The Wrong Blood

by Manuel De Lope

  Ordinarily, no one requires more than a couple of minutes to urinate, although it’s said that women take longer than men and that obese men take longer than women, and there are probably scientific reasons that justify this point of view. When the young man asked his question, the three of them—that is, the two customers and the innkeeper—simultaneously turned their heads toward the rear of the barroom and started moving toward the toilets. Light entered this area through glass panes on a door that faced the luminous green meadow and opened under the porch, where a rabbit hutch was kept. There were no ladies’ and gentlemen’s rooms, there was only one latrine, and generally anyone could urinate for as long as he or she wished. Although the drinking water from the spring was connected to a tank and the tank to a faucet, the toilet facilities had not been connected to a septic tank, so that wastewater was carried directly into the river after passing through a proper toilet, a white porcelain bowl stamped with the calligraphy of the Manufactures Villeroy Frères, of Bayonne. One may suppose that in those places and those times, even toilets were smuggled. The nephew stepped up to the latrine door and rapped on it discreetly with his knuckles. At the other end of the barroom, the buffalo thrust his snout forward.

  “Is everything all right, Uncle?”

  The door was neither open nor locked, and they had great difficulty pushing their way in. Inside, the rich man from Vera de Bidasoa was lying on the floor, wedged between the door and the toilet bowl, with his fly open and his eyes rolled up, dead or almost dead from a stroke. They had great difficulty opening the door because the rich man’s body was obstructing it, but in the end they managed to haul him out of the latrine and drag him a few feet into the dining room. It was unthinkable that a rich and ample man should die in such a confined space as that privy. But to say that he was a rich man back then is not the same as to say that someone is a rich man now, when much more capital runs through the veins of the valley, although that’s no reason why anyone, even in those days, should have had to die in a latrine. His traveling companions loosened the starched collar of his wedding shirt, while the innkeeper opened the back door, the one that faced the meadow, and then hurried to open the front door as well, so that air could circulate. Nobody thought about closing the rich man from Vera’s fly. He was still breathing. They put damp towels on his forehead and concluded at once that they urgently needed to get him out of there and take him to where he could be helped.

  There was a wooden bench that had been used as a butcher’s table for quartering pigs and as just a bench ever since pig-slaughtering days had come to an end, and in any case there were no pigs at the inn, because rabbits and chickens were considered more profitable and required less work. The man’s head was resting on that bench when he emerged from his throes. His eyes, which had rolled up in his head, finally began to focus and to seek something they could understand. But he could understand nothing, nor could he grasp where he was. So it happens with the dead to whom fate has granted the right to open their eyes again. The man from Vera rubbed his nose. No one on the point of death who is thinking about his soul ever rubs his nose. His arm rose clumsily, and he dragged the back of his hand across his nostrils, indifferent to his nephew, indifferent to his companion, indifferent to the other witness, Etxarri, the master of the inn, but the rich man’s gesture, which relieved his nose of mucus and facilitated his breathing, at least manifested his will to live.

  They put him in the black Citroën 11 that was waiting in the sun to take its passengers to the wedding. It was an elegant, spacious automobile, designed like a gondola, with an engine as reliable as a ship’s. In those days, there was a metal plaque nailed to an electric pole outside the inn, and on this plaque a skull was crossed by a streak bearing the words DANGER OF DEATH. Another sign with the face of Christ was nailed to the door of the inn, and the words under the face were ERREGIEN ERREGIA, which means “King of Kings” in Basque, but which could also mean “I shall reign.” These signs were nothing but relics, or they later became relics, and even as rust was devouring their metal and causing their enamel to flake off, time was causing other damage. New embankments were excavated and built, some curves were flattened, and the arches of a new concrete bridge straddling the river were raised above the very roof of Etxarri’s Bar. As has already been mentioned, these days there’s much more money circulating through the veins of the valley.

