Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  “It happens to us all,” he says to comfort her, wondering if it’s the best thing to say, whether he would accept that if he were in Pilar’s position. He read recently that according to a study done by the Mayo Clinic, 14.7% of doctors made mistakes in the three months prior to the study. And that must be less than the real figure. But for once, he thinks that statistics can be rhetorical, and he prefers to tell her that he, too, has made mistakes. She seems to be calmer as she looks at him now. “But you’ve never left anybody hemiplegic.” We still don’t know if the patient’s had a stroke. “It’s a matter of millimetres, in any case, a matter of seconds,” he replies. Does she think he’s always made the right decisions? He’s gone too fast sometimes, his lack of patience has prevented him from doing things well. On occasions, he’s worked without taking all the safety measures, but luck’s been on his side. He’s never admitted as much before, and he hopes that she’ll take it to be a white lie to some extent. But he repeats himself—nobody’s never made a mistake, never had an accident. That’s the word—an accident. Pilar looks at him with her hands on her knees, watching his lips move, like a dog attentively watching to see what its master wants. He’s never seen her looking so submissive. “Now you have to face up to what’s happened,” he says, in the most convincing voice possible, and Pilar says yes, he’s right, and she’s going to try. She’s not happy, of course, but she is obviously relieved.

  She takes her surgery cap off—first of all a shower, and then fresh clothes. Until she took it off, Abaitua hadn’t realized she had it on.

  Abaitua stays by the door while she’s in the shower. Her clothes are piled up on the bidet—socks, panties, and a white bra on top of the green scrubs. There are some splashes of blood on the scrubs. He sees the imprecise contour of her body through the emery-polished shower screen, she’s bending over now to scrub her toenails in that peculiar way she normally does, without bending her knees; even years after getting married, her mother used to tell her off for that, saying it wasn’t feminine. She must have been a strong, agile girl, with a lot of personality, one of those girls who preferred playing with the boys. She leans her head back for the water to flow all over it. She answers his questions precisely, frankly, probably emboldened by not being able to see him. She says she didn’t panic when the accident happened, the duct cauterized easily, and being nervous didn’t affect her hands. But she got frightened afterward, the very thought that she was going to have to see the patient awake was unbearable, and she doesn’t remember how she fled the scene, doesn’t remember anything until the moment of seeing him.

  She doesn’t need to be convinced that the best thing is for her to go back to the clinic, explain what happened to the patient, and apologize. She says it herself. Once she’s dressed, she picks up the car keys, but Abaitua says he’ll drive her there.

  Pilar sits next to him, sparing him her usual comments about the best way to get there when, as usual, he gets lost in the roundabouts. Abaitua talks more than usual about the insufficient, bad signposting, to break the silence. Pilar looks straight ahead, seems a long way off, lost in her thoughts, but judging by her face, she isn’t as upset as she was before. Abaitua wonders what she’s most upset about, the damage she’s done to the patient, or the damage to her pride. There’s no doubt her enemies at the clinic will gossip about it to harm her and, in any case, be glad it’s happened. That, at least, is what Abaitua believes, and it makes him angry.

  At the entrance, he says it to her again—if she wants, he’ll go with her to see the patient. Hoping she’ll say no; for one thing, he’d hate to be in that situation, for another, and above all, he’s not at all sure it’s a good idea. But he feels he has to say it—“I’ll go with you if you like”—and she, fortunately, says no, she’d rather go alone. So he’ll wait for her.

  He has the uncomfortable sensation that everybody who’s walking through the vestibule is thinking about what Pilar’s done when they look at him. “Doctor Abaitua, Goytisolo’s husband. The wife made a mess of it in the operating theater this morning, and he’s been suspended without pay from the hospital because of something he did when he was drunk.” He thinks they’ll be very glad when they find out she’s got problems. Some people say hello as if nothing’s happened. That’s the worst thing. Arana, the anesthesiologist, holds his hand out to him. He clearly doesn’t know what to say. Abaitua knows the man’s made two big mistakes in the operating theater over the past year, and now he’s showing his support. As if saying “welcome to the botch job club.” He feels he’s being treated as a guilty party because he’s married to Pilar. As if he had to share her blame, and that gets under his skin. To an extent, it’s because that’s what he’s feeling, that he’s the one to blame for Pilar’s guilt. Which may be related to some sort of macho world view. In any case, he’s fed up with feeling responsible for what other people have done, the need to take on other people’s blame, be they relatives, colleagues, or fellow Basques. It’s a new feeling for him, something he’s never felt so clearly, or with such intensity, and he gets the impression that his rejection of this feeling means that something inside him is healing.

