see him right away, he doesn’t want to overwhelm the man and needs to run some neurological tests on him first. She’ll have to wait a little. He tries once more to improve his appearance in the bathroom before approaching Teresa Hoyos, but looking now in the mirror, he thinks he hasn’t improved matters; more than anything else, he looks like an all-night partier who’s just run his hair under the faucet a little.

  When he opens the doors after going through the ritual of counting to three, she’s still sitting there, with obvious anxiety in her eyes. He tells her he has good news. He tells her what the ICU doctor’s just told him, only leaving out a few technical details. They’ll have to wait a bit longer. She lowers her head for a moment and covers her face with her hands, and then, raising her hands, takes ahold of Abaitua’s left with her right. She puts her palm firmly on the back of his hand and thanks him. He replies that there’s nothing to thank him for, and seeing that she has no reservations about touching him, he finds it hard to hold back his tears. He makes an effort to control his crying. It’ll be the second time that night if he cries.

  He thinks they’re both sitting there trying to think what to say. He is, at least. He keeps his hands busy by trying to do up the over-tight smock, and she closes the book on her lap and crosses her hands over its back cover. She has pretty, well looked-after hands, smaller than her feet in proportion, and not as beautiful. When she sees him looking at it, she says the book’s about victims and forgiveness, but she doesn’t show it to him. She says the writer thinks forgiveness has to be asked for if it is to be given. But she wouldn’t like to be put in the situation of having to answer a request for forgiveness. She doesn’t need to be asked for forgiveness. She smiles and says that perhaps it’s because she’s feeling relieved, happy. What does he think about it? Abaitua isn’t sure but thinks he would at least need an expression of regret for the harm done. He probably isn’t as noble as she is. Then she laughs—she doesn’t think she’s noble.

  She says she thought about him for a moment while she was reading the book. She looks at him, as if to gauge how much her words have affected him. She has quite a few wrinkles. At the corners of her eyes, and vertical lines above her lips. The skin on her neck, too, has started to loosen, but her eyes are bright and show no sign of sclerosis, not a trace, like a young person’s eyes. She’s still beautiful. “I, on the other hand, do need to ask for forgiveness. It’s probably because of my religious education.” Her voice is rather broken but sweet, too. She doesn’t look away from her lap.

  “I’m so relieved.” She throws her head back. She looks at him from that position, and it seems to Abaitua that she’s looking at him from a long way away. “Thank you very much for coming.” She remains silent awhile between sentences, which she speaks alternately in Spanish and Basque. Her hands on the book on her lap, her head leaning backward against the wall, her face turned toward Abaitua after her last short sentence, and then she looks again at the spot where the ceiling and the wall meet.

  It’s meaningful that he’s the one to give her this happy news after such a long time spent without seeing each other. How long has it been? she asks him.

  He doesn’t know.

  “I had no choice but to leave,” she says, her eyes bright once more. Does he understand? Then she leans her head backward once more. “Oh, don’t make me spell it out.” She found it very difficult going to his office and grasped at any excuse not to go, because she wanted to so much. She wanted to be very sick, so that he could operate on her and take care of her. “Qué se yo,” she says, shaking her head—I don’t know.

  He’s going to say something, but she puts her hand on his shoulder. She asks him not to say anything.

  “My husband’s a good man.” It seems like rather a sad statement. After a long silence, she says they’ve been married for nearly twenty years, and that they’ve flown by. She goes quiet again. He says it’s incredible how time races by—an inoffensive filler of a sentence. If she were to ask him, he wouldn’t be able to say how long he’s been married. But she doesn’t ask him. Now she looks at him almost naughtily, lifts her chin a little, and says he still wears the same eau de cologne. So he does. He’s been true to his eau de cologne, at least. He could tell her he’s realized that she, too, is still wearing the same one as before, and that he noticed it once on a patient and felt tempted to ask what it was, in order to be able to buy it and thus remember her better; but he doesn’t.

  Instead of that, he says that he, in fact, does have to ask her for forgiveness. Right then, a nurse opens the door and sticks her head in. There is astonishment in her eyes at seeing a white smock in the waiting room. She tells Teresa Hoyos that they’ll call her to come and see her husband in ten minutes, and then she leaves. Teresa squeezes his hand, lets go of it, and puts her hand back in her lap. “Don’t say anything.” It could be because the nurse’s leaving the door open has diminished their privacy, but he doesn’t think so. There’s complete silence. He only becomes aware of the beeping of a machine when Teresa Hoyos says it’s like an anxiety-making machine that she carries around inside her. He remembers the Peruvian woman and the guy from Sagastizabal listening to the machine marking out their child’s heartbeats, and he feels sorry for them.

  They’ve got ten minutes.

  Because he doesn’t know what to talk about, he tells her about the guy who wants to bring Sagastizabal back to life in the very center of Martutene and the Peruvian girl who wants to give birth there to show respect for her ethnic group’s traditions. Teresa Hoyos seems moved by the story. She brought two children into the world via C-section, and now she regrets not having any memories of their births. The most
important moments in our life are going to be presided over by that depressing beeping. Don’t you agree?

  Less than ten minutes isn’t enough for him to say what he’s thinking.

  Teresa Hoyos says he’s lucky to be a doctor.

  They keep quiet. They stand up together when the nurse comes back. Teresa Hoyos takes ahold of both of his hands, which are hanging at his sides, and squeezes them tightly. Help that couple, she says.

  The couple is just as he left them half an hour earlier, the girl lying on the bed, the guy sitting next to her, and both of them staring at the tomograph. When he asks if she minds if he examines her, she turns toward her partner as if to ask him for permission, and the guy gets up. Then he moves back to the wall. She has short, strong legs, her ankles and hips are thick, but she’s supple. The baby has reached Hodge’s first plane, the cervix is two centimeters dilated, uterine tone is normal, and the amniotic sac remains unruptured. There’s still a long way to go.

  He asks if she’d like to have the child at home, and she nods two or three times with a smile from ear to ear.