“The Basque nationalist EAJ-PNV party missed a great opportunity when they ruined the chance of an agreement with the Nazis.”
“But they lost the war…”
“The EAJ-PNV? Yes, you’re right.”
“The Nazis too…”
“Hmmm, you could say that. But how much money does the US film industry spend, still today, producing films about the Nazis? Isn’t that true? One might be forgiven for thinking that winning the war wasn’t enough, that their victory left a bitter taste in their mouths, or that they couldn’t quite believe they had won. They’re still fighting an enemy who, having disappeared a long time ago, remains more present than ever.”
“Perhaps the objective is to make sure that Leviathan does not rise again,” Lazkano suggested, and Gloria, knocking her glass back in one, gestured for him to drop the subject. But Lazkano was on a roll already: “The first battalion to enter Paris was the Gernika Battalion, the Basques…”
“You’re mistaken, young man, I’d say that parade took place in Bordeaux: ‘Let the Basques through, they’ve had to suffer that horrible painting Picasso painted for them, maybe this can be some sort of consolation’…who knows…”
“More wine, papá?”
“Gisele, more wine.”
Gloria released Gisele: “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” Lazkano had noticed that the servant was tense, that he and Gloria got in the way of her usual routine, that she would have preferred to do things her way without having Gloria and Lazkano touch her bottles of wine. Their intentions were good, but they were just annoying the servants.
“This wine from the Rhin…It’s really fruity; I like it, papá.”
It irritated Lazkano to see Gloria continuously try to change the subject, so completely at the mercy of her father’s words. Now he understood why she had decided to leave the parental home so young, and why her mother’s death had cemented her decision to remain in Barcelona indefinitely. But all Gloria’s comments about the wines from the Rhin weren’t enough to change the course of the conversation.
“The Nazis were disciplined people, it’s not fashionable to say anything in their favor, they throw you to the dogs as soon as you do, but the fact that so few people die on German roads nowadays, isn’t that thanks to the Nazis? The best roads and the best cars, no speed limits on the autobahn…How many people die here, by contrast? They took some of their ideas to the extreme, I agree; but shouldn’t we subtract all the people who haven’t died on Hitler’s roads in the past seventy years from the number of those who died in the camps? The fact that roads here are deadly traps is another form of terror, and who is responsible? The mediocre rise through the ranks and we accuse truth tellers of being cruel; it’s sad, but that’s the way of the world. Have you ever thought about any of this, Lazkano? About the fact that certain people are demonized, and not others?”
They took a little bit longer than they would have liked to arrive at the chilled panna cotta and the coffee that common courtesy demanded.
“There’s a lack of discipline, Señor Lazkano. Authority. The work they used to do in the German Gymnasium with the young, with Hitler’s youth…Günter Grass’s case must be familiar to you.”
Diego was beginning to feel weak. It was him who was holding on to the bottle of white wine like a shipwreck now, hurriedly filling up the glasses. He drank in order not to talk. How many shy people, how many cowards, must have become alcoholics in this way?
“Wouldn’t you like a digestif? An herb liqueur? A grappa? It’s not my favorite but we also have homemade patxaran. Etxekoa.”
“No, thanks.”
Etxekoa was the first Basque word he’d issued since their arrival. From our home.
“It’s been a pleasure, Diego. Come back whenever you want. It’s difficult to find people to properly converse with in these tumultuous times.”
Diego lowered his head docilely, lacking the stamina to add anything else, as if the authoritarian hand of Gloria’s father were forcing him to curtsy.
Gloria led him to the door.
“He has a certain charm, your father.”
“You mean when he’s not saying something hair-raisingly horrible? He’s old now, but imagine him forty years ago, when I was a child.”
“We always clash with our parents: or do you think you would have had a good relationship with him if he hadn’t been such an enormous fascist?”
“You don’t need to pretend, I’d like to shoot him myself sometimes.”
“We don’t choose our parents, you’re not responsible for them.”
