“I can’t, ama.”
“Do it for me, for your mother.”
“Do you want me to look bad with my girlfriends?”
Bittori clenched her teeth. Because she was angry? No, to stop an involuntary flood of words. If they’d gone on arguing one minute more, she’d tell her daughter about the blackmail letters. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What would Txato say?
They parted coldly, not saying a word, without a farewell kiss. And Bittori looked out the window to watch her daughter get her father’s car. Nerea, willowy, hopped around, more like a little girl than a full-grown woman.
Behind the curtain, Bittori shook her head in disgust.
“What an idiot you are!”
54
THE LIE ABOUT FEVER
It was after eleven. How much after? Fifteen minutes, maybe a bit more. Detail: on the balcony of the town hall, the ikurriña was waving at half staff. Toward the mountains, you could see clouds (there had been flashes of lightning in the early hours of the morning); there, toward the river and the highway to San Sebastián, as well, but with bursts of sunlight. The buses filled with travelers, mostly young people, had just departed.
Nerea drove into the plaza with a flurry of jolly honks of her horn. Under the portico, her two girlfriends were waiting, both carrying ikurriñas wrapped around poles. What about Arantxa? Even before she got out of the car, she asked about her. The other girls thought Nerea must have gone to pick her up. Could she still be sick? She lives on a street close by, just behind the church. Nerea: she’d be right back. And while her friends warmed up inside the car, because while it might not be cold out, damn, the air is quite cool, she trotted to her friend’s house. The house she’d visited so many times, where as a little girl she’d slept on innumerable occasions. The house that, in those moments Nerea couldn’t imagine, she’d never visit again.
The familiar door, the brass plaque with the last name, the doorbell pushed for the last time in her life.
Miren opened the door.
“She’s in there. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
And she invited her in. Nerea went straight to her friend’s room. She found her in bed fully dressed. Had she jumped back into bed when she heard her arrive?
“You’re not well?”
She answered that she wasn’t completely well; although, frankly, the way she looks, the power of her voice, her decisive gaze, are not what you expect from a sick person. At first, she used the same arguments as Bittori. The only difference was vocabulary. A tough man, leader of executioners, a man who decided about the life or death of others. And with her back resting against the pillow, she imitated him:
“Kill that guy, kill the other guy.”
Unlike Bittori, Arantxa didn’t speak with a pained grimace on her face or with frightened eyes. On her youthful face, there is dejection. Dejection? More: bitterness. Transparent bitterness that allows a glimpse of what’s behind it: indignation. Her words confirmed it:
“Go without me. I no longer have the stomach for joining in that carnival of death. In other times, I would have gone along. Now it’s impossible.”
“Because of Joxe Mari?”
“When he joined the organization, the scales fell from my eyes. It isn’t that I suddenly see things differently. It’s that I finally see them.”
“Come on, don’t be a wet blanket. We don’t have to be in the first row.”
“Nor the fifth or the last row.”
“It’s just for a short time. Then we’ll take the car and the four of us will see what’s doing over there. I was thinking about Zarauz, but I don’t really care. If you like, we can go somewhere else. Just imagine we’re going out to have some fun.”
Nerea’s joviality clashed with Arantxa’s frigidity. A sudden silence between the two friends. Two, three seconds without blinking: a frozen scene. They looked each other over carefully. One surprised and bewildered; the other hard and distant—accusing? The other:
“What should I do? They’re waiting for me.”
“If you have to go, just go.”
Something silently breaks between them in that instant. What? A line of affection and confidence, an old, tacit pact between two girlfriends. For some trivial reason, the bouncer at the KU discotheque wouldn’t allow one of them to enter one Saturday. That was a long time ago. Then the rest of the group refused to go in. Either all or none. And right in front of the corpulent bouncer they tore up the tickets they’d just bought. Screw you.
“May I ask a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t tell any of this to the others. Tell them I have a fever, that I’m not well.”
Pensive, disappointed, Nerea left that room to which she would never again return. She passed through the dining room, through which she never passed again, and spoke for the last time with Miren, who asked her, with the house door already open:
“What’s wrong with her?”
“A slight fever.”
“What’s wrong with that girl is that ever since she’s been going out with that guy from Rentería she’s been odd.”
Minutes later, Nerea repeated the lie about the fever inside the car. The three friends set out. The highway dry, thank heaven, with a good bit of traffic until Beasáin, then no more. We’ll be the last ones there. One of them said that without Arantxa it wasn’t the same, that they wouldn’t have such a good time. A good time?
“We’re going to a funeral, remember?”
The usual thing in that time: they ran into a Guardia Civil checkpoint. Where? About five or six miles before Arrasate. They got on the end of what first looked like a traffic jam. Then they saw it wasn’t, that up ahead were the police checking the cars one by one, asking to see the identification cards of one and all. Parked on the side of the highway were half a dozen Guardia Civil vehicles, and stretched across the road were two spiked chains, one at the start and one at the end of the checkpoint. Up on the embankment bordering the highway were several Guardia Civiles, each with his finger on the trigger of his submachine gun. Hidden lower down in the bushes was another with his weapon at the ready. And a third stationed behind a tree. All of them prepared to fire.
