Just by chance, she saw her father’s picture on the screen of a television set up on a high shelf against the wall and she knew. Did she just suspect? No, she knew with absolute certainty from the first instant. Immediately in the running commentary at the bottom of the screen her certainty was confirmed: BUSINESSMAN MURDERED IN GUIPÚZCOA. Nerea, surrounded by laughter, by trivial, happy conversations, hid her emotions. Her heart was pounding so violently that it caused a sharp pain in her chest. As soon as people stopped talking to her, she turned her eyes to the television again. On the screen she saw people she couldn’t hear because of the racket in the bar. People speaking into microphones. A gentleman with a white robe, lehendakari Ardanza with a serious face. And finally she saw a street and a facade she easily recognized.
She couldn’t hold in her urine. Thank heaven she was wearing black jeans. She feigned naturalness. She whispered to the imaginary terrorist standing before her in this improvised and illusory healing encounter in the Europa’s café: I still sat at that table another five minutes. She even attempted to smile at the joke a boy made and drank down her beer with fake calm. All these details after all these years felt like burning coals inside her. She had no one to whom she could unburden herself. To her family? Impossible. Even though they’d suffered the same disaster they wouldn’t understand her. To Quique? That guy was always too wrapped up in his business to take any interest in stories about my life before we met.
She made a covert sign to that boy, José Carlos, who wasn’t a boyfriend; but, well, she couldn’t talk to any of the other men in the bar with the same sense of security. And the guy understood that she wanted to talk with him alone or who knows what he understood if in fact he understood anything. He just followed Nerea out to the street and then farther, almost all the way to the corner. Night had fallen. She, her thighs covered with pee, waited at a certain distance from the bar before turning around. Then she hugged José Carlos and exploded. God, what sobs. The boy was dumbfounded. What’s the matter, what’s wrong? Did those guys insult you? She: my aita. That was all she could manage to articulate: my aita. And the astonished kid: what are you saying, what’s happening? Until, finally, Nerea managed to take a deep breath and tell her story. She asked her friend to get her back to her apartment.
She also asked him not to leave her alone, but to stay with her all night. Yes, whatever you want, whatever you want. They went up to the flat. And Nerea, before anything else, washed up in the bathroom. Immediately after, one of her roommates came to tell her that the boy from the bar downstairs said she was to call home and that it was urgent. Nerea: yes, the ETA has murdered my father. The girl, who knew nothing until that instant, clasped her hands to her head and burst into tears. And the other roommate—horrified, what’s going on, what’s going on—burst into the corridor. She said something naive: is your father in the Guardia Civil? And she, too, burst into tears. Nerea begged José Carlos to go to her room with her. But aren’t you going to call? She: would he please stay with her and not leave her alone. They went to bed and he, they killed your father, fuck, they killed him, and he had a hard time making love. He cursed, swore, fell asleep. And Nerea, in bed, in the dark, smoked one cigarette after another until she finished her pack and his. She would have smoked every cigarette in the universe.
Finally, the sun came up. The spaces between the blinds lit up with the clarity of the new day. Nerea felt a comfortable sensation, as if she’d found refuge in a date different from yesterday, which she knew she could never forget. As when an earthquake is over, or a fire, some devastating event, and you realize standing in the ruins that you’ve survived. My things. What time could it be, seven, eight in the morning? The room reeking of smoke, with no consideration whatsoever she shook José Carlos who was sleeping like a baby at her side. He could leave now, she told him. And the boy, thin, downy legs, dressed as quickly as he could and ran out, so eager to obey that he forgot to recite me any pretty words and to give me a farewell kiss.
And then alone, something very strange took place: everything was normal. As on every other morning, the traffic noises resounded, it rained as it always rains, along the sidewalks paraded pedestrians with umbrellas. What else? People went about their business as if there had been no attack the previous evening. Naked, Nerea peered out the window convinced there was a plot against her. She hated the morning and the rain and the house across the street and a lady walking her dog. Every object seemed to say to her: well, yes, you father’s been murdered, so what? Beetles and chickens die, too. That thought cut her to the core. Suddenly she felt as if she had awakened from a bad dream to a worse one. She took a compact out of her bag and for the first time took a look at her eyes, her nose, her forehead, all victims of terrorism. The morning coolness that came through the window began to enter her body and she instantly understood that what happened the previous evening was true and that not even it was the worst thing, that the worst was yet to come and that she wouldn’t be able to postpone it much longer. She experienced a violent chill thinking that she had to call her mother.
No one knows, no one can know. Without breakfast, without washing, she walked to a street phone on Avenida Goya. It must have been 8:30 a.m. Okay, she didn’t call until after ten. She walked up the street and down the street or absently along Fernando el Católico and Gran Vía and back and each time she came to the telephone she went around it, getting soaked with rain and trembling because she was afraid to tell her mother she didn’t want to travel to the village even though she had no pending examinations or urgent schoolwork. So? It’s that I don’t want to see the body or the coffin or the grave, that’s horrible to me, and I also don’t want to be connected with the murder or for reporters to come to interview me or take pictures so that all of Zaragoza knows who I am. She never stopped rehearsing the possible conversation she would have with her mother. I’ll say this, I’ll say something else. And at a magazine stand on Gran Vía, her father’s face on the front page of a newspaper and she came within a heartbeat of buying it but she didn’t dare. Why? She was so very ashamed.
