Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  Presents. The one she’s giving him on Martin’s behalf first. The watercolor set and Baroja’s Zalacaín el aventurero. He’s happy—Martin always gets it right. Then her own presents. He likes the surfer hoodie, and it looks good on him. The expression on his grandmother’s face shows she thinks he likes that more than her present, so he puts the sweater back on again.

  She challenges him to find her favorite sentence in the book. She sometimes does that when she lends him a book, although she’s not sure it’s a good idea, because it influences his reading to an extent.

  There’s the start of an argument when the bells at the nun’s church ring out. “What right do they have?” Julia says as she raises her hands to her head. She has a headache, and her mother says she’d have fewer headaches if she slept in the same bed every night. Not caring that the boy’s there to hear it. She’s going to mass. She says it with a tone of reproach, holding Orixe’s Basque-Latin missal against her chest, even though it’s unnecessary—she knows it just as well in Latin as she does in Basque. She doesn’t put on a mantilla. Julia asks her mother maliciously if she no longer takes communion, and she, astonished but defiant, asks what’s behind her question. “You’ve already had breakfast.” And she looks at her daughter with pity. It’s obvious she hasn’t set foot in a church for a long time—it’s no longer necessary to have an empty stomach before taking communion, nor is confession necessary now, either. It’s enough to repent and harbor an intention of improving. Julia contradicts her, saying that repentance is good for a while, provisionally, so to speak; although she’s not very sure of what she’s saying, she enjoys making her mother doubt and seeing how nervous it makes her. It’s clear the idea that she has to confess is enough to make her nervous. But Julia doesn’t feel sorry for her; or rather, her thirst for revenge is greater. She remembers that her mother instilled her with a fear of touching the host even with her teeth, and now people pick it up with their hands. The relaxed attitude of her mother, and of all Catholics, makes her angry—they avoid making even the smallest sacrifices for the religion they so strictly forced on her. Zigor says he wants to go with his grandmother, he says they now do collective confessions, he’s heard that at school, and he makes a discreet sign for Julia to keep quiet, as if saying to her, “What do you care anyway?” She’s ashamed—her son’s more mature than she is.

  Zigor is still wearing his pajamas and reading Zalacaín at the kitchen table. Barefoot, he has one foot on a chair, one hand holding the book up, and the other hand hangs loosely from the arm that’s resting lazily on his knee, twirling a pen around; he always keeps a pen nearby when he reads. Like she does. But his posture seems like a young boy’s to her. He looks at her from the corner of his eye and continues reading. She puts the breakfast things her mother hand-washed into the dishwasher and says she’s going to take a shower.

  Apart from a white cotton pair, all the panties she has are beige. Waist-high beige silk panties, and they aren’t cheap, as she’s said a hundred times to Martin when he’s teased her about them being so ugly. She’s thinking of buying some more exciting ones. She’s tired and lies down on top of the made bed. She puts one hand inside her bathrobe to stroke her breasts; the mere idea of buying new panties has made her feel seductive, her nipples have hardened, and she breathes more heavily. She has to overcome her urge.

  Zigor is at her door in the sweater his grandmother’s given him and has the book in his hand. Julia tightens her bathrobe belt. “I know what the sentence is,” he says, without noticing her reflex movement, or so she hopes. It’s the part about Martín starting to find out all he could about French liberalism and beginning to find his countrymen backward and fanatical. “Martín empezaba a impregnarse del liberalismo francés y a encontrar atrasados y fanáticos a sus paisanos,” he reads aloud. A significant choice. Why does he think that was what she found most interesting? She thinks it’s a promising topic of conversation. She smiles as she remembers something Faustino Iturbe once said. He’d like to make love to the Marseilles, underneath the Gernikako Arbola—the Tree of Gernika. That wasn’t the part she most liked when she read the novel. “What is it, then?” He lies down on the bed, too. He tickles her, trying to make her tell him what it is. She refuses. She isn’t going to tell him until he finishes the book. Now she tickles him.

