For several months, the smiles of the newlyweds (with Miramar Palace in the background) decorated the window of a photographer’s shop located in one of the porticos in Guipúzcoa Plaza.
The banquet, held at a restaurant in Ulía with a view of the sea, went on until late in the afternoon. Bittori, about to say goodbye, a bit drunk?, said something that intrigued Nerea.
“I wish you great happiness, because you’re really going to need it.”
Nerea repeated what she’d said to Xabier a little later in a private moment.
“Please pay no attention whatsoever. Ama has the story she has. And on special days like today it’s possible she’s hounded by memories.”
That was a Saturday. On Monday, the newlyweds took a train to Madrid. They walked around, they visited, they made love abundantly, since he was pressured by the illusion, the haste?, of being a father as soon as possible, which for him meant entering the hotel room and getting right down to business without even pulling back the bedspread. On such occasions, the grief-stricken face of the woman who’d told her on the street that she’d never give her husband satisfaction came into her mind. Accommodating, submissive, she carried out Quique’s instructions: get into this position, turn over, come closer. Barely had they caught their breath and he was reviewing names for the baby, which upset Nerea because that brings, as she said, bad luck.
In Madrid, they boarded a flight to Prague. They’d planned to spend the rest of their honeymoon there. It was Nerea’s idea. One of her girlfriends told her the city was marvelous. There’s this, and there’s that; there’s the so-and-so bridge, and the who-knows-what cathedral. Prague? Okay, we’re going to Prague. Whatever you say, darling. Half owner of a business that produced and distributed liquor, Quique thought the trip would offer him a stupendous opportunity for an on-site examination of the possibilities for doing business in the Czech Republic, a nation in which at the time he had no clients. And with the intention of trying his luck he packed his bags with a mass of prospectuses with information in English about his products along with a cardboard box containing about twenty tiny bottles of different liquors. He said that:
“In Germany and Austria every year they buy a ton of sloe gin from us. I don’t see why the Czechs wouldn’t like what their neighbors like.”
“And what are you going to do with those prospectuses? Hand them out in the Prague supermarkets?”
“You leave that to me, because I’m a good hand at these things.”
In Prague, as in Madrid, they strolled around taking photos, visited with great interest, coupled with procreative ends. But there was a glitch in the form of an unexpected episode that still comes up when they recall their Prague honeymoon. And it was that, two days into their visit, they agreed to walk to the Malá Strana neighborhood, have lunch there, and see and photograph any historical places or curious details in the cityscape they might find along the way. The sunny weather favored the plan. Also an easy-to-use map the hotel people had given them.
Along cobblestone streets they went down to the Charles V Bridge. And pronouncing admiring phrases they crossed the small tunnel that separates the two towers at the entrance. Nerea, wearing sunglasses, wanted to be photographed at the foot of one of the statues. She left her bag at the rail as she fixed her hair and then that boy of fourteen, fifteen, or at the most sixteen popped up, grabbed the bag by the straps, and, seen and not seen, started running. Nerea noticed instantly. She shouted the word “bag” toward Quique, toward the stone figures, and toward all of Europe, and had time enough to mention the contents: her passport, the visa. All of which spurred her husband into action.
Quique took off after the thief. That was the first time in her life Nerea’d ever seen him run. And did he run quickly! Also, the circumstances were in his favor. Because just as the boy had to dodge slow, almost stationary tourists, those same tourists got out of the way for Quique. The thief ran right into an Asian man. By then he saw himself caught and who knows if beaten to a pulp by that speedy foreigner and had no better idea than to toss the bag into the river with the likely hope that it would create a dilemma for his pursuer.
There was no dilemma. Instantly abandoning the chase, Quique ran to the railing. Nerea, about thirty yards away, saw him take off his shoes at top speed and put something in his shoe. His Patek Philippe? What else? The Vltava, where it passes through Prague, is wide. Now we’re going to have trouble. And she was tempted to shout to him, for God’s sake, so he wouldn’t jump; but he did jump, feet first, and she ran over to grab his shoes and the luxury watch.
There below was Quique, wearing his 120-euro white shirt in the muddy water, showing Nerea the recovered bag, as he swam calmly, happily, manly toward the nearby shore. A group of Asians applauded from the bridge. And Nerea, with Quique’s shoes in her hand and the Patek Philippe in a safe place, felt like a piece of overripe fruit about to burst from love. They met at the shore. Despite the wet, she threw herself into Quique’s arms. And numerous cameras scattered around them recorded the embrace. The sopping-wet husband and the happy bride made their way back to the hotel. As they crossed the bridge hand in hand, Nerea recalled the SOINC who’d accosted her weeks before in the street.
99
THE FOURTH MEMBER
Long years in prison weigh on you. They weigh heavily. Arguments with comrades tire you out, demoralize you; the same with run-ins with jailers and the hunger strikes. Solitude, which on one hand can be a refuge, can also eat away at you. Stretched out on his bed, Joxe Mari feels insecure. For certain it was a mistake to answer the letter from Txato’s wife. God help me if ama ever finds out. I don’t even want to think about it. But this is exactly what he hasn’t been able to stop doing for a long time now, and since he wrote to Bittori, with even greater intensity: going round and round with his doubts, emptying the sack of memory at his feet; in a word, brainwashing himself. Here in prison thinking too much weakens you. It puts you face-to-face with the bitter truth. Here’s your life, son, tossed aside like a pile of trash inside the four walls of a cell.
