Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  Miren was taking off her daughter’s shoes. “Maybe someone was in cleaning up?”

  “Cleaning up at eleven at night?”

  “I have no interest in those people.”

  “Fine, I’m just telling you what I saw. It wouldn’t matter if they came back to the town.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. Now that there’s no armed struggle, they can strut around.”

  5

  MOVING BY NIGHT

  Some weeks after becoming a widow, Bittori spent a few days in San Sebastián. More than anything else, so she could stop seeing the sidewalk where her husband was killed and so she wouldn’t have to go on suffering the menacing stares of the neighbors—friendly for so many years and then, suddenly, just the opposite. She could also stop seeing the graffiti on the walls, especially the one on the kiosk in the plaza, one of the last ones, the one with the bull’s-eye above the dead man’s name. It appeared, and in a few days, goodbye.

  In reality, her children tricked her into going to San Sebastián. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: a fourth-floor! When she was used to living on the second.

  “Of course, ama, but there is an elevator.”

  Nerea and Xabier agreed they had to get her out of the village at all costs, out of her hometown, where she’d been born, where she was baptized, married, and then make it hard for her to return, even subtly keeping her from doing so.

  So they set Bittori up in an apartment with a balcony from which she could see the ocean. The family had spent a long while trying to sell it. They’d placed an advertisement in the paper. They’d even called several interested parties. Txato had bought it months before being murdered. He’d wanted somewhere outside the village to hide.

  There were lamps and some furniture in the flat. Her children told Bittori to move in provisionally. You talked to her, and she understood nothing. It was as if she’d gone mad. She was apathetic, she, who was always such a talker. But now she was like a statue. It actually seemed she was forgetting to blink.

  Xabier and a friend from the hospital brought over some essentials. They would drive to the town in the van late in the afternoon, when it was getting dark, so they wouldn’t call attention to themselves. They made perhaps ten trips, always after sunset. One day they’d bring this; the next, something else. There wasn’t much room in the vehicle.

  They left the double bed in the house in the village because Bittori refused to sleep in it without her husband. But, finally, they managed to remove lots of things: dishes, the dining-room carpet, the washing machine. One day during the week, while they were going about their business loading some boxes, they were insulted by a gang of Xabier’s old acquaintances; some of them high-school friends. One, angrily chewing his words, said that he’d memorized their license-plate number.

  On the way back to San Sebastián, Xabier realized his friend was having an anxiety attack and that if he kept driving in that state, they were going to have an accident. So he convinced him to pull over to the side of the highway.

  The friend: “I can’t do this tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

  “Calm down.”

  “I’m really sorry. Really sorry.”

  “There’s no need to go back. The move is over. My mother has enough with what we’ve brought already.”

  “But do you understand me, Xabier?”

  “Of course. Don’t worry.”

  A year went by, then another, then more. Meanwhile, Bittori secretly had a key made for the village house because she’s no fool. And what about it? First Nerea; then, a few days later, Xabier. Ama, the key? You have one. No, it’s that. They were united against her. She told each of them that she had no idea where she’d left the key, how scatterbrained I am!, that she’d look for it, and finally, after a few days, she pretended she’d found it after a lot of searching. But of course by then she’d had a copy made at the hardware store. She lent the key to Nerea, who from time to time (once or twice a year?) went to check on the place and do some dusting. Her daughter did not return the key, and Bittori never expected her to.

  On one occasion, Nerea brought up the possibility of selling the house in the village. A few days later, Xabier suggested the same thing. Bittori suspected the two of them had come to an agreement behind her back. So when the three of them were together, she confronted them: “As long as I am alive, I’m not selling my house. When I’m dead, you can do whatever you like with it.”

  The children exchanged a quick glance. They did not contradict her. The subject was never broached again.

  She took it upon herself to go to the village in the most discreet way imaginable, on bleak days of wind and rain, when the streets would be empty, or when her children were busy or traveling. Then, she would let seven or eight months pass without going back. She got out of the bus on the outskirts of the town. So she wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. So no one would see her. She used backstreets to get to her old house, where she would spend an hour or two, sometimes more, looking at photos, waiting for the church bell to ring out, and then, after making sure there were no people around the entrance, she would return by the same route she’d used to arrive.

  She never went to the cemetery. What for? Txato was buried in San Sebastián, not in the village, despite the fact that his paternal grandparents were resting there in a family mausoleum. But it was impossible. She was strongly advised against it. If you bury him in the village, the grave will be attacked, it wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.

  During the ceremony in the Polloe cemetery, Bittori whispered to Xabier something he’d never forgotten. What? That rather than burying Txato it seemed as if they were hiding him.

  6

  TXATO, ENTZUN

  How slow the bus is. Too many stops. Hmm, another one. The two women, with the usual physical traits, were sitting next to each other. They were returning to the village just at sunset. They both spoke at once without listening to each other. Each one involved in her own thoughts, but they understood each other. And as they sat there, the one sitting next to the aisle gave the other, sitting next to the window, a light nudge with her elbow. With a rapid nod of her head she called her now-attentive partner’s attention to the forward part of the bus.

