Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  There is no discussion when it comes to paying. He makes a vigorous, stylized movement to the barman, proffering a fifty-euro bill between his index and middle fingers. When they leave, he turns left and heads up Kale Nagusia instead of going back to the theater, and Julia follows him. There aren’t any people at the theater door, so the film’s already started. Finally, although it’s late, she asks him if he doesn’t want to see the next film, and he answers by shrugging his shoulders. “I’d rather chat with you.” Julia laughs. She, too, prefers to carry on chatting, but she doesn’t say so. She only reminds him that he’s left his book inside, even though that gives away the fact that she was looking at him when they were in the cinema. He doesn’t mind, he says—it was boring.

  As they walk toward the Santa María basilica—he talks about Bachmann, her tragic death, and agrees that Frisch can’t have been easy to live with, either—Julia remembers how the two met in Paris, their first meeting, at a theater where one of Frisch’s plays was to be put on for the first time and he asked her to have a coffee with him instead of seeing his play; he, too, preferred to talk with the girl. She liked that enthusiasm of the writer’s, preferring to seduce a young poetess rather than enjoying success and seeing his play on stage for the first time, although that could also have been a sign of immaturity, a sign of being dangerously addicted to the game of seduction. Julia would like to share that memory with Kepa, but she doesn’t think it appropriate.

  They turn left onto Portu Kalea and turn left again before going through the Portaletas gate and walking along the wall. He says he’s hungry, really hungry, as he always is when he hasn’t eaten with a fork and spoon—eating things on pieces of bread does no more than whet his appetite. He says it with disappointment, sounding even a little irritated, as if he were mentioning the symptom of an illness. Then he puts two fingers in his mouth and gives out a penetrating whistle that sounds like some sort of a code—B, C, D, E.

  A man sticks his head out from a ground-floor window on the next block and then waves an arm in greeting. They go toward him. The man greeting them has an enormous belly and is wearing a white apron. They can see inside from the window—it’s a gastronomic association. There’s not much to it, the kitchen and two or three long tables with benches, all wooden and varnished, sitting on which there are only men. All of them are beyond middle age. Some of them are playing cards, there’s a very peaceful atmosphere. Kepa asks the cook how it went in Brazil, and he replies, “Very bad,” completely seriously. It’s terrible over there, the mulatto girls are shameless, and he adds, “Obviously, with this body of mine . . .” and grabs onto his belly with both hands. The sexual harassment was overwhelming. Thankfully, he had the devotional scapular his mother gave him. He laughs out loud at his own pleasantry. His name is Xabier and, Kepa says, his monkfish and hake in sauce are unparalleled, even though he doesn’t eat fish himself. That’s right, says the cook, he’s a pure meat-eater. He throws four small crabs into a frying pan and then a handful of salt. The crabs let out a type of screech and move around as they redden. It isn’t pretty to watch. The cook invites Julia to come into the kitchen, but she doesn’t want to. So the meat-lover hands her a plate with the crabs on it through the window, and they go to sit on the bench across the street. They talk about the quay, which is crowded with people. The bay is lit up. Julia doesn’t feel comfortable eating the crabs she’s just seen suffering and doesn’t want to get her hands dirty. Kepa takes them out of their shells and splits them in two. He doesn’t feel uncomfortable at all and sucks on them with obvious pleasure. Finally she follows his lead—they really are exquisite.

  There aren’t any real fishing boats in the harbor. He says there’s no longer a smell of tar and ropes; or the smell of brine, she adds. He takes a cigarette out of a wide tin box. It smells good when it’s lit, sweet like pipe tobacco. The sleeves of his jacket are rolled up to his elbows, revealing his muscular arms; he’s half lying back on the bench, the legs stretched out. It doesn’t smell of marmitako, either. It reminds her, says Julia, of when the inner harbor used to be full of fishing boats, and the fishermen all sat together on their sterns with spoons in their hands around large pots of marmitako. And the fishermen’s wives, dressed in black, played cards on the overturned barrels under the arches. She tells him that earlier, on Kanpandegi Kalea, before going into the cinema, she was remembering Elogio sentimental del accordeón, and closing his eyes, he begins to recite: “¿No habéis visto, algún domingo, al caer la tarde, en cualquier puertecillo abandonado del Cantábrico, sobre la cubierta de un negro quechemarín, o en la borda de un petache, tres o cuatro hombres de boina que escuchan inmóviles las notas que un grumete arranca de un viejo acordeón?”—Haven’t you ever seen, some Sunday at dusk, in abandoned ports along the Bay of Biscay, on the decks of black schooners or on the gunwales of flat-bottomed boats, three or four men wearing berets and listening, motionless, as a young cabin boy plays an old accordion?

