Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  The air in the dining room, above the table covered with appetizers, how much work!, seemed stretched tight. There was a tension there like some elastic substance that could snap at any moment. The children, who in their way also must have noticed the disturbing phenomenon, were politely silent, expectant, holding in—mother’s orders—their demand for the croquettes set out in perfect order on a porcelain platter.

  Wearing slippers, doing his best to cover up the fact that he’d just been reprimanded, aitona walked into the dining room. Before, when he entered the house, he’d said a short hello, given a bland kiss. And as soon as he started to take his usual seat, with his back to the balcony door, Miren asked him if he’d washed his hands. With his grandchildren and daughter present, he didn’t argue but went like a little lamb to the bathroom to wash his hands and keep peace during the festivities.

  With all five seated at the table, they chewed and drank, Joxian, like the others, drank water, since you’ve had more than enough wine this morning. And in the air, between the heads bent over the plates, that airy-human tension persisted, perceptible even to the children, who on other occasions had shown themselves to be lively but who now were strangely silent. But the story of the day was in the air and everyone knows it and no one mentions it, why ruin a family gathering? They don’t see one another that frequently. Anyway, within an hour or an hour and a half we’ll be gone.

  It was easy to see that the matter he’d heard about in the Pagoeta was burning inside Joxian. In a free moment, when Miren carried the dirty plates to the kitchen and was getting clean saucers out of the cabinet, he asked Arantxa, in a low voice, who the dead man was. She answered in a similar whisper:

  “A friend of Guille’s.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “The man who helped him find work.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Miren, loaded down with plates, back in the dining room:

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Nothing at all? The tension in the air increased. One more tug and it splits. But suddenly there was custard, celebrated with joy by the children, and an opportune action by Joxian, who gave a fifty-cent piece to each grandchild. Peace and dessert. Then he almost ruined everything. How? He grabbed the remote control without thinking. He had already pointed it at the television set and was just about to turn it on. The result would have been, Rentería, bomb, a death in the Capuchinos neighborhood. Arantxa managed to stop him in time by means of a discreet kick under the table. It’s possible Miren detected it. Or had she suspected already that there had been a secret communication between father and daughter?

  When she was alone washing dishes in the kitchen, at a random moment she called Endika, six years old, into the kitchen using some meaningless pretext and then the air exploded. Miren managed to wheedle out of the child the reason his aita hadn’t come to dinner. And the boy, who had not been taught how to dodge the astuteness of his amona, told her the truth. From his child’s point of view, but the truth. Among the other things he said were:

  “Some bad men killed a friend of my aita.”

  “He’s been crying all morning.”

  “What kind of a man cries all morning?”

  The question upset Endika, who back in the dining room told his mother. Joxian reacted reflexively. He tried to hold his daughter back, grabbing her by the wrist, but his aged, arthritic hand lacked the necessary agility. Arantxa got up from the table with an energetic, angry impulse, went straight to the kitchen in the same humor, and there took place what could not be stopped from taking place.

  “Listen here, what did you say to the boy?”

  “And you two, what did you say to him about bad men?”

  Those contorted faces, those angry stares, those words that fly like bullets.

  Arantxa, aggressive, challenging, started speaking in Spanish.

  “It’s only by a miracle that I didn’t lose a son and that I’m not a widow. Both of them passed by a bomb half a minute before the explosion.”

  “Here we aren’t fighting against innocent people.”

  “Oh, and are you fighting? Should I congratulate you for what happened this morning?”

  “That counselor, that friend of your husband, was in the PP.”

  “Are you insane? Above all else he was a good person and a father with children and a man with the right to defend his ideas.”

  “He was an oppressor. And let me remind you that you have a brother rotting away in a Spanish prison thanks to good people like that.”

  “That son you’re so proud of: they proved he committed bloody crimes. That’s why he’s in jail, because he’s a terrorist. Let me repeat that: because he’s a terrorist, not because he speaks Basque, which is what you told Endika once. You’re a liar, worse than a liar.”

  “How dare you speak that way about my son, a gudari who’s risked his life for Euskal Herria?”

  “Well, why don’t you go to the houses of your son’s victims and explain that to them. I’d like to see you look them in the eye.”

  “Those are your husband’s friends. Let him go.”

  “Why do you never call Guillermo by his name? Does the word burn your mouth? I suppose that for you he’s an oppressor.”

  “He’s not much of a Basque.”

  “He was born here, before I was.”

  “Hernández Carrizo and he doesn’t speak Basque. If he’s a Basque…”

  At that point, Arantxa decided the conversation was over. She passed by Joxian, who had been observing the argument from the doorway, gloomy, unable to intervene.

  “Out of the way, aita. I don’t know how you’ve been able to stand her all these years.”

  “Daughter, don’t go.”

  Arantxa called the children, picked up their shoes so they could put them on out on the landing or even on the street, it’s all the same to me, and without saying a word or saying goodbye, she kicked them out of the flat. Miren maintained a resentful, hard, stony silence in the kitchen, and Joxian, staggering with sorrow, tried to stop his daughter and his grandchildren.

