Within the first week of the affair we had a routine; we had rules. Always at my apartment, always on the days that José Antonio was in Bilbao. We were careful that the neighbors never saw him enter the apartment, that we were never seen leaving the building at the same time. We planned our next meetings in person, never over the phone. When Elena and I passed Robert and his wife, Morgan Duarte, in the street one afternoon I waved hello but made no effort to speak to them.
If José Antonio’s lovemaking was characterized by his tenderness, the American’s was best characterized by its mix of affection and brutality. It had been less than eight months since I inherited the new kidney, and my strength hadn’t fully come back; yet I found myself being pushed into pillows, slid off the bed or the sofa and onto the hardwood flooring, my hair seized in his hands and his in mine. He would say things to me in Basque while we made love—sometimes sweet things, sometimes filthy things I’m embarrassed to repeat. He would call me his whore, or his love, or his little dog. And always, afterward, he would touch me in a way that was almost clinical, inspecting the pale webbing between my fingers, smelling the damp hair at the back of my neck, running his fingers over the raised pink line across my abdomen.
“How do you say this in Basque?” he would ask, pressing his lips to the scar, in that way of his that seemed affectionate but might have just been simple curiosity.
“Orbaina,” I said.
“Of course,” he said. He had been asking me for the Basque translations of peculiar words like these since the first day we met. He spoke Euskera well, but his vocabulary had holes in it, lacking, for example, a whole range of words that dealt with pain or toil, as if his family home where he had learned his Basque was free entirely of grief, or tenderness, or aching.
His inquiries, however, seemed to be unrelated to any real interest in my life, but rather only to advance his own version of what it was to be Basque. He often asked silly questions such as “What do the Basques think of the election of Aznar?” or “The death of François Mitterrand doesn’t seem to have much importance here in Muriga, does it?”
“I have no idea,” I’d say. Or I’d make up an answer, just to humor him or to confirm his sweeping generalizations. “Yes,” I’d tell him. “It’s true. Basques don’t like spicy foods.”
After that first day in the apartment he never once asked about José Antonio, or about Elena, for that matter. When Robert occupied my home for those brief afternoon hours in which our affair existed, I never again caught him examining the photographs on our walls of our honeymoon in the Canary Islands or of our only trip to Córdoba, when we had introduced Elena to José Antonio’s parents. Instead, he would sit uncomfortably on our couch, flipping through José Antonio’s old football magazines and fidgeting impatiently, smoothing down his dark hair with his fingers. When once I mentioned that he had to leave, that my mother would soon be bringing Elena home, he seemed almost grateful to be allowed to escape the apartment.
After we had been sleeping together for a few weeks, however, I found myself struggling not to interrogate him about his wife. It wasn’t jealousy—I knew that she was more beautiful than me, that she was doubtlessly more compatible with Robert than I was. But I wanted to know the most commonplace details of their lives. (Where do you store the olive oil, on the countertop or under the sink? How often do you change the sheets on the bed? Does your wife change them, or do you, or is it something done together? Did you bring peanut butter from the United States to eat while you are in Muriga? Do you brush your teeth at the same time?) Maybe this is what we both gained from the affair, this voyeurism.
The one time that I brought myself to actually say his wife’s name, it was to ask where the two had met—the most commonplace of questions, something you might ask an old friend from primary school if you saw him in the street. We had just collapsed onto the sheets of my bed when another of the memories came to me (as they often did during my afternoons with the American), a brief flash of a young woman with dark, short-cropped hair leaning back against a stone wall, the salty, rotted ocean air pulled into my lungs, and suddenly I was talking. Against all my expectations, Robert answered immediately, as if it was the question he most wanted to be asked.
It was at a barbecue the day after his graduation from the university in Idaho, he said, on the beach of what was called Lucky Peak Reservoir. He had seen her earlier in the afternoon, sipping at a can of beer and refusing to swim in the cold water, but it wasn’t until the sun had set and the party began to wind down that he gathered the courage to approach.
