by Lucy Wadham
On the phone that morning Txema had told him that he would find him a job on the French side:
You’ll be happier over there.
Mikel wondered how Txema would know that. He hadn’t been to visit him for four and a half years.
I’ll talk to people, he went on. We’ll sort something out.
I just want a quiet life.
I know you do.
Without politics.
I know that. There was a moment’s silence. You need a rest. Where are you?
Mikel hesitated.
Where exactly are you, Mikel?
He had heard the urgency in Txema’s question.
Mikel. Are you there?
Yes.
Tell me where you are.
And Mikel had told him that he was on the French side.
Good. That’s good. Where?
Someone wants to use the phone. I have to go. I’ll call you back.
Mikel. Wait. I can find you a job. Where are you?
I’ll find a job, Txema. Don’t worry. I’ll call you back. I have to go.
Mikel now walked past the bandstand. Planning, he thought, was indeed a futile business, either in prison or out. His plan, built in his mind over years, had collapsed when the first step had failed. When he had understood that she would not meet him here, that they would not catch the night train to Paris together, he had stood in the phone box that reeked of stale cigarette butts and cried like a child. When the woman had come to call her husband, he was hunched over, his hand covering his face. He had pushed past her on his way out in case she wanted to give him sympathy, but fortunately she was not the type. He had stood outside for a while, letting the self-loathing settle in and calm him down.
Mikel pushed the door to a café called L’Amiral and walked up to the bar. The place was busy and he had to raise his voice to be heard. He ordered a double whisky and paid for it with some of the money his probation officer had given him for his first month. The café did not sell tobacco so he asked his neighbour, a tiny little man with a face cut into sections by deep lines, for one of his Lucky Strikes. The man held out the open packet without a word and Mikel took one and nodded his thanks. He was grateful for the man’s presence beside him as he drank. He liked the barman and the expertise in his every gesture and he liked the noise behind them and the silence between them.
SEVENTEEN
Kader was beside himself. He could feel this woman’s unhappiness as if he were breathing it in. He wanted to help her but he could not speak. His heart was like a hot stone in his chest. All he could do was keep driving.
They had reached the outskirts of Bordeaux. The traffic on the ring road was moving very slowly. In the rear-view mirror he could see the remains of the setting sun, smudged on the horizon.
The traffic came to a halt. He turned and looked at her. He wanted to ask her … anything. Are you all right? Can I help? But he couldn’t speak. He turned back to the road, sick with failure.
They were not moving. He checked his mirror. The sun had gone. Stuck there in the traffic, Kader felt anger rise in him.
I’m going to pull over, he said. He pulled into the slow lane. We’re not moving anyway.
He stopped the car in the breakdown lane and turned off the engine.
Tell me about yourself, he said, leaning back into his window.
He felt like a fireman coaxing someone from the edge of a building. He would have been happy being a fireman but he had failed to get on to the course.
She was looking straight ahead. He looked at her hands, surgeon’s hands that had rummaged in people’s insides.
Tell me about your childhood, he said.
Astrid looked at him. She almost smiled. For a moment he thought she was pleased he had asked.
My childhood?
She faced forward again and shook her head.
Tell me. Why not? He folded his arms. Tell me a story, he said.
Astrid glanced at him.
All right. I’ll tell you a story.
Something, as she shifted in her seat, indicated to him that she might lie.
My father’s a lawyer, she said. Kader was thrilled by the sound of her accent. He suddenly thought of Amadou, wanted him to see her.
He works in San Sebastian – Donostia, the Basques call it. He defends members of the Basque terrorist group, ETA. His own father was a hero of Basque resistance against Franco.
Kader glanced at her. He did not know who Franco was but he did not want to interrupt.
Franco was a dictator, she said. He ruled Spain for nearly forty years. Under him the Basques were not allowed to speak their language or fly their flag. They were persecuted and imprisoned and killed just for being Basque.
Kader looked at her. He could see the shadow on her forehead again. He guessed that her story would set them further apart but he wanted to hear it.
When my grandfather died, Franco had been dead for seven years. There was a democratic government in Spain. He told my father that he should no longer defend people who killed. That there was no need for killing any more. But my father ignored him. He still defends the liberados, even today.
Who are they?
Liberados are members of ETA who carry out attacks. Commando members. She paused. I don’t see my father any more. I hardly know him but what I know, I don’t like. He claims to be a revolutionary and says that the members of the organisation he defends lead the lives they lead for metaphysical, not political reasons. He wears well-cut tweed suits, modelling himself on the English gentleman, and he stands very straight, always with one hand held behind his back.
She was settling into her story, staring off to the side, chasing her memories.
My mother is English. She came to San Sebastian to study art history at the university. She was rich and beautiful and romantic. She met my father in a bar in the old quarter and fell in love with him. I don’t believe he ever loved her. For a time he coveted her.
Kader was not familiar with the word but he felt he understood enough.
