Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  When Abaitua looks at the clock on the wall and sees that it’s two, for a moment he doesn’t know whether it’s two o’clock in the morning or two o’clock in the afternoon. The place is artificially lit night and day, but that isn’t the main reason for his confusion. In fact, it seems to him as if he left home days ago. The nurse signs the voluntary discharge and then reads aloud the list of medications and materials he’s requested. Dressings, gloves, scissors, dissection tweezers, surgical tweezers, Foster tweezers, curved needles, local anesthetics, 5- and 10-unit oxytocin drips, Methergine. She looks at him after reading each item, and he nods. She quickly comes back with it all in a cardboard box. She’s taken the initiative of adding a sheet, towels, and postpartum sanitary pads. There’s a large group of nurses standing around the counter. They seem excited. One of them asks if they should call an ambulance, and he says no. The guy says their van’s in the parking lot.

  It’s a small house—it used to be the shepherd’s shed, the guy explains—and even so, the coat of arms over the door wouldn’t be out of place on a palace. When the baserri was knocked down and the property was expropriated, his uncle, the firstborn, put it into storage, and he’s now dug it out.

  They’re obviously both proud of the house. The furniture is modern and functional, everything’s clean and tidy. A room used for many different things takes up almost the whole floor. There are bookshelves in one corner and a table with detailed topographic maps on it. It’s how they make their living. They take on just enough projects to be able to get by. They also have oil, rabbits, two pigs, and a goat. And fruit trees, several cherry trees, a walnut tree, and of course the apple orchard that gave the house its name, though it’s nowhere near as big now as it once was.

  Her name is Luz, but the Sagastizabal guy uses the Basque word for light instead, calling her Argi. He says it’s only because he has trouble saying Luz, it’s hard for him to pronounce the Spanish z. Luz would like some soup. What she’d really like is to make some soup, to pass the time by doing something, and she won’t let the guy touch the cooking pot. She looks at Abaitua and asks if he’ll let her, and he says she can do what she wants. It seems soup is a universal heritage—a couple of leeks, a carrot, a bit of bone, and a piece of meat. The two men go out to the stoop. It’s a warm night, and the sky’s completely clear.

  He wishes Lynn could witness this.

  The couple don’t mind him calling a friend to help him, it would be good, just in case the father can’t manage it. The father says he shouldn’t worry about him. The only problem is calling Lynn at that time of night might frighten her. While he waits for the line to connect, he remembers the first time he called her, from the Pio XII roundabout. He likes remembering his moments of daring. Lynn’s voice doesn’t sound like he’s just woken her up. When he tells her he’s at Sagastizabal waiting for Luz to give birth and that he could do with a midwife, she gives out a cry of joy. She won’t be more than a minute.

  “I’ll fly off.”

  She says maite zaitut again, as well.

  She gives Luz, or Argi, two kisses, and a minute later it seems as if she and Lynn have always known each other. Abaitua envies that ability—which is more typical among women than among men—to come together without any distrust. She’s wearing a white T-shirt and jean overalls that make her look younger and more Irish. She’s got a red bandana with white spots on it tied around her neck.

  “Hey man.” She ties the bandana on her head like a pirate and claps her hands in front of the father’s face to perk him up; he seems to have taken fright since the contractions began growing more frequent. They have to heat the house up to around eighty or eighty-five degrees to make it comfortable for the baby. Lynn says that babies lose half a degree of body heat every minute. Abaitua cleans his hands in the sink and splashes her with water, saying she’s too clever by half. They’ve never acted so familiarly with other people around before.

  They talk about Couvade syndrome to tease the Sagastizabal guy; he’s mimicking Argi’s breathing without even realizing it. Abaitua thinks the term couvade comes from cave, but Little Miss Smartie Pants says that it’s called Couvade syndrome in English, too, and that it comes from the French couver, to incubate. He isn’t embarrassed about Lynn seeing he doesn’t know something related to his own profession; on the contrary, he’s proud of her knowledge. She also says that it’s connected with matriarchal societies, and that, inevitably, leads them to a discussion about Basque women. The Sagastizabal guy’s convinced that traditional Basque culture was matriarchal. The main beam of the house. They drink soup and eat boiled chorizo while they talk and almost forget about Argi.