“She looked just like she does now,” he said, to himself as much as to me. “Her older sister was a friend of my cousin. Even after we had been dating for several months, she said that she wouldn’t sleep. When she told me that, I knew that I had to have her.”
26. JONI
The elections weren’t for another several months, but after José Antonio’s death in March 1998 the few placards and campaign posters that he had plastered along the granite walls of the old part of town were left behind, an unspoken homage. José Antonio’s dark suit seemed a little too large for his thin build and he was framed in bright lettering proclaiming, “Torres, a New Vision for the Basque Country.” Mariana had told me it was a campaign slogan that had been devised by the party in Bilbao. It was the same slogan being used by a wave of young conservative party candidates in small towns throughout the region, she said, one that had tested well in market research from Madrid.
But even after his death, and after the nationwide protests and the calls for justice, after the trials and the sentences, the peeling posters betrayed Muriga’s conflicted psychology, spray-painted over with the usual nationalist slogans. In sloppy handwriting across a José Antonio poster at the corner of Calle Nafarroa and Calle San Francisco, it read, “Fascists Stay Out of the Basque Country,” and on a poster outside the town music store, José Antonio’s forehead was tattooed with a red swastika. The last traces of the posters finally peeled away during the winter rains of 1999.
* * *
“QUÉ SINVERGÜENZA,” Robert said one Saturday afternoon that January, walking past one of José Antonio’s newly hung posters on the way to the handball court. In a small town where reputation is everything, to call someone “shameless” is perhaps the worst insult one can level.
“That’s a strong word,” I said to the American.
“I’m sorry, Joni,” he said, kicking at a crumpled Coke can with the petulance of a pouting young boy. “It’s not our place, I know. You and me, we’re outsiders. But I can’t help but take sides here.”
I nodded. He was right, of course. If anything, he was more easily accepted because of his Basque heritage.
“My grandfather was a political prisoner during the Civil War,” he said suddenly. “I never told you that before.”
“No,” I said.
The American reached his hand out, skimming the wet limestone with his fingertips as we approached the fronton.
“He was a barber in the Republican navy. His ship was captured in thirty-seven, two years before the end of the war. They kept him and his brother until the war finished, and when they were released they borrowed money to come to Idaho as sheepherders. They were indentured servants, more or less; it took my grandfather five years to save enough money to bring my mother over to the States.”
“You know about the massacre at San Jorge?” I asked. I realized I had made my home in Muriga during the height of the dictatorship that had taken power after the war, while Duarte’s family had been forced into exile by it.
“Of course. I did my master’s thesis on the role of the Church in the Civil War. It’s one of the reasons that I chose to apply at San Jorge.”
I struggled to make sense of this new information; it was, I felt, the first moment of true candor I’d heard from Robert Duarte, and I didn’t know what had provoked it, what its implications were. Had Duarte come to Muriga as something more than a curious young man exploring his herit
age?
“And José Antonio?” I asked.
His bearded lip curled up involuntarily, emphasizing his scar.
“Torres and his party are just the next version of Franco and the Falangists. I’ve been talking with Mariana,” he said, then stopped himself, as if realizing he’d overstepped a boundary.
“She’s mentioned as much,” I said. He watched me closely.
“You wouldn’t believe the things he’s said to her. ‘Spanish unity.’ ‘The Nationalists are a bunch of terrorists.’ The same thing my parents tried to escape from. We act like things have changed, but they haven’t.”
By this time, we had arrived at the fronton. Etxeberria and Irujo were waiting for us at the front gate, as had become our habit over the last several weeks. Already Etxeberria was slurring his words, tottering over to slap Robert Duarte on the back and speak to him in Euskera. Irujo grinned dumbly at me, then offered a flask from his jacket pocket.
