The Bird in Last Year's Nest

by Shaun Herron

  The transport stopped for a long time and he supposed the driver was eating at the truck stop at Echarri-Aranaz. They stood up, moved their legs, rubbed their buttocks but said no more than—

  “Stiff.”

  “Sore.”

  “Exhausted.”

  And tried to go on standing when the transport moved and could not. It moved slowly, rolling on rutted ice, and they had to sit again on rutted bottoms. The driver thumped on the passenger seat and Ugalde shot the bolt and pushed up the seat. There was wine for them, and sausage and bread and he passed them along and locked the seat again. The wine bottles had been uncorked. They ate and drank and spilled in the dark and did not talk and the road roared under them and their feet froze.

  They rolled and bounced and suffered through Vitoria, in the Basque province of Alava, down into Bilbao in the Basque province of Vizcaya and along the Biscay shore, for fugitives go where they must.

  Beyond Zumaya, on the headland where tourists stop to enjoy the panorama y punto de vista, Miguel pulled his transport off the road and thumped on the passenger seat.

  “You can’t walk like cripples in Guetaria,” he said into the hole. “Come out here and stretch.”

  Coming out was not easy. Miguel hauled them out, one by one, and lowered them to the ground into a gale-force wind. There was no snow here on the Biscay coast but it had been raining and the endless swell charged in and leaped in house-high breakers, pounding and clawing at the shore till as far as they could see it was yellow, boiling water the color of the churned-up sand.

  They could not walk upright. They hirpled about, their legs and their backs bent, their cold feet aching, and Miguel shouted into the wind that staggered them, “Walk. Up and down. Wave your arms. Walk. Keep walking.” Even the cloudy light was hurtful to their eyes after the hours of darkness.

  For fifteen minutes he drove them, up and down the lay-by till they were able to walk with some appearance of normality. “That rock like a crouching mouse,” he said, pointing along the shore, “is the Ratón de Guetaria, the Mouse of Guetaria. The harbor is built between the mouse and the town. You will be in a house above the harbor.”

  “What sort of house?” Ugalde asked.

  “The house of poor people. A small house.”

  “Will there be room for four of us?”

  “What room do fugitives need?” It sounded like a rebuke for unreasonable expectations, and Ugalde walked away.

  Maria was walking between Mauro and Pureza, her arms linked in theirs, holding them tight against her. She was talking intensely, her face changing suddenly from eagerness to apparent anger, her lips narrowly open, tightly shut, her words spitting. Mauro’s responses mirrored his mother’s face but Pureza was stone-faced and once or twice she shook her head, and Maria released her arm. Then Maria spoke again with a kind of jubilant aggression and Mauro laughed. She tightened her grip on his arm, then hugged him, her face full of fire. The wind tore her words away and Ugalde could hear nothing of what she said. He watched her unhappily, with a sense of separation.

  Miguel was at his shoulder. “You and the señora can ride in the cabin,” he said. “It’s just down the road. I’ll let you off opposite the street you go down. It’s a cobbled street running down toward the harbor. Halfway down, turn left. That will bring you up the hill again, up some steps and through the tunnel under the church. Two doors out of the tunnel on the left is the house you want. The old man will be at the door. It’s time to go. I’ll let the young ones off a hundred meters beyond you.”

  “What old man?”

  “Old man Mir, Villar Mir. He’s just an old man. And his wife, Concha.”

  “What are they?”

  “What are they? Nothing. Just old and poor. You’ll wait there.” Miguel yelled into the wind for the others to come. He repacked Mauro and Pureza in the compartment. Ugalde and Maria sat close together on the passenger seat.

  “What were you talking about to Mauro?” he asked her.

  “About going to my cousin’s at Pau,” she said, and took his hand as if to soften any response.

  “There’ll be no work for us at Pau.”

  “We’ll be close to home,” she said. “We should stay close.”

  “Why? What good will that do us? We need work wherever we can get it and it won’t be in Pau.”

