To hear her say that, while her husband clasped her hand. A tired husband, who was proud of his wife for having been able to face up to life. That strange kind of dignity that surrounds pain and envelops it. Xabier was the only son they had.
He wasn’t going to find Zeberio’s ama alone either. Her eldest daughter would be waiting for him; they’d spoken on the phone for quite a while, and she might have given some advance information to her ama; the hardest part of the job would be done by the time he arrived, they’d offer him coffee and pastries: hospitality above all.
He had no idea what he might find, but he definitely didn’t find that. A modern, functional house, an active woman who looked after her grandchildren, corridors filled with toys and strollers; children’s naïve drawings everywhere, disproportionately cute monsters; dolls that you wanted to touch, made of rubber and cloth; rhinoceroses and elephants in bright colors. And a detail that moved him to his core: a plaid blanket on top of a bed in one of the rooms. When he saw it he felt a knot in his throat, gripped by the memory of the day they got lost on the mountain: “Unbelievable, Zeberio. Really? What is this, your love nest? Is this where you bring your little nuns? You like sex in the wilderness, hey?”
Zeberio’s ama paid him almost no attention. Her daughter, Kepa’s sister, had inherited his same hard look, his air of distrust, the will to impose an agenda and not detour from it.
“We have half an hour.”
That harshness shocked him a bit. Zeberio’s ama didn’t sit down with them; she was bathing her eldest granddaughter and only the sound of water splashing and the smell of soap signaled her presence in the house.
He found it hard to start, his body wanted to go off in tangents, meander around the compass’s needle, share news and unravel the adventures of the past few years. It was difficult for him to start talking about her tortured brother just like that, while she held a baby girl enthusiastically sucking on a pacifier on her lap. He tried to do it softly, with the aid of clichés, the only thing that can help in such circumstances.
“I knew your brother well.”
The woman’s eyes sparkled momentarily.
“Lucky you, then, I wasn’t so fortunate. I was thirteen when he disappeared, a child still.”
A child still. She was talking about herself, but she could just as well be talking about her brother.
“He was a very cool guy. Very generous.”
The woman nodded, an indifferent gesture. Even the baby in her lap was showing more interest, sucking on the pacifier with gusto. Lazkano continued talking:
“He didn’t speak much, but if you caught him on the right day, or subject…Once we got lost hiking…weather was terrible and your brother…He had a refuge in the mountains, with blankets…”
“You want to reopen the case, isn’t that right? I don’t know if my mother is up to it…She’s gone through that hell twice. To ask more of her at this stage…”
“There’s new evidence. People who weren’t willing to talk then want to talk now. We’d have the best attorney. It could establish a precedent for others, in the future. We wouldn’t ask anything of you.”
“In our case, not asking anything of us is already asking a lot, don’t you think?”
Diego remembered something: There’s always another hill.
“No doubt, Maite: the press will bother you again for a while, I can’t deny –”
“Journalists keeping watch in the hallway, the phones ringing nonstop…we’d have to go to live in Switzerland…and, what, return when it’s all over?”
Zeberio’s sister smiled: a moment of tenderness, a feathery fleck of humor that was worth its weight in gold. Generous, reserved. Diego knew then she was exactly like her brother.
“If we’re willing to run that risk, it’s because we can see we stand a good chance; but it all depends on you.”
She was silent for a while.
“Have you spoken to Xabi’s parents?”
Xabi. That tendency to think of the other instead of ourselves. To think first of the pain of others rather than our own.
“They are in agreement.”
She nodded, but not to say yes, just to signal she was thinking. The mother turned grandmother came into the living room with a little girl wrapped in a towel. She rotated the dimmer switch of the halogen lights and light flooded the room.
“You’re practically in darkness.”
Maite Zeberio spoke with determination:
“If they are in agreement, so are we.”
Although he hates such celebrations, Diego Lazkano has no choice but to attend Agirre Sesma’s birthday party. Thankfully no one knows him, and no one asks about his next book or how long it’d been since his last publication.
He can see the Kursaal cubes from the balcony. Moneo’s whitish prisms aren’t lit up yet. The apartment’s ceilings are high, and it feels like the home has always belonged to the same family. Bequeathed from grandparents to parents, and from parents to their children. Lazkano notices the spines of the oldest books. Nothing to do with what Agirre Sesma keeps in his attorney’s office: Ludwig Feuerbach, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, E. H. Carr, Leon Trotsky, Marta Harnecker…Engels and Marx occupy the same space as all the previous ones.
Agirre Sesma notices Lazkano looking at his books.
“I couldn’t keep those in my office, they’d scare some of my clients off. Nowadays they’d think they’re science fiction writers.”
“An attorney of lost causes…”
“Let’s say that I’m an attorney for causes that have been lost in the short term.”
“The kind that are won in the long term.”
