Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  On the way to their respective homes, they passed a row of street vendors. There was something for everyone: handmade ceramics, sandals, pocket books—anything and everything. And Txato, who was like a gunslinger from the old West when it came to pulling out his wallet, stopped at the stand of a black man selling costume jewelry and bought Nerea a bracelet, which was a dirty trick because of course Arantxa wanted one and we have three children, not two like them, and Joxian made a crap salary at the foundry and they had enough to go to Lanzarote and for many other luxuries. So it was no to Arantxa. And she, on the verge of tears, made a scene. She put up such a fuss that Txato grabbed her by the hand and without asking Joxian or me, brought her over to the black vendor. And now she turns up in my house more than thirty years later with the same one, because it is that bracelet with green beads and sort of goldish, no doubt about it. What did it cost Txato? A few cents. Miren was enraged, but she swallowed her anger, where does he get off giving a lesson to her and Joxian about how to make our children happy?

  Or am I wrong? Miren couldn’t stop looking at the bracelet. An amused Arantxa was watching television; Celeste said goodbye using those sweet and affable courtesies that no one here uses anymore but which are really nice. And Arantxa said goodbye in her jolly way, waving her good hand, and Miren did the same in her style, a bit dry, as she accompanied her to the door, but instead of simply letting her out, she stepped onto the landing with Celeste.

  “Listen, where did my daughter get that bracelet she’s wearing?”

  “A doctor gave it to her. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Right, very pretty. But you mean a male nurse gave it to her?”

  “No, no. A doctor came by. I don’t know what his name is. I never saw him before. And I thought the doctor might be a family friend because he only came to see Arantxa and after a few minutes he gave her a sweet kiss on the cheek and she seemed happy, blissful the whole time. They chatted. I mean, the doctor chatted and Arantxa answered with her iPad, and at the end he gave her the little bracelet.”

  “You didn’t by any chance catch the doctor’s name, did you?”

  “Oh dear, no, unfortunately, Mrs. Miren, it was just that the physical therapists called him ‘doctor’ a few times. But if you like, I can find out tomorrow. He’s a tall doctor, gray around the temples, and wears glasses. I never saw him before. Is it serious?”

  “No. I just wanted to know.”

  Joxian came home at the usual time with the usual glassiness in his drunken eyes, scratching his shirt where his liver was. The breaded anchovies were crackling away in the frying pan, the window wide open so the smoke would drift out to the street. Arantxa was hypnotized by the steam coming off her bowl of soup. Joxian kissed her on the forehead. Then, sitting at the table, he sighed with fatigue.

  “I’m not hungry at all.”

  Miren, with a severe look on her face:

  “What? Don’t you even wash your hands?”

  He rubbed them together as if he had them under the faucet.

  “They’re clean.”

  “What a pig.”

  And off he went to the bathroom to wash them, grumbling but docile. Back in the kitchen, Miren, behind Arantxa’s back, made signs to him he didn’t understand.

  “What?”

  She pursed her lips and shot him a furious look so he’d pretend nothing had happened. And she shook her head as if saying: God, the patience you need with this man.

  Finally, Joxian noticed the bracelet. He’s hopeless at pretending and Miren would have happily cracked him over the head with the frying pan.

  “How cute!” To his daughter. “Did you buy it?”

  Arantxa shook her head vehemently and tapping the tip of her index finger again and again against her chest sounded out with her lips two words: it’s mine. Joxian sought an explanation in his wife’s sullen face. In vain. And so it went, until dinner was over. He kept his mouth shut so he wouldn’t make a fool of himself.

  Later on, in bed, in the dark, the couple whispered.

  “Come on, it isn’t possible.”

  “I bet my life on it. Txato bought her that bracelet on a festival day years and years ago, when the kids were small and we were all still friends.”

  “Well, what’s the difference? Arantxa must have found it in a drawer and put it on.”

  “What a fool you are. She didn’t find it. A doctor gave it to her.”

  “You’re driving me nuts. Txato bought it for her…”

  “Quiet down.”

  In whispers:

  “Txato bought Arantxa a bracelet when she was a little girl. I’m with you that far. Then the years go by and a doctor gives the bracelet to our daughter. I don’t understand a thing.”

  “The only thing I see clearly is that there is only one doctor who could have done something like that, aside from kissing Arantxa on the cheek.”

  “Who?”

  “The older son, who for some reason I don’t get kept the bracelet.”

  “You watch too many soaps.”

  “They’re planning something. Don’t you see that? They’ve intruded into our lives and now we’ve got them right here with us, in our bedroom, even in our bed, they’ve managed to get us talking about them all the time. Why do you think that woman has come back, that she lets herself be seen, that she put a geranium on her balcony, and goes into the village shops? They’re coming after us. Something has to be done, Joxian.”

  “Right, go to sleep.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Me, too.”