  She looked away, disappointed, perhaps a little angry and he wondered why. Her cousin wouldn’t want them around for long and they had little money. When the hue and cry for him and Mauro and Pureza began, his cousins in Paris wouldn’t want them at all. They needed to find work quickly and he had to find it where it was. Laboratories were to be found in larger centers. What could he do except the work of a laboratory assistant of some kind? First, they’d try Bayonne for the sort of work he could do. If he failed there, Toulouse, and if he failed there … they were in trouble. A Spanish waiter, a Spanish seamstress, a Spanish cook, a Spanish laborer? Anything, anywhere? They had neither time nor money to waste visiting in Pau.

  “What business could we have in Pau?” he said.

  “Unfinished business,” she said harshly. Since the end of the Civil War, some people had called Pau Spanish Town.

  It wasn’t the moment and he hadn’t the time to pursue the meaning of an emotion so harsh. The transport had stopped. “There’s your street,” Miguel said. “The young ones will be right behind you. Don’t hurry. Walk slowly and don’t look around. Old Villar will be at the door. Go with God—and the fishing fleet when it can get out of the harbor.”

  They walked slowly. “Take my arm,” Ugalde said. Down the narrow cobbled hill they went, sharp left, up the steps into the short tunnel under the church. They could see the second door on the left beyond the tunnel. An old man stood in the doorway, warmly wrapped, bent, leaning on a stick.

  “Señor Mir,” Ugalde said.

  “In.” It was a prolonged, high, whining, complaining sound.

  “There are two more behind.”

  “Go on in,” he whined impatiently, and looked around them at the street as if they were obstructing his view.

  They stepped down into a dark hall with an open door before them, and went through the door into a short unlit corridor with a small inadequate window at the far end. There was a door on either side of the corridor.

  “Señora Mir,” Ugalde called quietly.

  “Yes.”

  They jumped. The voice came from behind them and they saw nothing when they spun. Then a black figure, darker than the dark of the corridor, was faintly distinguishable behind the door. “Señora Mir?” If there were only two of them in the house, this had to be the other one, and female, though it wasn’t possible to tell that in this light.

  “Yes.” The voice was a husky whisper, but female.

  “You were expecting us?”

  “I don’t know. Who are you?”

  “Ugalde.”

  “Yes, he’s the one.”

  “There are four of us.”

  “Yes. Four.” She was nervous, or afraid.

  She came from behind the door, taller than her husband but not, perhaps, if his back had been straight. “Go in there, to the left,” she gestured and they opened the door. The room was darker than the corridor. Ugalde went cautiously in, looking over his shoulder to make sure Maria was all right, and tripped over something on the floor. He fell forward onto his knees, and Maria cried out. What he had landed on felt like a mattress. The old stone house had begun to feel like a dungeon. He got up as the light went on, a dim light from one naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. There were six narrow mattresses on the floor, all close together, with scarcely room to walk around them. The high window was shaded.

  “Stay here,” Señora Concha said beside the light switch and turned to leave.

  “Señora,” Ugalde said. Concha Mir was old, and stood very erect and was dark-skinned and deeply lined and afraid, and proud-looking.

  “Yes?” It was a challenge to complaint.

  “The bat
hroom, señora?”

  “There is no bathroom. The water closet is at the end.” She nodded toward the end of the corridor. “You can wash in the kitchen. And eat there.”

  “We ate in our own kitchen, señora,” Maria said.

  Concha Mir nodded sharply as if to say everybody did and turned and left them, and came back almost at once with Mauro and Pureza. “Carega will come soon,” she said and closed the door.

  They stood looking at one another and the dismal room, with nothing to say.

  “It’s damp,” Mauro said, feeling a mattress.

  “Who is Carega, Mauro?” Ugalde asked him.

  “I need to go to the water closet,” Maria said. “We should all go,” she added and left.

  “You were one of them, Mauro,” Ugalde said as if the thought made him resentful. “Who is Carega?”