  The anesthesiologist pats him on the back. He talks to him about the pressure Pilar’s been under recently, about how she’s overworked, all in a tone of compassion that sounds sincere. Fortunately, Abaitua’s phone rings, and he takes advantage of that to say goodbye with a gesture of his hand.

  It’s Kepa. He says he wants to set a date for their trip to La Rochelle, but Abaitua thinks the real reason he’s calling may be to remind him to help him find a place in the old people’s home for his mother. Abaitua says it’s a bad time.

  He prefers to wait outside. From the top of the stairs, he sees the roof of Lynn’s house and, through the branches of the trees, the bathroom and kitchen windows. The shutters are still closed. He remembers the bathroom walls and their white, hexagonal tiles and blue border. He doesn’t know what to do and gets into the car.

  He puts Lynn’s CD on.

  When Pilar comes out again, she looks calmer, but it’s obvious she’s been crying. She doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t ask her anything, either. They drive in silence and have to go around the roundabout twice to find the right exit. Too many signposts. Amara, Center, Hernani, France. At the next one, Pilar gently points the ways, and he ventures to ask her how it went.

  “Fine,” she says.

  “Oh beautiful release / memory seeps from my veins / let me be empty . . .”

  Pilar thinks it’s a beautiful song and wants to know what CD it is. He says he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how it got there, either.

  “ . . . and weightless and maybe / I’ll find some peace tonight.”

  They’re silent once again as they drive slowly in the long row of cars alongside the river. He used to play on this side of the city as a child, before there were any buildings. The trees are tall and beautiful; apparently, the inhabitants of the houses find them troublesome now. He thinks they’re Indian horse chestnuts. He asks Pilar, who’s an expert on trees. She says she doesn’t know, which he interprets as a way of saying that she thinks it’s frivolous to talk about trees right now, and they keep quiet until they reach María Kristina Zubia. When they stop at the traffic lights there, she says, in a voice that sounds natural, or neutral, “She’s a great person.” No more than that. They move forward, and while he’s thinking about whether it might be better to turn left, he says, as if breaking a long silence, that there’s no reason for the patient to forgive her for anything, it was an accident, bad luck for both of them.

  There’s a skiff moving along the river in jumps and starts, like one of those long-legged insects. He used to row at one time, too.

  “It was just bad luck for both of you. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  The best thing is to tell the patient what actually happened. He’d like her to be humble enough to admit that it’s good advice. As far a
s the consequences of that mistake are concerned, that depends on the social status of the person affected, to a large extent. He asks who it is, what she does, how old she is.

  She turns toward him for the first time since they got into the car. “Let’s talk about this later, please, not now.”

  When they reach home, it’s he who opens the door and lets her in first. She walks through the entryway and the living room to her room, the room that’s now hers, and sits on the side of the bed without taking her jacket off, her body leaning forward a little, her head more so. Like that morning. He looks at her from behind, seeing her right-hand profile. That morning, she was wearing a red coat that flared out at the bottom like a bell, making it look like a cape. He doesn’t know what to do. He isn’t familiar with this room, and he feels that being here together is more intimate than using the same bathroom. But he goes up to her, not knowing whether what he feels is pity or affection. She leans further forward now, and he puts his hand on her shoulder, as he did that morning when she said that terrible thing—“I fell asleep.” He then asked her who it was, and as he expected, she told him it was Adolfo. Pilar looks him up and down now, tries to smile, and he sits down next to her.

