All in all, hate was the most effective antidote Joxe Mari had for the poison of nostalgia, for remorse, and for the feeling of defeat. A profound and slow-burning rage was born within him. Since he couldn’t release it, he kept it boiling in his chest. Not when he was carrying weapons did he ever experience anything comparable. In those days, he had other motivations. I don’t know, the sense of obligation. So a guy has to be executed? Okay, put two rounds into him, no matter who he is. This hatred now was pure and hard, the result of beatings, humiliations, the certainty that what they were doing to him they were doing to his people. Hatred for Joxe Mari was like a cool drink during the summer heat, like warmth on winter nights. It immunized him from any sentimentality. If he could kill with a look, he wouldn’t have hesitated: he would have caused a chain of deaths in each one of the prisons where he was held.
And then along came Aintzane, the girl from Ondárroa, two years younger than Joxe Mari. Her parents ran a restaurant where she also worked. Before meeting her, Joxe Mari had received letters from other Basque girls. In bars of abertzale persuasion, the herriko tabernas and other places, it was common practice to put up posters with photos of jailed ETA militants. And next to the photos the name of the prisoner and the prison where he was being held. Joxe Mari and his comrades received letters with some frequency from girls who thought they were genuine heroes. Letters overflowing with admiration and sympathy, with the desire to transmit encouragement and help the imprisoned gudaris feel less isolated. Letters that over time could arouse amorous expectations.
Joxe Mari and Aintzane were exchanging letters for over a year before their first meeting. At first they wrote in Basque. They switched to Spanish when they realized that increased the surveillance on their correspondence and now the letters were delivered more rapidly to Joxe Mari. One day she visited him in the interview room of Puerto I. She was, well, not fat, but big and powerfully built, pretty, quick to laugh, naturally likable, and very advanced in her thinking. It was her idea to arrange a conjugal visit as soon as Joxe Mari, overcoming his awkward timidity, confessed in the meeting room that he in reality had never until then done that, even though he’d had a girlfriend in his village, but she was a prude.
“She wouldn’t let me kiss her on the street.”
And for an instant the interview room rang with Aintzane’s noisy guffaw.
Joxe Mari let himself be guided. He received tenderness, caresses, loving words whispered into his ear, and he enjoyed it. That was the problem. At night, unable to fall asleep, he suddenly understood, and it was as if the ceiling of the cell had fallen on top of him, that the best things in life were getting away from him. Not that he hadn’t thought that before. It’s that now for the first time he had the physical sensation that he’d wasted his youth.
A few days later, during a televised soccer match between Real and Athletic, he concentrated not on the ball, not on the way the game developed, but on the people crowding the seats at the Anoeta Stadium, Basques like him waving ikurriñas, with banners, some demanding that prisoners be brought to jails in Euskal Herria, and he watched them jumping around, singing, and enjoying themselves. And he also saw some pictures that accompanied the news about the high temperatures in the north of the peninsula, and the La Concha beach appeared filled with people in bathing suits, relaxed Basques, Basques who were perhaps happy, who strolled along the shore, swam, sunned themselves, lovers stretched out on towels, boys in canoes, toddlers digging in the sand with plastic shovels. And suddenly a bitter taste filled his mouth and even went beyond his mouth, to the very center of his convictions and thoughts.
He and Aintzane had another intimate encounter with its flash of rather hasty pleasure. The place, truth be told, with that bed where God knows how many couples had been, didn’t exactly invite romantic illusions. Once again alone, Joxe Mari sensed that something inside him was fighting to bring him down, that mast he was began to bend, the entire ship was sinking. Some time later, Aintzane stopped writing. Well, I suppose she found someone else. These things happen. The only thing is that in jail they hurt more.