She traveled to the village seven days later, when her father had already been buried and was no longer the most recent person killed by ETA. Ama never forgave her. I know it. I don’t need her to tell me. Nerea’s seen it over the course of all these years in myriad gestures, in the tone of certain words, in reproaches about secondary matters. Nerea would have wanted to tell all this to a repentant terrorist in jail and get it all out of her system the way you might vomit old, burning coals. It can’t be because the good doctor says that she shouldn’t. She doesn’t want problems with the family; let’s let sleeping dogs lie.
“Check, please.”
31
DIALOGUE IN DARKNESS
In the kitchen as afternoon came on, she let him have it. She didn’t even give him a chance to kick off his shoes. How could he not tell her that ETA was sending him letters?
“I thought that being married meant we told each other everything, or at least the important things.”
Sitting in his chair, Txato, not at all perturbed, untied his shoelaces without looking up at Bittori who, standing in front of him, her face red with anger, would not stop talking. On and on. After a long day’s work, he sighed toward the floor as if to say: when will this storm pass?
“How did you find out?”
“Talking with Miren.”
“I wanted to take care of it on my own so you wouldn’t get upset.”
And Bittori went back to her tirade. After a while he interrupted her. What were they having for dinner?
“Monkfish in sauce. Why do you ask?”
“Because I have no appetite whatsoever.”
They spoke little during dinner, each one immersed in their own anxious thoughts. Txato said only three things: that she, with her scolding and complaining, was not making things easier for him; that you only talk about things like this in secret; and that s
omeone ought to cut Joxian’s tongue out for revealing it to his wife and God only knows who else.
From the kitchen, he went directly to bed. To the sack, as he put it. Bittori stayed behind washing the dishes. It was useless for Nerea to remind her from time to time that the family had enough money for a dishwasher. But Bittori was having none of that—as long as I have my own two hands I’m fine, and that a contraption like that is nothing but a useless expense, that they use a lot of water and electricity, and when you get married, do what you think best in your house but leave me in peace in mine.
Txato usually stayed out of these domestic squabbles. Dishwasher, no dishwasher, it was all the same to him. An early riser, he also went to bed early. On workdays, at six a.m. he was already taking care of business in the office. And on weekends, since he was taking part in the Sunday phases of the cyclotourism program, he was also up and about before sunrise. It might happen that on some occasion or other, caught up in a hard-fought game of mus, he could forget to check his watch, but with few exceptions, the day normally ended for him at ten p.m.
The only thing that would have kept him up at that hour was the rebroadcast of soccer matches on Basque television. He would watch the matches until it came time to clear out, because Bittori controlled the TV, and Bittori liked to watch her programs alone.
Once dinner was over, Txato got into bed, as always, on Bittori’s side. From the earliest days of their marriage, he warmed the bed for her. Even in summer. A habit not born from any agreement between them and one he never stopped practicing even on days when there was some matrimonial argument in progress. Later, Bittori would join him, at eleven or twelve, and he, without waking up, would slide over to his side.
And Bittori did come. Often she would leaf through some ladies’ magazine; but this time she immediately turned off the lamp on the night table. She remained sitting up in the darkness, her arms crossed, her back against the headboard. And he, who snored, was breathing quietly, so Bittori knew he wasn’t sleeping.
“How long are you going to wait before telling me everything?”
Txato didn’t answer; but she knew that he was wide awake and didn’t bother to repeat the question. After a few seconds he clicked his tongue as a sign of annoyance and, clearly unwilling, brought Bittori up to date on his persecution, skipping no details, without omitting his visit to France. On the other hand, he said not a word about the references to Nerea in the last letter.
“What do you intend to do?”
“Wait.”
“Wait for what?”
Bittori felt him roll over toward her in the darkness.
“I paid them already for this year and they’re not going to get any more out of me. The bastards have demanded a huge sum, right at the moment when I’ve taken on debt and made purchases, and when a few of my slow clients just aren’t paying. Remember that we still owe part of the money for the San Sebastián apartment. Who knows, there might have been a mistake. Some jackass who does the books didn’t write down my payment or wrote it in the wrong place. How would I know if the guy I handed the envelope to didn’t just keep it to pay for his fun? Or maybe Joxian’s right and the second demand was really meant for someone else. That’s why I think that for the moment it’s better to do nothing and wait for time to clear matters up. And if it’s me who’s mistaken, they’ll be making their demands soon enough.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m a little afraid.”
“What good does being afraid do?”
“Those people are bad and they’ve got a lot of friends in the village.”
“The people around here know me. I’m from here, I speak Basque, I don’t get involved in politics, I create jobs. Besides. Whenever they take up a collection for festivals, for the soccer team, or for whatever, Txato gives as much as anyone. If someone from outside comes around to hurt me, I’m sure they’d stop him. Watch out, he’s one of us. Besides, they can always talk to me, you know that.”