  Pilar has changed into house clothes; recently, she often stays in her operating scrubs. She’s sitting on the sofa in the living room, leaning over the table in the middle and doing the sudoku in the newspaper. He hasn’t seen her like that for a long time. He feels a mixture of pity and affection. He asks if she wants anything for dinner, and she says she’ll have a glass of milk and some cookies. He’s not going to have anything. He says good night. She says she’ll be going to bed, too, once she finishes the sudoku.

  Even though it’s still early.

  Abaitua’s taking his shoes off when she comes to the door. She stays standing there looking at him, as if not daring to go into the room where they haven’t slept together for at least three months now. Finally, she sits next to him and puts her hand, the same one she made the mistake with the scalpel with, open on his lap for him to hold.

  She gives him a shy kiss on his cheek, and he clumsily hugs her, forced to by the situation. They both stand up. She opens the bed and smooths down the sheets while he gets undressed. Then, while he gets into bed, she takes her clothes off. She lets them fall to the floor.

  He’s no longer used to being near that body, which is bigger and slower than Lynn’s. He kisses her neck and one earlobe, and she lets out a soft moan. Her skin is soft, the softest he’s ever stroked.

  He, too, finds it a relief when she says, “That’s fine in movies,” gives him a light kiss on the cheek, and moves over to her side of the bed. He’s grateful she’s chosen comfort. But he knows that she still feels guilty because she can’t fall asleep with her head on his shoulder and her arm over his belly in the way canonical lovers are supposed to. He thinks his chest isn’t muscular enough, or at least not enough to be comfortable, although that wasn’t a problem for Lynn; she used to fall asleep like that, her head resting on his chest or his belly. It wasn’t very comfortable for her, either, but she didn’t care, she didn’t want to fall asleep.

  It isn’t a good idea for him to think about Lynn, but he lets himself take a quick look at some images, like glancing at a book, picking it up and thumbing through.

  Lynn barefoot in the boutique in Bordeaux.

  Lynn saying hi through the library window.

  Lynn squeezing her breast between her thumb and index finger again, trying to get a drop of milk from her nipple.

  Lynn half-crying, saying—shouting—that she loves him, she loves him madly.

  He’d rather sleep alone, to be able to listen to the radio. It’s as prosaic as that.

  23

  “Nuclear Free Otzeta,” reads the poster.

  Seeing the narrow valley depresses Julia. The river’s scarcely six feet wide, and it disappears under a block of cement in the town. The mountain slopes that come down to the house are covered in insignis pines, except for a few yellowish-green patches where there are sheep grazing. In the distance, parallel to the road that runs along the riverbank, the new highway flies over the northern part of the town. The first houses are fairly respectable—lively colors, recently built. A park with swings and other things for children serves as a transition area to the town itself, in which most of the buildings have those façades of exposed brownish brick and the small roof tiles so typical of the sixties and seventies, built without any aesthetic consideration whatsoever to house the immigrants arriving at the time. In the small old plaza in the center of town, the old baroque church is still standing, along with the town hall, its ashlar coat of arms taking up most of its blackened façade, along with a couple of eighteenth-century houses, both made of stone and with large coats of arms on them. A third house, almost touching the church, looks like a mansion, and there are four Tuscan columns holding up its porch. On the façade, it says it was made by Joseph Ygnacio de Goytisolo in 1763—“Joseph Ygnacio de Goytisolo lo hizo. Año 1763.” It’s the only one that looks empty. Julia knew the town back when it had even more beautiful houses.

  From some windows, there are pieces of cloth with the map of the Basque Country on it in black and arrows drawn on in red demanding the return of Basque prisoners.

  Beyond the plaza, on the street that starts up the hill, is Martin’s family’s house. A Basque-style villa with a sloping roof, white with blue windows, ‘20s style, and it clearly stands out from the other buildings around it, because they date from the town’s first industrial period, shortly before the war. There’s a small, narrow garden separating it from them with severely pruned plane and Indian chestnut trees in it. Now there’s a large Basque flag flying over it on top of a tall pole—the building’s been converted into the Basque Nationalist Party’s town headquarters. She decides to go into the bar across the street from it to have a coffee. Above all, she wants to put off reaching Torrekua. Her mother and sister and the children are at her brother-in-law’s baserri, and there are probably more people there, too, relatives and friends; her sister and brother-in-law are never by themselves.

