“I either leave town or follow in Joxe Mari’s footsteps. There’s no alternative. The pressure is on. I seem soft to them. They say books are eating my mind and they laugh at me. They’ve started calling me Kartujo. And the worst thing is they are making me do things I don’t agree with. Right now, there’s no friend I can talk to the way I’m talking to you. I practically don’t speak out of fear I’ll say the wrong thing. And last night was too much. I’m very tired. I haven’t slept for a minute. I was on the point of hiding out in the hills, but then I thought of you two.”
“Tell Guille what you told me on the bus.”
Yesterday, in a corner of the Arrano, Peio whispered to Gorka and another friend that he had four Molotov cocktails in a hiding place. Guille: who was Peio?
“One of the guys I hang around with. He gets more and more radical every day.”
Arantxa added details:
“His father was the biggest drunk in town. Every day you’d see him staggering up the street. He died.”
Apparently, Patxi allowed Peio to take a few empty bottles. The boy got the gasoline on his own. He bought it? Are you kidding? He uses a rubber hose to drain it out of the gas tanks of cars and trucks. It’s very easy. He made the cocktails. He added motor oil so the fire, as he put it, would be stickier. He was practicing alone in the quarry. He had four left over.
“He’s really fascinated by weapons and the struggle, and one of these days he’ll join ETA.”
Peio proposed an ekintza when it got dark. He couldn’t think of an objective. Did anyone have any ideas? First, they talked about the town hall. The door still had the burn marks from the last time.
“What abut the batzoki?”
Juancar:
“Don’t you dare. My aita’s probably in there playing mus.”
Gorka kept quiet. He was drinking his calimocho in silence and furtively glancing at the clock, waiting for the opportune moment to say goodbye. This was getting really bad. He saw his two friends were committed, their eyes glittering from the alcohol they’d consumed. Peio was saying that it was too bad there hadn’t been a row that afternoon with the cops so they could roast two or three. Now they were talking about setting fire to the car of some enemy of Euskal Herria. By then, after all that talking and gesticulating, the entire tavern was aware of what they were openly planning in the corner. That was when Patxi came over to order them to take a walk. Because of course in the Arrano he doesn’t want problems. For compromising matters, there is a back room. And in the same moment, as if in passing, he insinuated, telling them without telling them that there was this guy who owned trucks.
“At first I didn’t understand because I was more concerned with getting away than with anything else. Peio and Juancar understood immediately that Patxi was referring to Txato.”
Guille: who was Txato?
Arantxa:
“I’ve talked about him a couple of times. The man with the shipping company. A man who doesn’t roll over because of threats from ETA. It seems he doesn’t pay the revolutionary tax or he’s late in paying or he doesn’t pay enough, I don’t know. There are so many rumors! The fact is that they’ve set up a persecution campaign to throw a scare into him and all the people in the town are against him. A good man. For my father a brother, and for me almost an uncle. Now we don’t speak to him or his family even though they never did anything to us. This is a crazy country.”
And Gorka, cornered by his friends between the table and the wall, defended himself. He couldn’t, seriously, he couldn’t, he had to go. They insisted. All they’d need was an hour. Not even. The plan was simple: toss the four Molotov cocktails, come back to town, and you off to your fucking books. From the bar, Patxi saw them, apprentice gudari, arguing and waving their arms. Again he went to their corner, this time with the excuse of picking up their glasses.
“Mind telling me what the hell’s going on?”
“This guy, Kartujo, says he isn’t coming.”
“He’s a coward.”
“Can you believe he’s Joxe Mari’s brother?”
Gorka kept silent, and Patxi turned to him, serious, calm:
“Look, son, when you’re in a group and you know the plan of action, you stick with it to the end and you don’t squeal. If you didn’t want to take part, you should have left sooner. No one’s forcing you. But if you’re here, you’re in. And now get out of here, the three of you. You can pay for your drinks tomorrow. Or they’ll be on the house. According to how you do.”
Gorka was now marked a squealer. From there to informant there was about an inch. That broke down his resistance. And he was suddenly so eaten up by shame that he felt as if he’d walked down the street naked, his tall, bony body where everyone could see it. A ball of disgust formed in his throat. He felt himself to be chickenhearted, a plucked chicken, and nothing worried him more than the fear the others would see his sadness. The others, what did they do? As they walked they repeated Patxi’s argument in a tone of recrimination until Gorka finally said, okay, enough, let’s go. And off they went, jolly, slightly drunk, shouting gora ETA, amnistia osoa, and other slogans, to get the cocktails Peio had hidden.
With the bottles in a bag, they walked toward the river. It was dark then, but with a purple border of sky above the mountains. They agreed that each one would throw one cocktail, but that Peio, who had made them, would get to throw two. When they were near their objective, Juancar hissed to be quiet. They confirmed that the entry gate was locked. Too high to jump over it. Besides, there was barbed wire on top. Bad luck: there were only two trucks. One next to the warehouse door.
“Damn, how far away it is.”