* * *
IT WAS a disappointing match, with Mendoza and Ortza, the grandson of the legendary player Txikito de Iraeta, losing quickly to two young pelotaris from Ustaritz. When the crowd dispersed it was still early afternoon, and the match had put our foursome in a collective foul mood. As we emerged squinting into the afternoon light Etxeberria spat on the street, flicked his hand at us in an attempt at a wave, and headed up the hill toward his apartment behind the cathedral. The three of us—Robert, Irujo, and I—wandered aimlessly through the stone streets of the old part of Muriga. Finally, after we had passed the elaborate stonework of the city hall, Robert broke the afternoon’s silence.
“What do you know about Iker Abarzuza?” he said in English.
I glanced over to Irujo, who was still wearing the same drunken, beatific smile he had arrived at the pelota match with, oblivious that someone had spoken at all.
“What do I know?” I asked.
“I’ve spoken to him a few times after class. He seems like a bright kid. Pretty idealistic. He thinks the world of you; he’s told me about your private lessons.”
I was unnerved by the tone in which the American spoke; gone was the soft intimacy of our discussion on the way to the match, when he had spoken about his family. Instead, his clinical coldness had returned.
“Yes,” I said cautiously. “He’s very bright. I’ve been helping him prepare for his English exam at the end of the year.”
Irujo touched me softly on the shoulder, then turned into the Boliña, leaving me again alone with Robert. The streets were empty for a Saturday afternoon. Most people were at home watching the Bilbao match against San Sebastián. Only a few old women were out, pulling their small carts full of the weekend’s groceries.
“I’ve also spoken a few times with his friend Asier,” he continued. “Funny kid, won’t speak a word to me unless it’s in Euskera.”
“I suppose that’s why he hasn’t been in my English class for a month now,” I sighed.
“He’s an interesting kid. Imagines himself to be quite the expert on Basque politics.”
“We have a few of those kids every year,” I said. “Luckily, they grow out of it.”
“What’s lucky about it?” Robert said, defensive.
“Well, I just worry about them sometimes, is all. Idealism is great, especially when you’re young. But it’s an intellectual vacuum in small towns like Muriga, and I’ve seen kids get lost.”
Robert didn’t say anything for a long while. When we reached the bridge out of the old town, I stopped.
“I think I’ll head back and meet Irujo for a patxaran after all,” I said. Robert nodded. We shook hands, but as soon as I turned to leave he called to me.
“Joni!” he said, jogging back over. “I know it’s not my place, to get involved in people’s lives here. But there’s a point in which you can’t really help it, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” I said, and the image that came to me as I said this was not of Iker and Asier with their Molotov cocktails nor of José Antonio’s new posters wallpapering the streets, but rather of Mariana, at home with Elena, allowing the young girl to run her tiny fingers over the bright pink scar across her mother’s abdomen. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
27. IKER
“I had a dream last night,” Andreas says this morning from his upper bunk. Each day, the Salto del Negro is woken by the clanging of the cafeteria and the squawks of shorebirds circling the garbage bins just outside the prison walls, and after eighteen months together Andreas and I have settled into a habit, where the first to wake says loudly, “The worst part of this shit-covered prison is the fucking shorebirds!” (Or, on mornings where one or the other is less inspired, simply, “Fucking shorebirds.”) But this morning it’s too early for the shorebirds, and there’s only the dark of the Salto del Negro, the sound of a thousand men breathing and snoring, and now Andreas’s high, childlike voice.
“Are you there, Iker?” he whispers. “Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to hear about the dream?”
“No,” I say. “But you’re going to tell me anyway, so go ahead.”
There is a pause, as if he’s considering whether to be pissed off by this answer. But he wants to describe his dream more than he wants to act offended, so he continues.
“At the beginning, we were fishing, my grandfather and me, along the Río Atuel back home in Argentina. Except that the man who was my grandfather was my own age—no older than thirty. I knew that he was my grandfather because he wore the same blue handkerchief around his neck and because he called me Pepo. The river was black and flooded and filled with debris. Fences. Plastic soap containers. Old books so fat with water that they were open like the wings of a bird. A woman’s shoe. I remember all of these things. Dead animals. A young girl’s addition tables.”