  It’s amazing how short her delivery is. Argi sits up and pushes, holding onto her husband’s and Lynn’s shoulders, and a few minutes later, the child’s head comes out. Abaitua cleans its face with a piece of gauze and then almost all he has to do is hold it.

  An Apgar of 10. Fast heart rate, active tone, strong crying, pink color. No need for aspiration even. He puts it on the mother’s belly.

  “Mi hijito,” she says—my son.

  Argi takes the child to her breast. She’s peaceful and crying at the same time, she hugs the Sagastizabal guy and, with wide-open eyes, shows him their child. “Welcome to the world, Peru,” he says. Peru, but with the accent on the e. That’s going to be his name. Lynn didn’t know that Peru is how you say Peter in Basque, she thought it was Kepa. She’s incredibly happy, he’s never seen her so happy. She goes up to him and thanks him for calling her, and he hugs her. Abaitua hasn’t cleaned himself, and he’s covered in Argi’s blood. “I love you,” she tells him again.

  They leave Peru with his parents in the room and go out to the stoop. They sit down on a long wooden bench and wait for the day to come. “The small hours.” It’s the same expression in Basque—ordu txikiak. That moment full of silence, waiting for the transition between night and day, the sounds of night gone and those of daytime yet to start.

  Lynn says she’s felt that profound silence that lasts only an instant, no time at all, but is absolute, until the birds’ singing breaks it. He hasn’t. The sun begins to rise behind Santiomendi, and a rooster crows.

  He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that day, and he’d say, as Lynn says, that he’s a lucky man to have gotten the chance to live it. “A fortunate man.” He admits that he does feel like it, and she snuggles into his arms. He’s made her the happiest woman in the world. They stay there on the bench, Abaitua sitting and Lynn lying against his chest as they watch the sun come up. There’s hardly any noise from the traffic, it’s still early. When the Sagastizabal guy comes out, he seems a little embarrassed to find them like that, but Abaitua doesn’t mind. With his hands in his pockets, he, too, looks at the sun and then suggests they have breakfast. He’s added some tomatoes and peppers to the meat from the soup.

  Argi wants to get up. She feels good and wants to feed the chickens. That’s one of her jobs. The guy doesn’t think it’s a good idea and wants to see what the doctor has to say. He shrugs his shoulders. She shouldn’t do anything strenuous, but she can do anything else she feels like doing. The man fills up a container with grain from a large sack, and the newly delivered mother feeds it to the free-range chickens. Lynn helps feed them, too. While throwing them grain, Argi calls to the hens in Spanish—“Pitas, pitas”—while Lynn speaks to them in English—“Here, chick, chick.” Abaitua says they’re going to confuse them. You say purra, purra to Basque chickens.

  The splendid Sagastizabal coats of arms looks out of place, strange to say the least, on the humble shed wall in daylight. The panoply around the shield itself is magnificent: a helmet with feathers on it, two dogs or wolves stretching to hold it up on either side, and a lot of leaves all around. The guy bets they can’t make out its peculiar feature amid so much decoration, and indeed, they don’t notice anything particular until he points it out. In the lower area there’s a head, as large as the
helmet at the top, opening its mouth above an erect penis. The testicles are very easy to make out, too. It’s all very clear once it’s been pointed out, and yet difficult to notice amid all the baroque flourishes. The Sagastizabal guy hadn’t noticed it, either, until somebody researching local heraldry came to draw it and pointed it out to him. Before him, none of the family ever noticed it, quite clearly. Not his father, his uncle, or his grandfather, at any rate, because they wouldn’t have put up with such obscenity, or perhaps they had found out but kept it a secret. An embarrassment for the family that they’d kept quiet by pretending not to see it. Something everyone saw and nobody admitted seeing. In any case, it’s clear Basques haven’t always been so serious and puritan, says Lynn, to which the guy says that it was almost certainly chiselled by a Galician stonemason. Then he says solemnly that factories are what make communities gloomy and sad.