  “I don’t know. I know hardly any of them. Did you see what your friend Basa did to Abril?” Mauro said, his voice rising. “Did you see Abril when they carried him out?”

  “I saw him.”

  “Good.” Mauro turned to Pureza. “Basa asked me who recruited me. I wouldn’t tell him it was you and I thought Abril would fight at the holding-house. They were waiting for us there and I thought Abril would be dead, so I told him Abril.” He was tired and tense and his face in the poor light betrayed his strain. He lay down on a mattress close to the wall. “I did that to Abril,” he said and glared at Pureza as if she were to blame for what he had done to Abril.

  “You’re tired, Mauro,” Ugalde said. “We’re all tired. We should sleep.”

  “Don’t blame me for Abril, please, Mauro,” Pureza said.

  “Did I say …?” Mauro came close to screeching.

  “You didn’t say. But that’s what you mean. I didn’t know. I was in that cell. There was nobody to talk to. That captain and Basa never stopped asking me questions. I didn’t tell anything. I just said all the time I didn’t know. I just said all the time, I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. Mauro … there was nobody to help me, Mauro.” She was plucking at her hands, her little sentences streaming desperately out, pleading her defence against something nameless and destructive.

  Ugalde put his arm around her. “We’re all tired,” he said. “Lie down, child. Rest.”

  “He doesn’t want me,” she said pathetically.

  “We’re all too tired to think or feel properly. Lie down and rest. That’s the first thing we have to do—rest. Then we will be sane.” He forced her down onto a mattress and lay on the one beside her. “Go to sleep now.”

  “He doesn’t want me. I have nobody. What am I going to do?” She was crying. “I have nobody.”

  “Sleep.”

  When Maria came back, Pureza was asleep. Mauro was asleep. Ugalde was on the edge of sleep. “Don’t you all need the water closet?” Maria said.

  “Lie down and go to sleep,” Ugalde muttered. He was beyond caring about anything. The ruins of his life were falling on him. He went to sleep, seeking shelter from them.

  Carega did not come soon.

  Before he came, they had slept into the dark, and washed in the kitchen and were supping stewed beans. Ugalde sat facing the kitchen door. Mauro had his back to it. Villar Mir and his wife sat on stools against the kitchen wall like warders, watching them eat. Villar leaned forward on his stick, Concha’s back was as straight as the wall behind her, like a protest against her husband’s deformity.

  “You’re the doctor,” Villar said suddenly.

  “I’m a doctor,” Ugalde said.

  “Doctors did this to me.”

  “Did what to you?”

  “My back. In the Civil War. Nationalist shrapnel in my back. They butchered me, the doctors.”

  “In the field?”

  “In a tent.”

  “It was often very difficult.”

  “They didn’t get it all out. It’s still here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his back. “They butchered me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The silence came down again, and Villar and Concha continued their vigil. Carega opened the kitchen door and came in. “Doctor,” he said. “I couldn’t come earlier. The Civil Guard are as thick as fleas on a dog’s back.”

  Ugalde did not see Mauro stiffen, his spoon halfway to his mouth. The man was broad, barrel-chested, dressed in a fisherman’s jersey and trousers, a beret, and turned-down rubber sea boots. But he was less weatherbeaten than a fisherman. “I’m Carega,” he said, and paid no attention to Villar and Concha Mir.

  Ugalde stood up. There was something about the voice, but what it was he couldn’t be sure. “Señor,” he said.

  “I have met your son before,” Carega said. “In Bilbao.” He was smiling at the back of Mauro’s head.

  Mauro rose and turned. “Señor,” he said, and watched Carega like a pup waiting for a blow.

  “That’s past,” Carega said. “Sit down. Leave us, Villar.” Señor Carega disposed of past and present as a man of power.

  When they had gone quickly and without question, Carega sat down on Villar’s stool. “We have business, doctor,” he said. “First, you will sail on the Virgin of Begoña as soon as this storm dies. It will be crowded.”