  “Don’t leave, please.”

  It was useless. Five years passed before Arantxa spoke to her mother again.

  90

  FRIGHT

  At that time, helmets weren’t popular. Are you kidding? Maybe some jerk who wanted to look like a professional rider would wear a little one, but that’s about it. They wore caps, sunglasses, and bicycling gear because that way no one would recognize them. One afternoon, Joxe Mari rode through the village checking each side of every street out of the corner of his eye. Patxo, the previous afternoon, had challenged him:

  “Got the balls?”

  “Well, there’s not much to brag about. My village is filled with people riding bikes. No one would stop to look.”

  And that’s how it was. No one on the street seemed to realize that the powerfully built bicyclist wearing a cap and dark glasses was Joxe Mari. He rode along the street that borders the plaza, passed right in front of the Pagoeta, went down to the river. From the opposite bank, he saw his father (his beret, the checked shirt, his back bent, how old he looks) busy in the garden. Patxo asked him what he was looking at.

  “Nothing. I wanted to say goodbye to my village.”

  Unless it was raining, the two of them preferred bicycles to cars or public buses for reconnoitering throughout the province in search of objectives, their principal, not to say their only, business at that time. The bikes enabled them to go to the same place separately but without losing sight of each other. And they set a signal so that the one who rode ahead could warn the one behind about any danger. Distance: not less than fifty, not more than one hundred yards. And when they entered a town they never went into the same bar. At the end of their excursions, first one, then the other would
bring up his bike in the elevator. Raised on the rear wheel they fit. In the flat, they met with Txopo, who, free of duties, imitated or tried to imitate the normal life of a student.

  In the weapons courses, they’d been taught to be extremely careful. A light on in a room at any hour of the day meant that one of them was in the flat and that there were no problems. All the lights out and a coin in the mailbox, left there by the last one out: flat empty. If the coin wasn’t there: careful, don’t go up. The same if a towel was hung halfway out of a window or there was light in all the rooms or the doormat wasn’t in the agreed-upon place. One time, Patxo forgot to follow the rules. If Txopo hadn’t stepped in, Joxe Mari would have punched him.

  They were on the move, a workday, cold, gray, but without rain or wind, through the Andoáin, Villabona, and Asteasu zone. More than anything so they wouldn’t be inactive and because after a bleak week of winter, the weather finally invited them to take a ride on their bicycles. They could do nothing else but pedal here, there, because their communication link had given them a note from the bosses ordering them to do nothing until they received new orders. This led them to conclude that Donostia was preparing some huge ekintza and that they shouldn’t interfere or that the organization had come to some kind of secret agreement with the government.

  Joxe Mari was depressed.

  “We’re a second-class talde.”

  And Patxo tried to raise morale.

  “Don’t worry. When the opportunity arises, we’ll strike a spectacular blow and they’ll start respecting us.”

  “Sure, as long as the state doesn’t drop its drawers. Because if the armed struggle ends all of a sudden, tell me what we will have contributed.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic. I think it will go on for a few more years.”

  In Recalde, near the funeral parlor, almost at the end of the day’s excursion, Joxe Mari stopped as he’d done on other occasions to give his comrade a few minutes’ lead, and then he started out and when he arrived, what the hell is that guy doing standing there?, he was surprised to see Patxo outside the entryway. Upstairs, the lights were out.

  They gathered at the building’s corner.

  “The coin isn’t there.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Not losing any time, they went toward the El Antiguo neighborhood. They didn’t stop until reaching a short time later Benta Berri Plaza. There: what do we do now? They decided, first, to calm down, then make a plan. It was now completely dark. It was nine p.m. Fewer and fewer vehicles passed through the zone. They hadn’t noticed the cold while they were pedaling, but now it was settling in their bones. And Joxe Mari, whose big body was beginning to note the lack of dinner, swallowed down the last bit of the chocolate he usually carried on those excursions, along with bananas and apples.

  One thing was clear: at night, in bicycling gear on the street, they would attract too much attention.

  “Dressed like this, where are we going to go?”

  “And with this cold closing in and these light clothes we’re going to freeze if we stay outdoors.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “I think we should go back and take a look. It could be that Txopo forgot to leave the coin in the mailbox. It happened to me once.”

  “If he was careless, I’ll bust his ass.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The apartment windows were still dark. On the deserted streets, there were no suspicious movements, though who the hell knew if there were txakurras hiding in some parked car or behind the curtains of some nearby apartment. They left the bicycles leaning against the post of a traffic light. They were breathing out a dense mist. Patxo was shivering and didn’t hide his fear of getting sick. Joxe Mari tried to keep warm jumping up and down and doing gymnastic exercises. He grumbled constantly. Lots of curses, lots of swearing, but he couldn’t break out of his indecision.

  Patxo, practically frozen, his nose red, had an idea:

  “It’s enough if one of us goes up. If they’re waiting for us, they’ll grab him, and the other can escape.”