“So how was the fishing?” I ask.
“The fishing,” he says, still dead serious. “This is what I was about to tell—this is the worst part.”
I hear a clicking noise from Andreas’s top bunk, as if he is tapping a ballpoint pen against the concrete wall.
“We were standing at the edge of the river, just where the roots of the Fitzroya trees were exposed by the water. The water was up over our feet, and my grandfather was pointing across the river, showing me where to cast. His hand was on my shoulder, and he would point across the debris in the river to a target as if he were a military general telling me where to shoot. I whipped the pole out over the river, and when I felt the hook set my grandfather would clamp his hand on my shoulder and yell at me to reel in.”
Suddenly I want Andreas to stop. I don’t want to know what monstrosities are waiting on the end of his grandfather’s line. But it’s too late. The story is in motion, and now it will arrive.
“He pointed to a small gray shape just under the surface of the water, and I cast my line. When the line went tight I reeled and reeled. The pole bent so much that its tip was touching the river. I pulled for what seemed like hours, my grandfather yelling and cursing in my ear the entire time, and when I finally managed to bring my catch into the shallows I saw that it was the altar from the San Juan Cathedral, where my grandfather had been buried.
“My grandfather swore at me and waded into the river to release the hook from where it had been set around the leg of the altar. The river was still rising, so by now I was waist-deep. I had to lean upstream against the current. Before I could even gather my strength my grandfather was at my side again, pointing at a smooth brown hump against the far bank of the river. Without thinking, I cast. The first cast missed, and my grandfather whispered more and more quickly in my ear, but the second cast landed cleanly on the brown hump, and I felt the line come alive as the hook set. It was quiet for a moment, as if the river itself had stopped flowing, and then the line jerked toward the bottom, knocking me off-balance. I felt the current carrying my feet from the river bottom, and then my grandfather’s hand landed square between my shoulder blades, pushing me into the river with the
thing at the end of the line.
“Are you there, Iker?” Andreas asks. “Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
A pause, and then:
“The debris in the water battered me without mercy. Have you ever been in a car accident, Iker? It was like a car accident. I held on to the bamboo pole as if by instinct—I knew it would be the only thing to save me. Finally, the river emptied into a great muddy lake in the valley where my town, Santa Rosa, had been. The streets were filled to the streetlights with the brown water, and I swam onto the roof of my aunt’s bakery.
“I was still holding the bamboo pole, and when finally I had wedged myself between two stovepipes sticking out from the roof, I felt a small tug on the line, as if to remind me. This time, when I turned the reel, the thing on the other end of the line twisted slowly. The water was dark brown, nearly the same color as his skin, and it wasn’t until he was within reaching distance that I realized it was Imanol. It was my son.”
The clicking sound from Andreas’s bunk continues, and then it is joined by the first shrieks of the shorebirds.
“Do you think it means anything, Iker?”
“No,” I say. “Except that maybe you should have been a fisherman instead of an amphetamine dealer.”
When he laughs, Andreas’s lightheartedness comes back. There is a racket from the outside courtyard.
“Fucking shorebirds,” he says.
28. JONI (1951)
The night the child arrived stillborn, nerea’s mother had come with me back to the doctor’s house, walking the quarter mile in the blowing rain without a word. In the dark rain-slicked streets, the woman seemed older than I’d ever be, though in fact she was no older than her midfifties. When we arrived at the doctor’s house she told me to wait at the doorway, and a moment later the old doctor joined me.
Her mother stayed at the guesthouse on the Ubera River for ten days. For the first four days the old woman refused to allow me to see Nerea at all. Instead, I slept on the sofa with the sloping cushions and watched Nerea’s mother shuffling in and out of the bedroom, opening the door just enough to allow her thin, bent frame to pass through. She cooked for hours at a time, Aitor stopping by every few days to leave groceries and to sit around the kitchen table for coffee. There was a constant smell of garlic frying in olive oil, a steady train of food carried into the bedroom and, often as not, brought out untouched.
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