“But parents are responsible for their children? Do you think it’s easy to live with that? I’m sorry, Diego. I should have told you. My father was a friend of Melitón Manzanas.”
Gloria sighed.
“Okay, I’ve said it. I was going to explode if I didn’t.”
Some names can freeze your blood. For many people, Melitón Manzanas’s is one of them. The first policeman the ETA had killed deliberately. A dark legend hung over that man. Apparently his enjoyment of torture wasn’t enough for him, he had a habit of making wives and sisters pay for the favors he carried out for the men he detained. Not even his work colleagues at the police department wanted anything to do with him. He belonged to a class of exceptional sadists.
Lazkano had heard that he’d even been accused of collaborating with the Nazis in his twenties: they said that he handed Jews over to occupied France in exchange for people of interest to the Spanish government.
Lazkano wondered if Gloria had heard about that. He hoped, for her own sake, that she hadn’t. It must have been hard enough for his friend to digest her father’s relationship with Francoists and torturers. But Señor Furmica’s philo-Nazi rhetoric was easier to understand now. Wouldn’t it be something to listen to the postwar anecdotes that good old Melitón and her father must have told each other over schnapps. Definitely, it was better that she didn’t know anything. He decided not to let her know how that friendship of her father’s warped and waved itself around the greatest massacre of the twentieth century. Without our knowledge, the loose-end-thread of a plot linking us to the cruelty of the world can be so close to home – much closer than we think. Start pulling at the loose thread of a simple tapestry and you’ll arrive at unsuspected places. “Objects will survive us.”
The atmosphere turned to ice, and it didn’t look like there was anything to be done about it.
Gloria hugged Lazkano in a way she hadn’t hugged anyone in a long time. Maybe it was just an illusion, but he felt that if Gisele hadn’t interrupted them at that precise moment with Diego’s jacket, he might have even kissed her lips.
That day Gloria didn’t come to pick him up at Sants Station. Lazkano was surprised, but he didn’t think anything of it: she must have just been late. He bought a couple of newspapers and sat down in the cafeteria to wait for her. Seeing that she wasn’t turning up, he called her. The call went straight to voicemail. She must have been immersed in one of those impossible conceptual works, oblivious not only to her appointment with the visitor she was supposed to pick up, but also, quite likely, to the time of year and the world outside.
Thinking that Gloria must have gotten confused about the time or the day, Lazkano decided to hop in a taxi and go to his friend’s house. He rang the doorbell. There was no response. He ate a light dinner in a neighborhood pizzeria and returned to knock on her door at dusk. It didn’t look like there was anyone there.
He left a third message on her voicemail, letting her know he was staying in a boardinghouse in her neighborhood. The following morning, after breakfast, seeing that he hadn’t received any calls from her and that she still wasn’t picking up the phone or coming to answer the intercom, he decided to call Gloria’s father. He didn’t keep his phone number in his address book, but he found it easily in a Pakistani cybercafé, in the white pages. There weren’t many people with the Furmica family name in Donostia. Although it was Gisele who picked up the phone, he hea
rd Gloria’s father’s voice soon enough.
“You didn’t know?”
Lazkano should have suspected something when he saw all the plants on Gloria’s balcony. There were too many to be all for her own consumption. But who knows, she might have been sharing the herb with her friends…Although it was obvious that Gloria didn’t earn much with her works of art, Diego hadn’t realized that her financial circumstances were so dire.
He couldn’t help remembering what Gloria used to tell them when they were late for rehearsal, all the reprimands that made Soto so angry:
“You’re going to end badly,” “Don’t expect me to come to get you out of jail,” “Like we’ve money to pay an attorney.”
Her father had already paid her bail, but they still needed to send a registered fax with the bank transfer’s receipt and complete some paperwork. She was being held in the Eixample police station.
“I didn’t know you were in Barcelona, Lazkano…Gloria will be glad to have a familiar face waiting for her. I’d be very grateful if you called me when they release her.”
“Of course.”
