Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  The partner’s wife is a lot younger than him, and quite attractive, too. Her hair reminds him of Lynn’s, although it’s probably dyed. After they’re introduced, the first thing she says is that Pilar reminds her of one of those beautiful women Modigliani painted, and she, Pilar—unusually—doesn’t mind saying it’s not the first time someone’s told her that. She’s sometimes been compared to that naked woman lying on a red bed cover and bluish-green cushions. Sleeping Nude with Arms Open is the title, Urruti’s partner’s wife says. She knows it’s part of a private collection in Milan. Apparently Pilar’s feeling very uninhibited, because she tells them how they’ve occasionally talked about traveling to Milan to find out just where it is and go see it. Abaitua doesn’t mind her saying that at all, but he clarifies that it’s just an excuse for going to Milan. Adriana—which is Urruti’s partner’s wife’s name—tells them that it’s the jewel in the crown of Mr. Gianni Mattioli’s collection—Pilar makes a note of that in her diary—and that it’s open to the public once a week, she thinks on Mondays.

  “I suppose you’ve noticed that Adriana’s got a degree in art history,” says her husband with pride, and Abaitua remembers the advice a Bilbao father once gave to his son who was going away: don’t tell people you’re from Bilbao, they’ll realize anyway, and if they don’t, you don’t need to humiliate them. The walls in the restaurant are blue. “Bilbao blue.” The art history graduate tells them that Frank Gehry often used to come to this restaurant when he was building the Guggenheim and that the blue of its walls inspired him to choose the color for part of the museum. There’s a tedious squabble when Urruti contradicts her, saying that the owner of the restaurant spread that story around on purpose, and his wife abruptly shuts him up by saying that that’s just his opinion and he doesn’t know a thing. It seems she still enjoys humiliating Urruti, a quarter of a century on. Her disdain for him has always been obvious, and all his colleagues think it’s due to the frustration of having married a doctor and failed to gain the economic status she’d been hoping for.

  Abaitua wonders what other people might think about them, about their relationship, and his intention to be pleasant with Pilar, and to overcome his sarcasm, is reinforced.

  “Con unas patatitas, ajitos, y cebollitas tiernas.” Abaitua finds the way cooks and waiters use diminutives all the time, like now—“some nice little potatoes, a few little cloves of garlic, and some lovely little green onions”—extremely irritating. Giving a demonstration of his impeccable memory, the head waiter—a fat, serious-looking man, with an air somewhat like a notary—recites the long menu by heart, although they each have a copy in their hands, which makes Urruti keep quiet for a good while. After his recital, the head waiter adds a coda: the specials are “bacalao con berenjenas y tomatitos, cola de merluza gratinada, solomillo al foie con salsa de vino”—cod with eggplant and some little tomatoes, tail of hake au gratin, steak with foie and wine sauce.

  When it comes time to taste the wine and the waiter holds the bottle out, waiting for them to decide who’s going to do it, Abaitua suggests that Pilar should. She usually does. As well as having a finer palate than him, and having been on a couple of wine-tasting courses, she enjoys surprising waiters, because it’s usually a task that falls to men. And he makes his pleasantry about her having “a good nose on her.” After a slight protest, she tastes the wine calmly, without any extravagant gestures. After she approves it, he sees in her eyes that she’s asking him to behave more properly, to not tease her in front of people.

  He decides to talk as little as possible, even though that means running the risk of Pilar saying later on, as she often does, that he’s been grumpy and absent.

  Urruti, talking about the past again, says, “Cuando éramos rojos”—back when we were reds.

  Abaitua thinks that he’s treating him with a little pity, and in spite of appearances, he thinks that could be because, to an extent, he feels guilty for having dedicated his professional life to the pursuit of amassing wealth with his partner. The partner doesn’t have any such issues, he proclaims proudly that he’s never been so naïve as to let himself be swept away by dreams like left-wing people are. His eyes look increasingly toad-like as he eats and drinks, and his lips more lascivious. He’s reminded once more of the resident who was after Lynn. When he bumped into him that Saturday and the resident asked him if he knew anything about where she was, he got rid of him without hiding his temper. Why did he think he should know?

