Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  “Brought up? Who did you bring up? I never saw you do anything with your children, ever. You spend half your life in the bar and half your life on your bicycle.”

  “And every day I have a nice vacation at the foundry, screw that.”

  Their eyes met for an instant. Disdainful, distant? In any case, devoid of cordiality. Then Miren turned off the light and giving an energetic twist rolled over on her side, her back to her husband. He in the darkness said that:

  “If I were twenty years younger, I’d take off tomorrow to look for him, beat the shit out of him, and bring him home.”

  Miren did not reply.

  65

  BLESSING

  They were still speaking. They were still sharing secrets and snacking together on Saturday afternoons in San Sebastián. And they could easily have brought along other women from the village. Juani, who was a great friend, or even Manoli, whom they saw less, but no. In their Saturday ritual there was no space for anyone else, not even for their husbands. Are you kidding? Let them go play cards or ride their bikes and leave us in peace. They also went to mass together and sat next to each other.

  Miren dunked her churro in the hot chocolate. She said, chewing, as she wiped the tips of her fingers with the paper napkin, that ever since the night of the search she hasn’t been comfortable in her own house.

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you. It’s as if they’d dirtied it. It’s an invisible filth that you know is there. No matter how often I wipe it down, it’s still there and it makes me so sick I can’t stand it. And whenever I see a Guardia Civil car on the street, it makes my stomach turn.”

  “I understand you perfectly.”

  “Something has changed at home. We’re not the way we were before Joxe Mari took off for France. Gorka doesn’t speak. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Are you traumatized? I ask him. He doesn’t answer. Arantxa laughs at me, at her father, at the people in our town, at everything. I think that boy from Rentería has made her dumber than she already was. And Joxian and me, what can I say? For a long time now, we just don’t get along. One argument after another.”

  “The business with Joxe Mari must have affected him.”

  “Affected? It’s broken him. I couldn’t begin to tell you. Before, I never saw him cry, not even at funerals. Now, when you least expect it, there he is with red eyes and pouting. He runs to the bathroom so no one will see him.”

  “What about you, how are you bearing up?”

  “Well, I’ll always back my son no matter what. I don’t give a damn what people say. Of course I’d rather he were nearby, working and starting a family, but since it’s not that way, you have to play the hand you’re dealt. To tell the truth, and I’m only telling you, okay?, it’s Joxian’s fault that I feel so uncertain. She looked around at the nearby tables to make sure no one was listening and, bringing her mouth to Bittori’s ear, whispered: he says that if Joxe Mari takes up arms he won’t look at him again ever. His hope is that he goes to Mexico or some place like that as a refugee. But if he doesn’t go, then what? I was thinking about talking to Don Serapio.”

  “To the priest? What can a guy like that tell you?”

  “He might give me some advice, who knows. Juani made confession with him and felt relieved.”

  “Then talk to him. Except for the time you’ll spend, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

  On Sunday, the two friends, arm in arm, went to high mass. Again and again, Miren looked toward the statue of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and with a trembling lip she whispered to him. What? That he watch over her son, that he take care of him now that she couldn’t. It’s impossible, she said to herself, that such a generous, noble boy join a criminal organization, as the Spanish newspapers call it. He’s got such a big heart. He’s always doing for others, on the handball team, at work, everywhere, how can he not do for his country? You were Basque, too, right, Ignatius?”

  Bittori:

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I was praying.”

  They took communion. They walked forward, then back, one before the other, along the center aisle, heads down, hands together. Almost the devotion of nuns. More precisely, of almost nuns. Remember? They were so close to joining a convent. And after so many years they agreed, half joking, half serious, on the same idea: every time one of them had an argument with her husband, she repented for having chosen, what dopes we were, matrimony over nuns’ habits.

  “The only consolation, the children, Sister Bittori.”

  “There’s no going back, Sister Miren.”

  Before opening her mouth and extending her tongue to receive the consecrated host, Miren whispered to Don Serapio that I’ll pass by after, okay? And the priest, discreet, slow-moving, nodded.

  Once mass was over, the congregation made for the doors. Don Serapio blew out the candles on the altar; preceded by the altar boy, who opened the door for him, he entered the sacristy. And that was the moment Miren was waiting for to go and speak to him.

  “Will you come?”

  “It’s better you go alone. This is very intimate. I’ll wait for you in the plaza and if there’s anything, you can tell me.”

  Don Serapio was taking off the chasuble when Miren entered the sacristy. As soon as he saw her, his brow covered with perspiration, he ordered the altar boy to leave. Held back by some obligation or other, the adolescent did not immediately obey.

  “Hey, didn’t I tell you to take off?”

  The altar boy then dashed out of the sacristy, leaving the door open. Can you believe it? The grumbling priest, striding decisively, shuts it. As soon as he was alone with the woman, he offered her a chair with sweetened gestures. And as he sat down, he asked if she was visiting him about the same matter as Juani, Josetxo’s wife. Miren nodded.