  “We’re getting used to small spaces,” Ugalde said.

  “A priest will bring you suitable clothes. You’ll be told soon how we’ll get you aboard. The priest will tell you that, too. Now. What plans have you for the future?”

  “Only rich refugees have plans for the future.”

  “And you have no money?”

  “Very little.”

  “So what will you do?” It was more than an enquiry. Ugalde had the feeling it was an order to report.

  “Find work if we can,” he said vaguely.

  “What sort of work?”

  Maria said, “We might find work as a family in some large country house, señor. Reliable servants are hard to find. And Spaniards accept servitude so quietly.” She said it bitterly.

  Carega heard something in her bitterness and fastened on it. “You want your doctor husband to be a butler, señora?”

  “I do not want, señor. But we have to …”

  “Exactly. You have to. You are not the servant class.” He smiled at Maria. “Your son has an interrupted education to continue. Your level of life has been high by any standard, except those of the rich in Spain. You have a great deal to lose.”

  “We have already lost it, señor. We shall now face the consequences. Please do not worry about us.” Ugalde wanted his little flock safely back in their small space, away from this man. He was after something and he saw Maria as the way to it. Ugalde wanted her away from him before he had time to reach her. “We kept our bargain, señor,” he said and got to his feet again. “After we get to France, you have kept yours. We are no longer your burden. We shall manage.” He motioned the others to their feet.

  “My business is not finished,” Carega said. “Please sit down.”

  Maria, half up, sat down again. “What is your business, señor?”

  “We do not want to know, señor,” Ugalde said. “I mean no offence. You’ll be free of us soon, without obligation.” To get far from them, to have nothing more to do with them, that was what he wanted.

  “Señora,” Carega said as if Ugalde had not spoken. “I want to offer you security and comfort in exile, and close to the Spanish frontier. Miguel reports that you do not want to stray too far from Spain.”

  “Make it plain,” Maria said and Ugalde sat down helplessly. Even their brief exchange in the cabin of the transport had reached this man.

  “I’ll make it very plain. There is an inn on the edge of the village of Gan, a few kilometers on the Spanish side of Pau. It is owned by an old woman called Leonora Leguerica. She is past eighty and tired and wants to sell her inn. She bought it when she ran from Spain during the Civil War. She called it the Viva Yo. It is a good house, and prosperous, with a good clientele, many of them French officers from the milit
ary establishment at Pau. We want to buy it and give it to you.” He smiled cheerfully at her, the sort of smile that said, You won’t believe it.

  Maria said, “You said you would make it very plain. You have made it very strange.”

  “There are nine guest rooms, a celebrated dining room, a garden restaurant, a profitable bar, produce gardens, good fish in the moutains and men to catch them for you. There is an experienced staff …”

  “You seem very reluctant to come to the important point, señor,” Maria said crossly. “Which is: What do you expect in return? You sound very strange indeed—a valuable business, for nothing?”

  “Not for nothing. There is cellar space under the inn, far more than Leonora uses. The inn is pleasantly situated and isolated. It is on an unimportant road that connects with several unimportant roads to the frontier. It is ideally situated for those who climb the mountains from France, or walk down them from Spain by ways known to those who need to know such things. Vincente Hierro and Abril are at the Viva Yo, at this minute, getting well.”

  “No.” Ugalde was on his feet again. “You made it very plain. The answer is no. Come.” He stepped away from the table.

  “There is more, doctor.”

  “Not for us.”

  “Let him finish, Dion.”

  “No.”

  “Go on, señor.”

  “The spare cellars, señora, we need the storage space.”

  “For guns,” Ugalde said.

  “Yes. And explosives and the other things we are forced to use.”

  “No.”

  “The inn would be yours absolutely. You would hold title.”

  “Get somebody else.”

  “You, doctor, and your family, are the most suitable people we have in sight. Ideally suited.” He was pleasantly confident.