  They have a nice meal, but because he finds it hard to join in with the others’ enthusiasm, he gets told, for the thousandth time, that he’s too demanding when it comes to food. And then there’s another concession. “Como en Donostia no se come en ningún lado”—there’s nowhere like Donostia for good food. Although when it comes to good cod, there’s nowhere like Bilbao.

  The fashionable thing for people to do now—without criticizing the “Guggen,” of course—is speak wonders of the Fine Arts Museum. Adriana, Urruti’s partner’s wife, suggests they go and see an unmissable exhibition. She tells them, over their coffee, that she’s decided to write her thesis about the presence of pathology in works of art. What she says is interesting, although Abaitua has a vague memory of having read something about it in a copy of Jano, the medical and humanities journal. She’s examining works of art in which the characters have some pathological feature, looking into their illnesses and putting them in context. She says that mammary pathology is the most common. Raphael depicts the breasts of his lover, the model Margherita Luti, in his wonderful work La Fornarina, and on her left breast and in the armpit on the same side there are clear signs of what may be a tumor. One of Rubens’s Three Graces—in fact his wife, Elena Fourment—has a clear depression on one breast, which is a sign of cancer. There are many cases like that, but she says that what especially interests her is what makes the artists want to show them, even on idealized figures. In the Medici Chapels in Florence, for instance, in the beautiful, extraordinary allegory of dawn, there are signs of advanced cancer on one breast, while the other is perfect. Why did Michelangelo use such cruel realism on what is clearly an idealized figure, even if the figure is only idealized to make it androgynous? Was he fascinated, or perhaps horrified, by the spectacle of signs of illness on a woman of his acquaintance and thus unable to avoid depicting them?

  She gesticulates as she asks her questions, giving them emphasis, and several people walking by stop to listen. They’re in the vestibule of the Fine Arts Museum, and the unmissable exhibition deals with breasts, it’s focus is La Carità romana, in other words, the Valerius Maximus legend in which a daughter called Pero takes advantage of her visits to her old father, Cimone, who’s in jail, condemned to death by starvation, to breastfeed him. When the guards find her doing this, they are so moved by the daughter’s love that they lift the father’s punishment. That’s the story the leaflet tells. The sight of more than a dozen paintings in the hallway all on the same subject matter is something Abaitua finds revolting, but the sensation disappears as soon as he stands in front of the first of them, a Rubens from The Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. It’s astonishing how natural the unusual situation seems to him. The old father’s half lying down on the floor, with his hands behind his back—tied, presumably—and wearing no more than a dark loincloth. His daughter—blond, sturdy, and yet at the same time delicate—has her left arm behind her father and is holding her breast to his mouth with her right arm. She stares at her father’s mouth, without showing any particular feeling; there’s nothing seductive about her or about her father. The second painting, too, is by Rubens, from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum; it dates from almost twenty years later. The woman is very much like the first one, and dressed almost identically, all in red, but her father is older and in a worse state. The biggest difference between the two paintings—as well as the characters’ positions—is in the eyes. They’re both looking at a group of soldiers who are observing them from behind a barred window. Th
e scene is more disturbing than the one in the first painting, above all because of the looks, and also because the breast which is not feeding the old man—a pearly-colored round breast—is uncovered for no apparent reason, unlike in the other painting.