  Julia says it isn’t possible, he can’t know all that by heart. Lynn told her about his miraculous memory, but she never thought it would be that good.

  There’s resignation on his face. It’s just memorizing. He has his hands on the edge of the bench now, his body leaning forward. He says Lynn’s told him she’s a wonderful piano player. Julia’s embarrassed. She doesn’t play very well, but Lynn thinks everything’s wonderful. “Well, Faustino Iturbe thinks Flora Ugalde’s a virtuoso, too.”

  Julia nods, “Yeah, a virtuoso, that’s what I am,” and says no more than that. Kepa keeps quiet. She thinks he’s got it that she doesn’t like him talking to her about Flora Ugalde. They’re both quiet, but that doesn’t make Julia feel uncomfortable. “An easy silence.” A green boat comes into the harbor. It’s a fishing boat. A flock of seagulls is flying behind its stern. Kepa says that before, when he was a child, everybody knew how to play the mouth organ. Julia, too, has sometimes wondered why that instrument disappeared. It’s the humblest of instruments. Her father used to play.

  “My father was a fisherman,” she says out of the blue.

  “And mine was a baker.”

  Kepa laughs as he draws the conclusion, “So you and I are the miracle of the loaves and the fish.” Then he looks her in the eyes and says seriously, “It’s true you have eyes you could get lost in.” The intensity with which he says it disconcerts Julia. She doesn’t answer. She keeps quiet too long to be able to say now that he shouldn’t tease her. Faustino Iturbe often describes Flora Ugalde’s eyes. “Eyes you could get lost in.” Always attentive to her eyes. He’s often compared her eyes with worrying lakes that hint of vegetation in their depths, depths of deep, dark water that are moved by anger less and less and made more and more still by disdain and boredom. And when they do shine with happiness, he’s happy whenever he believes it’s because of him. That, at least, is what it said in the last episode.

  “It’s Flora Ugalde’s eyes that are deep,” she says, too late.

  “But it’s obvious it’s you who lent them to her.”

  To avoid his eyes, she looks at the green fishing boat and the seagulls flying behind it, almost directly above the stern. The fishermen are throwing out the fish that are spoiled or that they won’t be able to sell, and that’s what the seagulls are after. When the boat arrives at the quay, they fly easily up to the castle, drawing wide knots in the air. In praise of the simple pleasure of flying, Julia would say. She doesn’t mind if Kepa thinks that’s a dumb thought. She thinks they fly more than any other type of bird. He neither agrees nor disagrees. “Non sortu ta zer izan / hautetsi ahal banezake, / hoiek bezela kaio / Gaztelupean jaio / eta biziko nintzake,” he recites in Basque—If I could choose what to be and where to be born, I’d be like those gulls and under the Castle spend my days. He says it in a deep voice, as if it were a serious declaration. She asks him if they’re his lines, if he’s a poet, too. They’re by Emeteri Arrese.

  He takes her by surprise when he asks her, wit
hout any sort of segue, as if they were still talking about the seagulls, what she feels about the whole issue of Flora Ugalde. It reminds her of Lynn asking her how she feels about having been turned into a literary character. It seems to her as if that conversation happened years ago.

  “Resigned, I suppose.”

  He takes another cigarette out of his tin box, lights it, lets the smoke out of his mouth, and then swallows it again. It’s clear he gets a lot of enjoyment from smoking. He looks as if he wants to say something, but there’s a bit of tobacco on his lip, and he keeps quiet.