121
CONVERSATION IN THE MEETING ROOM
At first, at the very beginning, Miren would visit Joxe Mari two and even three times a month. She would leave home resolute, heroic, fighting. And when the prison came into view, a fury would surge in her. She would complain about the lack of hygiene in the interview chambers; she would question whether the forty minutes allowed for the visit had actually gone by; she would face down the guards on duty, speaking to them in a familiar way, scolding them for the scattering of “Basque prisoners,” as if she could blame them just because they were wearing uniforms. Why did they have to make family members travel so far? What difference does it make whether your son is in this jail or in another closer to home? After all, he’s behind the same bars that are everywhere. Ma’am, if you wish to lodge a complaint, please see. Languages, accents, wills all collided, and one day, in Picassent, after an arduous trip, with a flat tire, and we almost got killed, they denied her access to the meeting hall. Just like that. Or that’s what she said to everyone in the village. Later, she calmed down. She calmed down? Are you kidding? What she did is vent her feelings on the bus, both coming and going. Over time, she learned to hold in her rages. Over time, she learned to swallow her indignation, to accept things.
And before Joxe Mari’s first year in jail was over, Miren fell into the routine of visiting him once a month. And she’s done that right until now, with few exceptions, as when Arantxa had her stroke. Miren spent three months taking care of her daughter, and during that period could not visit Joxe Mari. What about Joxian? He goes with her, at the most, twice a year. At first more often, but they would fight.
Joxe Mari and Miren would always converse in Basque, deliberately enigmatic if the subject required it, with many things understood but unspoken, in case they were being recorded.
“Josetxo’s gone. Funeral’s on Monday. You know, for what happened. It was a fast-moving cancer.”
“What about the butcher shop?”
“Juani’s had to take over. What else could she do? Lots of people buy there. We all help as much as we can.”
Joxe Mari was well aware of his mother’s efforts to lift his spirits. And her pride when, giving him news of the village, she would list the names of people who’d asked for him and sent regards.
Once when she visited him at holiday time she told him that:
“The guy from the tavern asked me for your photo. Now I know why. You and the others are on the facade of the town hall. This big. And under the photos your names. In between, a banner in favor of amnesty. I pass by every morning and say hello to you. Leaving mass, the first thing I see, right there and huge, is your face. These people stop me, those people stop me. I’m to give you a hug from them. And if you need something, don’t hesitate. The shopgirls don’t want me to pay. What I say to them is please let me. Finally, after I beg them, they do charge me because they see I don’t want to take advantage. But if I ask for four pounds of potatoes, they probably give me eight for the same price. And one even slips a head of lettuce in my bag even though aita brings them from his garden. The fish lady is the same. She gave me a bream the other day. Hey, girl, don’t be that way, I say to her. Pays me no attention. There was a demonstration outside the town hall. All the boys singing to you. I got goose bumps. And the bands stop outside the house to dedicate a song to each of us. I pray to Saint Ignatius that he protect you. I pray to him often. Take care of him for me, I say. When mass is over I stay in the church alone speaking to him. A little while ago, Don Serapio came over to me. He says he prays for you, too, and he blessed me in your name.”
“What’s-his-name wrote me. The abertzale left in the Town Council wants to see if they’ll name a street after Jokin and me.”
“Ah, that I didn’t know.”
“It’s a mess, but I don’t think it�
�s a good idea. They say it’s an apology.”
“Bah, what the hell do they know?”
Years and wrinkles. Years and gray hairs and the loss of hair. Miren, one day:
“Are you eating well?”
“I eat what they give me.”
“Well, today I think you’re a little thin. Do you know about that guy Patxo who was with you?”
“The last thing I heard is that he was in Cáceres II.”
“A traitor.”
“What do you mean?”
“He signed a letter with some others.”
“So that’s it. He’s one of them?”
“They dropped their drawers. So they can be let out. Juani asked me the other day if you also. ‘Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘My Joxe Mari?’ The look I gave her, well, I don’t think she’ll ask again.”
Another time when Miren came she saw he was angry. What was wrong?
“Arantxa told me about Gorka when she called.”
“We don’t know anything about him. Didn’t you know we hardly ever speak?”