  They grapple. He gets on top of her with a leg on either side, and Julia tries to get him off her. He’s stronger than her, and in any case, the way they brush against each other in body-to-body combat inhibits her. Even so, she lifts her hips up to try to pick up speed, but not realizing that Zigor has already stopped making any effort. He moves to one side and picks up the envelope with his name on it from the bedside table.

  “And what’s this?” he says, with his legs still to either side of her.

  Julia tries to get the envelope, but he holds it beyond her grasp. She does nothing to stop him from opening the envelope and taking out the drawing of the schooner. He gets off the bed and sits in front of the desk with the drawing. She stares at him, her hands over her mouth. That goes on, and she thinks of telling him that it’s a joke.

  “Who’s this Kepa?”

  “A friend of Martin’s.”

  He looks at her sharply and then seems to realize that she’s embarrassed, because he looks away toward the drawing once more.

  “Is he serious?”

  “I think so.”

  Because she feels that saying anything else would be betraying Kepa.

  24

  On the radio, they’re talking about the blue sky, which is going to cloud over as the day goes on and, by the afternoon, give way to some risk of showers, and Abaitua, just in case, looks in his closet for a light raincoat that isn’t too sporty. Always prepared. He takes out a summer raincoat he’s had for years and that won’t look bad on him in the streets of Bilbao. He tries it on and thinks it looks good.

  He goes into the kitchen, and Pilar doesn’t realize. She’s still wearing her bathrobe, sitting in front of the remains of her breakfast with a pen in her hand, and she doesn’t see him, or doesn’t want to look up before she finishes her sudoku. She’s taken up that pastime again and spends hours doing it; it seems to require more concentration than the crosswords she used to do. Abaitua wants to be as gentle as possible when he tells her they’re running late, and she, staring at him in silence for a moment as if she weren’t actually seeing him, says she’s not actually sure she wants to go and gets up reluctantly.

  They’ve spoken about it before. He’s told her he understands that she doesn’t want to be around people, that she’s lost her interest in work and is even tempted to forget about everything, but he tries to convince her that she has to face up to things as soon as possible and move forward. He encourages her once more. Urrutikoetxea probably hasn’t heard a thing, and if he has, he won’t care. It was an accident, one of the many that happen in hospitals every day, and as far as Urruti’s concerned, Abaitua doesn’t think he’ll have the bad taste to bring the matter up, not unless it’s to say something very much like what he’s just said, in fact. He tells her again that he wants to go with her; it’s not to do her a favor, he’s been wanting to go for a walk around Bilbao for a long time now, to visit the Guggenheim, and to go to the type of good restaurant Urruti will certainly take them to. Pilar’s eyes light up, and he’s quite pleased about how respectful and patient he is with her.

  Pilar drives. She does so with confidence, resting her right hand on the gear stick and holding her foot back so as to not break the speed limit, getting angry with drivers who do break it and overtake her. There’s not much traffic.

  Sociological reflections. Abaitua observes that among more mature couples in high-end cars, the woman is often—perhaps not in most cases, but certainly in many of them—the driver. He thinks that now that almost everyone has a car, and to the extent that driving has gone from being something prestigious to a common, annoying chore, men, at
least in the Basque Country, have lost interest in it, unless it’s in rallies and such, and it’s women who have to do it. It’s similar with smoking, too—the men are giving it up and the women are starting. He’s also noticed that whenever there’s a couple with a stroller, it’s the man who pushes it, regardless of the couple’s age, and the same is true when it’s the grandparents—grandfathers who were once ashamed to push their children’s strollers are now proud to take their grandchildren out for a walk. He’s convinced that in a few years’ time, it’ll be women, in general, who’ll take care of politics—it’s already becoming apparent in Scandinavia—and men will spend more and more time doing manual activities and gardening.