“In 1977, for example, we worked toward the granting of a sort of unemployment subsidy for recently released prisoners, so that they wouldn’t be condemned to stealing again; I’m talking about social prisoners, not political prisoners…Many thought it was an outrageous idea and it didn’t move forward, but after seven years it did: in 1984 Congress approved it.
“Were you involved?”
“Well, we never quite sat on the mahogany chairs…But yes, we sometimes did the dirty work for the mahogany-seat-warmers…Those years were very intense: it’s always more satisfying to create from nothing…You know that better than I do.”
“You were a mediator too…”
“Murillo and I would take turns. It didn’t always work…The engineer’s case, especially, still haunts me.”
The color drains from Diego’s face. “We won’t do anything to you, don’t worry.” Dale una pasara con esto. The man who spoke German. One of the bad holes. Best to fumigate. Quite a big nest. Killing ants. The engineer and him, hand in hand.
“You were the mediator?”
“Yes. Do you remember the case?”
Melon rind. Honey. Toothpaste. The ants don’t know where the floor ends and the wall starts.
“Vaguely…”
“Back then people got really stuck in their position…When they were looking for money, like in Jauregizar’s case, it was simple; however, when they were after propaganda…We all carry some thorn or other in our side, but…Who can I talk to about something like this?”
Lazkano tries to change the subject somewhat:
“For a while you defended people who had decided to take up arms.”
“Because for a while we thought there were reasons to take them up.”
“But you didn’t…”
“I did my military service as a member of a surgical support team. All the blood I saw in those years sufficed for me…I was better suited for a different kind of fight.”
“And better suited to stay in the shadows, right?” He thinks it, but he doesn’t say it. Lazkano remembers an expression Soto coined: penned struggle. What did he mean by that, exactly? That the struggle needed to be led and authored by someone, written down, organized, or rather, that the struggle needed to be rich not as much with arms as with intellect? They were two very different things, could even be said to be
unrelated. Typical Soto: even after all these years, his word games, his convoluted sentences, flooded Lazkano’s mind.
Attorney Agirre Sesma changed the subject, the way he usually did when he sensed the possibility that someone might reject the logic of his discourse.
“Perhaps we should come to an equal position before we get into the thick of it, don’t you think?”
The attorney stared at Lazkano, as if he were seeing a mirror reflection of himself at another time. The risk of the fall, and the certainty that you’ll have the chance to fall again. Diego stepped away, recoiling at the attorney’s attempt at inhabiting his skin, defending himself atavistically: “Don’t involve me in your decline, don’t hold on to me so we might both fall. We are two. We are not the same, we are not equals.”
You are a toad, he thinks; attorney Agirre Sesma reminds him of an amphibian.
“Equal position? What do you mean?”
But he didn’t find out. A girl wearing a black dress approached, her hair pinned up in multiple little plaits, turning her wrist as if she were twisting a light bulb to say hello.
“Look, this is my daughter: Cristina…Come, Cristina, I want to introduce you to a client.”
“Happy birthday, aita.”
She offers her dad a little gift adorned with a white ribbon, and kisses him and the man he’s just introduced her to twice. The fragrant perfume the girl is wearing stirs something in Diego. The gift for her father wasn’t wrapped in any shop, she’s done it herself: it’s tied in the exact same way as the ribbon that hugs her waist and hangs from the back of her dress in a long, slightly limp oval bow. A brooch in the shape of a horse on her chest, a horse that looks like it’d like to jump from one breast to the other. She’s an apparition: she looks older from a distance, but becomes younger as she approaches them, revealing the truth of her age. Cristina, still on the other side of the abyss, still far away from decline and decadence. All of her is freshness, passion, smooth skin. The unforgivable youth that’s unaware of its own insulting energy, that stirs in a savage man the need to grab her, although a civilized man never would, passions be damned, abysses be damned.
“Will you pay my father what he deserves, or will you do like the rest, give him a lot of work and paltry wages?”
“Cristina, please…”
“There aren’t many like him, you should be proud of your father.”
“And I am, don’t think for a moment that I’m an ungrateful daughter. But these things have rather wrecked our family’s finances. Has he told you how many times he’s mortgaged this beautiful home? He survives thanks to a stipend I set up for him. Did he tell you?”
Even when she’s ranting she’s all joy and splendor. Agirre Sesma smiles nervously. From there on, Lazkano will secretly call him “the Toad.” A young man, from the other side of the abyss, comes over and takes the girl’s arm. Then the two of them walk away toward the epicenter of the party, following the call of youthful laughter. Lazkano observes the Toad. He seems a bit ashamed, uncomfortable.
“Don’t pay any attention to my daughter. She loves to tease. Her mother was exactly the same, she teased me like that too. Emilia died two years ago, and…”
“I am so sorry.”