  Urruti’s partner’s wife gives them basically the same information as in the leaflet, but she does also add some significant details. It could be that she prepared the visit beforehand, and he guesses—from a look they quickly share—that Pilar suspects that, too. He’ll ask her when they’re alone. Adriana tells them that one of the Rubens, the one from The Hermitage, already came to the Guggenheim on a previous occasion, as part of an exhibition called Rubens and his Age showcasing the treasures amassed by Catherine the Great. Pilar and Abaitua saw that exhibition. And they also saw, right here in this same museum, Caravaggio’s enormous The Seven Works of Mercy, but he overcomes the urge to say so. In that painting, daughter Pero and father Cimone appear off to the right. Pilar, too, keeps quiet about their having seen it. She has less trouble letting others enjoy their belief that they have exclusive access to certain things, knowledge included. More precisely, it’s no trouble at all for her. He sees her nodding to let Adriana know that her explanations are interesting, but she also finds a moment to throw him a look, very clearly this time, as if to say “what a know-it-all this woman is,” and Abaitua enjoys that complicity of theirs, unusual as it is.

  He thinks she must be glad that the subject of her “accident” hasn’t come up. He, on the other hand, would have preferred to talk openly about his problems at the hospital.

  Adriana, the partner’s wife, talks about the marvellous play of light—“Ese maravilloso juego de luz.” They’re still standing in front of the magnificent Caravaggio. In the top left-hand corner, the angels escorting the Virgin. Their wings open, of course. He thinks that angels with their wings down must be an artistic exception. He can’t help remembering Lynn.

  Everyone laughs when Urruti’s wife says she finds it a bit revolting seeing so many old men feeding from young women’s breast. She also finds the looks of pleasure on the faces of the daughters in some of the paintings a little repulsive. Now Pilar speaks, saying that what takes her aback is the soldiers looking on. After the fourth or fifth painting, they just glance at the rest. Jean-Baptiste Greuze 1767. Simon Vouet 1590-1649. Johann Zoffany 1769. Lorenzo Pasinelli 1670. Charles Mellin 1600-1650. Just to say something, Abaitua asks their guide if she doesn’t think the daughter in Mellin’s painting doesn’t look a bit like the Tamara de Lempicka figures, and she says she may, but he doesn’t think she’s very convinced. After looking at the painting for a moment, she says, with great conviction, that you can find everything in the classics. He likes the way she gives so much emphasis to everything she says.

  Meanwhile, Urruti and his partner are telling loud jokes, probably encouraged by the laughter of the group of women behind them who are listening in on their guide’s explanations. Urruti, pointing at Pero and Cimone, mentions the phenomenon of el chupón or el mamón—the suckler. A man tasked with drinking the milk of mothers who have too much, or whose children have died. Izaina in Basque, perhaps. It was usually an old man, because of his teeth, or rather his lack of them, he says, to prevent the women from thinking he’s being obscene, or so Abaitua thinks. Urruti says he knew one in Otzeta who used to go from house to house to do his work—on arriving at each successive doorstep, he would say hello and then step into the new mother’s room. Abaitua doesn’t believe it, even though he once knew an old midwife who told him she knew a man who did that, even though she didn’t know the name for the job in Basque. Urruti says “Ave Maria,” pretends to take off a beret, drags his feet backward like an old man toward the last painting, and makes a sucking gesture while cupping his hands around his mouth.

  Everybody laughs, even Pilar. Abaitua finds himself in a very bad mood.

  The painting that closes the exhibition is the only contemporary work, dating from 1997, by one Johannes Phokela, a South African who reinvents classical painting by changing sex or race roles as a way of turning western painting on its head. That’s what the catalogue says. In this case, the erotic is clearly on display, above all because the man isn’t old. His hands are tied with ribbons behind his back, his feet, too, and it looks like part of some S and M game. His head is bald, probably shaved, and there are no hairs on his body, either. They’re both naked. He has a book open on his lap. He’s muscular, but with that crude, harsh air Lucian Freud’s figures often have. The woman breastfeeding him, on the other hand, has a touch of Botero. Her dress is falling off her arms, she has no pubic hair, and she’s wearing red shoes. Standing in front of the painting, Urruti says it’s a clear case of sex addiction. More laughter. The two partners continue fooling around, to please their group of listeners, with whom they’ve now started talking. They’re four elderly ladies from Santander. When one of them says that the man doesn’t look old and that the women doesn’t look as if she’s just given birth, either, unlike in Valerius Maximus’ legend, Urruti says in all seriousness that it’s probably a case of galactorrhea. He tells the ladies from Santander not to laugh—he’s a gynecologist, and he knows what he’s talking about. There’s not much doubt they’re looking at galactorrhea caused by a hypophyseal tumor. The women don’t know if he’s being serious, but in any case, they’ve stopped laughing.