  He isn’t sure whether he’s ever shared these thoughts with Pilar. Bearing in mind their lack of communication recently, he imagines he hasn’t, but he wouldn’t like to repeat himself. In any case, he decides to say something to break the silence, but even though she listens carefully, it’s clear he doesn’t have her full attention. She knows that women are taking over roles that have traditionally been considered men’s, above all those that aren’t very prestigious—or that lose their prestige once women take them on—but the opposite seldom occurs, beyond the exceptions that prove the rule. Men push strollers and look after children in the park while their mothers are at work, little more than that. Pilar gets very serious about the subject, and Abaitua’s sorry he brought it up, because he thinks that, to an extent, Pilar’s talking about him. He feels guilty, because he doesn’t do any of the housework, although to a large extent that’s because Pilar, who’s so neurotically perfectionistic, doesn’t let him—she doesn’t like the way he does things. That’s why they don’t have a cleaner, either. If he washes things up by hand, she always puts them into the dishwasher later. She thinks that everything other people do is badly done; but it’s also true that Abaitua doesn’t try all that much. He accepts that Pilar’s neurosis isn’t an excuse, or at least not a complete one.

  A Swedish woman says to her husband, “I’d rather you helped out more at home instead of going to so many Feminist Party meetings.” He’d found it very funny when Lynn told him that. And he’s sure he hasn’t told Pilar the anecdote. He does, and manages to get her to smile.

  The things to talk about in Bilbao are how the city has turned its back on the river and the wonderful way in which the tone of the clouds in the sky transforms on the twisted titanium surface of the Guggenheim Museum. Urrutikoetxea’s office has views of the Isozaki Atea Towers. Building them cost a little more than five hundred and fifty euros per square foot, not serious money. Although Urruti greets them in authentic Otzeta Basque, he gladly switches to Spanish on the excuse that his partner doesn’t understand Basque.

  His partner’s a fat man. He looks a little like the resident who’s in love with Lynn, above all because of his bulging eyes, but his flesh isn’t as soft. Both of them are proud of the way the city’s been transformed over recent years, especially compared to Donostia. The partner says what everybody knows—Donostia has closed in on itself, it’s living off the past, it’s held onto what it had to an extent, but its beauty is fading. Urruti agrees and goes even further and says it’s a bit provincial: “San Sebastián es un poco pueblo.” Abaitua is hurt by Urruti—a Bilbaoan from Otzeta—saying things like that, but he listens to him in silence, even though he agrees to an extent, but mostly because he’s determined to be pleasant. Pilar, though, does protest—even though she’s always been a fan of Bilbao, even back when it was gray and ugly, when the area where all these wonderful modern buildings are now was the customs house for the port, because her father was on the board of Hispano—most of the board members were Basque speakers—and he often brought her there. Abaitua knows that she’s defending Donostia on his behalf, to be on his side, and he’s moved. Her arguments are weak, however, even though the other two seem to give way to them, admitting that the Kontxa is, of course, unparalleled and that the downtown is still quite attractive—“La señora Concha, desde luego, es incomparable, y el centro sigue siendo coqueto.” Things like that.

  Abaitua agrees with Urruti that the rivalry between the people of Donostia and the people of Bilbao is more markedly on display in Donostia. He doesn’t say that it’s due to an inferiority complex, but he obviously thinks that. It’s nice being with Urruti—because he never shuts up, it’s easy to remain comfortably quiet. Abaitua’s only worry is that he might bring up his lawsuit with the hospital or Pilar’s accident—there’s no doubt he must know about them—but for the moment, he doesn’t mention either. They have a short discussion about whether the rivalry between the two cities has increased in recent years. Urruti’s partner thinks it’s always been the same, whereas Urruti thinks it’s gotten worse and blames soccer for polarizing everything. He says Donostians think they’re losing out there, too. So they talk about soccer for some time, about both cities’ teams, about the differences between the two groups of fans. Pilar doesn’t say anything. Abaitua thinks there’s more localism than before. The patriotic idea of brotherhood between Basques that existed during the Franco years has lost strength since the Spanish Autonomous Communities were set up, including, among other things, when it comes to dividing inheritances between brothers and sisters.

  Then they talk about what’s usually refered to as “the situation.”

