Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  Pilar has a yellow towel wrapped around her head—it makes her look like Nefertiti, with her long neck, proud chin, and narrow black eyes—and she has another towel of the same color tied around her waist. Her soft skin is covered in pearl-like drops of water, and she’s drying one foot, which she’s propped against the bathtub, taking particular care with the skin between her toes, to avoid getting athlete’s foot. Before, whenever they met up in the bathroom, she would ask him to dry her back and put lotion on it. He liked stroking her soft, cool skin. Few women have such soft skin as Pilar, and he can say that, because the first thing he looks at when he sees a woman in his office is her skin. It’s still firm. Her back is muscular, her waist well defined in spite of the structural changes of age. He would rub her back until she told him it was enough. That’s enough, ederra. Which means “handsome.” Or that’s enough, maitxia, she’d tell him. Maitxia—darling—is one of the few Basque words he remembers from his childhood, and Abaitua finds it especially endearing when it’s she who says it.

  Today, of course, she doesn’t ask him to dry her back or put lotion on her. She just says to him in the mirror—in her clumsy Basque, which is a clear sign that she’s in a good mood—that she’s not going to the clinic that morning and it would be good if he could drop her on the hiribidea—the avenue—because her father’s called to ask her to meet him at the notary’s office again. The old man’s trying to tie things down, so as not to leave any loose ends, so that the clinic can remain open and under the family’s ownership. You know, “inheritance troubles.”

  He could also take the fact that she uses the word “troubles” when talking about family matters as a sign of good will, of mutual understanding, unless it’s simply that because of her difficulty with the language, she’s using it as a way to describe the inevitable bureaucratic chaos. Because she doesn’t usually say anything negative even in the worst struggles with her family—apparently in order not to open the way for him to say anything hurtful, because she thinks he hates her relatives—and he’s convinced she’d rather renounce her inheritance than discuss money with her siblings and their spouses and make any lack of harmony among them all public. Abaitua would say that, in general, he treats Pilar’s family with the respect it deserves; he doesn’t ever interfere and seldom criticizes them. The very night before, when she told him that they would have to close the clinic when her father died, he encouraged her by saying that there was no reason to think that should happen—taking care not to say what he was really thinking, which was that her family members and the other partners made sure there wasn’t any risk of that happening by always sending patients from the public health service over to their clinic.

  Something which Abaitua himself has never done. He’s always tried to keep himself separate from Pilar’s family’s medical business, exaggeratedly so, even, because he has always held himself to be a passionate, honorable defender of the public health system and he wouldn’t like to put that image at risk, but above all, even though so many years have gone by since they married, because of a stupid wish to show that Pilar’s social status—her father being the owner of a clinic—has nothing to do with their relationship. He’s well aware of this impulse of his.

  The first time she told him that her father had called her to a meeting to talk about the future of the clinic, she asked him to go with her. She didn’t make any specific request. “You’ll come?” she asked him, as if it weren’t really a question. In other words, she made the suggestion and, at the same time, accepted the possibility that he might not. He answered that he would feel out of place. “I’d just be sitting there” were his exact words, hoping for a more direct request, for her to say “please come,” instead of that ambiguous “you’ll come?” So that it would be perfectly clear that he had no desire whatsoever to stick his nose in her family businesses and, come to that, so that he could show her that he thought she was quite capable of managing by herself. But it was clear that he really should go with her, it would have been the most normal thing to do, not only because of his profession but also because there was no doubt that her sister would be bringing her husband and that, furthermore, the man would crow louder than anyone else. What’s more, if Abaitua didn’t go with her, he would have to explain his absence, so that her father wouldn’t take it amiss. So why doesn’t he go with her? And why doesn’t she ask him openly to? He’s clearer about the answer to the first question than he is about the answer to the second—he doesn’t trust himself to behave properly in the meeting, he’s worried that if he goes there against his will, he might get silent and gloomy and, finally, everyone there will get angry and he’ll end up saying something inappropriate. It has been known to happen. So when she said “you’ll come?” what she was really asking was whether he would behave well; she was asking him to go to the meeting, but only if he was going to be respectful and pleasant, otherwise she’d rather he didn’t go.

  Pilar, as in so many other areas, is too mistrustful about this. He doesn’t find the family he has married into as unbearable as she thinks (she’s wrong about what he thinks of his father-in-law, he actually likes the old man), and the way he behaves with them, bearing in mind the natural limits to their relationships and except for the occasional quarrel at Christmas, seems quite appropriate to him. Sometimes he thinks that beyond the matter of his temperament, she believes him to be more upright and uncompromising than he actually is and that, because of that, she’s under the impression that he thinks being involved in medicine as a business is despicable and, consequently, he can’t stand having anything to do with her family. But he doesn’t think of himself as being that upright and intransigent, particularly not upright. To be sure, Abaitua himself has tried to groom his reputation for uprightness through particular types of behavior—turning down the opportunities offered him by his father-in-law, for instance, taking part in organizations in favor of public health, leaving his private practice, which was going so well, when he was given the chance to work full-time at the hospital. Be that as it may, what Abaitua really finds difficult to stand is her thinking him to be incredibly virtuous; nor does he understand her not admiring more what she takes to be such a virtuous, honorable, and selfless way of being. She seems to think it’s just the way Abaitua is, that he’s chosen this path rather than the path of riches that the butchers at the clinic have chosen, which is one that she tolerates at best. She doesn’t know just how high the price for Abaitua’s honor is, just how much anger is building up inside him. And her not knowing this makes Abaitua feel like an impostor whenever there’s occasion for him to see that she believes that if he’s not the head of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, or even the director of the hospital, it’s his own doing because he doesn’t want to be, because he’s too upright, too unambitious, unwilling to bargain, and, above all, because he loves his profession too much. Pilar thinks that he’s a good doctor, the best gynecologist for miles around. He’s heard her say that with pride, and he isn’t ashamed, because, to an extent, he believes it to be true.

