Guernica

by Dave Boling

  Josepe repaid Alberto Barinaga’s hospitality by having sex nearly every night with his daughter Felicia in the bedroom directly beneath her sleeping parents.

  When Xabier returned from school one afternoon and rushed to help his brother turn hay to dry with the long trident forks, Justo noticed scratches and purple welts across the back of his hands.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I gave an answer in Basque,” Xabier said.

  Justo hadn’t been to school for years, but he remembered the teachers who belittled them at every opportunity and used a ruler or a willow branch to swat students who spoke Basque instead of Spanish in class.

  “I’ll take care of this.”

  At age eighteen, shirtless beneath unwashed coveralls, Justo went to school the next morning. Once the class was seated, save for Xabier, Justo approached the teacher, a bespectacled Spaniard with a marigold boutonniere.

  At the front of the classroom, Justo lifted Xabier’s raked hand toward the teacher and said two words.

  “Never again,” Justo said in Basque.

  The teacher responded with a showy bluff, expecting the young farm boy to be daunted. “Vete!” he demanded in Spanish, pointing toward the door.

  The teacher paused. He turned to the class and saw every student focused on the showdown. “Vete!” the teacher repeated, chin raised.

  Justo struck so quickly the teacher was helpless, grabbing the extended arm and pulling it down between the teacher’s legs. Spinning around the bent-over teacher, Justo took the wrist with his other hand and lifted it so that the teacher straddled his own arm. In the span of a second, the teacher went from imperiously pointing toward the door to being bent in half, with his own arm between his legs and pulled up tightly against his scrotum.

  Justo’s grip on the teacher’s wrist tightened as he lifted his arm even higher, causing the teacher to rise onto his toes to reduce the pressure on his groin. The teacher groaned. Students sat in stunned silence.

  Justo bent and looked around at the teacher’s sweaty face and said two words. “Never again.”

  Justo lifted him higher for an instant, then released his grip. The teacher dropped to the floor.

  The first colorful installment of Justo Ansotegui’s legend passed from student to parents that afternoon, and every father relayed it to friends that evening at the taberna. The teacher did not show the next morning or the following one, and he was replaced. When Justo next appeared in town, several men he didn’t know stepped from storefronts and clapped their hands in approval. Justo smiled back and winked.

  Xabier never needed his big brother’s assistance to get good marks. Not nearly as physical as his brother, Xabier instead felt himself grow stronger with every bit of information he committed to memory. He had no property and few possessions, but these facts were his: history, mathematics, grammar. So he assumed the role of dutiful student. If he had to act as if he were accepting of these Spanish teachers’ politics, he could easily pretend. By sixteen, he had consumed everything the public school teachers offered.

  The next move was Justo’s, and he proposed it with typical bluntness at dinner.

  “You know, Xabier, you’re not much help around here, and I may want to get married someday; have you ever thought about going into the seminary, maybe in Bilbao?”

  Xabier was as devout as any boy, and he certainly had done nothing that would serve as an obstacle to joining the clergy; he simply had never considered it. He admired the parish priest but never sought to emulate him. But it would be a way to continue learning.

  “Priests live comfortably; they’re respected in town,” Justo continued. “Besides, you’ve got no hope with women anyway.”

  Xabier was not insulted, as he assumed Justo was right on that account. But Justo was his brother, not his father, and who was he to tell him what to do? He was about to question Justo’s authority when his brother made a final point.

  “Mother would have liked it.”

  The issue spurred all-night introspection. And when he rose at dawn, Xabier was reasonably certain it was a good idea. He informed Justo—with reservations.

  “I thought there might be something more dramatic about a big decision like this. I thought priests felt some calling, that they heard some kind of heavenly voices.”

  Justo, his muscled shoulders and arms extending from his ruf-fled apron, scooped eggs from a skillet onto Xabier’s plate.

