He laughed merrily, his bushy eyebrows arching upward, and shook his right hand in the air in the customary way. ‘Mucho. Mucho.’ He retrieved a plate from further down the bar. ‘Try this,’ he said. It was older, more expensive, better, but I was no expert. ‘That one’s on me.’
We left him amongst the myriad hams and walked to the port. Two Guardia Civil appeared. Not again! My pulse and breathing quickened with a surge of adrenaline, like when a big wave approached. Maite’s hand tightened in mine and she slowed, trying to delay the inevitable.
They halted in our path. ‘Papeles.’
Maite handed over her ID card. The Guardia examined it carefully with his torchlight and gave it back.
‘Usted,’ he said, looking up at me.
‘Es extranjero,’ said Maite. ‘Australiano.’
The Guardia regarded me suspiciously. ‘Pasaporte.’
‘Está en Mundaca,’ I said. ‘Tengo esto.’ I took out my wallet and gave him the extract of my birth certificate.
‘No vale,’ he said impatiently. ‘Hay que tener el pasaporte.’
He interrogated Maite with the charm of a Doberman. ‘Qué hace usted aquí?’
‘Una vuelta.’
‘Por qué está usted con extranjero?’
‘Es un amigo de Mundaca.’
‘Mundaca? Qué hace en Mundaca?’
‘Hace surf. Es surfista.’
‘Es hippy?’
‘No.’
‘Fuma marijuana, toma droga?’
‘No.’
‘Vamos a cachearle.’
I knew where this was going. I stood with my legs apart, arms out, already feeling violated. The subordinate Guardia searched me and found nothing. He started again with Maite, convinced she was meeting someone clandestinely. ‘Y usted? Se encuentra con alguien?’
‘No.’
‘Por qué está en Lequetio?’
Maite didn’t give an inch, repeating what she’d said earlier. ‘Le dije antes. Hacemos una vuelta.’
At this point, a group of men came out of a nearby bar. The Guardia’s attention was drawn to them. ‘Papeles,’ he said. A second Guardia, finger on the trigger of his submachine gun, waved us away and proceeded to question the others. We moved off swiftly, the voice of the Guardia smothered by the slap of our shoes on the hard cement path.
‘Bastards!’ Maite fumed, once well out of earshot. ‘They hate us.’
It was difficult not to share her contempt. My own experience of the Guardia had been minimal and relatively harmless. Officious, unfriendly, unpleasant — yes. But abusive — no. At least not to me, yet I could sense the hatred, the menace, and it made me shiver.
Nowadays the plight of the Basques appeared such a straightforward proposition. Why should they be persecuted? ‘It’s thirty years since the German and Italian fascists were defeated,’ I said, when we reached the car. ‘Manolo’s right. Franco’s Spain exists in a vacuum. It’s got almost no political allies in the Western world. Franco will die, Maite, and when he does you might get the reform you’ve waited for so long.’
She studied my half-shadowed face for a moment and kissed my cheek. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, a little mournful, ‘but I’m tired and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s drive back and I’ll drop you off.’
‘Will I see you tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’ She eked out a half-smile. ‘Tomorrow night. Same spot.’
When we arrived in Mundaca, she reached into the back seat and brought out a rectangular parcel from under the blanket. ‘Would you mind?’
It felt much heavier than the others. ‘What’s in –’
She interrupted me, a finger to her lips. ‘Trust, remember?’
The boys and I stood on the headland beneath unhappy clouds, surveying the sea. Across the river the autumn light broke through, highlighting the pine-covered headland, the Laga cliff and the white sands of Laida, soon snuffed out by the mass of heavy clouds that pushed in from the sea. A cooler onshore wind rose up out of the north-west and cut across the greyblue sea, arriving in disorganised scurries that tormented the moderate swell.
On the sandbar, the swells transformed into disparate dark peaks that lurched skyward and crashed, discharging their pent-up energy in a series of dull dis-synchronous explosions. The spume was whipped sideways and disfigured peaks rolled across the sandbank, pushing their force horizontally, creating a seething sandy mass of froth. The channel was a battleground of the out-surging river torrent and the churning, chopped-up swell, with no consistent victor.