An imperious hand ordered them to stop. Nerea rolled down her window. Officers of the Directory of National Intelligence. No good afternoon or please. The cop took their identity cards to a van where they were given the usual examination. They had no prior crimes, no charges against them. When the officer returned with the cards, he came lethargically, to steal their time, to make them understand who was in control on this stretch of the highway, between this mountain and the next: where were they going? As if he didn’t know. And why did they have to answer? Better to stay out of trouble. So Nerea, the involuntary spokeswoman, the driver, used the Spanish name for the town:
“We’re going to Mondragón.”
They were ordered to get out of the car. But not in a friendly way: get out of the car. With an oral blow of the hatchet:
“All three of you out of the car.”
A wave of the cop who spoke to them summoned another two. Masculine hands searched them. One girl: how humiliating. Another: how disgusting. They would shudder recounting the incident in the Arrano Taberna a day later. And Nerea, with tears in her eyes, had to open the trunk: her father’s raincoat, a bicycle pump, her father’s umbrella, and the rolled-up ikurriñas.
“What’s this garbage?”
“Two flags.”
“Unroll them.”
Nerea unrolled them, already biting her lower lip in an incipient pout. There they were, two flags recognized by the Spanish Constitution. And suddenly the sarcastic familiarity:
“What’s this, going to the mass for the ETA guy? Do you really think God will receive him in His glory?”
Nerea maintained a dignified silence. Certain she’d overcom
e the urge to cry, she dared to look the cop right in the eye. Black eyes in which she saw her own reflection. Lord, her mother again delivering last night’s and this morning’s sermon and also Arantxa fully dressed and in bed. No doubt it would have been better to travel with the large group in one of the buses. And as she thought that, she felt a spark of courage in her chest.
“I’m waiting for an answer.”
“We are not going to a mass.”
The Guardia Civil launched into a tirade against Txomin the murderer, the terrorist, and may all of those bastards die like that, et cetera. With an authoritarian snap of his chin, he ordered the three girls to get out of his sight immediately. Pulling away, Nerea saw in her rearview mirror that the Guardia Civil had ordered the car behind theirs to stop.
55
LIKE THEIR MOTHERS
One asked the other. Well? Wasn’t this the café their mothers came to on Saturday to have a snack? Arantxa thinks maybe they went to a churro bakery, but she’s not certain. What she does know without any doubt is that her mother still likes churros and that sometimes, when she comes to San Sebastián, she buys half a dozen and then eats them cold at home. Nerea would swear that when they were still friends Miren and her mother usually had toast and jam in this café.
And what were those two doing there? For a long while neither had news of the other. They met by chance a short time back. They almost collided at the corner of Churruca Street and the Avenida. It was impossible to just keep going. In Nerea’s case, the surprise contained a drop of concern. Nothing really, a passing suspicion, unnecessary, because there before her, overflowing with affection, was Arantxa’s smile. With no hesitation, she swerved to kiss her. They looked each other up and down and each interrupted the other to express admiration.
They agreed, do you have the time? to bring each other up to date on their private lives. Where? Not in the street, of course. It was beginning to get dark and a disagreeable wind was blowing. Nerea pointed to the nearby café. And there they went, arm in arm.
“How long has it been since we’ve seen each other?”
Umm, ever since Arantxa moved in with Guillermo in Rentería, about a year and a half.
“I was suffocating in the town. I know it isn’t right for me to say it, after all I was born there, grew up there, and had all my friends there. But I couldn’t stand it anymore. Lots of people living there have their lives ruined because of politics. People who give you a hug today and tomorrow for whatever someone’s said to them will shun you. I was insulted because I was going out with a man who wasn’t Basque. What do you think of that? They’d say, what would Joxe Mari say if he found out?”
“Quit kidding. Who said that to you?”
“Josune. What hurt me most was that when she spoke to me we weren’t alone. She held a kind of people’s trial, understand? I kept my mouth shut. In a country like this, the best thing you can do is keep quiet. But the next time I saw her on the street I stopped her, I told her I’ll fall in love with whoever the hell I want, and I told her to go to hell.”
“Good work.”
“She wasn’t the only one who had a bad opinion of my boyfriend. My mother, to go no further, had the same prejudices. Little by little she’s accepted things. From time to time she even visits us in Rentería. Poor Guille. He’s such a nice guy. He’s started taking Basque lessons, but I don’t think it’s going to work out. I don’t think he’s got any talent for languages.”
A waiter came over to their table. What would they like to drink? Arantxa, hesitating for an instant, asked for this; Nerea, not hesitating at all, asked for something else and at the same time asked the waiter if was possible to lower the volume on the music.
“As I was saying, I stopped going into the bars in town. Well, I stopped going into the Arrano a long time ago so I wouldn’t have to see my brother’s picture on the wall. My life was elsewhere, with my Guille and my job in San Sebastián. It’s a crap job but you’ve got to eat. I felt an enormous desire to abandon the town. ‘Desire’ isn’t the right word: obsession. I finally got it through my thick skull that I had no future there. I felt very uncomfortable. Even now, remembering all that, the names of places, the faces of certain individuals, I feel a clot of repugnance in my mouth. Forgive me for getting overexcited. I didn’t like certain stares. I imagine Josune campaigned against me. But not only Josune. As soon as I could, I moved into an apartment with Guille. There we are, married by a judge. We’re not doing badly, working and saving to have as decent a life as we can.”