  He took her hand, on top of the table, between his pale hands, not made for hard work like Joxian’s, which are rough and look like burned stone. Why is he taking my hand? And patting the back of hers he said:

  “Remove all doubts and remorse from your mind. This struggle of ours, mine in my parish, yours in your house, working for your family, and Joxe Mari’s struggle, wherever he is, is the just struggle of a people in their legitimate wish to decide their own fate. It is the struggle of David against Goliath, a struggle I’ve talked about often during mass. It isn’t an individual, egocentric struggle but, above all, a collective sacrifice, and Joxe Mari, like Jokin and so many others, has joined it, with all the consequences. Do you understand?”

  Miren nodded affirmatively. Don Serapio, understanding, tender, patted the back of her hand twice. And then he went on:

  “Has God shown that he doesn’t want Basques in his presence? God wants his good Basques at his side in the same way he wants—take note of this—good Spaniards and Frenchmen and Poles. And he made us Basques the way we are, tenacious in our purposes, hardworking, and firm in the idea of a sovereign nation. For that reason, I would go so far as to assert that on us has fallen the Christian mission of defending our identity, therefore our culture, and above all our language. If our language disappears, tell me, Miren, tell me frankly, who will pray to God in Basque, who will sing to Him in Basque? Shall I answer? No one. Do you think that Goliath, wearing the Guardia Civil three-cornered hat, with his barracks-basement torturers, is going to move a finger in favor of our identity? They searched your house the other day, in the middle of the night. Didn’t you feel humiliated?”

  “Oh, Don Serapio, don’t remind me of it, it makes me gasp for air.”

  “See? The same humiliation that you and your family had to endure is suffered daily by thousands of people in Euskal Herria. And the very same ones who mistreat us are the ones who then talk about democracy. Their democracy, theirs, which oppresses us as a people. Which is why I say to you, completely honestly, that our struggle isn�
�t only just. It’s necessary, today more than ever. It’s indispensable because it’s defensive and has as its objective peace. Haven’t you ever heard the words of our bishop? Go home in peace. And if one day in the months that follow or whenever it is you find your son, tell him from me, from his parish priest, that he has my blessing and that I pray a lot for him.

  Miren left the sacristy, crossed the church, and went out a side door. What a priest. Listening to him speak, I felt a desire to follow in Joxe Mari’s footsteps. For one instant, without stopping, she turned her eyes toward the statue of Saint Ignatius. Maybe you should learn to encourage people.

  She walked out into the plaza. The blue Sunday, the pigeons, the children running around in the shade of the linden trees. Bittori? There she was, sitting on a bench. Miren walked straight toward her.

  “Let’s go. I’ll tell you about it along the way.”

  “You look relaxed.”

  “The next time Joxian starts in with his sorrows and fears, he’s going to hear about it. Now all my ideas are clear.”

  66

  KLAUS-DIETER

  She met Klaus-Dieter. She fell in love with Klaus-Dieter. That mane of straight blond hair which shook when he danced and also, though less, when he walked. Six feet two, a mountain of handsome boy. And German. With the novel perspective that included: a new nation, another culture, another language, other gestures, other smells, and goodbye, perhaps forever, to all this. Goodbye to my unbearable mother, to my land, which I loved and to which I am today indifferent and which I sometimes hate, and goodbye to everything around me, so boring, so foreseeable. Goodbye or, if not goodbye, from here to old age in a straight line.

  The boy was part of the group of young Germans who studied for half a year in the liberal arts program. What did they study? No one knows for sure. Something related to language, or maybe just language. Some mornings she could see them, nine or ten, boys and girls, in the university cafeteria, at first all together, clustered, smiling, a bit on the dumb side, not really noisy considering how many there were. Then, as it happened every year around this time, the usual thing occurred. Little by little they began mixing in with the native student population. Nothing bizarre: friendships formed, romances, which generally lasted until the day the foreign member of the couple had to go home.

  Nerea saw him a couple of times. He attracted her because the boy was, quite frankly, really something; but what does that mean? So many men attracted her, including some professors. They’d never run into each other at any party, at any bar; there was no opportunity, no flirting: she’d never spoken to him. Did he speak Spanish? At least he was studying Spanish, no? And besides, talking, at times, and depending on the circumstances, is superfluous. As to meeting him, she met him later.

  Meanwhile, her aita was murdered, and she, did she cut all her ties, go out very little, isolate herself? None of that, with one exception: when conversation with classmates turned to politics, she lost interest, looked away, went to the bathroom. She felt a kind of sexual pressure which she hadn’t felt before her father died, at least not with the same intensity. She tried, unsuccessfully, to find a reason for her constant physical desire. Because pleasure, real pleasure, she only felt a tiny bit. I’ve never been one for easy orgasms. She used sex to relax, that was all there was to it. And also (before and during, but more before than during) her self-esteem went up. There were days when she practically had none. Especially in class, when she realized that even if she paid close attention she didn’t understand her professors’ explanations. Then she would take an anguished look around, toward her classmates who were taking notes, who raised their hands to participate in discussions, even to argue with the instructor, and it seemed to her that all of them were brighter and better prepared than she was, and that a brilliant future awaited them, while hers would be domestic, monotonous, the future of someone no one finds interesting, no one likes, a person who experiences a vivid rejection looking in the mirror.