The wind stiffened and ripped across the estuary. The chaotic sea issued a steady growling roar — a warning to all would-be seafarers. Jackets fastened, hands buried deep in pockets, we stood watching. The salty wind carried an uninvited chill from the deeper outlying Atlantic, catching our faces and ears, buffeting our jackets and well-worn jeans.
‘Man, what a mess!’ said Jock. ‘I told you it wasn’t worth looking!’
I chuckled. ‘Surfers ritual, Jock. You gotta check it, no matter what.’
‘Stuff this,’ said Rob.
We headed back to the house to bunker down. I went back to bed, plunging back into the depths of a disquieting dream of being in Lequetio with Maite. After interrogating us, the Guardia Civil made us face a stone wall near the port with our hands up, waiting for the order to shoot. It came and the sound of machine-gun fire rang out around us. But the shots eventually gave way to the mocking laughter of the guards. Then they told us to get lost.
I awoke in a state of agitation. I’d never seen anyone die. Never been to a funeral, not even my sister’s. Two great-aunts had died at home, in a bedroom upstairs, a bedroom I’d occupied, and would occupy again when I went home to study. I never saw the bodies. I was shielded, protected. I remembered the smell, though — the scent of death mingled with old age. You don’t forget that. But they were old, death was expected. To die young, that was different.
No-one warned us Louise would die. It came as a shock, even to my parents. Her days were always numbered, we didn’t know it, and she didn’t know it either. She lived one itchy, scratching day to the next. And then, one day it happened. She was gone. Dad came and told me at school. I had to sit in the classroom at lunchtime. It’s the only time I remember him crying, but, for me, it wasn’t real. It was as if she’d disappeared, gone on a long holiday, drifted away to another life. It wasn’t that she’d died.
To die, I couldn’t fathom.
My uncle fell off the back of his fishing boat once, engine still running, halfway between Rottnest Island and Perth. Drowning, he said, was preferable to a shark. His life flashed before him, like they say it does. I heard him recount the story to my father after a few whiskeys in our lounge room. It stayed with me, but it was only a story.
Death was a theory. Violent death, that was even more farfetched. I hated violence. I’d been punched a few times, not really beaten, but hit hard enough to make it memorable.
And, anyway, to die like that, shot against a wall in a fishing village, was that really my destiny? Would I die for the Basque cause like George had been prepared to do? But hadn’t George been half-dead from grief, from losing his wife and unborn child? He didn’t seem to care whether he was dead or alive. That wasn’t me.
George admired the Basques, grew to love them, threw himself in with them, wholeheartedly. That I could understand. But he wasn’t fighting only for them. He was fighting for justice — justice here and justice at large. He was committed to discovering and communicating the truth to the world at large, uncovering the lies and deception, documenting all the sadness, horrors and tragic truths of war. When it came down to it, he was a war correspondent — a war correspondent who’d happened on the Basque country. That was his destiny.
Would I fight for Maite? Yes. Die for her? That was a different matter.
I reached for my book. George was back in Bilbao and the terrifying daily air raids had begun. Like everyone else, he spent much of his time scampering to and from
shelters. Only bad weather, when the planes didn’t fly for fear of smashing into the mountains, offered any respite. On the battlefront too, the aerial bombardments were pinning down the Basque troops and creating paralysing fear.
George described the mystique of the air — the sheer physical dominance of the German air force and its devastating effect on morale. It was the noise, smoke and fire, as much as the bombs that created the terror — a terror that affected the troops on the battlefield, not unlike the civilians in the city. This, he thought, was the first war where air power had had such a major impact on the course and outcome of a war.
I laid the book in my lap and tried to imagine Melbourne skies filled with aircraft, the sound of their engines, of bombs falling, whining, the explosions, buildings destroyed, smoke, people rushing for cover, confusion, the relief at finding shelter, the silence underground, the smell of fear, the tears and whimpers, the terrified children, the consoling grandmothers, the moans of the wounded, the last gasps of the dying. And after, the air raid over, surfacing nervously, surveying the wreckage, smoke and flames, searching for loved ones, neighbours, friends, always glancing skyward. No, not in Melbourne. Impossible.