  Urruti openly describes himself as a nationalist, while his partner says he’s a liberal—in the classical sense of the word, that is. He’s right-wing, extremely right-wing, and calls people who think like Urruti “yokels” more than once, without worrying about what their visitors might think. Abaitua doesn’t like listening to people who think of themselves as being cosmopolitan and highly educated just because they aren’t Basque nationalists, and he doesn’t like this man. He finds him physically repulsive. He’s the hot-tempered type. His face is round, his lips are thick, lascivious, all his facial movements show mockery and disdain. He obvious holds sway over Urruti. What he finds most striking—and Urruti must think the same thing about him—is how much he’s aged since he last saw him. His hair and drooping moustache are now completely white, but his ageing is most apparent in his gestures and his way of walking. (That way his coccyx sticks out, which it always has, has got worse.) He’s skinny, but his belly’s fat, it pulls at his shirt. Because it spills out over the top of his pants, he may still be able to use the same size as when he was young, and perhaps that’s why he looks so happy. They’re both wearing those sweaters you see more in Bilbao than in Donostia, knitted, with adjustable sleeves. Urruti’s is blue, and his partner’s, green.

  “Habrá que hablar del tema,” the partner says—it’s time they got down to talking about the business at hand. Abaitua arranged with Pilar that at this point, he would go out for a walk and join them again for lunch, along with the other two’s wives. They both thought it would be a good way to show mutual respect for each other, making it clear that Pilar is capable of talking business by herself and that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with private medicine. But when he says goodbye, he has the feeling he’s abandoning his wife.

  He really does feel a sense of nostalgia for Bilbao as an ugly, industrial port. But he admits it’s beautiful now.

  He walks along the river aimlessly, not planning on going anywhere specific. Deustuko Zubia, which no longer opens for large ships to go through.

  The Euskalduna Palace, rising out of the water like a docked ship. The building on the opposite bank he’s always admired, the one with a tiger on top—lots of Bilbaoans, fans of the local soccer team and its mascot, prefer to say it’s a lion—has also been restored, and seeing it always seems to transport him to 1950s Detroit.

  He turns around and goes back in the opposite direction. Uribitarte Pasealekua. Young people jog by just as they do along the Urumea in Donostia. Zubizuri Zubia—he walks across the bridge, shuffling his feet over the various slip resistant materials they’ve put on the glass walkway, wanting to kn
ow if it’s still slippery. Campo de Volantín Pasealekua. There used to be a bar at the end of the boulevard that served what was apparently an excellent omelette, which the young people who always ended up there at the end of the night would use to soak up all the alcohol in their stomachs. He’s across from the city hall. Areatzako Pasealekua-Paseo del Arenal. He sits on a bench to watch the town and the townspeople. Bilbao scenes: a tall, upright, and elegant man of his age with a striped beret on, a type he hasn’t seen before, least of all in summer; a little boy asking his mother for an ice cream in Bilbaoan Basque; another man, older, small, wearing a blue beret and singing what he recognizes as the song “Bizkaia es un bello jardín”—meaning “Biscay is a beautiful garden”—in a baritone voice.

  He gets closer to the river again on Erribera Kalea; it’s not very clean, but the water’s certainly much more transparent than it was a few years ago. He heard somewhere that Resurrección María de Azkue, the famed Basque priest and Renaissance man, once had the bad luck to fall in.

  Seeing the now-renovated market reminds him of the senselessness of what the Donostia city council did with the Bretxa Azoka.

  San Anton Bridge and the church of the same name at one end of it, both featured prominently on the Bilbao coat of arms. He quickens his pace; he’s late and still has to find the restaurant in Bilbo Zaharra—the old town.

  They’re waiting for him at the table, but fortunately, Urruti’s partner’s wife has only just arrived. Urruti’s wife is just the same as she was thirty years ago, though her face is a little more wrinkled. She’d always been chubby, small, and ugly, and so she still is, small and chubby, though she no longer looks ugly to him. That’s the reward, and sometimes the revenge, of many of those people who looked older when they were in their youth—they don’t look so ugly as they age, or so old, either. When they order champagne as an aperitif, somebody inevitably describes it as “Bilbao Water.” Pilar tells an anecdote about Paco Bueno, the founder of the well-known bar—she thinks it must be an urban legend—about how he refused charge some Bilbaoan patrons for their champagne. “Water’s free here,” he said. He thinks she looks happy, happier than she has for a long time. And talkative, too.