We lived in a big house two doors down from one of General Franco’s summer residences. Lola was born five years after me. She was my mother’s attempt to bring my father closer to her but she drove him further away. He didn’t like noise and Lola made a lot. My father began to hate my mother, the elegance that had drawn him, her beauty, her frailty and most of all, her wealth. He took a mistress, another lawyer who also defended the organisation. He stopped coming home. My mother began to drink. She would drink until she passed out. Sometimes, when I came home from school, I’d find her lying on the kitchen floor.
She stopped talking and began clicking her tape recorder on and off. Kader could not think of anything to say, so he waited.
I looked after Lola, she said. On my way to school, I dropped her off at the childminder and picked her up on my way back. I dressed her and fed her and taught her to speak. My mother sometimes tried to stop drinking, usually after her brother Angus had been to stay. He loved her very much and always made her feel stronger. Once, after one of his visits, she went to see my father at his office. She told him that she was going to move back to England. Very calmly he forbade her to take us out of the country. He told her that the organisation would make sure it never happened. I still don’t know why. He has never shown any interest in us.
She paused and smoothed her face with her hands. She looked at him.
Keep talking. I like stories. My Mum only knew three, so she’d alternate. I had my favourite but I didn’t tell her which one it was. I just waited for it to come round again.
Tell me, she said.
Kader shook his head.
Not now. Keep talking.
Astrid was staring at him but he faced forward.
Go on, he urged.
My father made my mother stay in the Basque Country. She decided to move out of town. She and her brother bought a beautiful old house in a village in the hills behind San Sebastian because it reminded her of the part of Scotland
where she grew up. We moved there when I was eight. I loved it. My mother gave up drink. We spent three happy years there.
She stopped.
Then what?
Astrid looked at him.
He opened his hands.
That’s not a story, he said. There’s no ending.
You want an ending.
Do you want to get some air? he asked.
No.
Wrap it up, he said.
She took off her sandals, put her bare feet on the dashboard and hugged her knees.
The man who farmed my mother’s land was called Josu. He was a big, quiet man in his fifties who had always been alone. Josu adored my mother. He came every day to bring her a present, something he’d found or made. I still don’t know how it happened but after a year, Josu moved in with us. He and my mother slept in the same bed. Some people in the village were shocked but I didn’t care. I liked him. He was shy and gentle and he made my mother happy. She began to cook and look after the house. With Josu’s help she made a beautiful garden. She made a place, a kind of green alcove with a bench in it that had a view over the mountains. She and Josu would sit there in the evenings.
Astrid paused. Kader watched her, this time afraid she would stop. She let her hair out of its clasp. She put her feet down and put the clasp in the bag at her feet. He watched her look out at the world around them. He looked, too, at the traffic now moving slowly and the pine forest and the lake in the distance glowing orange and the birds flying across the sky in a formation that changed from a V to a U and then to the head of an axe.
Go on, he said. He cleared his throat. Astrid looked at him.
One Sunday my mother, Lola and I came back from mass.
Are you religious?
No. Everyone went to mass in those days. For some people it was just a way of seeing the whole village in one place, or it was a place to sing, or just be warm for an hour. I liked it because of the smell. It smelt of polished wood and damp stone. She paused. The women and men stood in separate parts of the church – the men in the wooden galleries high above us – and they sang at each other.
Kader thought of the mosque they had made in the basement of his tower block. He had always hated the place. It smelt of feet and the men and women couldn’t see each other.
We came home from mass, Astrid went on. And my mother went into the house to make lunch and Lola and I stayed in the garden. We had a bronze statue of a goat in the garden that Angus had brought my mother from his home in England. Lola loved it and I was lifting her onto its back when I saw my mother come out of the house and go down the stone steps to the wine cellar. She was carrying a red-and-white checked tea towel. I was holding Lola around the waist when I heard my mother’s cry. It was more like a low moan. I let go of Lola, leaving her stuck on that goat, and ran to the steps. They were slippery from moss and rain. There was always this icy draught blowing up through the iron gate of the cellar. I didn’t want to go down those steps, my heart was beating very fast. When I stepped into the cellar my mother grabbed hold of my arm, which made me bite down on my tongue. Josu was swinging from a rope. My mother was gripping my arm so tightly, it hurt. She was saying my name over and over again. I remember the sleeves of Josu’s shirt were too short and his wrists were showing and his great big hands were dangling from his cuffs. She paused. Now whenever I taste blood I think of Josu hanging there in the light from that naked bulb.
Kader’s own heart was racing. He had no wish to touch her now. Her sorrow was a wall, something insurmountable. He looked out at what he took to be the sun ahead of him but it was an orange moon.
Why did he do it? he asked.
I don’t know. My mother said it was because he loved her too much. But she’s mad. She lives in a fantasy world.
Kader was suddenly very tired.
What do you mean, mad?
She’s not interested in reality any more. She lives in her memory, the bits of it that make her happy. Her childhood, moments with Josu. She forgets the rest.
So she’s not crazy? Wild hair, shouting, drooling crazy.
He saw Astrid smile and he began to relax.
Shall we get out? he said. I need to move.
Astrid nodded.
I used to watch the sun come up with El Niño, he told her. It did us good. He climbed out of the car, walked round to her door and opened it for her. Look, he said, pointing at a freshly mown bank by the side of the road. It’s perfect here.