I looked up at the ceiling where a patch of mould was thriving. Poor Bilbao! About to be starved out by Britain’s refusal to come into port and France following suit, like a castle under siege. What must they have thought of the British, their supposed friends?
In Britain, amid a rising tide of public opinion, the matter was debated in parliament for weeks. Through his newspaper articles and by passing information to influential British politicians, George’s exposés helped reverse British policy, though they wouldn’t guarantee safe passage across the three-mile coastal limit into Bilbao itself. George claimed it was his duty to not only report the truth but also to counter misinformation.
The peeling, faded wallpaper was stirred by a current of wind sneaking though the gaping crack between the door and the architrave. George wasn’t afraid to go out on a limb. No fear. He used his craft, his influence, to aid the cause to his utmost. And he succeeded. Is that how it was done? Was the pen mightier than the sword?
The wallpaper flapped. I pulled up the blanket and the book. The troops are rattled and Memaya is lost, Elgueta and Elorrio next to fall, but somehow Beldarrain and his troops escape. I wiggled my toes and stretched my restless legs. Good old Beldarrain! He seemed to have a sixth sense. But where are these places: Elorrio, Memaya, Elgueta? Maite would know them.
My leg was going numb. I shifted position and turned the page. George meets Jaureghuy at his hotel, an undercover French military advisor to the Basques, fronting as a Salvation Army journalist. Salvation Army! We had them at home, fighting for Christ. A different battle, different weapons. How strange to have their own foreign correspondent. Was that believable? The French must have thought so. I had to chuckle.
Outside, a few dark clouds had gathered above the village. To think those German planes had gathered here too, above the river mouth where we surfed, to turn and make their run down the inlet to Guernica, to practise their blitzkrieg — a thought that made surfing here seem completely surreal.
But it all happened out there, out beyond where we surfed, out amongst the swells in an ocean we doted on for little else but waves. Hard to imagine with everything so calm and peaceful these days. Merely fishing boats on their daily forays and the play of the wind across the sea. Surfing, after all, was about finding enjoyment and peace. Envisaging the river mouth as a fulcrum for destruction was unimaginable. The war had reached our doorstep! Guernica, Mundaca and Bermeo. It was all too close.
I got out of bed. The wind had backed off a little and the clouds seemed less threatening. I decided to walk up the hill behind the village by way of the post office. George had given me courage to send the parcel and maybe there would be a letter from home.
The few locals who ventured out were wrapped in coats, berets pulled tight, their manner brisk and purposeful. Umbrellas, useless in this wind, were furled and tethered and used as canes or not at all. We scanned the skies, sensing a heavy autumn downpour.
The postmistress gave me the usual once-over. ‘Another parcel for Ireland?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ I said sheepishly.
She lifted it and grimaced slightly. ‘Pesa bastante.’ She weighed and stamped it, and placed it aside.
‘Cuatro cientos veinte cinco pesetas.’
I paid the money. ‘Señora, hay correo para mí?’
She huffed and turned to peruse the pigeonholes behind her. She thumbed through a bundle from Correos Listos and, reading out the names in thick, measured Spanish, halted at one. ‘Sí, hay uno,’ she said stiffly, and handed it to me.
‘Gracias.’
‘Adiós,’ she murmured. Both she and Franco were watching me when I left. I pulled the door hard against the wind and made for the hill.
The long grass furled and unfurled in swirling patterns where the wind funnelled through. A few stray seagulls careened overhead, bouncing off the sudden gusts. There were no farmers or their wives about today. They stayed close to their caseríos, stone farmhouses in the lee of the hills, protected there from the wilder weather. I was alone, save for the letter in my pocket, and Franco’s eyes still boring into my back.
Near the crest of the hill, between two fields, there was a stone terrace wall where blackberries had taken hold. Here, out of the wind, I sat and gazed out over the village to the estuary and beyond, to Izaro, besieged by the wind-lashed, blue-black, Cantabrican Sea.
Mum had a lot to say. They were all missing me, especially Rosie. She wanted me to come home. I swallowed back tears. I missed her too and felt guilty being away so long. There was no recent news of John. Why didn’t he write? She presumed that wherever he was the post was hopeless. We didn’t hear from him for five months when he was trapped on that island in the South Pacific. She was resigned to a long wait, but you could tell she was hurting.