  In whispers:

  “The one in the dark overcoat.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize her.”

  “All I can see is her back.”

  “It’s Txato’s wife.”

  “The one who was killed? How old she looks!”

  “The years go by, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  They kept quiet. The bus went its way. Passengers got on and off, and the two women kept silent, staring at nothing. Then one of them, in a low voice, said that poor woman.

  “Why poor?”

  “How she must have suffered.”

  “We all suffer.”

  “But she must have had a really rough time.”

  “The conflict, Pili, the conflict.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  And after a while, the one whose name wasn’t Pili:

  “How much would you like to bet she gets off at the industrial park?”

  They looked away as soon as Bittori stood up. She was the only person to get off.

  “What did I tell you?”

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “She gets off there so no one will see her, and then she tiptoes to her house.”

  The bus drove off, and Bittori, do they really think I didn’t see them?, set out in the same direction through the zone of factories and workshops. Her expression, not haughty, never that, but serious, her lips pressed tightly together, her face raised because I don’t have to hide from anyone.

  The town, her town. Almost nighttime. The windows glowing, the vegetal scent of the surrounding fields, few passersb
y on the street. She crossed the bridge with the lapels of her coat raised and saw the calm river with its gardens on the bank. No sooner had she gotten among the houses when she began to have difficulty breathing. Asphyxia? Not exactly. It’s an invisible hand that squeezes her throat whenever she returns to the town. She walked along the sidewalk, neither hurrying nor slow, recognizing details: in that doorway, a boy told me he loved me for the very first time in my life; taken aback by the changes: those street lamps do nothing for me.

  It wasn’t long before a whispering reached her. Like a fly that had buzzed in through a window or from the darkness of an entryway. Barely a slight noise that ended in ato, which was enough for her to figure out the whole sentence. Perhaps she should have come later, when people were indoors, on the last bus. Well, here you are. What about the return? I’m spending the night. I’ve got a house and a bed.

  Outside the door of the Pagoeta a group of smokers clustered together. Bittori was tempted to avoid them. How? By turning back and sneaking behind the church. She stopped for an instant, ashamed she’d stopped. So she went on walking in the center of the street with forced naturalness. Her heart was beating so hard that for a moment she was afraid the men could hear its pounding.

  She passed closely by without looking at them. Four or five with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. They must have recognized her when she was close because there was a sudden silence. One, two, three seconds. They started talking again once Bittori reached the end of the street.

  Her house with lowered blinds. On the lower part of the facade, there were two posters. One, which looked recent, announced a concert in San Sebastián; the other, faded, shredded, announced the Grand Worldwide Circus, exactly in the place where one morning there appeared one of myriad graffiti: TXATO ENTZUN BOOM BOOM BOOM.

  Bittori passed through the entryway, and it was like entering the past. The lamp she’d had all her life, the old creaking stairs, the line of collapsing mailboxes with hers removed. In his day, Xabier had taken it down. He said to avoid problems. When he removed it, a square appeared the color the walls were painted long ago, when Nerea had yet to be born, nor had Miren’s son, that criminal. And it’s the only thing for which I wish there to be a hell—so the murderers will go on living their eternal sentence.

  She breathed in the scent of old wood, the cool, enclosed air. And finally, she noted that the invisible hand had released her throat. Key, lock: she entered. Again, she ran into Xabier, much younger, in the hallway, saying with tearful eyes all that about ama, let’s not allow hatred to embitter our lives, make us small, or something like that, she couldn’t remember exactly. And her spite in that same spot, so many years ago:

  “Sure, right away, let’s sing and dance.”

  “Please, ama, don’t make the wound bigger. We have to make an effort so that all of this which has happened—”

  She interrupted him:

  “Excuse me. All this that they did to us.”

  “—doesn’t turn us into bad people.”

  Words. There’s no way to get them off your back.

  They never let you really be alone. A plague of annoying bugs. She should open the windows wide so the laments, the old, sad conversations trapped in the walls of the uninhabited house, could flow out to the street.

  “Txato, Txatito, what do you want for dinner?”

  In the photo on the wall, Txato half smiled with his murderable man’s face. All you had to do was look at him to realize that someday he’d be killed. And what ears. Bittori kissed the tips of her joined ring and index fingers and then deposited it on the black-and-white face in the portrait.

  “Fried eggs and ham. I know you as if you were alive.”

  She turned the tap in the bathroom. Just look, water came out, and not as rusty as she’d imagined. She opened drawers, blew away the dust on some of the furniture and other objects, did this, did that, walked over there, walked over here, and, at about ten thirty, raised the blind in the master bedroom just enough so the light inside would filter out to the street. She did the same with the next room, but without turning on the light. Then she brought a chair in from the kitchen and sat down to peer through the open spaces, completely in the dark so her silhouette wouldn’t be outlined in the light.