  It’s well-known that rose plants are named according to their variety and grafts, or according to fashion and current events and color. Back then, there were roses called Lady Macbeth, or Marquesa de Urquijo, or Presidency of the Republic. There was an old variety of rosebush called Titanic. A pearly white rose that didn’t look like much but had a most fragrant scent was named Essence of Love. Any catalog of rosebushes offered a summary of the visible and invisible world of those years, arranged in parcels of flowers that were capricious or enigmatic, but identical in their perfection. Nobody doubted that there would exist in years to come a variety of rose, probably blood-red in color, that would be called July Eighteenth, because that was the day the war began, and after the war, or even during the conflict in some gardens, somebody would think of giving that name to a rosebush in order to commemorate the victory or celebrate the satisfactory turn of events; the names of rose varieties establish a terminology of passions and enthusiasms so evocative that they live on in the eyes of those who still remember the name of a given plant. However, let no one dare to imagine that anyone on the other side, the losing side, either during those three accursed years or later, might feel the sweet and sinister urge to cultivate rose plants in the courtyard of a prison or against the wall of a cemetery and call them Euzkadi, October, or Revolution, as if the roses they produced would also take a side in the conflict, would deny themselves to one group and bestow themselves on the other, as arbitrary as victory or disaster, and like them indifferent to future returns of spring, the fervor of anthems, the pangs of grief, and every sort of flag. And so it was that María Antonia Etxarri, the inn family’s daughter, did not remember the name of the enormous roses that grew up the façade of the building. On the other hand, whenever she saw the ice delivery van, María Antonia couldn’t help remembering the night when she was raped. At the time, she was a girl of sixteen. Many years had passed since then, and she still didn’t know whether what happened that night was what people called a rape. Before that night, she had known two men. The first of them had gone down to Oyarzun at the beginning of the war and was her first lover, although he had never been her boyfriend. The second man had also gone down to Oyarzun, but she didn’t know whether he’d done so to kill the first man or to sign up to fight in the war. Now this second man had indeed been her boyfriend, but somehow she had never heard from either of the two again; they had faded away, like travelers disappearing into a fog. The third man in her life, the one who would rape her, had not yet appeared, but she had a feeling that he was getting closer.

  Because of the first two men, her mother and stepfather had slapped her and called her txona and whore, txerria in the language of the house, and then, when María Antonia and her stepfather were alone, he had touched her breasts. But some time afterward, when the men arrived from Pamplona, having come by who knows what roads, her mother and stepfather had fallen silent, and then they had run off to Oyarzun, and María Antonia was left alone with all those soldiers. Some of them wore espadrilles, some had uniforms and wore boots, and others dressed in a wide variety of clothing, but all wore the red beret of a company of right-wing militia, the Carlist requetés.

  The troops did not number more than twenty, and they were accompanied by three mules, which were loaded with the men’s equipment and several cases of ammunition. An ice delivery truck, requisitioned along the way, had been armed with a light machine gun, which was set up on the roof above the driver’s cabin. On one side of this vehicle, one could read the words Fábrica de Hielo, “Ice Factory,” written in blue-and-white letters, with snow on the F and the H. The same words were w
ritten on the other side of the truck, but someone with white paint and a brush had added another, longer phrase above the snowy letters of the Ice Factory: “Long live God, who never dies, and if He dies, He rises again.” This short prayer was the unit’s slogan. The conscripts installed on the ground floor of the inn would shout that slogan fervently, along with songs and cries of “Long live” and “Death to.” Many of the militiamen were boys not more than twenty years old, and some of them looked as young as María Antonia, but probably none of them, experienced though they were at getting drunk, had ever gotten close to a woman. Thirty meters from the house, the armed ice truck guarded the brow of the hill. The three beasts of burden needed fodder. They had been put in the stable, next to the rabbit hutches, where the cows had been housed until the girl’s mother and stepfather dispersed them on the mountainside before running away.