Dad wrote mostly about the government. The Whitlam dream was falling apart. A swag of new policies had been introduced too rapidly, he said. The neighbours’ curtains were still closed. They rarely saw them and, when they did, they looked grey and drawn and spoke only briefly. Vietnam had been so cruel to them.
Whitlam had made important social changes, but the economy was falling apart. Scandal and other political mischief, with the government trying to gain control of the senate. Malcolm Fraser, the leader of the opposition, was gaining ground. He wondered where it would all end.
They’d been out to the crematorium at Springvale to visit Louise’s grave, on her birthday. They’d taken flowers.
Tears dropped on the page. I’d forgotten about the lingering anguish, the dark cloud sitting over the house. I felt overwhelmed with sadness. ‘Poor Louise,’ I whispered to the wind. ‘It all comes back to you. Too much suffering.’
Louise had fought a battle of attrition, for survival, a slow, unwinnable war. I could draw from her strength to fight against the negative forces that held me back. ‘Is that what you’re experiencing, John, an internal battle?’ I whispered. ‘A battle to make sense of it all? Is that why you left and never come back?’
Is that what George had done when he lost his wife and child? His grief was raw. Ours, mine, was different — distilled over time, the essence concentrated, a residue to carry inside forever.
‘Too many thoughts,’ I whispered. ‘Where are they taking me?’
The wind was wreaking havoc, distorting the land and seascapes, disfiguring their composition. In places it uncovered their stark underlying fabric, revealing terrain I’d not yet seen. The sea’s form endlessly changing as the wind cut and thrust across its surface, the swirling patterns in the pines on the headland across the river mouth where the trees, tightly grouped and deeply rooted, strained and bent, but held fast.
The sky, too, put on a show, rapidly transforming under the hammer of the wind. Clouds scuttled past, herded down the valley towards the higher
Pyrenees. Rain whipped up in a stinging spray. I pulled up the hood of my jacket, but the wind caught it and flung it backwards.
Fearing the worst, I headed back to the house. The path was slippery. At least the wind, now at my back, forcibly kept my hood in position. It rained heavily and the path was treacherous. I moved hesitantly but slipped and slid on my backside. ‘La hostia!’ Muddied and cursing in Spanish, I got to my feet, my hands caked in mud. I could have laughed.
The others certainly did when I flung open the door. ‘Sewer rat!’ said Jock.
‘What happened?’ asked Rob, who had a fair idea what had happened. ‘Are you mad, Owen? It’s wild out there. You dirty, filthy boy!’
‘Mate, I had to stretch my legs!’ I peeled off the damp layers at the door and retreated gingerly to the bathroom for a torturous shower. The hot water ran out well before the mud was off. My dignity restored by fresh clothes, I joined the others in the kitchen.
Jock was still shaking his head and chuckling. ‘Coffee?’
‘Sure,’ I replied.
‘Milk?’ enquired Jock. ‘Or do you want it … mud black?’
‘Bloody comedian, you are, Jock! Well, you guys missed quite a show up there on the hill.’
Rob shook his head in mock concern. ‘Life’s one slippery slope for you, Owen.’
The wind scaled back across the afternoon and by early evening all that remained was a stiff breeze. Heavy clouds had given way to thick, white cumulus forms that sailed past at altitude. Pale lemon shafts of light broke through from the west. My thoughts and mood moved with the weather. The anguish and guilt wrought by the letter had given way to gentler, calmer feelings. Home seemed so far away.
Unsettled by Maite, the doctor and that intense man, a puzzle I couldn’t yet solve, my mind turned to the ocean. I needed to focus on the here and now, on my own battleground. Where was the giant swell I’d been waiting for? Why couldn’t the real battle begin, the one I was really here for?
I rounded up the others. There was little point checking the waves, but we did anyway. The sea, simpering, messy and defeated, snatched at every citron ray of light, extracting energy to repair itself. Hunched in jackets, we murmured to each other, shrugged and adjourned to Bar El Puerto. Having been cooped up for the better part of the day, we were in a mood to cut loose.
Mundaca: A Tale of Intrigue, Romance and Surfing in Franco's Spain Page 17