  “You did hear a voice,” Justo said. “Mine.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Justo Ansotegui’s reputation rose uphill to the village of Lumo. There, Mariangeles Oñati heard that he was a defender of causes, a wit, and a wag, although some suggested he was an overeager curator of his own mythology. Most often she’d heard that he was the one to watch during the strength events on feast days. One friend claimed that he had carried an ox into town across his shoulders and then celebrated the feat by throwing the beast across the Oka River.

  “Yes,” Justo said when asked of the story. “But it was only a small ox, and downhill most of the way into town. And the wind was with me when I threw it.”

  Mariangeles came to dance at one of the festivals with her five sisters. She also decided it was time to watch the men’s competitions, which she usually avoided.

  The largest young man standing beside a skinned log at the start of the wood-chopping event joked with the gathering as he removed his boots and sad gray stockings. Going barefooted seemed to Mariangeles a foolhardy act for one who would be fl ailing an ax so near his feet.

  “After all these years of competitions, I still have nine toes,” he said, proudly wiggling the four remaining appendages on one of his bare feet. “But this is my only pair of boots and I can’t afford to damage them.”

  The man bent at the waist and tore into the pine log between his feet. Halfway through, he hopped 180 degrees to work on the other side. The log split beneath him well before any others in the competition. Justo was seated, nine toes intact, replacing his socks and boots before the second-place finisher broke through his log.

  In the wine-drinking event, Justo was less impressive. Unpracticed in the use of the bota, he sprayed wine over much of his face. After coughing and spitting, he took what was left in his bag and squirted shots into the mouths of grateful friends, who had turned up their open mouths as if awaiting the sacrament.

  But in the txingas event, Justo was unmatched. The “farmer’s walk” tested strength and endurance as the competitor carried 110-pound weights in each hand up and back along a mea sured course until they dropped. The collapse for most competitors followed a customary pattern. On the second lap, the knees began to bend dramatically—sometimes in both directions; on the third, the shoulders had pulled the spine down into a dangerous curve; and finally, gravity yanked the weights and the man to the turf.

  Mariangeles stood near the starting point when Justo was called. He grasped the ring handles of the weights, his face straining as if he’d never get them off the ground. It was false drama for the audience, because he then easily hoisted them and unleashed a proud irrintzi, the traditional mountain cry, rising in pitch to a shriek with quickening ululations.

  Justo marched without struggle, his back rigid. The back is the trunk of the tree, he reasoned, the arms merely the branches. Past the marks where others had fallen in exhaustion, Justo Ansotegui nodded to the crowd, gesturing at little ones who would praise him to future grandchildren.

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” a young boy asked as he passed.

  “Of course, how do you think my arms got so long?” Justo volleyed, and at that moment, he straightened his arms against his sides, a move that caused the sleeves of his shirt to ride up, making his arms appear to grow in length by a third.

  The boy gasped and howled along with the crowd.

  Justo’s weakening arrived so gradually no one could notice. Already the winner by several lengths, he chose not to further delay the inevitable and set the weights gently at his feet.


  It so happened that Mariangeles discovered the need to visit with acquaintances near the finish line after Justo’s competition. And who could have imagined that a friend would say something so humorous, just as Justo walked past, that she found herself unleashing her most feminine wind-chime laughter, which caused Justo to turn in her direction? And because it had all been so amusing, it was natural that she still would be locked in her broadest smile—the one that gave greatest depth to her dimples—when Justo looked her way.

  Justo glanced and walked on.

  “Unnnh,” Mariangeles muttered. This must be the most arrogant man in Guernica, she thought.

  Behind the scenes, Mariangeles quickly arranged to present the prize, a lamb, to the winner of the txingas event.

  “Congratulations,” she said to Justo in front of the crowd. Mari-angeles handed Justo the lamb and moved in for the ceremonial kiss on his cheek. She took a close look at his jagged, misshapen right ear, retreated slightly, and came in for a kiss on the other cheek.

  “Thank you,” Justo said, and announced to the crowd, “I am going to fill the valley with my flock from winning these events.”