  So it was that María Antonia found herself in charge of the whole place. It had been her stepfather’s idea to convert the inn to a bar, thus making the most of its excellent location on the road, near the bridge and the river. In addition to being in a strategically good spot for turning a roadside inn into a bar, Etxarri’s also had the advantage of dominating the crossroads, a fact that had not escaped the lieutenant in command of the unit, a swarthy, unshaven young man, his belt unbuckled and the top three buttons of his army jacket undone after a three-day march. The lieutenant and a sergeant took up quarters on the second floor. That was where the mule drivers had slept in the past, and twenty years later, when Etxarri’s Bar had become a prosperous business, that was where the fishermen would have their rooms, that is, the sportsmen who would come from Madrid or Bilbao in big black cars with enormous trunks for the opening of the salmon season. Two men had been posted to the attic, where previously there had been only doves. The soldiers’ rifles protruded from the small windows. It is likely that they were asleep at their post, because nothing could be seen from up there, except for the forest of fir and oak trees on the other side of the river and a few pale columns of blue smoke rising from the bottom of the valley.

  The unit formed part of Colonel Beorlegui’s forces. After an operation around Vera de Bidasoa, where his men had pushed past the village but failed to get across the Endarlatza bridge, Beorlegui had decided to execute an indirect maneuver, dividing his troops into small support units and a main advance force and moving out over difficult terrain and along forest trails in order to fall upon Oyarzun. These matters were all very far from María Antonia’s thoughts. They seemed equally far from the thoughts of the young militiamen, who shouted curses at Judas and praise to the Risen Lord and beat on the wooden tables in the dining room with clenched fists before passing out, exhausted, on those same tables, their rifles leaned against the benches and their faces placid in sleep, several of them with two or three deaths on their shoulders, accumulated like two or three eternities through service in some firing squad, and others, or the same ones, with death waiting ahead of them, so close, so soon that they could almost dream of it. On the morning of their arrival, they had sat down outside the front door of the house, under the climbing rosebush, to take off their espadrilles and treat their blisters and relieve their swollen feet, and they had hardly noticed whether they were in enemy territory or not, because after the surprise at Vera de Bidasoa, it wasn’t clear which redoubt in the valley or which hillock had remained under their side’s control. María Antonia had a feeling that one of those soldiers, if not more than one, was going to rape her. Barefoot, lounging in the field or on the stone bench, they looked like lads on a day trip, and later that afternoon, when a sudden rainstorm drove them into the kitchen, they cursed like drunken day trippers, too. The men stationed on top of the ice truck covered their machine gun with canvas and took refuge inside the vehicle. The men in the attic retreated from the embrasures and waited for the cloudburst to pass. Rain lashed the glass panels of the balcony on the second floor, where the only officer in the troop was in a discussion with his sergeant. The lieutenant had asked for some lunch to be brought to the room. It was past five in the afternoon, but neither he nor the sergeant had eaten anything yet. María Antonia climbed the stairs with a tray in her hands. There was some of the week’s bread, wine, and chorizo, along with some chestnut purée from the previous winter. The soldiers had dispatched two large cheeses and then cooked some potatoes, which each of them had eaten with his individual field rations. María Antonia pushed open the door and entered the room. The dark, abrupt lieutenant, who could not have been more than twenty-five, was drying his hands on a towel. He pivoted around, turning his back to the balcony. María Antonia stood still in the doorway. Her mother and stepfather’s bed was inside this same room, in the space partitioned off as a bedroom. The spread was on the floor. The wardrobe stood open, and its mirrored door reflected the unmade bed, a pair of calf-length leather boots, and a military bandolier and belt, complete with holster and standard-issue pistol, which hung from one of the brass balls on the bedposts. The girl noticed that the lieutenant was barefoot and must have been sleeping with his army jacket on since he arrived.

  “Who’s this kid?”

  “She was in the house,” the sergeant said. “Her parents ran away yesterday.”

  “What’s your name, muchacha?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Etxarri,” the girl said.

  “Leave our lunch on that table. And stay away from the soldiers,” the lieutenant said.