Astrid sat for a moment, feeling the breeze on her face and breathing in the smell of cut grass. She watched him scramble up the slope and disappear over the top. She did not know why she had told him about Josu, except that the telling had led her there. She had shared more with this boy in the few hours she had known him than with anyone she had ever met. He knew more about her life than Chastel did. Perhaps because she knew she would not see him again, she had even been tempted to tell him about Mikel.
She got out of the car and slammed the door. As she climbed up the steep bank after him, she thought of Mikel’s voice, laden with sorrow. It seemed to pluck at her from behind as she climbed. When she had been released from prison she had waited for a sensation of freedom but it had never come. She had just felt irrelevant. Now, as she crawled up the bank, she felt a lightness entirely unfamiliar to her.
At the top Kader was sitting on the flattened grass, one knee clasped to his chest, watching a large, yellow moon. Astrid sat down beside him.
El Niño didn’t watch the sun, Kader told her. He wasn’t interested in the sun. He’d watch me. He’d lie beside me with his tongue lolling, his mouth open, smiling. Kader turned to her. He was, he insisted.
I believe you.
He’d sort of turn his eyes up to me, then look away and start panting again, then back to me, then away. Back and forth, just checking that I was with him. Sometimes I’d smile back at him, sometimes not. He turned and looked at her. Lie down with me, he said, suddenly animated by the idea. Rest your head on my chest.
Astrid watched him lie back on the grassy slope. He blinked at her for a few moments, then at last closed his eyes in defeat. She lay down beside him and rested her head on his chest. She felt his breathing stop, then start again. After a short while he put his arms around her shoulder. They lay there in silence, Astrid listening to his heart beat.
I’m on my way to see my younger sister, she said. She’s the only person in the world that I can’t do without.
Kader laid one hand on her hair and began to sift strands of it through his fingers.
She’s at home in the village trying to find her boyfriend who’s been in prison for twenty years. He was a liberado. He got out yesterday.
And he doesn’t want to see her, Kader suggested. Astrid heard his voice reverberating in his chest. He thinks he’s going to be disappointed, Kader went on. And he’s probably right. I was inside, he said. For eighteen months. Even eighteen months fucks with your head, believe me. Man, I thought about her so much – her name was Aurélie – when I saw her in the flesh, it just wasn’t as good. She was hot but there was no way she could live up to how I’d thought about her when I was inside. No way.
Astrid realised that there was nothing that this boy could say that would make her judge him. He could not disappoint her, he was simply himself.
She took his hand from her hair and turned it over. She looked at the smooth, brown palm, the long fingers, the thin skin over the joints and the tiny purple veins running beneath. She held the fingers pressed between her two hands but they were slightly vaulted and would not lie flat.
She sat up and looked at the artificial lake, a bronze slick below them. On the horizon she could make out the glowing red sign of the Hotel Mercure against the night and in between lay the dark pine forest, slashed and bound in pale rows.
We should go, she said.
He caught her by the wrist as she moved to stand. She looked at him. His grip was firm but not commanding: she thought of a younger brother, stronger than
her only in body. He held on stubbornly. In the moonlight she could see two scars glowing on the top of his scalp. He let her pull free her hand.
How did you get those scars? she asked him.
I don’t know how to be with you, he said, looking at her, his face all open suddenly.
Astrid felt a rush of terror at her own sin. She had to be out of the way of his trust. She stood up, and with violent strokes, brushed the blades of grass from her skirt.
Let’s go, she said.
Sure, Kader said, keeping his face from her as he rose to his feet, because he knew it was full of doubt.
EIGHTEEN
José Maria Egibar, alias Txema, sat in the orange glow from the dashboard of his Mercedes 4×4. He was waiting for Lorea Molina’s banana-yellow Mégane to appear in his rear-view mirror. He examined his face and was as usual disappointed by the blemished skin, the broken veins, the sagging flesh on his neck. He disliked the expression in his eyes, tried as always when he looked in a mirror, to alter it. His eyes had once shone. Now they looked like two holes. The hollowness he knew, was the result of habitual fear. He was determined that he would not live in fear for very much longer.
On first meeting Lorea he had recoiled from the shrill timbre of her voice. Five years later he still recoiled. Even the organisation had sensed the instability in her, knew that it was not the kind they could use, and turned her down on three separate occasions. For this, Txema was grateful. He had seen her zeal, noted her disappointment and understood the opportunities the combination might offer him. Over the years he had fermented Lorea’s resentments and carefully guided them towards the greatest danger to himself: Mikel Angel Otegui.
Lorea’s car appeared on the bend. He watched her park, then check her make-up in the mirror. Lorea was incapable of ignoring a mirror and so she never lost track of her face. The first sight of that face without make-up had shocked him, not because he found it unattractive but because of the terrible vulnerability he had seen there. Blinking up at him in the harsh daylight coming through the hotel window, she had seemed pinioned. Her dark eyes no longer looked out but submitted to his scrutiny, full of shame. He had let her escape from under him to the safety of the looking glass in the bathroom.