  She often went out looking for men. She wouldn’t accept just anyone. She sought athletic, neat boys. And charming, agreeable, extroverted, she always got her man. All she had to do was put on a jolly expression a few yards away and the fly would come to the spiderweb. Sometimes the dry, cold cierzo would be blowing through the streets of Zaragoza or it would be pouring rain or she was simply too lazy to change her clothes, and then she took the easy way out: she could call José Carlos from a nearby telephone booth. She would say: come over. And the boy would come to the apartment, satisfy her, and leave.

  It wasn’t until March that the affair with Klaus-Dieter began, at a moment when he only had a few weeks left before going back to his homeland. There was no other reason for all the haste and for the misunderstanding, because it was a whopper of a misunderstanding. She still smiles when she thinks of it. It was beautiful while it lasted and besides you cannot deny that, without knowing it, he helped you to finish your academic work. How could that be? To keep up with him, she hit the books hard, passed all her exams, freed herself from the old promise she’d made years back to her deceased father that she would get her degree. A degree, by the way, that mattered absolutely nothing to her.

  The party took place one Friday in the Colegio Mayor Pedro Cerbuna, a university residence and cultural center. Depressed, she was tempted to stay home. With little hope that he’d answer, she telephoned José Carlos. A roommate answered. No, he wasn’t there, he’d gone home and wouldn’t be back until Sunday. And Nerea imagined him back on Sunday afternoon with the usual package of sausages (breakfast, spicy chorizo, et cetera) and before coming back, on Saturday, I suppose also on Sunday, strolling with his official girlfriend along the riverbank, holding hands, because she won’t go any farther, which didn’t bother him in the slightest because for sex he had Nerea, who had to listen—her legs spread, in her narrow and creaking rented bed—to her friend’s village anecdotes.

  She was just about to hang up:

  “Do you know if anything interesting’s going on in the city tonight?”

  The boy mentioned a party or concert, he wasn’t sure which, in Pedro Cerbuna. And he added, even though Nerea hadn’t asked for his opinion, that it was a preppy party. Nerea went on to ask her roommates if they felt like going with her. They declined. What to do? She went into her room ready to spend the final hours of the day reading a novel; but she put herself in a good mood with the bit of cocaine she had left and at about nine she set out on the hunt.

  There he was, taller than everyone around him, dancing away with that cute blond shaking of his hair. Shirtless, his face red from jumping around so much, awkward. Twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four years old? One thing for sure, the boy was enjoying himself. He was swaying back and forth and shaking violently, for sure not the way they danced in his country. But here, aside from a few schoolmates, who knows him?

  Suddenly their eyes met above a few heads, and that was enough for Nerea. She wouldn’t know how to express what she felt. She thinks of clichés: interior earthquake, magic moment, Cupid’s arrow. And the boy must have noticed her fascination because he stood there staring at her with an expression of shock on his face and even reduced the intensity of his dancing. He smiled at her with beautiful teeth.

  Out on the street, she was devouring him with kisses. Nerea, what are you doing, Nerea, what’s wrong with you? She had to hang on to his neck because he was about six inches taller than she was and pull his head down to reach his mouth with her own avid, impatient mouth. And she was clinging, the huntress caught, to his body, her sex moist, on the verge of screaming. What can he think of me?

  He lived quite far away, in a flat he shared with two other German students, out toward San José. Nerea didn’t care about the distance. She would have followed him to the ends of the earth. He spoke with a marked accent. He called her “Neguea.” She would have eaten him alive. The accent made him even more attractive. He made grammatical mistakes that de
lighted Nerea. And she, who’d never spoken a word of German, pronounced his name, and probably pronounced it badly or with her own marked accent, as she deduced from Klaus-Dieter’s laughter, the bastard, and from the obvious pleasure he got making her repeat it again and again.

  By then it was after two in the morning. They were walking along, the air cool, the moon there above the rooftops, on streets with barely any traffic, the entire night for them alone. They were as free as could be. They paused from time to time to tangle their tongues, to slowly caress their faces, to frenetically touch each other’s body hidden behind a tree, in the darkness of some entryway. She, in love like a fifteen-year-old in love with a rock star; he, more restrained, but in no way standoffish. Perhaps he was timid. And at the end of the long road, a bed.

  67

  THREE WEEKS OF LOVE

  They lived together for three weeks. They divided their time between his flat and hers. The advantage of Nerea’s place? It was close to the university. Its principal inconvenience? The bed was narrow and, for him, too short. Klaus-Dieter’s apartment was the opposite. It was far from the university, but there they had a double bed where, along with being able to roll around as much as they liked, they could sleep comfortably.

  What a great three weeks! Even today, two decades later, Nerea would still remember the nights and the days, with their mornings and evenings. She even thought of a title: Anthology of Happiness. She doesn’t think she could compile enough autobiographical material for a big book or a long movie. She would include episodes from her childhood, a few memorable trips, bits of joy here and there, and of course the three weeks she spent in Zaragoza with her German boy. She never again loved anyone with the same passion, never again gave herself so completely. Not even to Quique, but what more could that conceited jerk expect? Aren’t you exaggerating?