“You can come back whenever you want, whether you’re a notary or a lawyer,” the doctor said. “You’ve got two houses in this town.”
“I’m sure I’ll be back,” said the lawyer.
“You’ve got everything ready for your departure?”
“A taxi’s coming to pick me up. My bags are all packed.”
“In that case, I wish you good luck.”
“Thank you.”
The lawyer stopped for an instant at the foot of the porch. Then he turned around and said his final good-bye to the doctor. María Antonia Etxarri saw him walk down through the garden at Los Sauces. She watched as he disappeared behind the tall garden wall, bristling with broken glass, that bordered the road. Then she saw him emerge from behind the wall, enter the gate of Las Cruces, and walk up toward the house. The old Etxarri woman would have taken some pleasure in telling him a few tales, ancient tales, about when she was barely more than a child and had had two men like two horses, about the months she’d spent in the big, rambling house in Vera, about the time when a sergeant had possessed her, about her arrival at Las Cruces with a bundle in her arms, and about who knew how many other things. She would have joined her hands, but she wouldn’t have found the words. For barely an instant, her mind was crossed by the thought that the person coming toward the house was her grandson, and that now the house was his house, and that she could cook dinner for him, and that the boy could move in with her and stay a long time. But she couldn’t demand recognition from him, nor could she claim dividends on the blood that she’d turned over to her Señora, and she couldn’t even imagine doing such a thing. It was simply a warm sensation that she felt in her stomach. It was a deeper respiration, as when the mind feels itself on the verge of receiving a revelation. But none came. She knew she could count on the doctor’s discretion. She was confirmed in this almost at once, because Goitia entered the house with the broad smile of a schoolboy on an excursion day.
“I think the taxi I ordered will be here soon,” the lawyer said, consulting his watch.
The old Etxarri woman withdrew for a moment to the kitchen. She was falling back on simple, solid things, because it couldn’t be otherwise, nor did she wish that it could be. She had prepared a surprise for the boy. A short time later, she returned with half a bacalao, wrapped in gray paper and enclosed in a cloth sack tied with a cord. She said, “This is half a bacalao for you to take back to Madrid.”
“Oh, María Antonia, that wasn’t necessary.…” said the boy, thanking her.
The old Etxarri woman smiled. Half a bacalao was necessary in any circumstances. Goitia went upstairs and came down again with his shoulder bag and the two suitcases. Ten minutes later, the taxi arrived. It entered the gate and went up the gravel road to the villa. Goitia waited for the cab in the foyer. He and the driver hauled the trunk, filled with books or whatever else it was filled with, to the car. Then the cabdriver carried out the suitcases and the shoulder bag. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his forehead, and muttered something about luggage loaded with bricks. Meanwhile the boy, with half a bacalao wrapped up like a mummy under his arm, took his leave.
“Good-bye, María Antonia.”
In her excited state, the old woman dared to say, “Greetings to Verónica.”
“I’ll give her greetings from you, and from the doctor, too,” said Goitia.
The old woman put her hands in the pockets of her apron and fell silent. The sensation of warmth had disappeared from her stomach. In her pockets, there was a rosary, a much-used handkerchief, two wrinkled thousand-peseta notes, and the key to the pantry. She wondered if she should give the boy a tip, the way grandmothers do with their grandsons, but then she decided that half a bacalao was enough. Three quarters of an hour later, she watched the plane take off. From the porch at Los Sauces, the doctor also watched the takeoff. The plane rose thunderously over the black waters of the estuary, flying toward the horizon and the open sea. An orangey glow illuminated the fuselage as it described a great half circle in the sky. Then it headed inland, high and silent in the twilit heavens.
The next morning, the day dawned foggy again, as was usual in late autumn. Before breakfast, the doctor, wearing pajamas, slippers, and bathrobe, stepped out onto his porch. The old Etxarri woman stepped out onto the porch at Las Cruces, with her hands under her sweater and her red scarf wrapped around her nose. When the doctor discovered her, her face was raised to the sky, as if she might be expecting the announcement of a new existence after the passing of the clouds. The doctor, too, would have wished for that, and the thought filled him with melancholy. But the Lord does not grant the exhausted veins of life the privilege of a second youth.
MANUEL DE LOPE was born in Burgos, Spain, in 1949. At age fifteen he moved to Madrid, where he now resides again, after having lived in Geneva, London, and the South of France for twenty-five years. In 1978 he published his first novel, Albertina en el país de los Garamantes, thus commencing one of the most treasured and significant careers in modern Spanish literature. The Wrong Blood is his first novel to be translated into English.
JOHN CULLEN is the translator of many books from the Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Enrique de Hériz’s Lies, Yasmina Khadra’s Middle East Trilogy (The Swallows of Kabul, The Attack, The Sirens of Baghdad), Christa Wolf’s Medea, and Margaret Mazzantini’s Don’t Move. He lives in upstate New York.
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