Diego Lazkano spent the morning in the police station’s waiting room. Rubber stamps, the toxic smells of ink and fluorescent lights that buzz and buzz but never quite burn out, posters of the most wanted criminals. Vestiges of the eighties: he still felt nervous in places like these.
When midday arrived, as soon as the policeman in reception abandoned his post, he had to explain Gloria’s case all over again to the officer who took over the afternoon shift. They released her shortly before five p.m. She didn’t look too bad.
“I’m sorry, Diego, they only let me make one phone call and it’s not like I was going to ask you for the money. Where did you spend the night?”
“Are you all right?”
“I shared a cell with two Bulgarian prostitutes…They looked like two of Oteiza’s grandmothers…Would you believe that I couldn’t remember the capital of Bulgaria? Do you know that they don’t use ink to take your fingerprints anymore? Even that’s over.”
Gloria didn’t want to expand on her job as a dealer. She confessed to him that she’d only been doing it for a short while, dealing to “friends of friends,” and that she’d bumped into a cop in civilian clothes during one of her deliveries. Bad luck. According to her public defender, she was going to be all right, because it was her first time and because they found only a small amount on her. But she couldn’t forgive herself for having to ask her father to bail her out.
“My entire life I’ve always managed on my own…And now I owe him one. He’s going to claim this one; of course he will, the old fucker.”
“If you’re in dire straights…you know you only need to ask, Gloria…Do you need money?”
“No, but if you want, I’ll let you pay for a round of martinis in Boadas.”
Professor Heiner Stachelhaus sat in the main auditorium of the MACBA. Given the small turnout, the organizers were shamelessly collecting the wooden folding chairs they’d added, envisioning a larger number of attendees. Gloria’s pupils were dilated.
“You’d think it was David Bowie…”
“He knows more than anybody about him…”
Josep Ramoneda officiated the introduction and did it effortlessly, with his deep, woodwormy voice. Lazkano enjoyed his radio programs, although he had never seen him in person. Professor Heiner Stachelhaus drank Vichy Water, welcomed the audience’s presence in Catalan, and proceeded to speak in German. His interpreter was very good, although it was too obvious that he was someone who read and that he wasn’t a professional simultaneous interpreter.
“Beuys was half gangster, half clown. Hat, raincoat, fragile appearance, insatiable need for action. There are people like that, people who never rest and who calm down by working to exhaustion, who turn tiredness into fuel. ‘The very outpouring of power is my energy,’ Joseph Beuys used to say.”
Lazkano remembered Soto. That’s what his friend was like. It was almost like he was describing him.
“Beuys was born on May 12, 1921, in a town called Krefeld, near Düsseldorf. He had a nomadic year before finishing high school, working as an assistant in a circus: he worked in construction, as a sandwich man, and as an animal keeper. He was at peace with his years of service in the Hitler Youth, it was normal, his obligation to be a soldier in the war. He believed in destiny…”
“We should have invited your father, Gloria.”
“Will you shut up please?”
“After studying to become a radiotelegraph operator in Posen, they trained him to be a war pilot, first in Erfurt and later in Königgrätz. A crash in Crimea in the winter of 1943 would determine his future. Having bombed a battery of Russian antiaircraft cannons, before he was able to regain height in his ascent maneuver, the JU 87 plane he was piloting was shot down. Against all expectations, Beuys and his copilot were able to fly the plane across enemy lines. However, an altimeter malfunction caused the plane to crash in the middle of a snowstorm. In the crash, Beuys was thrown from the plane. His copilot was dead. From there on the story gets murky, but for years Beuys claimed that a tribe of nomad Tartars found the remains of the plane and took him in, gravely injured: they took care of him in their camp for eight long days. They rubbed his wounds with animal fats, they wrapped him in felt to keep his body warm. They fed him milk, cheese, and curds. When the Germans rescued him they sent him back to the front, in revenge, because some thought he had never sufficiently embraced military discipline. He was wounded in combat four more times, and showered in medals as a result. They also demoted him, twice, for indiscipline. When the British captured him in 1945 his body was covered in scars.”