  Some kids passed by. People just walking along. A boy and a girl who argued as they strolled; he tried to kiss her and she fought him off. An old man and a dog. She was sure that sooner or later she would see one of them outside her house. And how do you know that? I can’t explain it to you, Txato. Female intuition.

  And what if the prediction were to come true? Well, yes it did, even if Bittori had to wait a long time. The bells in the church tower rang out eleven. She recognized him instantly. His beret pulled to one side, his sweater over his shoulders with the sleeves knotted over his chest, and some leeks held tightly under his arm. So he still tends his garden? And since he’d stopped in the circle of light from the street lamp, she could see his grimace, between disbelief and shock. Only a second, not more. Then he started walking again as if someone had stuck a needle in his backside.

  “What did I tell you? Now he’ll tell his wife he saw light here. She’ll tell him: you’ve been drinking. But her curiosity will be piqued and she’ll come to resolve her doubts. Txato: want to bet?”

  It was eleven. Don’t get impatient. You’ll see that she’ll come. And she did come, of course she came, almost at twelve thirty. She stopped barely an instant in the light of the street lamp, staring at the window with neither incredulity nor surprise but rather with angry eyebrows, and immediately returned to her own house, stamping the pavement and fading into the darkness.

  “You’ve got to admit she’s kept her looks.”

  7

  ROCKS IN THE KNAPSACK

  He rolled the bike into the kitchen. It’s light, a racing bike. Just another day, Miren, standing before a pile of dirty dishes: “For luxury baubles you’ve got money, eh?”

  Joxian retorts: “Actually, I do have money, so what? I’ve also been working my whole life like a mule. We’ve been screwed.”

  He brings the bike up from the basement with no difficulty, without touching the walls. A good thing we live on the first floor. He rests it on his shoulder as he did as a young man, when he’d taken part in cyclo-cross competitions. It was seven a.m. and it was Sunday. He would have sworn he made no noise. Even so, there was Miren sitting at the table, in her nightgown, waiting for him with a face full of reproach.

  “Would you mind telling me what you’re dong with the bike in the house? What do you want to do, get the floor dirty?”

  “I’m going to adjust the brakes and wipe it down before I go out.”

  “So why can’t you clean it outside?”

  “For shit’s sake, because you can’t see anything out there and it’s colder than hell. And by the way, why are you up so early?”

  Two sleepless nights in a row. He could tell by the shadows under her eyes. The reason? The light that came through the blinds from the house that belonged to those people. Not only Friday, yesterday too, and, if you push me a little, from now on, every day. So people can say oh the poor victims and oh let’s stroll along with them with smiles on our faces. The light, the blind, the people who’d seen Bittori on the street and had nothing better to do than to come here and tell all, it had brought up old thoughts, bad thoughts, but when I say bad I mean bad.

  “This son of ours has made our lives difficult.”

  “Right, and if people in town hear you, we’ll have a better life.”

  “I’m just saying it to you. If I don’t talk to you, who will I talk to?”

  “Since you’ve become so abertzale, such a Basque patriot. Always the first, the one who screams loudest, the revolutionary woman with balls. And when tears came to my eyes in the visitors’ room at the prison, boy, did you get mad. ‘Don’t be soft’
—he imitated her voice—‘don’t cry in front of the kid, you’ll get him depressed on me.’ ”

  Many years back, how many?, more than twenty, they began to suspect, discover, understand. Arantxa, one day in the kitchen: “Come on now. All those posters on the walls in your room. And the wooden statue you had on the night table, the one with the serpent wrapped around the hatchet, what about that?”

  One afternoon, Miren had come home upset. In San Sebastián, she’d seen Joxe Mari involved in a street fight. Who saw him?

  “Who do you think? Bittori and I. Or do you think I’ve got a boyfriend?”

  “Okay, calm down. He’s young, he’s got hot blood. He’ll get over it.”

  Miren, taking sips from a cup of linden tea, invoked Saint Ignatius, begging protection and counsel. And while she peeled garlic to encrust in the flesh of a sea bream, she made the sign of the cross with the knife. During dinner, she never stopped making a speech at the silent family circle, predicting serious trouble, attributing Joxe Mari’s tricks to the influence of bad company. She blamed Manoli’s son, the butcher’s son, the whole gang.

  “He’s become a thug, what with the way he dresses and that earring it gets me all nervous. He had his face masked with a hanky.”

  At that time, Bittori and she were friends? More, sisters. You can’t know how close they were. They almost became nuns together, but Joxian came along, Txato came along, mus partners in the bar, dining pals, usually on Saturday, members of the Sunday gastronomic and cyclo-tourism societies. And the two women got married in white dresses in the village church, with aurresku as they left, one in June and the other in July of the same year, 1963. Two blue-skied Sundays, as if ordered for the occasion. And they invited each other. Miren and Joxian held their banquet in a cider bar that wasn’t bad at all, truth be told, on the outskirts of town. But, after all, cheap and with a country odor of mown hay and manure. Bittori and Txato held theirs in a fancy restaurant with uniformed waiters, because Txato, who as a boy had walked in worn-out sandals, had founded a thriving shipping company.