  María Antonia crossed the room and put the tray where she had been told to put it. Behind the rain, the valley was suddenly torn by glittering sunlight, and although the downpour continued to beat against the windows, a strange, sunny luminousness flooded the parquet floor. Reflections of the wine danced on the table. Neither of the men paid any attention to the girl when she turned to go. After she left the room and began to walk down the stairs, the sergeant closed the door behind her with his foot.

  When it stopped raining, the soldiers went outside again, some stretching, others rubbing their eyes, all of them young country boys, much like the boys in the surrounding villages, and all day long María Antonia had felt that one of them was going to rape her. But she wasn’t afraid. She assumed that that was, in some way, what had happened on the two previous occasions, even though it wasn’t, and she also assumed that her mother and stepfather had beaten her and called her a tramp and a slut precisely because it wasn’t, and because she had let herself be taken in. The young soldiers were wearing pants that were too big for them and outfits that were generally the wrong size, and one or two of them were in their underwear; when they stepped out of the dark kitchen, all were dazzled by the brightness of the late afternoon sun. They took down the stuffed buffalo head, brought it outside, and set it on a rock some fifty or sixty meters away. Some of the troops took target practice, and a bullet split the buffalo’s left horn. Then they stopped, because just as they had orders not to loot, they surely had orders not to waste ammunition, either. One of the men who had been posted to the attic shouted something to his comrades on the ground, and several of them laughed, and others shaded their eyes with their hands and squinted up at the eaves, where they could see a big smiling head and a rifle barrel sticking out of the opening in the dovecote. A rumble of artillery fire came from the direction of Erlaiz, and no one could tell if the steam rising from the valley was coming from the rain or if the rain was putting out a fire somewhere down there. The fields looked as though they had been polished. The mountainsides took on the fir trees’ sharp shadows. The blaze of twilight gave the leaden clouds blood-red outlines, but the most intense brightness, beyond the mountain crests, shone from the sea.

  A while later, the lieutenant came down from his room and the two men stationed in the attic were relieved, as were the two serving on the armed ice truck. Those who had gone down to the river to wash their socks returned, sending rocks rolling down the embankment as they came. The sergeant gave a few orders as well, while the officer headed for the bridge, from which point one coul
d see the succession of hills and the river winding among the firs, and from there he examined the valley, aided by a pair of black binoculars whose brass fittings were shiny with use. Darkness was falling. After a few minutes, the lieutenant returned. “Mess and turn in,” he told his men. “Tomorrow’s a fiesta.”

  “A holy day of obligation, Lieutenant?” said one of the soldiers, who was wearing an undershirt and drawers and shaking out a blanket into the cool twilight air.

  “Shut your trap,” said the lieutenant, without hesitation.

  “Does anyone have any aspirin?” the sergeant asked.

  Someone had two aspirin tablets, well wrapped in a piece of newspaper, and he gave one to the sergeant, who put it in his mouth and threw back his head and started chewing. Then he took a long pull on a canteen. Then he clicked his tongue and belched.

  Night was coming on quickly, and only shadows could be seen, moving from one side to the other, unpacking equipment and carrying bundles. The men gathered in groups of three or four to prepare their mess. The kitchen cupboards and various corners of the inn had been searched, not violently, because the soldiers had quickly confiscated sufficient bread and provisions for the following day, and with the exception of sugar, which was not to be found inside the house or anywhere else, they needed nothing. They turned on no lights and lit no fire. Some of them laid blankets on the floor of the kitchen and the dining room and settled down to sleep. Two or three went out to the stone bench beside the entrance to smoke cigarettes, whose dim embers intermittently lit up their faces with a serene glow. Others bedded down in the stable with the mules, because it was a warm and welcoming stable. After exchanging a few words, however, the men decided to take the mules out into the field so that they could graze. María Antonia Etxarri, unafraid, went out and sat near the three smokers, and then, when they withdrew, she took a seat on the same bench, near the entrance, and remained there with her arms folded across her belly and a blanket over her shoulders, listening to the strident breathing of the soldiers sleeping inside the house and the concert of the owls that had been born the previous spring and the dull thud of the hobbled mules’ hooves as the beasts grazed in the darkness.