“David Bowie, what a hero…” whispered Lazkano into Gloria’s ear.
“I don’t want to hear another word, Diego.”
“In the happenings he carried out with the Fluxus group he provoked emotions that frustrated many people: pianos filled with detergent that he then destroyed with an electric saw, tearing the hearts out of dead animals live, fat, flickering TVs, primal screams, loud noises…all sorts of madness. Most times people didn’t understand what Joseph Beuys was doing, but he didn’t care a damn. He carried on as in a trance.
“In 1945, his fiancé, much younger than him and an employee of the Düsseldorf post office, returned her engagement ring. Joseph Beuys sank into a depression; his friends had to climb into his house through a window to rescue him, and when they found him he was sitting in the dark: ‘I want to dissolve,’ he told them in a weak, barely audible whisper. On the ground, broken drawings. He ordered a box from a carpenter of Krefeld, intending to coat it in tar and ‘bury’ himself in it. Finally, he understood his depression as a process of purification and moved on.
“Even before his famous intervention with the coyote, he always had a special relationship with animals. Proof of this was his piece Honey Pump in the Workplace. Like Rudolph Steiner, he admired bees, because they were ancient sacred animals: ‘Sacred, because the destiny of bees reveals the destiny of human beings…When we pick up a bit of beeswax, what is it, really, this thing in our hands? A mix of blood, muscles and bones.’”
“Gloria…”
“What now?”
“You know that bees have been disappearing lately, don’t you? They don’t know why, but they’re disappearing…”
“Will you shut up already?”
“But if there’s one animal that Beuys had a close relationship with, that’s the hare. ‘I am not a human being at all, I’m a hare,’ he said once. Consequently, he carried out the performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare in the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf: he walked around the exhibition space with a dead hare in his arms, explaining the pictures on the walls to it with great tenderness and detail.
“When Beuys proclaimed that all humans are artists, he wasn’t saying that there’s a painter or a sculptor inside every person, but that all human beings have artistic abilities, and that we need to take those abilities i
nto account, and try to improve them. For him, creativity is the science of freedom.
“Although the shamanic character of his performances has been particularly highlighted, Beuys didn’t intend to use his ideas and happenings to return to scenes of the past, but to look for clues with which to face the future. It’s undeniable, on the other hand, that there was something of the shaman about him, even in his external appearance: Beuys always wore a fisherman’s waistcoat, a felt hat and white shirt, in addition to his jeans.
“What is a shaman, after all? The shaman is not just a sick person: shamans are sick people with the ability to heal themselves.
“On June 2, 1967, during a demonstration against the state visit from the Shah of Iran, the police killed the student Benno Ohnesorg in West Berlin. Twenty days later Joseph Beuys founded the Deutsche Studentenpartei, the German Student Party. His provocateur’s soul had no limits: ‘My party is the biggest on in the world, most of its members are animals,’ he stated. In 1971 he organized a successful protest against some tennis courts they were intending to build on a forest near Düsseldorf: they cleaned the forest with gigantic brooms.
“Joseph Beuys’s work is closely linked to the Documenta festival that takes place in Kassel: in Documenta 1982, he proposed planting seven thousand trees in the following five years, probably the most transformative artistic intervention ever carried out in a city.”
Lazkano listened up: his mind unconsciously went to the eighties. While Joseph Beuys planted trees, things happened to him: he met Soto and Zeberio, Idoia left him, he moved in with Ana soon after, they arrested and tortured him, he ran away, met Lena in Lille…
“The social change Beuys advocates is a change without violence: ‘Without violence, not because violence, for particular reasons, doesn’t stand a chance to be successful or effective, but because of human spiritual morality and because of political and societal norms. Partly, because the dignity of the human is linked to the inviolability of the person, and because those who forget it abandon the realm of the human. And partly, because the systems that we wish to transform are structured around violence expressed in every imaginable form. That’s why all violent expressions echo the behavior of the system and, rather than weakening it, reinforce that which they wish to destroy.’”
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