  Fortunately, since it’s the last painting.

  Abaitua thinks about Lynn. He holds the door open for Pilar to go out and thinks she’s looking very pale. When he asks if something’s wrong, she says no, but he’s sure that’s not true, something’s up.

  More laughter. On the way out, the group stops in front of the poster for the upcoming exhibition. It’s another themed one: the Iconography of the Lactation of Saint Bernard. The saint in his white habit is on the poster, kneeling on the ground in ecstasy, his arms at his side, his hands and forearms open, receiving the milk that the Virgin, seated on an altar with the Christ Child in her arms, is squirting in his direction. At the bottom of the poster, in miniature, copies of a dozen other paintings of the same scene.

  The two partners are competing to say the funniest things, while the art historian interprets the painting. The Virgin is squirting her milk at the founder of the Cistercian Order in order to save him the indignity of feeding straight from her breast, and the Christ Child is in her arms to make it clear that he’s given his permission.

  Urruti recalls the time they had that txotx back in Otzeta and drank straight from the stream of cider shooting out of the barrel, just like Saint Bernard, instead of lining up to fill their glasses from it as is the usual custom. The partner’s wife, still determined that the full extent of her knowledge be broadcast, assures them that you could write a whole thesis about breastfeeding in art; her husband, on the other hand, thinks it would be interesting to research the personal obsessions of art museum directors instead. It doesn’t look as if it’s ever going to end.

  Abaitua feels relieved when they get outside. There’s no question that Pilar isn’t feeling well. She excuses herself when they suggest going to have a drink, saying she has a bit of a headache. They go with them to the parking lot, which is nearby, and on the way, the partners say they’ll have to meet up again to continue their discussion at the clinic next time, that way they’ll be able to meet the rest of the partners.

  Abaitua’s drunk too much, as he does at any lunch where he doesn’t have much to say, and the way Pilar’s driving—fast, brusquely changing gear, and taking the bends aggressively—soon makes him dizzy. They’re in silence. The weather forecast was right, and although it started raining some time ago, Pilar hasn’t turned on the windshield wipers.

  The automatic payment system at the tollbooth isn’t working. She wants to reverse but can’t, because there’s a car in the way. Pilar sticks her head out of the window and quite roughly tells the driver behind to move back. Abaitua tries to calm her down—they aren’t in a hu
rry. Finally, when an employee lifts the barrier for them, he asks if the meeting went badly. Her answer’s harsh: “That friend of yours” is an idiot. No more than that. She’s talking about Urrutikoetxea, of course. Abaitua doesn’t understand why she’s in a bad mood, or, above all, why she’s said “that friend of yours.” He says it wasn’t he who wanted to do business with that idiot; if it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have ever come to see him.

  “OK, yeah, I knew you’d find a way to throw it in my face.”

  “I’m not throwing anything in your face.”

  He doesn’t have the energy to get angry. Before she can start talking again, he tries to place himself on her side by saying that he doesn’t know which of the two partners is the bigger fool.

  Even though it’s raining harder, she still hasn’t put the wipers on. They can hardly see the road, but Abaitua stays as he is, firmly resisting his urge to press the switch. He finds it harder to hold back the frustration he has inside. He tries to keep it under control. He remains quiet, looking at the play of light caused by the refraction of the water on the windshield. He doesn’t know how she can drive, you can hardly see the road through the shining colors, mostly red. Finally, in the most agreeable way he can manage, he decides to ask her again—something must have happened, something he missed.

  “You know full well,” she answers.

  “I don’t,” he insists.

  “Yes, you do. When they made those jokes about galactorrhea, they were laughing at me. Why do you think they brought up hypophyseal tumors?”