It would be impossible to hit it with a bottle thrown from outside. The other was parked with its front bumper against the wall. Difficulties? At least three. First, the chain-link fence made it necessary to toss the bottles straight up, as if they were mortar projectiles. That means you can’t aim properly. The second difficulty was the impenetrable thicket of blackberry bushes growing in front of the wall, which would keep them from getting close to the target. And the third difficulty? They were surrounded by trees, so the whole place was dark, so dark they couldn’t even see where they were walking.
There was no light in the office.
“Great. We’re alone.”
Peio, impatient, threw the first cocktail. He threw it as high as he could so it wouldn’t hit the fence. With no accuracy. The bottle burst on the asphalt. The advantage was that now the flames enabled them to see the truck better.
“They told me it was my turn. I could see I wasn’t going to hit the truck. They couldn’t hold it against me since Peio had also failed. And suddenly, as we were lighting the rag, we heard a voice shouting: bastards, bastards. And not only that. Bam! A shot. I swear. And there was Txato coming toward us, running along the esplanade. Bam! Another shot. I don’t know if he was really trying to shoot us, but it was clear he had a gun.
“ ‘Shit, this guy’s going to kill us. Let’s take off.’ And we didn’t have hoods or anything else to cover our faces. Anyway, I think it was too dark for him to recognize us. Instead of chasing after us, Txato went to put out the fire. I think that if he wanted to he could have killed the three of us. I couldn’t sleep and today I’ve spent hours going from one place to another. I’d be grateful if you’d let me stay here a few days. Then I’ll figure a way to leave town. If I stay there, I’ll end up just like Joxe Mari.”
Arantxa stood up.
“That’s enough. I’ll make supper. Meanwhile, you call home and tell the aitas what the situation is.”
“I can’t tell them about what happened yesterday.”
“Make something up.”
“What?”
“Guille, what would you say in his place?”
“Me. I don’t know. That someone wants to beat me up or something like that.”
PERSONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT
For a while, Gorka found refuge in solitude. He slowly distanced himself from his friends. And he never went into the Arrano Taberna. He studied, read, wrote poems and stories. These he immediately destroyed, convinced they were worthless. He didn’t get depressed. I’m learning. Meanwhile, he nourished the vague hope he would someday get a job, but where? In the foundry, as his father suggested several times? Joxian offered to speak with the people in the office. That’s not happening. Twenty-one years old and still living with his family. His father was frantic, thinking him an oddball; his mother scolded him constantly. To wake him up, she said, certain that he’d turned out lazy.
From time to time, Gorka went to book presentations, lectures, and round tables in San Sebastián. He would hang around other writers and actually met a few. He stopped borrowing books from the town library. More than anything else it was to avoid running into people he knew in the street or in the reading room. Instead he became a regular in the municipal library in the Parte Vieja neighborhood of San Sebastián, where he would spend entire afternoons bent over books, encyclopedias, newspapers.
But he knew he couldn’t disconnect himself from the town as long as he lived with his parents. Festivals, public events, telephone calls from friends drew him away from what he loved. He trained himself in the art of ducking out, becoming a master of dissimulation. When it came to the demonstrations he simply had to attend, he figured out a way to stand in strategic places. First at the side of his friends, later a few steps away from them, and once he was aware his presence had been noticed, he’d stop to talk with anyone, if possible with older people; he would linger on the sly, and when the opportune moment came he’d disappear.
He often would leave the town for days at a time. Which is how he arranged things with Arantxa. He moved into her apartment and in that way progressively detached himself from his group. And he was no parasite. He lent a hand to his sister and brother-in-law in everything he could. While they were at work he cleaned their house. He helped them wallpaper the living room. Alone, he painted the kitchen ceiling. And in the spirit of exchanging one favor for another, he tried to teach his brother-in-law some basic elements of Basque. They had to give it up because it was impossible. Guille had absolutely no talent for languages.
Luck ran into Gorka one day and favored him. How so? Well, the boy found a job or the job found him and outside the town as well; not well paid, not a bit, but to his taste: employee in a San Sebastián bookstore. The owners met him, he came to a book presentation, they asked him. Listen, how would you like et cetera. He didn’t hesitate. It was success in what he mentally called his Personal Liberation Movement, the objective of which was limited to a single point: achieve independence. It isn’t only that he’d earn a tiny salary; it’s that his job allowed him to lose sight of the town every day without his having to give explanations to anyone, because everyone knew where he was going every morning he got on the bus.
While he worked in the bookshop he published book reviews in Basque, published a few literary works in magazines, and also, though only sporadically, articles on cultural matters in the newspaper Egin. Publishing in Egin gave him a free pass in his hometown. No one reproached him, no one was suspicious of him. Was it true they barely ever saw him? Sure, but he published in Egin.
One afternoon he saw Patxi on the street. From one sidewalk to the other:
“Your article yesterday was very good. I didn’t understand a thing, but I liked it. Keep up the good work.”
Basque became his main source of income. Lucrative? For the time being, he was surviving. He did everything. He wrote jacket copy, pamphlets, did short translations. A publisher accepted a thin book for children. At the last minute, without consulting him, they changed the title. They called it Piraten itsasontzi urdina. Gorka wasn’t horrified, but he did prefer his own title. That interference in his writing troubled him.