  Julia remembers things.

  Flora Ugalde, wearing her red coat, runs along the train stop platform to meet her lover, knowing that Faustino Iturbe is following her.

  Crouched down on the ground protecting her face with her arms. Faustino Iturbe is furious, shouting that she’s a whore.

  Confused, wanting to flee along the gravel path she can see from the window as Faustino Iturbe hangs around her legs, begging her not to abandon him.

  Answering his interrogation: Did you enjoy it with him? What did you two talk about? Did you talk about me?

  Him reproaching her for snoring like a man.

  For wearing such foul pajamas and always putting them on inside out to avoid feeling the stitching.

  Him speaking ironically about her inability to accept even the smallest sacrifice when it comes to being attractive; about her lack of interest in him except to disdain him; saying that her panties are boring; that he’s seen her surreptitiously putting a load of paper tissues between her thighs, waiting for him to fall asleep so that she can wash off his sperm.

  Julia wonders what the man who’s read Loves and Sorrows and has such a good memory is thinking about. She asks him for a cigarette, just to do something. She hasn’t smoked for a long time and starts coughing as soon as she lights up. Kepa pats her back as if something’s just gone down the wrong way and rests his hand on her shoulder. She feels his heat. Her eyes water as she coughs, and she smiles to let him know it’s nothing serious.

  Only to Lynn—and that, moreover, happened as soon as she met her—has she ever admitted that she sees the awful relationship between Faustino Iturbe and Flora Ugalde as a reflection of her and Martin’s relationship. Their intimacy has been made public, if slightly disguised. Sometimes she’s thought it would be better if he just came out and wrote about it all openly, telling things as they are, without changing any names, without passing it off as fiction. That way, at least, she would be able to demand he get things exactly right and he wouldn’t have any right to embellish the truth. Her pathetic situation, her and Martin’s real situation. Remembering his slogan that fiction is justified by being close to the truth makes her laugh.

  Kepa doesn’t ask her why she’s laughing. She figures he must be thinking she’s as hysterical as Flora Ugalde. She tells him about the conversation she had with Lynn when she asked her what it felt like to be the inspiration for a literary character. Julia laughs again.

  She remembers Martin saying, “So you two did talk about me.”

  The memory of that makes her stand up. “I’m boring you,” she says, while he remains seated on the bench. He answers seriously, as if offended, “That’s not true.” Julia takes a few steps over to a street light and says, “Come here so I can see your lying face properly.” He doesn’t hesitate and looks straight at her as he walks toward her. She thinks he might kiss her, but he doesn’t. He just stands there looking at her, and then she says she has to get the train. There’s one in twenty minutes.

  They leave Ijentea Kalea, join the noisy boulevard, and continue on in the direction of the river. They don’t talk much; they’re constantly getting separated by the people coming in the other direction. Julia thinks about the coming goodbye and decides to say she’d like to see him again when they get to it. She rehearses the sentence. “I hope to see you again . . .” But she’d like to have something more to say. Even though there are swarms of people in the Okendo gardens, too, the noise they make doesn’t drown out that of the birds in the palm trees taking shelter from the unusual light and all the people walking around. She must have made an expressive face on lifting her hands up to her nose, still a little revolted by the smell of the crabs. “If you want to wash your hands, I have a suite reserved here,” he says, pointing at the María Cristina Hotel. She laughs and thinks she’s sounding hysterical again. “I can put up with it until I get home.” He insists he’s being serious. He has to go up and unmake the bed. Julia frowns as she looks at him, now knowing what to say, while he says once more that he’s serious. Finally she admits that she knows about everything Martin went through to reserve the suite for the Catalans. And knows he came up with a plan to make it look as if the room’s being used, so that nobody can reproach him for going around asking for favors in vain. She’d guessed that Martin was going to ask Kepa to do this favor for him. She doesn’t know why. She must be quite tipsy, because she tells him now that she only agreed to walk with him because she knew he had a suite. She laughs again, so that he won’t take her seriously. Yes, she is curious to see what a suite in that rundown, glamorous old hotel is like. “Come on then, we’ll ask for the key and go and wash our hands.” She accepts, but standing still at the foot of the stairs, while Kepa’s already on the second step, she tells him she’s promised herself not to sleep with a man the same day she meets him. He turns around and says, in a completely natural way, that he agrees. He could have said, “Going to bed with you is the furthest thing from my mind.” Likewise, he might have understood that before reaching this decision, she often took men to bed with her on the very first day she’d met them. Thinking these things, Julia becomes nervous and goes red. But Kepa doesn’t seem to have realized and, in any case, doesn’t say anything. Then she hesitates over whether to stand next to him at the reception desk or whether to stand discreetly away from him. There are people swarming around, and there’s not much glamour. There are no big stars around. Eventually, she decides to step up to the desk with Kepa; the reservation was made for a couple, and just in case he comes across any difficulty. But there’s no trouble, even though his last name’s not Calvet i Barot; Martin told them in his best Spanish accent that a Don Pedro Ruiz was going to be taking the suite. When the receptionist calls the bellboy, Kepa, without batting an eyelid, says that his chauffeur is going to bring their suitcases in later. In the same relaxed way he tells Julia that it’s actually his real name, Pedro Ruiz, although everyone calls him Kepa Ziur. The Kepa part is obvious—that’s how you say “Pedro” in Basque. Ziur: an anagram of Ruiz.