  Justo waved and accepted congratulations as he worked through the crowd, lamb peeking out from inside the bib of his overalls. Mariangeles skirted the gathering so that Justo would have to pass her again.

  “Would you like to dance?” she asked.

  Justo stopped. He looked down at himself, in his soiled coveralls. He looked back at her.

  “We can find somebody to hold your lamb.”

  She took the leggy lamb from him and hugged it to her face.

  “Did somebody tell you to do this?” Justo asked.

  “No, I just thought you might like to dance, if you’re not too worn out from all the chopping and lifting.”

  But they didn’t dance. They sat and talked as the lamb gamboled around them and returned to “nurse” on Mariangeles’s finger whenever she placed a bent knuckle near its mouth. Her sisters watched them, and on the walk home, they unanimously voted against her seeing this boy.

  Yes, she agreed, he was not the most handsome of her suitors. He was almost frighteningly powerful, and he was missing the outer curl of his right ear. And for all his bombast in front of the crowd, he had been without confidence when they were alone beneath the tree.

  “He’s homely,” a sister said.

  “He has character,” Mariangeles argued.

  “He’s ugly,” a less generous sister offered.

  “He has his own baserri,” Mariangeles’s mother commented from behind the group of girls.

  Her mother’s frankness stilled the warm adrenaline that had driven her since she introduced herself to Justo, and even her walking slowed from the weight of its significance. Was that at the root of her interest in this man? She was almost twenty, the eldest in a family of six girls and a lone brother who was nine. Her father had injured both legs in a fall at the farm, leaving him weakened and affixed to his wooden rocking chair like sagging upholstery. Did she flirt with Justo because the time had come for her to move on? She returned home in silence as her sisters debated his many inadequacies.

  Others interested in Mariangeles presented flowers or sweets when they arrived at her home and then sought private time with her. Justo arrived empty-handed but wearing his work clothes. He gave her mother a vigorous handshake, patted the father on his shoulder, and asked a question that instantly won over Mrs. Oñati and the sisters: “What can I do around here to help?”

  “To help?” the mother asked.

  “Help—heavy lifting, woodcutting, repairs . . . whatever is the hardest for you ladies.”

  Mariangeles’s mother sat down and composed a short list. Justo looked it over and nodded.

  “Come on, Mari, put on your work clothes and we’ll be done with this before dinner.” When Mariangeles went in the sisters’ sleeping area to change into older clothes, her mother followed.

  “You know, you learn more about a person by working beside them for an hour than you can in a year of courting,” her mother said.

  After an afternoon of work, they sat together for a relaxed meal, with everyone feeling as if Justo were already part of the family. The sisters, who now would not have to repair the roof of their lambing shed, agreed that Justo was a more appealing prospect than they first thought. Not handsome, to be sure, but a good catch. And looks, well, they’re not everything.

  A month later, at the next community fair, Mariangeles stood in the first row alongside the txingas course. Justo went through his precompetition theatrics, padding back and forth along the path a few times, before stopping in the middle of the grounds, taking a sharp left turn, and walking directly toward Mariangeles.

  He collected the handles of both weights in his massive left hand, barely needing to lean into a counterbalance, and with his right hand retrieved a gold band from his pants pocket.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked the stunned Mariangeles.

  “Yes, of course.” They kissed. He reapportioned the weights and went back to the competition. As Justo walked, a man overseeing the event skittishly approached and walked beside him.

  “Justo, you went off the path, you’re disqualified,” the judge informed him.

  Justo continued past the mark of the winner, just to show he could have done it anyway, and rejoined his future bride, apologizing for not adding another lamb to their flock.

  Justo was right; seminary studies suited Xabier, who displayed exceptional recall of facts and details. But more relevant to his future, he showed a trustworthy manner that inspired people’s confidence. As he eased from secular studies toward the strictly clerical, and as he became familiar with the tasks expected of a priest, he grew more certain this was his calling. Many seminarians question the personal costs, but Xabier had no need to reconcile himself on that issue. His most critical self-examination instead involved the soul-baring question of whether he had the ability to truly help those who would approach him in their time of greatest need.