“He’s a faggot.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
He told her. Gorka was living with some guy.
“For the first time in my life I’m happy I’m in jail. If I were out, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“When aita finds out he’ll have a fit. Son, everything’s turning out bad for us. What bad luck.”
“And the people in the village, what will they say? Holy Mother, I’d rather be here than hearing them.”
Fists clenched, Joxe Mari vented his rage, against his brother who:
“Even when he was a kid, he was weird in the balls. Now he makes you the mother of a faggot and me the brother of a faggot and drags our name through the gutter. I’m still waiting for him to be kind enough to visit me just one damn time.”
Occasional illnesses, some family problem, something unforeseen that comes up, all keep Miren from visiting her son. Only a few times. In such cases, what did she do? Well, she’d make up for it another day and would go two weekends in a single month. Even if she had to crawl, she’d go see her son. And if they send him to the Canary Islands, something nasty guards threatened Joxe Mari with on more than one occasion, I’ll learn to swim, just let them try to stop me.
The woman who was never sad, the woman who was always strong and combative, once, only once over so many years, lost her iron self-control. Tears came to her eyes, her voice broke. And Joxe Mari, when he saw her like that, felt a kind of terror and didn’t know what to say and he’d never forget the visit that ended up knocking down in him the thing that had begun to fold years before, when that girl from Ondárroa taught him physical love.
It was when Arantxa had her stroke. Miren, serious, hard, had given him painful news over the phone. And three months went by when she didn’t come to see me, though she did call him from time to time and regularly sent him money for his expenses at the store.
“For now, she’s in a clinic in Cataluña. The townspeople are all supporting us. Whatever I tell you can’t really describe it. In the Arrano and in all the bars and stores they set up banks for her. No need to worry on that account.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“They try to give us hope; but I read the truth in their eyes. As far as dying, they say she won’t die, but she’ll never speak or walk or anything. I mean she eats through a tube that goes right into her stomach.”
At that point, her voice cracked with sadness. She covered her face with her hands. And on the other side, Joxe Mari places his hands on the glass, not knowing what to say except ama, ama, he so huge, so overwhelmed by the situation and at the same time such a helpless child inside his massive body, even though he wasn’t by far what he once was. After a few minutes, Miren calmed down, moved on to other subjects, and kept calm until it was time to leave.
The years passed; the visits followed one on another. Miren:
“I gave him your congratulations. He was very happy. And very elegant. In gray, wearing a tie. Maybe next time I’ll bring photos. We waited outside the town hall. After a bit, he and his husband came out. Ramuntxo is his name. I’ve gotten used to calling him his husband. Listen, he’s a great guy. He’s got a daughter. A very sad story. I’ll tell you some other time. On the stairs, a crowd of friends waited for them and then started throwing rice. They saw us on the other side of the street and came right over, and I wasn’t sure how Gorka was going to react when he saw us. He didn’t invite us. But, what the hell, we went there. Aita cursing me for making him leave the village. We thought he was going to yell at Gorka. Me, I’m saying, get along now and shut up. Celeste’s husband drove us to Bilbao in his van. The poor guy was left waiting for us out on the street until midnight. If it weren’t for him we couldn’t have gotten Arantxa into the seat. Because you’d be amazed at how stiff aita’s become. So all went okay. The dinner, because we stayed to dinner, we had to, was top-notch, with me sitting next to Gorka wearing my new shoes, and everything okay. Son, what can I tell you? That he turned out the way he turned out? Juani says there are worse things. I’ve talked this over a lot with Saint Ignatius and he says I’m right.”
“Do you think my brother is happy?
“I’d say he is.”
“Then that’s enough. No need to pick it all over.”
122
YOUR JAIL IS MY JAIL
Alone in his cell, Joxe Mari, now forty-three years old—seventeen of which he’s spent in prison—abandoned ETA. Just an ordinary day, before going to bed, he glanced over at a photo his sister sent him and said to himself: enough is enough. That simple. No one found out because he told no one. Not even his comrades or his family. No one. And that was half a year before the organization’s announcement of the cessation of the armed struggle.