  When she goes into the bar, she has the impression that everybody turns around to see who she is, and she regrets her decision. It’s the same atmosphere as ever—the floor isn’t very clean, the varnished stone walls are only decorated with posters about sports and cultural activities. She sits at the end of the bar closest to the door, next to the wall, and asks the barman—who’s greeted her by lifting his chin slightly in her direction and is wearing a checked shirt and cleaning the counter in front of her with a wet cloth—for a cortado. To her left, there’s a copy of Gara—the bilingual newspaper—and a collection box with a sign on it reading Presoentzat—For the Prisoners.

  The things she can read from where she’s sitting: AHT txikizioa—High speed train = Disaster; Gaztetxea orain—Housing now; Otzeta bizirik nahi dugu—Long live Otzeta; Adierazpen eskubidea—Freedom of expression. Written in chalk on a green board: Barriola a Olaizola II cinco tantos a que sí—Barriola over Olaizola II five goals all right. The television, turned on but with the sound off, is enthroned above the door. So customers can watch it and keep an eye on the door at the same time, she supposes. The head of the Gipuzkoa provincial government is talking into a thicket of microphones.

  The people sitting at the tables are old men. Most of them are drinking red wine, a few of them beer. It’s very easy to see which of the old men are local and which are not; their faces and way of dressing are different, even though some of the immigrants have been there for decades. Some of their hats mark them out as foreigners, but the size and positioning of their berets is just as telling. Those speaking Basque are speaking the local type—fairly thick Bizkaian—and most of those speaking Spanish have accents from Andalusia and Extremadura, which she sometimes finds hard to understand, and their way of speaking has traces of Basque in it. Nobody is speaking Basque with a Spanish accent
. The people at the other end of the bar—most of them her age, some a bit younger, all dressed as if ready to go hiking—are speaking local Basque, mixing in words and whole sentences in Spanish, too.

  She feels out of place here. She realizes she feels guilty, just as when she had to admit to herself a few minutes before that she doesn’t feel like going to Torrekua.

  She finishes the dreadful coffee, and when she asks how much it is, the barman says it’s been paid for. She doesn’t know who to thank for treating her. Then she notices a woman’s face at the other end of the bar that looks familiar to her, but she can’t place her. The faces of distant relatives her mother’s introduced her to at various weddings and funerals. She goes up to the group.

  “Etxezar erre dala”—so Etxezar’s burned down.

  Finally she works out who the woman talking to her about the fire at Etxezar in a sorrowful voice is. The daughter of one of her mother’s cousins. Lore, a robust woman of around fifty, with circles of rouge on her cheeks so round they look like they were drawn on with a compass, and particularly red lips, so much so that they look painted, even though they’re not. What Julia knows about her: she got out of prison earlier this year, after more than ten years inside for having let some ETA guys use her garage. Julia’s mother and sister went to see her when she was in Martutene Prison. They say she’s a very good woman, she spent her jail time teaching the comunas—the non-terrorist inmates—to sew, and everyone loved her. They quarreled about her more than once; each time she was mentioned, they used to say that she was a very good person, very generous, and that she was in prison for no reason, just for lending her garage to some guys, and she didn’t know they were with ETA, of course. For her mother and her sister, prisoners and the people connected with them are never guilty of the things they’re accused of. She says she was tortured badly at the Intxaurrondo Barracks and that after that horror, she found being in prison easy. A peaceful lifestyle, watching television and teaching people how to sew. Her biggest complaint was that her husband never went to visit her; he didn’t like leaving town and hated going through the security controls, having to stand in line with gypsies and petty criminals, and, of course, he never agreed to any conjugal visits. Julia is amazed at her talking about such intimate things. He’s a tall man, with a long nose and a sad face. He says with a half-smile that ever since getting out, his wife can’t stop talking. When Julia asks her how she is, the woman says she’s very well, the worst thing is that she’s going deaf, because of all the beatings she got.