  “You’re an asshole. If they grab you it’s just as if they grabbed me and vice versa. Just from the beating the cops will give you in the cell, you’ll be singing the Our Father in Latin, Russian, and in a ton of languages you don’t even know.”

  The freeze was settling in, the clothing inappropriate for the time and place, the hunger, cold, and fatigue, it all pushed them to make the decision they finally made. They went up to the flat separately, one in the elevator, another up the stairs. The doormat? In its place. A good sign. But careful, the door wasn’t locked. So what? They’d already put a key in the lock. Patxo, who was first in, turned on the vestibule light. Silence. They’d released the safety on their Brownings, because without hardware they go nowhere. For that reason they wore fanny packs whenever they went out on their bicycles.

  They found Txopo, what did they do to you? on the floor in his room, his cheek resting on a puddle of vomit, conscious and doubled up.

  “If I move, it’s worse.”

  Suspicious, naive, it took them a few seconds to understand that their comrade’s problem was some physical breakdown. Until he said, where the hell were you, you bastards? they kept aiming their pistols at the walls, the ceiling, the dresser, at Txopo himself. Why hadn’t he turned on the light? Idiots, because he couldn’t move. Couldn’t they see that for themselves? A terrible pain hit him the moment he came into the building. Suddenly, in the elevator. Using his last bit of strength, he managed to enter the apartment. Where did it hurt? Here. And here was a thigh, but also his back and then one side of his stomach. So, what do we do? He threatened to shout for help if they didn’t get him any. They tried to get him up. Impossible: it hurt even more. And the vomit and the stink.

  “We’ve got to clean this up.”

  “You clean it up.”

  Joxe Mari signaled to Patxo to follow him into the kitchen. They whispered with the door closed.

  “We can’t let the emergency medical people in here. Too risky.”

  “Sure, but we have to do something right away, because if this guy drops dead we’ll have an even bigger problem.”

  Txopo’s moans from the floor of his room drove Joxe Mari mad. He cut off the talk, now authoritarian, the boss, resolute:

  “Change clothes or put on a jacket, get the car, and wait outside the entryway.”

  “Are you nuts? We’ve got the boxes holding the weapons in the trunk.”

  The look in Joxe Mari’s eyes eliminated argument, that gaze is like a blowtorch. Patxo: if this ends badly it won’t be his fault. He got dressed quickly, grumbling the whole time. As he left the flat he muttered something or other about responsibility. And Joxe Mari looked into Txopo’s room to say: be cool, don’t worry, hang in there, and things like that. Then he rapidly changed clothes.

  From the kitchen window, he saw the Seat 127 supplied to them by the car-theft cell driving up along the street. The trunk filled with boxes. Shit: on the one hand, they send you weapons and material for making bombs, on the other they tell you nothing. They had planned to use the cover of darkness to put all of it in sport bags, carefully bring it up to the apartment, examine it, and decide what they should hide in the cache and what not to hide.

  There was no time to lose. Joxe Mari tugged Txopo’s feet to get his face out of the puddle of vomit. Disgusting. My ama, she’s great in situations like this. He used a towel to clean him up a bit. He went out to the stairway and pressed the elevator button. The neighbors? In their flats. He saw little of them. He could hear a television set somewhere. Casually, he picked up his comrade as if he were a sack. Looking through the peephole he confirmed that no one had come up in the elevator. Then he went out with Txopo over his shoulder, went down to the entryway, and as soon as Patxo signaled that the street was deserted he quickly loaded his sufferin
g, groaning comrade in the rear seat. He sat up front and gave the order to get moving.

  “Where to?”

  “Just go straight. I’ll tell you.”

  They left Txopo in an ambiguous position—sitting? doubled up?—on a bench in the Ondarreta gardens, near the highway that goes up to Igueldo. Patxo was worried about his comrade.

  “He’s going to freeze to death.”

  Joxe Mari said nothing until they crossed Matía Street, when a public telephone caught his eye.

  “Stop. I’ll get out here. You go back to the flat.”

  First of all, he entered a nearby bar. And while he drank a beer, he looked through the telephone book. Later, using the pay phone, he called the Red Cross Hospital, whose facade was visible on the other side of the street. Not giving much of an explanation he said:

  “Listen, there’s a boy here in great pain.”

  He said where, and when he was sure they’d understood him, he hung up. Barely a minute later, an ambulance passed by, heading, he supposed, to the place he described.

  Two days went by, two long days without any news of Txopo. Suddenly, the door buzzer rang. They jumped up. Could it be him? From the intercom, they heard: open up. They learn that the same night he went into the hospital he managed to pass the kidney stone that was torturing him out in his urine. Just to be sure, they kept him in the hospital for twenty-four hours under observation. He asked his comrades to forgive him for being a nuisance and thanked them for their help. What about celebrating? How? He offered to cook a grand meal for them. Squid in its own ink, hake, whatever they wished. Joxe Mari:

  “You remind me of my amatxo, because she always makes fish for supper.”

  Txopo told them he’d buy the ingredients and take care of everything. All they needed were their appetites. Okay, kid. He went right into his room. On the floor, still: the filthy towel and the now dry puddle of vomit.