  With regard to the religiousness with which Basques have usually been associated, his opinion is that the Church has taken the traditional world that modern times have mercilessly destroyed to its bosom, that’s the explanation for it. Lynn listens to him attentively. Abaitua, on the other hand, can’t stop eating the strong aged cheese, and that in turn makes him drink more and more wine. He’s been feeling sorry for the guy, ever since the moment he placed his hand on his little Peruvian wife’s shoulder and said that he, being from Sagastizabal, was an aboriginal and should be considered a protected species. Like the autochthonous apple tree they grow. Abaitua has to go. Argi comes up to him to thank him for the thousandth time, but this time in Basque—“Eskerrik asko laguntzeagatik.” It’s obvious she’s rehearsed the sentence. Strange-sounding Basque. He tells her she’s said it very well, and she complains—she’s finding it hard to make any progress but thinks she’ll learn more with Peru. Her partner, who’s listening closely, says, “Por la cuenta que te trae,” joking with her in Spanish, in a mock threatening tone, that she’d better.

  But when he says that Peru is going to be Basque—“un vasco de verdad” is what he actually says, a real Basque—he isn’t joking, he’s making a serious statement. Even so, Abaitua ventures to ask him what he means by “a real Basque,” the early morning wine consumption having removed his inhibitions and the fact that he just recently helped his wife to give birth removing any suspicion that his question might be ill intentioned. The guy answers that he isn’t very sure. Speaking Basque, of course, and then there are unavoidable conditions for being Basque, and also something that defines being Basque, but he doesn’t know exactly what that is. A way of being, a style, perhaps—wanting to last. An insistence on continuing to be Basque, that’s what he wants Peru to inherit.

  Abaitua proposes a final toast, to Peru. The wine has a purple tone to it, the sky is blue apart from a sketchy white cloud or two. He predicts, in spite of what the Sagastizabal guy said, that it’s going to be one of those wonderful, south wind, end-of-summer days. Lynn smiles as she looks at him and holds up her glass, and he can’t believe he made love with her a few hours ago. She says he’s a little tipsy, “un poco chispa,” and he does seem to be. When Abaitua toasts to Peru—“¡Por Peru!”—he speaks first in Spanish and then in Basque: “Para que sea un hombre libre, gizon librea.” May he be a free man.

  Even though the child is doing really well, he’s going to send them a pediatrician to have a look at him. Argi puts cheese, eggs, walnuts, apples, and chorizo in plastic bags for them to take away with them. They don’t want to, but the couple insists. They owe them much more than that. The Sagastizabal guy shakes his hand. He’s bigger than Abaitua. He holds his hand tight for a long while, as if looking for the right words to say goodbye. His eyes shine damply. Finally, he says “eutsi” and lets his hand drop. It’s a colloquial Basque term, both a greeting and farewell, that translates more or less to “stay strong.” Stay strong against what? The women say goodbye, too. Lynn gives Argi her child back, and they embrace while holding him between the two. They both shed tears as they give each other two kisses, and then, holding each other by one hand, they look into each other’s eyes and laugh.

  She goes first along the path that runs parallel to the road, and when she turns around, she says, “I’m happy,” as if she’s guessed that he’s thinking about her, and after a short smile, he says, “I know,” not at all surprised by what she’s said. They walk on until the electric warning system sounds to announce that a train’s about to come through, and then Lynn turns around once more. She challenges him to guess what type of train will go by next, a local train or some other type. The one who guesses right gets to ask the other to fulfill one fantasy. She prods him to make his choice quickly—come on, come on, hurry up—and he bets it’ll be a local train, thinking, probabilistically, that they go by more often. They both wait with their hands in their pockets, and a freight train comes out of the tunnel. Abaitua protests that she’s won because she knows the timetable. Lynn denies that, and in any case, even if she did know it, she doesn’t know what time it is, and so she couldn’t have cheated. They have to raise their voices a lot to be heard above the noise.

  She says she hopes he’ll keep his word as a Basque. She’s standing in front of him with a bag in each hand. Betting debts are sacred, and now he has to make her fantasy come true. When he asks her what the fantasy is, she turns around and continues walking. He’ll know when the time comes. She sounds completely serious, half nurse and half undine.