  The bellboy tells them as he opens the door that Bette Davies stayed in their same suite. A bright young man who laughs when Kepa says “I bet you tell that to everyone.” There’s a large sitting room, and the bedroom has a balcony that looks out onto the river. The bathroom is done up in Carrara marble, as you would expect. On the table in the middle there’s a large bunch of white and red roses and a bottle of Moët & Chandon in an ice bucket.

  When Julia comes out of the bathroom after getting rid of the smell of the crabs on her hands, Kepa Ziur, which is to say Pedro Ruiz, is opening the bottle of champagne. “They’re going to put it on the bill anyway,” he answers the question on her face, and in order not to seem mean, she accepts the glass he enthusiastically gives her and repeats his toast, “To our meeting.” They’re face-to-face in a room that’s too large, too luxurious, and too decadent, and they seem to have nothing to say to each other. Julia has never understood the pleasure some couples seem to get from spending weekends in luxury hotels. She spent two nights at the Paris Ritz—because of Proust, of course—and hardly enjoyed the marble, gold-framed mirrors, velvet curtains, and the staff’s not entirely respectful way of looking at her. She recalls Frisch, who always knew when a place—some shop or restaurant—wasn’t for him. He’d forgotten to say that sometimes the staff themselves will let you know when you’re in a place that
isn’t for you.

  The Fifth Avenue hotel Frisch stayed in didn’t seem very luxurious. Or very welcoming, either.

  So she brings the film up again, even though she doesn’t have much to say about it. Neither does Kepa, who says once more that he liked seeing Ingeborg Bachmann. Julia, feeling like saying the opposite, and a little annoyed by Kepa’s reverence for fame, says she found Marianne prettier. Kepa argues that they’re very different and, in Bachmann’s defense, that she’s much older. Around thirteen years older. Kepa frowns as he calculates the difference, and Julia realizes it’s a habit of his, he does it to get his astonishing memory in gear. He frowns and sharpens his eyes a little, half closing them, as if he were overcoming myopia. It’s fairly clear that after a certain age, Frisch started having relationships with increasingly young women. He met Ingeborg Bachmann when he was forty-seven, and he was no more than fifteen years older than her; Marianne, who he met four years later, was twenty-eight; and in Montauk, when he’s already sixty-six, Lynn is not yet thirty-one, so he’s thirty-two years older than her.

  Julia didn’t know that Marianne was so young. She says she likes her but finds it difficult to explain why when he asks her. There’s that sentence Frisch recalls in Montauk: “I have not been living with you to provide literary material. I forbid you to write about me.” Admitting that she identifies with her would involve the risk of bringing Flora Ugalde into the conversation, so with Kepa still waiting for her reply, she says she doesn’t know why.