  A little later, he began to snore. For Miren, turned on her side, wide awake, the darkness was filled with faces, lights, sounds. Immediately the geranium appeared, then the bracelet. And Arantxa eleven years old, making a fuss because she wanted a bracelet like Nerea’s. And she saw Joxe Mari smashing the éclair in Gorka’s face. And Txato, who had a way of pulling out his wallet like the cowboys in pictures when they draw their pistols. And she saw that woman, whose name she will not speak because it burns her mouth. That woman, who has returned with bad intentions, and if she thinks I’m just going to sit here and take it, she’s made a big mistake. She couldn’t sleep. Another sleepless night. Her head filled with thoughts, the darkness filled with ghosts. She went to the kitchen, it was after midnight, and wrote “Alde hemendik” on a sheet of paper. I’ll slip it under her door and then we’ll see who scares who more. She got ready to go out, but what if she recognizes my handwriting? She took another sheet. She repeated the words, changing her writing and using only capital letters. She went out to the landing with her shoes in her hand so those who were sleeping wouldn’t hear her, slipped them on as she stood on the mat, went down to the entryway, and opened the door. Did she go out? Just one step? Well? It was raining. Rain and wind. It was raining furiously. The drops were falling sideways. What a horrible night. She said to herself:

  “Humph.”

  She immediately tore up the paper, put the pieces in a pocket, and went back to bed.

  25

  DON’T COME

  The doorbell rang. The short, dry sound surprised Bittori, who was sitting in the living-room armchair, leafing through the jackets of her old collection of vinyl. This was the first time she’d heard that strident ring, so familiar to her in another era, since she had come back to the village house.

  She wasn’t alarmed. Was she expecting a visitor? Yes and no, because I always supposed that sooner or later someone, more accurately some woman, would come to poke her nose in, to question me, to find out my intentions.

  She didn’t have to wait long, a few days, before she ran into a woman she knew on the street. The meeting was so badly staged that she hadn’t the slightest doubt it wasn’t accidental.

  “Jesus, Bittori, how many years it’s been since I saw you last. This is great! You’re as pretty as ever.”


  Some acidic words rose to her mouth: really, you know what it is? They do you a favor when they kill your husband and leave you a widow. But she swallowed those words. She’d seen her at a distance, posted on the corner. She’s waiting for me, she’s going to ask me the questions people have told her to put to me. She did ask them, pretending that they were just then occurring to her. One of the women who didn’t go to the funeral, who never expressed her sympathy, who cut us off when the graffiti started. Don’t hate, Bittori, don’t hate. She answered the woman evasively, vaguely, giving her a fake smile that left a gelatinous, cold sensation like a dead jellyfish in her mouth.

  She opened the door. Don Serapio. What an unctuous look in his eyes, what sweetness in the arch of his brows. Those pale, delicate hands that spread apart, that join together, the clerical collar, the aftershave lotion. And meanwhile, she, her face like quartz, never blinked. Shock? Not even a smidge. The same as if she’d opened the door and found no one standing there.

  The priest walked in expecting a hug. This man was always looking for skin contact. Bittori brusquely recoiled, keeping her distance. He said in Basque that he’d come to pay a visit. She scrutinized him, one hand on the edge of the door as if contemplating the possibility of slamming it in his face. She answered familiarly, in Spanish, that he should come in.

  He may rule in the house of God, but in my house, I give the orders. And Don Serapio, over seventy now, walked in making note of floors and walls, furniture and adornments, which made it seem he used his eyes as if they were cameras. According to his nose, it was about two p.m., because he could smell the beans and sausage Bittori was heating up in the kitchen.

  “Are you living here now?”

  “Of course, it’s my house.”

  Bittori let him have the armchair where she’d been looking over her record collection so that every time he looked up his eyes would meet the photo of Txato hanging on the wall. She brought in a chair from the kitchen for herself. The priest initiated a casual conversation, praising Bittori, making gestures of bland amiability, his words pregnant with humble intonations, always trying to control the narrative; but she, in the few instances she spoke up, was defiantly resolved to pull away from Basque and toward Spanish, which she did so well that Don Serapio acquiesced and stopped speaking Basque.

  He leapt from one trivial theme to another, from the weather to health and family, until Bittori, who as yet had not eaten and had little patience left, cut him off:

  “Why don’t you talk about what you came to talk about?”

  Now unable to avoid it, Don Serapio shot an instinctive glance over the head of his stern interlocutor, at the framed photograph of Txato.

  “Fine, Bittori. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that your presence in the village is causing some nervousness…Maybe ‘nervousness’ is not the right word.”

  “ ‘Alarm’?”

  “I’ve expressed myself badly. I’m sorry. Let’s say that people see you come to town every day; they feel strange and ask questions.”

  “And how do you know they ask questions? Do they visit the church to tell you?”

  “In a small town like this news travels fast. The fact is that ever since you started coming people have been talking. You’re in your own town, no one argues that point. And as far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome here. But, things are more complicated than they might seem, and the fact that you have a legitimate right to return to your house doesn’t negate the fact that other neighbors also have their rights.”

  “For example?”