  It’s the first time they’ve walked through the garden together. He, also for the first time, doesn’t care if the gravel makes noise as they walk across it or even if somebody sees them from the gallery. He thinks Lynn is aware of this, and grateful for it. It’s obvious, at least, that she’s happy. With those bags in her hands, they look like a couple that’s just done the shopping together and is now coming back home. Abaitua takes the bags to go up the stairs. A man’s job. At the top, where he can’t get away from his obligation to pet the cat, which is lying there on its back for him to do just that, Lynn tells him to hurry up or he’ll get to the hospital late—an accomplice’s order, as if she were talking to her spouse. So he isn’t going to have any difficulty leaving. She loosens her overall straps, and he holds onto them by the bib to draw her toward him, with no sign of being ashamed at how badly he smells of sweat. He isn’t going to wash, even though she says he looks dreadful. He has a large wine stain on his shirt. He doesn’t care, he’ll take a shower at the hospital, he has fresh shirts there.

  At the train stop, he realizes again that he doesn’t have a car and decides to walk up the old road to the hospital. As he walks up the slope, he has the impression that weeks have passed since he walked up it the last time, just the night before. The road is narrow, and many cars are going by at that time. Hospital people, of course. His phone rings. It’s Pilar. She greets him with a happy “Hola,” emphasising the first syllable and drawing out the second. They’ve stayed the night in Bordeaux. That plural means her and the young neurosurgeon. That’s no secret, it’s work and nothing more. She says she’s been at work since four in the morning. She says she’s just completed a hydrocephalus operation, using a new technique for positioning the shunt, and it went really well. Professor Giraud said she has a very steady hand, and she’s almost sure he’ll agree to come operate on difficult cases in Donostia once a week. Do you realize what that means? She’s delighted. And you, what are you up to? He says he’s on his way to the hospital, and it seems she’s realized he’s out of breath, because she asks, surprised, if there’s anything wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong, he says, he’s walking up the hill from Martutene, and he’s just not in good shape. “And what are you doing there?” It’s too late to go back on what he’s said, and he can’t think up an excuse. “I’ll tell you later.” To which she says, “Yes, we have to talk, you and I have a lot of things to talk about,” without sounding at all worried. Her farewell is happy, too, and she sends him a goodbye kiss—“Muxu!”

  It’s obvious that the po
rter at the desk is waiting there for him. He goes up to Abaitua and tells him that the director has asked him to tell him to go up and see him. After wondering whether to first drop the bag with all his materials somewhere and change his shirt or not, he finally decides to face up to whatever it is as soon as possible. Because he’s curious.

  In the director’s office, while listening to the inevitable preamble of complaints about having to reconcile the interests of different pressure groups and the limits imposed on him from above, Abaitua’s spirit goes freely through the open window and flies down from the top of the hill and over the city and gets lost on the slightly choppy gray sea partially covered by clouds of the same color. The guy from Sagastizabal was right—the weather’s changed in a matter of minutes.

  Abaitua can’t see the other man’s face very clearly, because he’s sitting in a high-backed chair with the light behind him—almost certainly a strategy learned at some administrative workshop in order to gain the advantage over the person you’re interviewing—but the man is clearly nervous and unable to start in on what he has to tell him. Continuing with his preamble, he reminds him of the health speech they wrote together for an Euskadiko Ezkerra conference. “Healing Life” was the title they gave it, like one of the books Maspero published in the seventies, Guérir la vie, which argued that it’s impossible to improve health standards without first changing production relationships and living conditions. “How innocent we were,” he says with an air of nostalgia. Abaitua works out that the director must be ten years his junior, but he looks older than him.

  “O tempora, o mores.” Abaitua feels something like pity for this kowtowing individual who, in order to protect his job, has to pretend not to notice the wrongdoings of the shameless people who hold the real power at the hospital. He himself isn’t so very different. He’s tempted to open his heart to him and say, all of a sudden, that he’s full of inner peace, completely calm, tired—because he does feel absolutely tired, a feeling that’s heightened by having drunk all that wine—and, above all else, that he should be aware that he’s immune, that they can’t do anything to him, because he’s lost his sense of personal ambition, he doesn’t need money, and women love him. He’s really tickled by that wild thought and has to stop himself from laughing, a problem made worse by the fact that the director is sitting there with his mouth open and so he can’t help imagining him as a fish stuck swimming around in circles inside a fish tank. But curiosity gets the better of him, as does tiredness. So he asks him to say what he has to tell him.