“I think you’re too sure of yourself on this.”
“Don’t think I’m a dumbbell. I’ve taken precautions. As far as the business is concerned, I’m safe and sound. I’ve got a way to defend myself.”
“Is that right? What have you got, a pistol hidden in a drawer?”
“Whatever I’ve got hidden in the drawer is my business, but let me tell you again that I’m okay on all that. Could all this get complicated? If it does, I’ll just take the trucks somewhere else. To La Rioja or somewhere near there. I started out with less when I was young and did I get ahead or didn’t I?”
“Well, even though you’re from here, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of your workers has given information about you to ETA.”
“Could be.”
“Have you talked with any of the other businessmen from around here?”
“Why bother? I’m sure they all pay. I suggested that much to the older Arrizabalaga. I saw he was beating around the bush, not wanting to say anything. These matters, as I said, have to be resolved individually.”
Bittori slid down under the sheet and the blanket until she was flat on her back. The noises of the neighborhood, though muted, could be heard, a couple of voices in the street, the garbage truck. And the couple was shoulder to shoulder, backside to backside, and it was then that Txato, his face turned to the wall on his side of the bed, let it out, he had to let it out, we know it weighed too heavily on his tongue:
“I want Nerea to study far away. Wherever, but away from here, after this summer.”
“Wait a minute, where’s this coming from?”
“It comes from the fact that I want my daughter to study far away.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No. But when you see her, you can bring it up so she’ll know where I’m coming from.”
They fell silent. Below the balcony, a pack of partiers passed by. Then there was a silence broken by the church bell marking the hour. Txato, breaking with custom, did not snore all night.
32
PAPERS AND OBJECTS
As they covered him with the slab, Bittori thought—her eyes dry, because from now on I’m not going to cry even if they rub onions in them—that the next time light shines into that hole it’ll be when they bury me. She clung to the conviction that this man took a basket of secrets with him to his grave.
She often reproached him about it—you criminal—especially during her first visits to the cemetery.
“You kept me in limbo. I don’t think you told me even half of what was happening to you and what they were doing to you. Txatito, the day they set me down next to you you’re going to have a lot to tell me.”
But before she went home she forgave him. Fourteen farewells. How many times Bittori and Nerea heard Xabier say all that stuff about “that’s the way the terrorists defend the interests of the working class.” Having no choice, Xabier closed down the business, not without first asking his mother if she wanted to take over. Me? He asked Nerea the same question when the girl finally found it in her heart to come to the village. Me? And he couldn’t do it, either. So, with the help of a financial consultant they sold whatever they could sell and the rest they just abandoned.
Xabier hung a sign on the gate: CLOSED BECAUSE OF DEATH. For a few instants, his mother came out of her languor to whisper that he should put CLOSED BECAUSE OF MURDER. He didn’t do it. And the employees? Not a single one attended the funeral. Two did come to the burial in San Sebastián.
Days after, an employee representing the entire staff came to the owner’s son to ask him when they should return to work. Even then, the employee forgot to give his condolences. Xabier stared at him with pity and repugnance. Do these people actually believe the owner can be murdered and nothing changes? Xabier gave him a song and dance with professorial calm and high-flown language. And since the employee, deaf to explanations, insisted on knowing when they should begin
to work again, Xabier, at the limits of his patience, told him he was just a simple doctor and that he lacked the competence to run a shipping company.
He had a lot of trouble going through the papers in the office, the negotiations with banks, the cancellation of orders (some international), the sale of property, the dismantling of the business, and a million bureaucratic glitches he finally turned over to specialists, following the recommendation of a colleague at the hospital.
That same colleague had a suggestion, which he passed on to his mother: a possible solution intended to preserve jobs. What was it? Turn over the business under favorable economic terms to the employees.
Not a chance in the world. Bittori suddenly forgot she was in mourning. How could he possibly think to suggest such a hideous idea? Those employees went out on strike any number of times, on some occasions accompanied by broken windows, picket lines at the entrance, and threats to aita. Among them there was a leader, a very aggressive guy, something or other Andoni, with the emblem of the Basque trades union, the Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak, on his overalls, who took the leading role and who had, on his own, robbed Txato of innumerable hours of sleep. Txato had fired him, but he turned up hours later with two killers from the union and forced his way back in. What about the other workers? Some, true enough, were decent people, but did they make any gestures of solidarity, of compassion, after the murder? They could have sent a sympathy card. But not even that. Only two of them turned up at the Polloe cemetery and they never said a word.
“I’d rather throw it all away.”
Xabier loaded his car with boxes of note cards, bills, shipping notes, and all kinds of other documents, some perfectly ordered in ring binders, others loose. We wouldn’t want. What? Well, we wouldn’t want someone to take advantage of the fact that the owner was not there and that the place was closed down. Someone could rob the place. People who owed money trying to erase any record of their debt. Followers of the cause who wouldn’t be satisfied with the murder.
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