He left ETA and slept soundly. His convictions had weakened a long time ago. Everything influences such decisions: the loneliness of prison; doubts, which are like mosquitoes in summer; certain attacks that, no matter how hard you squeeze them, simply won’t fit in the ever-narrowing space of habitual justifications; the comrades he took to be deserters at first and who now he understands and secretly admires.
It’s over. In the future, count me out. And he didn’t waver, months later, when he saw those three hooded men announce on television that ETA had decided to put an end to the armed struggle. He considered it a matter that didn’t concern him.
A comrade, seemingly confused, disconcerted, asked him what his opinion was.
“I don’t have an opinion. Why do I have to have one?”
“Jesus, man, you’ve changed.”
In other times, he would have looked for a chance to argue, would have given a long harangue. Nowadays he just said what he had to say; some days not even that. He’d become solitary, thoughtful. He seemed calm, but he was as calm as a fallen tree. His solitude was deliberate, the solitude of a man who grows more fed up with each passing day. And he was as cautious as he was fed up. His meditations, those of a conscience where little by little slogans, arguments, the entire sentimental junkyard which had darkened his intimate truth lost any meaning. And just what was that truth? What else could it be? Well, that he’d done damage, that he’d killed. And what for? The answer filled him with bitterness: for nothing. After all that blood, no socialism, no independence, not one fucking thing. In his heart of hearts he firmly believed he was the victim of a fraud.
I suppose that ama, devoted as she is to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, must know that the saint too was a man of arms in his youth. Did he kill? Joxe Mari tried to find out by looking in an encyclopedia they had in the jail. He didn’t find the information, but he was certain. He killed, and he’s probably in heaven.
In his case, the change was not caused by war wounds or pious books. He thinks there were multiple reasons. And reasons within reasons that led to ot
her reasons and to the current situation, that of a man with no other landscape than the four walls of his cell, overwhelmed by the weight of what he’d done in the name of principles created by others and which he, obedient and naive, bought into.
Year after year, he would cling to hopes (the next elections, the Lizarra pact, negotiation with the Spanish government, the internationalization of the conflict), none of which ever came to fruition. Never. Here the only thing that comes to fruition is that one year ends and another begins. And then without warning, that photograph came, the first he’d ever seen of his sister in her wheelchair: the ax stroke that brought down the tree. Or the ship’s mast, who cares?
Arantxa had sent it by ordinary mail. In the letter included with the photo, written as usual by the Ecuadorian caregiver, Joxe Mari read: “I’ve been asking ama to bring you a photo of me. She won’t hear of it. She tells me to wait, that lately you’ve seemed in low spirits. But I really want you to see me as I am now. Where does this having to hide things come from? And since we’re on the subject, I’ve seen a photo of you without hair and with a double chin, you look more and more like aita, with the same dumbass face all the men in our family have.”
His poor sister. He never stopped loving her, not even when she married that Spanish asshole from Rentería, who ended up leaving her flat. And it gave him a chill just to take the photo out of the envelope. Now he realized something: he hadn’t been able to attach what he knew to an image. His sister. The painful, absolutely conclusive reality of her disability and the wheelchair.
When they took the photo, Arantxa looked straight into the camera. Now she was looking right at Joxe Mari from the photo. Her eyes pressed into slits by her smile, her eyes seemed smaller than they were in his memory. Her mouth, isn’t it slightly twisted? And that exaggerated way of smiling, you can’t fool me, that’s the usual thing that happens when you can’t control your facial muscles. You could see how she’d aged, in the wrinkles and in all the gray in her hair. It’s been cut short, what a shame. Short hair ruined her looks. On her lap, the iPad. One hand useless, closed, a bracelet, like some toy, on that arm. And one of her feet wrapped in a kind of orthopedic sock or ankle support, you can’t tell which.
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