Arantxa told him not to take it to heart and encouraged him to dedicate the bulk of his creative efforts to children’s literature.
“As long as you write for kids, they’ll leave you alone. But you’ll be sorry, my boy, the minute you get involved with national issues. In any case, if you must write for adults, set your stories far from Euskadi. In Africa or America, the way others do it.”
Good luck took a liking to him and granted him, under more-than-favorable conditions, his wish to abandon his native town forever. What happened? One afternoon he met Ramuntxo. In fact, Gorka hadn’t planned to attend the opening of a Basque painting exhibit at the Altxerri Gallery, but he missed his bus. It was raining, the gallery was nearby. So, to pass the time, he walked into the show as if an invisible string were pulling him in. And there was Ramuntxo with a canapé of shrimp, hard-boiled egg, and mayonnaise in his hand. They chatted. Ramuntxo, who was eleven years older, was astonished at how well Gorka spoke Basque. They got along well. And from the gallery, to speak more calmly, they went to the bar on the ground floor. They became even friendlier, until finally, at about ten at night, Ramuntxo offered to drive Gorka to his town. Gorka, delighted, not only because of the favor but because for the first time in a long while he found that somewhere in the world there existed a person other than his sister with whom he could talk without restraining his frankness.
Two months later, he moved in with Ramuntxo in Bilbao. The initial idea was that he would work for him as a secretary and also that he would edit texts broadcast on the radio. Ramuntxo, divorced, father of a daughter, Amaia, he loved madly, brought Gorka to live with him in his flat on Licenciado Poza Street. He gave him a bedroom and an office, and he paid him quite a bit more than the owners of the San Sebastián bookstore.
He forbade him to write a single line for Egin.
“Don’t fall into that trap. You listen to me.”
Gorka composed some texts that were so beautiful, so profound, and so well written that after a while Ramuntxo decided to bring him into the radio station. He had no problem getting his young friend accepted by the staff. And for Gorka that was like ascending to heaven.
It was not a station with wide broadcast range. Approximately 80 percent of the programming was in Basque. And some announcers mangled the grammar. All the better for Gorka, who read marvelously well, expressed himself fluidly, and had an enormous control over the language. He also had a good voice, so in a short while he went from being an assistant editor, in charge of the record collection, responsible for making coffee, and messenger boy to speaking at the microphone, first along with Ramuntxo and later alone.
He liked huge amounts of work, to the point that he stayed at the station after his workday finished. He sat next to the sound technician so he could learn how to work the control panel. He also kept an eye out in case some writer, artist, or singer came to the city. He would then run to find them and record interviews. He did the same later with athletes and anyone who was famous and who would bother to answer his questions.
Ramuntxo saw how enthusiastic he was and got him a half-hour program dedicated to Basque literature broadcast every day at ten p.m. except Saturdays and Sundays. Gorka was a happy man.
75
A PORCELAIN VASE
Aránzazu, wearing sunglasses, made herself comfortable on the forward deck and Xabier rowed. On the stern, the name of the boat Lorea Bi. Before, there had been a Lorea Bat. It belonged to Aránzazu’s brother and he gave them the key. When she was still a girl, she liked to go for a spin around the bay on the Lorea Bat, which was heavier and harder to manage than this current boat. On board, girlfriends from high school, the occasional boyfriend, rarely herself alone. The Lorea Bi has an outboard motor, but Xabier has decided to use the oars. After all, we don’t have to empty Aránzazu’s brother’s gas tank just so we can enjoy an afternoon.
“What? It’s four drops of gas!”
“A little exercise will do me good. I recommend it
to my patients and it turns out I’m the one who leads the sedentary life I reproach them for.”
A perfect day. A blue afternoon at the end of spring. The water in the port tranquil, with fish that turn from side to side, lighting up the depths with flashes of silver. Sitting above, along the edge of the narrow entry to the harbor, six or seven fishermen with poles are lined up, most of them boys. Because it was low tide, a wide swath of wall covered with algae was visible. And Xabier, pessimistic, suspicious:
“All we need is for one of those fools to hook us.”
They went out into the bay. In the open space, the Lorea Bi began to rock. The formidable volume of the water was obvious, the power of the waves a warning. What do they say? What they always say: that the water lives and you are tiny animals on a floating shell. Heavy seas? Of course not, but if you’re not used to the sea, the constant rocking is intimidating, and the breeze can get impetuous. Aggressive, it wraps itself around you, whipping, because it knows you have no defense. Aránzazu, her hair a mess—how pretty she is—had to tie it back in a bun.
She was afraid of something else.
“I’d like to open a hole in your forehead so I could take a peek from time to time at your brain and find out what you’re thinking and feeling. When I was a little girl, my girlfriends and I made time capsules. Each one dug a little hole in the ground and tossed in daisies, clover leaves, some little piece of jewelry, a lock of hair; we would seal them with a piece of glass and the next day come back to see what was there. Well, I’d do the same thing with your forehead to see what’s going on inside you.”
“Don’t restrain yourself on my account. When I’m asleep you can perform that trepanation and I’m sure I wouldn’t even notice. You know how soundly I sleep.”
Homeland Page 34