“Come on, we are here to celebrate,” he says, and drinks from his champagne flute without missing a beat, keeping his composure intact.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t quite understand why you’ve invited me to your birthday party. It’s not that I’m not honored, but…”
“We don’t turn sixty every year. And I don’t have so many friends either…occupational hazard, as you might have guessed…”
“You could think the opposite too. I see a lot of people here. Did you work for all of them for free?”
“Working for free doesn’t necessarily mean that people will thank you for it.”
“That won’t be my case.”
“Too early to say. You’ve just told me you don’t very well know what you’re doing here, in the house of this old crow you’ve just met.”
“Old crow is what you call yourself. I call you old Toad.” He thinks it, but he doesn’t say it.
“If it’s easier for you, we can talk about the case: the witness you told me about, have you been with him? Is he willing to give evidence in court?”
“He says he won’t…we need the right circumstances, he’s too afraid. He says he knows the place, the location where they held us up.”
“Could you make an appointment?”
“Any time. In your office?”
“Sounds good.”
“Now, if you’ll forgive me…I must go home.”
“We all have our duties to fulfill. Homes to look after.”
“You know that better than I do, sir,” says Diego suddenly, looking at Cristina and raising his empty champagne flute.
“Please, don’t sir me…don’t make me feel so old.”
“Here’s to a long life.”
“Not too long if I have a say.”
“Not even in good health?”
“When you’re condemned to merely contemplating the flesh…”
“You speak too much of the flesh for someone who claims to have forgotten all about sex.”
“If you want to forget something, speaking about it is as good a method as never mentioning it. Write that down, you can use it in one of your novels.”
Without reply, Diego heads toward the exit. The Toad’s daughter seems to be enjoying her young man: carefree, champagne always close by, she lifts a hand to her mouth every now and then, when her laughter threatens to diminish her elegance. The horse is still on the same breast, up in the air, undecided about whether to jump across.
With a flick, Diego turns on the lights in the abyss of the staircase. He feels like he’s been expelled from paradise. The lightbulb in the hallway is not bright enough for a building with such high ceilings.
Vargas’s confession gave the case an important push. Not to mention, of course, the discovery of the bones. From one day to the next, the two disappeared boys were no longer disappeared. No one knew what to call them anymore.
Soto and Zeberio screamed again. Maybe they never stopped all these years. But now their screams were audible.
Diego Lazkano and Agirre Sesma accompanied Zeberio’s sister and Soto’s father to the mortuary in Cartagena. The forensic specialist warned them as soon as they went in:
“They’re just bones, you won’t be able to recognize them. We’ll have to do DNA tests.”
They insisted on seeing them. They said it wasn’t possible.
“Nothing is impossible. Can I speak to your superior?”
The attorney talked to the forensic doctor’s boss, and then with the boss’s boss. And, later on, with the on-duty judge.
“We won’t leave until we see the bodies.”
Bodies, bones…It wasn’t easy to hit on the right word. Agirre Sesma himself used different terms depending on who he was talking to.
At last, the attorney managed to get them permission.
“Go in two at a time, there isn’t enough room for everyone.”
Three went in: Zeberio’s sister, Soto’s father, and Agirre Sesma.
They swallowed hard and contemplated the remains. A man in a white coat stayed with them the whole time. What were they afraid of? Did they think they’d take the bones away?
Each body was on a stretcher. Zeberio’s sister stared at one of them, silently. Soto’s father stood in front of the other, covering his face with his hands, in silence too. They each chose their dead. Agirre Sesma didn’t dare ask if they recognized them, or if they’d each chosen theirs instinctively. Some questions cannot be asked. Zeberio’s sister hugged Soto’s father then. They both stared at the same bones.
The man in the white coat started offering explanations.
“They buried them in quicklime. A hunter found them but since no one claimed the remains…they’ve been kept and labeled as John Does in the mo
rtuary.
“All these years?”
The forensic specialist shrugged his shoulders without changing the expression on his face.
“How can you explain that a year after Soto and Zeberio’s disappearance, these bodies emerged…and no one linked the two events?”
“We didn’t have the computer systems we have nowadays back then,” answered the forensic specialist. “Things weren’t the same then.”
Things weren’t the same.
The bull’s hide. La piel de toro. Capillary networks. Different train-track widths. Obedient men, fed through the roots by a dictatorship.
They took DNA samples. They left Cartagena and headed home, to unrest. VALLE DE LA ESCOMBRERA 10 KM. LA APARECIDA 4 KM. Soto’s father drove. Next to him, Zeberio’s sister. Behind, Diego Lazkano and Agirre Sesma. They all stayed quiet. The air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror exuded a pungent smell; white lettering on the little pine tree read “Arbre Magique.”
Two weeks later the test results arrived. Positive. It was them. As if they hadn’t known that already.
Newspapers and TV stations started to wake up from their lethargy. Overnight, everyone was concerned about the case. Horror, scandal. The remains showed clear signs of torture. The court case was going to be brought forward, it was clear.
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