“How did your parents react?”
“My mother wasn’t exactly pleased that I moved in with my boyfriend. Because of what people would say—my daughter’s shacked up with a guy—she would let me have it. As if we were still living in Franco’s days. She and lots of others think they’re very revolutionary and they go to demonstrations and shout slogans, but in reality they’re stuck to tradition like barnacles and they’re as ignorant as rocks. Look, ama, I said to her, we’ll fix that up in a second. And I got married. A Tuesday in January, with no white dress, no guests, no bullshit. Mortal sin gone: isn’t that what you wanted? For my mother, who dreams that Don Serapio will marry her children and that she’ll toss sugared almonds to the kids on the church stairs and show off in a fancy dress, that was a complete drama. That, she wasn’t going to forgive, you just don’t do things like that to your mother. A month later we celebrated the wedding in a restaurant with Gorka, who absolutely refused to wear a tie, my parents, and Guille’s parents. My old man got sentimental. I don’t know if it was because of the champagne—it never sat well with him. Right then and there he starts remembering Joxe Mari. It occurs to him that we’re not all present and he starts crying like a baby. Now, in his favor I have to say he gets along fine with Guille. Even before the wedding they understood each other. I think it was after Guille helped him in the garden. One day, I said to him: aita, how happy I am you like my boyfriend, or at least you like him more than ama does. And he says to me: it’s that your mother, she’s got a bad nature!”
The waiter came back with the order and put the bill on its little saucer down near Nerea. To punish her for asking to have the music volume lowered? She repeated the request. The only response: they did lower the volume, but they couldn’t lower it any more. The waiter said nothing more. He tended to another table, and the music was as loud as it was at the start.
“Damn, but this tea is hot.”
“Do you have any children?”
Busy with her tea bag, Arantxa shook her head to say no. Nerea was shocked that her friend would answer like that, without looking her in the eye. So, she pressed her:
“No children in the family plan?”
Then Arantxa looked up.
“There’s something I haven’t talked about to Guille or anyone else. I can tell you because you went with me to London. I’m starting to believe that in the clinic they maybe didn’t do everything properly. Even though my gynecologist says there’s nothing wrong, something isn’t working right, and that I can tell you breaks up my happiness a little.”
“So, you are planning to have children.”
“We’ve been trying now for a while. The idea that they may have left me sterile frightens me a lot, let me tell you. Anyway, tell me about yourself, your life, your plans. I’ve told you my part, which is not a great deal, as you can see. Are you still studying?”
Nerea was licking the teaspoon. Why is she holding back? For a moment, she gave the impression she was trying to see herself in Arantxa’s chestnut eyes. Sincerity in exchange for sincerity, she said:
“I was on the verge of giving it up. But after all is said and done I’m going to listen to my father and, when summer’s over, I’m going to continue the program in Zaragoza.”
“You don’t seem too happy about it.”
“I had problems at home. I let drop a few words I shouldn’t have
. I admit it and I’m sorry. Anyway, my father forgives me no matter what I do. That’s not the problem. At the same time—and this gets me off the hook—my parents didn’t want to tell me what’s going on. To protect me. I found out after. At first, I just didn’t understand them. But, okay, aita, why the hell do I have to study far away? I’m doing well here, in my hometown, with my friends. And he, hemming and hawing, that I should think about finding another university because it had already been decided that I was not going to stay in Basque Country. My mother agreed with him. And Xabier, who they’d already told everything before telling me, also agreed. I went against them, thinking they were working like a team so they could treat me like a little girl. And I didn’t only oppose them. I got furious! It was then I said words that now burn me in memory.”
“I know your father has been threatened. Is that the problem?”
Nerea nodded yes.
“I don’t know the details. At home, they said nasty things about your family. And it’s that my mother has gone nuts ever since Joxe Mari ran away to France. I’ve heard her say really ugly things about Txato. And don’t think anyone can argue against her. When you think of the friendship between our two families! A friendship I still believe in, by the way. Look, here I am talking with you, and liking it a lot. If I walk out of here and see Bittori across the street I’ll run over to give her a kiss. Okay, so if you want me to tell you the truth, I understand why your father wants to get you far away from town.”
“What my father doesn’t know and doesn’t have to know is that it wasn’t he who convinced me.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Something happened in the Arrano Taberna. No one told you about it?”
“I know nothing. Probably because I hardly ever go there.”
“For certain, negative waves about my father got to the tavern. And I had no idea. One afternoon, any old afternoon, I walk in and ask Patxi for a drink. I thought that since he was busy cleaning glasses he didn’t hear me. So, I asked again. He didn’t look at me. How strange. The third time, he comes over with a bad look on his face and says to me, literally, just as I’m telling you, that there’s no reason for me to be there and that I should never come back. I froze. I didn’t dare ask why.”
Homeland Page 25