  His gravest frustration came from the unstable connection he detected at times between holy protocol and simple human existence, as he discovered that sometimes doctrine failed to apply to daily reality. So many of a priest’s hours with parishioners, he discovered, involved the mind-numbing coddling of insecure adults and constructing reassurances built on vaporous faith. He had no doubts of his deep belief; he was more sure of that than ever. But how could he use it to benefit others?

  He was instructed to advise people that deaths and hardships are tests. And when people dared ask for reasons and proof, he was to lay down the cleric’s ultimate trump card: “God works in mysterious ways.” Xabier decided that if he ever heard himself use that phrase, which amounted to taking an easy way out, he would give up the cloth and become a fisherman with Josepe. So he tested himself alone at night, fabricating ghastly scenarios in which he was confronted by troubled faces begging for answers.

  An imaginary grieving mother beneath a black lace veil looks up from her baby’s grave and asks, “How could a caring God let this illness take my child?”

  Xabier decided he would embrace her and whisper his belief in her ear. “I truly don’t know how it could happen, but I . . . I . . . believe she is in His arms right now, where she feels no more pain, where she is whole and she is happy. And she is still in all of our hearts and can never be taken from there.” He would hold the woman then and listen to her sobs and absorb her tears with his shoulder until she was ready to withdraw, no matter how long it took.

  A bent and toothless woman, wedged against a wall and smelling of sepsis, raises a gnarled hand and asks, “Where is God’s mercy for the poor?”

  In his vision, Xabier would sit on the ground beside her. “Do you have family anywhere who can help?” If she answered yes, he would find them and urge them to take custody of her health. If she answered no, then he would become her family. “Come with me, sister, and we will find a place for you.” She would be p
oor, but she would be cared for.

  A large man with an indistinct shape and hidden face asks him from a dark corner, “Is avenging a grievous wrong a sin?”

  Xabier would say, “If it is a matter of pride, deny yourself; if it is a matter of honor and true belief, then ask, ‘What is the cost of this honor?’ I believe you’ll find your own answer.”

  Xabier knew he had romanticized himself as compellingly noble in these imagined situations (as well as slightly taller and considerably more handsome), but when he repeatedly arrived at compassionate responses, he felt certain there was nothing else he could do with his life that would have an equal impact. He also realized that his answers frequently had little or nothing to do with faith, religion, doctrine, catechism, or papal decree.

  CHAPTER 3

  The midwives convened at Errotabarri devoted as much attention to Justo Ansotegui as to his wife, Mariangeles, whose imminent birthing already was being ably managed by her mother and five sisters.

  Relegated to the main room, the surplus caretakers brewed cups of hot tea from mint and sorrel leaves for Justo. They applied cool, moist cloths to the back of his neck, while others rubbed the meaty webbing between his thumb and first finger. It had no curative value, but he didn’t know that and it kept him distracted. All had theories on the care and handling of distraught first-time fathers. But their main function was to keep him focused while, in the bedroom, Mariangeles did all the work. Two of the midwives had attended to Justo’s mother, Angeles, and in other rooms they whispered sad recollections. “Poor thing. No wonder the father here is so upset. He saw her, don’t you know?”

  It had been not quite a year since Justo Ansotegui and Mariangeles Oñati had married. They were imperfectly matched in some ways, but they were mutually respectful and so enamored of being married to each other that they thought of little else. They delighted in assuming their roles—dutiful husband, loving wife—as much as they enjoyed defying them. He acted the prankster husband (putting a lamb under the covers of the bed one night) and she the playful wife (riding cows, leaping wildly into the haystacks from off the roof of the shed). Farming and marriage progressed smoothly, and it was an ideal environment for the production of balanced and happy children. Yet that was the source of their first disagreement.