Caught up in rumination, he looks down at the floor, and what does he see? What do you think he sees? The floor here, which immediately turns into the floor in that flat on Avenida Zarauz one August Saturday so many years ago now, the city in festival mode. It was time for a general cleanup. Before the three of them took turns at the chore. That system caused problems. Is it my turn? Is it your turn? Always the same thing. All the work landed on the sucker whose turn it was. And mind you, they limited themselves to the absolutely essential, wipe this down with a rag, the vacuum cleaner a bit over there, just so they wouldn’t be up to their necks in filth. It was Joxe Mari who decreed: guys, on Saturdays, we all do a cleanup. And the three of them set up a barracks-like plan. Okay, you do the bathroom, you the living room, I’ll take care of the kitchen. Bim, bam, boom, all done in an hour.
They had the radio on. As usual. You’ve got to keep the radio on. Just in case something happens. They find out whether there was a police raid yesterday, if there was an ekintza and where, if one of the taldes had fallen. It seems that the more secret some information should be, the faster the media made it public. And of course, that can suit those in the struggle to a T. How so? To take precautions and clear out in time if things went wrong. You never know.
Since approximately three in the afternoon, they knew that something big had taken place in the Morlans neighborhood. A radio announcer said that Morlans was cordoned off. The press was not allowed to enter. Who kept them out? The Guardia Civil. Shots were heard in the distance, many shots, and at least one explosion. The details were vague and scarce, but enough to reveal that the cops were carrying out a large-scale operation in San Sebastián.
Right from the start, Joxe Mari sensed trouble:
“Txopo, drop whatever you’re doing and keep an eye on the street.”
At around six, they got their first confirmation
. The txakurras went up against the Donosti cell. There was talk of three dead in a Morlans apartment. The announcer added that there had been arrests in other places, though he did not say which places.
Joxe Mari to Txopo, who was still standing at the window:
“Anything?”
“Nothing.”
But he was suspicious. When you least expect it, those bastards come and break down the door. To Patxo:
“I think you and I should take off and that Txopo should stay behind.”
“What do we have to do with the Donosti cell? We don’t know them at all and we’re not their support talde.”
“All our intelligence-gathering work may well have helped them. And we share the same link with the higher-ups, who the hell knows. Let’s go, even if it’s only for one night. Txopo will tell us tomorrow if there were any odd movements on the street.”
Until then there had been three of them; now there were four. The incessant suspicion of being watched. One more member. And a very influential one. They talked it over in the dark on a side of Mount Igueldo where they spent the night in sleeping bags. Patxo wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Okay, how do you explain that they haven’t come for us yet?”
“Because they hope they can pull one thread and get the whole skein.”
“Is it possible you’re getting a little paranoid?”
“The other day I rode up in the elevator with a neighbor. Hi, hi. It’s the second time I’m seeing the guy in a short time. I don’t know how you feel but things like that don’t seem coincidences to me. And look at what happened today in Morlans. At some moment or other, the txakurras picked up somebody’s trail. So they said: look, if we follow this bird sooner or later we’ll find the flock. That’s how this war works, Patxo. Don’t try to make it more complicated.”
“If it was that easy, they’d have finished off ETA already.”
“Not even God can beat ETA. We lose militants, of course. But for each one who falls, two or three enter. We’ve got gunpowder for a good while.”
An explosion goes off in the distance.
“What was that?”
And soon after, the night, toward the city, lit up in luminous cascades, in huge clover leaves of multicolored sparks. It was the fireworks for Grand Week over the bay. Joxe Mari and Patxo sat down to look at them from the edge of the thicket, and, forgetting their recent conversation, gave opinions about each pyrotechnical display.
“Look at that, will you.”
“Damn, how pretty it is.”
Once the show was over, they went back to the darkness of the trees and fell asleep in their sleeping bags in a summer night on the mountain.
There was a cricket concert. Patxo was cursing:
“All those people down there, sons of bitches, having a party, lining up to buy ice cream, and us up here breaking our asses for their freedom. Sometimes I feel like grabbing my automatic and, bang, bang, giving them a bit of what they deserve.”
“Calm down, when we’ve got the whip, they’ll dance.”
At seven the next morning they turned up for their meeting with Txopo behind the law school.
“Well?”
“Nothing.”
But Joxe Mari, bags under his eyes, hair messed up, was still suspicious. He ordered Txopo to find a temporary place for them to stay. Until then, they would sleep outdoors in the sleeping bags. Patxo expressed his opposition. Then Joxe Mari turned the suggestion into an order, and there will be no more discussion. He sealed his authority with a pair of obscenities. It wasn’t easy to argue with Joxe Mari. He had strong, muscular arms and he was alarmed.