  “For example, that they be allowed to rebuild their lives and have some chance for peace. The armed struggle hit our town hard, but we must not forget some of the actions perpetrated by the state security forces. We had people killed, your husband, may he rest in peace, and those two members of the Guardia Civil who died in the attack on the industrial park. Without trying to minimize those terrible tragedies, which caused so much pain, we shouldn’t lose sight of the suffering of other people. There was repression here, there were house searches carried out for no good reason, innocent people jailed and mistreated or, to be more precise, tortured in their cells. At this very moment, we have nine sons of the town living out long jail sentences. I’m not going to go into whether they deserve punishment or not. I’m not a jurist, certainly not a politician, but just a simple priest who would like to help the townspeople live in peace.”

  “Are you insinuating that this peace is endangered because the widow of a man who was murdered comes to spend a few hours in her own house?”

  “Not in the slightest. I’ve only come to ask a favor in the name of the townspeople. If you do me this favor I’ll be profoundly grateful. If you don’t I’ll simply have to accept your decision. I know you’ve suffered, Bittori. The last thing I want to do here is call your feelings into question or reproach you in any way. I’ve always had you and your children in my prayers. And believe me, if your husband is not at this very moment in the presence of the Lord, it isn’t because I haven’t begged for it a hundred or a thousand times. But just as God deals with the souls of the departed, I have to deal with the souls of the living in my parish. Do I do it well, do I do it badly? I’m sure I make mistakes. I’m sure I don’t use the right words for the occasion and more than once I’ve said things I didn’t mean to say. Or I spoke when I should have kept my mouth shut. I’m not perfect, because no one is. Even so, I have to carry out the mission entrusted to me until my time on earth is done. Without being cowardly, without giving up. Do you understand that I can’t go to the house of one of those families, who are also broken up, and tell them, no, I’m sorry, your son fought in ETA, you’re on your own. Would you do that if you were in my place?”

  “If I were in your place, I’d make myself clear. What do you want from me?”

  This time, the priest, instead of raising his eyes to the photo of Txato, kept them focused on the floor, between Bittori’s feet and his own.

  “I want you to stop coming here.”

  “To stop coming to my own house?”

  “Just for a while, until things settle down and there is peace. God is merciful. For what you’ve suffered here, you will be rewarded in the next world. Don’t let rancor take possession of your soul.”

  The next morning, still short of breath, Bittori went up to Polloe to tell Txato. She spoke standing, because it had rained hard and she preferred not to sit on the moist stone.

  “That’s just what he said. That I shouldn’t go to the village so I don’t get in the way of the peace process. So you see, victims get in the way. They want to sweep us under the rug. We shouldn’t be seen and if we disappear from public life and they get their prisoners out of jail, well, that’s what they call peace and everyone’s happy. Nothing ever happened here. He said it’s time we all pardoned one another. And when I asked to whom I should beg pardon, he answered no one, but that unfortunately I was part of a conflict in which all of society was implicated, not just a group of citizens, and that he can’t write off the fact that if they should ask my pardon, they in their turn should expect others ask pardon from them. And since this is very difficult, the priest thinks that the best thing is that now when there are no more attacks, that the situation should cool down and that anger should cease and that with the help of time the pain and grievances will lessen. What do you think, Txato? I didn’t lose control, but I also didn’t keep quiet. I said:

  “Listen, Serapio. Anyone who doesn’t want to see me in the village can put four bullets into me the way they did with Txato, because I intend to come here whenever I feel like it. After all, the only thing I can lose, my life, they broke apart many years ago. I don’t expect anyone to ask forgiveness from me, although, come to think of it, it does seem to me it would be a humane thing to do. And that’s enough, because my dinnertime is passing by here. Tell the person who sent you to see me that I won’t stop until
I know all the details about the murder of my husband.”

  “Bittori, for the love of God, why dig around in that wound?”

  And then I answered him:

  “To drain out all the pus that’s still inside. If I don’t it will never heal. We have nothing more to say to each other.” He left the house looking down in the mouth and with an expression that said he was leaving offended. Who cares? As soon as I saw through a space in the curtain that he’d left the street, I ran to the kitchen to eat a good plate of beans because I was dying of hunger. What do you think, Txato? Was I right? You know I’ve never lacked character.”

  26

  WITH THEM OR WITH US

  The cool, misty rain, smacking against the graves, made an autumnal noise: Bittori liked it. Yes, because aside from cleaning all this up a little, it gives me the impression that life actually reaches the dead, no? I understand myself.

  Thinking these thoughts, she dodged puddles, protecting her plain hairdo with her umbrella. She was tempted (and not for the first time) to carry snails from the paving stones off for the pot. It wouldn’t stop raining, and as she left the cemetery it so happened that the city bus was just arriving, so she took it. What am I going to do? She reviewed circumstances and conditions. I still have beans left over from yesterday, I filled Ikatza’s bowl with food, no one’s waiting for me at home. It really annoyed her that Don Serapio would even think she would agree to his request that she not allow herself to be seen in the village for a while. So she got off at Bulevar, bought two rolls in a nearby bakery—he’s got a lot of nerve, that man—and went off to the village on the first bus.