On Monday, Txopo told them they could stay in the apartment of a fellow student and his girlfriend, but that the couple had conditions. What were they? That they not go outside so no one would see them coming and going since the flat was in a seven-story building at the entrance to Añorga. There was a lot of neighborhood traffic, so they were to leave at the latest on Friday. To Joxe Mari that seemed a reasonable period of time. He showed his usual concern with food matters. Txopo: food wasn’t a problem, all their hosts had to do was buy two loaves of bread instead of one.
“Okay.”
In the afternoon they boarded the Lasarte bus. They got off at the Añorga stop, where the lady of the house was waiting for them. She led them to the apartment, which was in a building near the railroad tracks. She was pudgy, friendly, chatty, with the bangs typical of a woman on the abertzale left. Their host was rather silent, sour, and under his nose was a curved scar of the kind left after a harelip operation. By mutual agreement they decided to hide their real names, which in our case made sense since they didn’t know us, while we could ask Txopo what their names were or look downstairs at the mailbox, but it was fine. It was a matter of adding a touch of adventure to routine.
As they ate dinner, they had a few laughs choosing nicknames. When they didn’t forget them, they confused them, creating ridiculous scenes. So the couple took on the names Queen and Jack, while Joxe Mari and Patxo became Bread and Chocolate. This was her idea, but it was merely a simple pastime on that first day and was totally useless, because going forward when they spoke to one another they never used the agreed-on names or simply said: listen, you; unless, in the case of Patxo, who every other time he spoke called Joxe Mari by his name, just as Joxe Mari did to him.
Jack sulked from the start. Joxe Mari noticed that there’s something wrong with this guy. And Patxo, at night, the two of them whispering to each other from bed to bed, also thought this guy doesn’t like having us in his house. She on the other hand, talkative and a good cook, always created a happy mood. Let’s just see if this isn’t the problem:
“Jealousy?”
“For sure.”
“Well, I don’t see any reason for it.”
And Joxe Mari, on his prison bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, even though his morale is way down, can’t keep from smiling. Jack wasn’t dumb; but of course, since during the summer season he worked renting umbrellas at the Ondarreta beach, he had no choice but to say goodbye in the morning and spend the whole day away from home. And on Tuesday, the Queen, big bosoms, walked into the bathroom scantily clad, pretending she hadn’t realized Patxo was showering even though she could hear the water splashing on the floor. Once inside (oh dear, sorry), Patxo figured out her intention and, what else would he do?, invited her into the shower stall. And within range of Joxe Mari’s hearing—he was in the living room reading the newspaper—they reached the stage of squeals and panting.
That night:
“You screwed her, didn’t you?”
“Get ready, because tomorrow I’m sure it’ll be your turn.”
But Joxe Mari, as soon as he saw her coming, was ready to reject her. The thing is that this kind of situation always makes me feel awkward. I’m useless. And that prudish Josune never taught me. Besides, as he said alone to Patxo, he had his doubts about Jack. Mad with jealousy, he was more than capable of turning them in. The thought disturbed Joxe Mari mightily, annoyed as he was by the constant lascivious insinuations of the little fatty. Damn it, she’s in heat. So on Thursday, without even having breakfast, they thanked their hosts for their hospitality and, with a half-hour interval between them, went back to the flat on Avenida Zarauz. Txopo assured them that during all those days he’d been keeping watch on the street and that he’d seen nothing suspicious.
100
THE FALL
They embarked on a rapid series of ekintzas, and if they didn’t commit more it’s because supplies were slow in getting to them. They complained: what’s going on? Their connection, in a bad mood, told them they weren’t the only ones. An ammonal bomb that they’d placed on the route of a convoy of the Guardia Civil failed to explode, and look, if it had gone off, it would be raining cops, and they’d have gained a lot of points within the organization.
They blew up a car dealership belonging to someone about whom they said this that and the other thing. Could it be true? Who cares? They blew it up. The building had to be evacuated. A bank robbery helped them improve their finances, which had really become a problem. They were living with less money than was proper. And they had already planned right down to the last detail the execution of a retired policeman when they found out that the entire leadership of ETA had been captured in a villa, house, chalet, or whatever it was outside of Bidart.
Total confusion. Even worse: the feeling they were orphans. What should they do? Joxe Mari, concerned, pessimistic, remembered that when they arrested Potros they found a long list of militants. I wonder if when those useless bastards were arrested the cops found the whole layout of the organization. Patxo spoke up:
“I’m not going back to the mountains.”
They decided to wait to see what happened and suspend activities until the situation was cleared up. The three of them spent the entire day outside the flat. As a precaution and at the insistence of Joxe Mari, who saw plainclothes agents hidden in the clouds. They acquired fishing equipment. In good or bad weather, they made their way to the Tximistarri rocks. All except Txopo, who preferred movies and libraries to waiting for hours for the cork to sink. Before leaving, they put tiny pieces of thread and adhesive tape between the door and the frame. And under the doormat, a thin, curved piece of glass taken from a wineglass: if someone stepped on it, it would break. At nightfall, the first to return would check the door and the mat. If everything was as they left it, he would go in and turn on the signal light.
Homeland Page 47