  When he was flossing, he thought perhaps what she had said was “are you going to come with me?”

  Now it seems to him that whatever the exact question was, it must have been difficult for her to ask, and that if she hadn’t wanted him to go, she wouldn’t have mentioned it to him at all. Still, it doesn’t escape his attention that what she really wants is a conscientious and agreeable companion, someone who’s ready to lie down in the middle of that shoal of sharks, prepared to listen to their exaggerations and stupidities—especially those of her brother-in-law—without getting angry, so that they’d all, her father particularly, be able to see him and see that they were still a couple that got on well together. Answering that he would be out of place was as much a result of wanting to hear her say that he wouldn’t be and would he please go with her as it was of pointing out that her foul brother-in-law was allowed, in the interest of family peace, to make all the decisions.

&nb
sp; He told her in Spanish that he would feel out of place—“No pinto nada”—to which she replied, “Lo mismo que otros,” meaning he’d be no more out of place than anyone else, referring to her brother-in-law, obviously, and while her words demonstrated good will on her part (she could have said something a lot harsher than “no more than anyone else”), she then turned her back on him, which spoiled the effect and seemed to be a way of saying that the conversation was over. Confronted with that doubt, Abaitua decided not to add anything else, and that’s how the conversation ended. Later on, he looked for a good moment to say that he would go with her if she wanted him to, but that moment never came, because she didn’t look him in the eye for the rest of the day. And now, when she said that seeing as how Loyola’s got her car, it would be good if he could drop her on the hiribidea, he misses another good opportunity to offer to go with her. He has to admit that he feels less and less like reaching out to her, and the metaphor works, because when he’s with her, it’s as if he loses all his strength, as if his muscles were weakened.

  It’s Pilar who’s brushing her teeth in his sink now, although she could perfectly well do so in her own bathroom. Her teeth are perfect, large, completely white. She takes water from the faucet with a young person’s movements, and when she leans over, she holds her breasts with her forearm so that they don’t hang down. She has never been proud of her breasts. When she was young, they were small and conical—goat’s tits, she used to complain—and even though they got larger as she grew older, they were still small, reminiscent of those on the allegorical statues of public monuments, those fine female morphological structures. She loves her flat stomach, wide shoulders, and strong back, her backbone furrowing a deep groove as it goes down to her slim waist. Abaitua’s never been interested in the size of women’s breasts, and he’s told Pilar hundreds of times that he likes her young girl’s breasts with their slightly swollen nipples. The first time he saw her in a bathing suit—he remembers well that it was at Ondarreta beach, and that it had green and black diamond shapes on it—he looked down the neckline and saw that her breasts didn’t fill the cups, and he moved a finger to spread the elastic edge out a little bit and told her, jokingly, that she was cheating. Pilar reproaches him every time she remembers that, and not completely jokingly, saying that he’s been loathsome and vile from the very first day. She has a bad memory of the exchange, unlike him, apparently getting very embarrassed by her small breasts, something he would never have guessed would be the case and in fact, he took her embarrassment to be arrogance at first, because Pilar was very beautiful. And she still is. (Related thought: unless she’s done it without him knowing, and he doesn’t think that’s the case, she hasn’t gone for a mammogram for more than two years. She’s afraid to go, precisely, because there have been some bad cases in her family, but he doesn’t think it’s the best moment to remind her.)

  She looks at him in the mirror with curiosity, as if she’s guessed that he’s thinking about her, and that look still makes him nervous. He wonders what sort of expression she would make if he told her he didn’t have to go to the operating theater that day after all and could go with her to the notary’s office. Although some people do so on the slightest pretext, he can’t do things like that, can’t not go to work without giving prior notice.

  She takes the towel off her head and brushes her hair. That’s how she does her hair, just letting it down, and she hardly ever uses a hair dryer. She looks at him with her eyes wide open now, astonished to hear the radio announce that it’s eight o’clock. They’re running late. He goes into his room, and Pilar follows him. She looks around the room, which is quite untidy, she locates and then, with a brusque movement, picks up the underwear and pajamas he dropped there earlier, and leaves the room again, having made a bundle of the two yellow towels and the underwear and the pajamas, which she’ll take to the laundry room. He doesn’t know how to interpret what her taking care of him like that—picking up his clothes and even his underwear without making any signs of revulsion—might mean. He thinks it could be a matter of habit, something mechanical, something to do with some resigned, subconscious submission to her role as a woman. He’s about to say that he was going to pick them up himself—he really does try to take care of his own things—but, in the end, he keeps quiet.

  They’re both in the main bathroom again, Abaitua is fully dressed apart from his jacket, he puts some eau de cologne on his hands and then a few drops on his neck, and his wife, still naked, pulls at the clean towel on the hanger to get it straight. That perfectionism irritates him, and he says “I’m very late” without bothering to hide his annoyance. “I’m coming,” says Pilar, but she continues to apply lotion from a jar the size of a thimble onto her eyelids. “I’m coming.” And he’ll wait for her in the car. He normally waits for her in the car when they leave together.

  In the entryway, after walking down the stairs as always, he waits at the threshold and looks out at the street from left to right, slowly, trying to see if there’s anything unusual. He had long ago given up the routine, but the fact that the trial over what happened down by the river was due to start soon and that his son was back from the United States had reawakened the old fear in him and reminded him of the safety measures he’d seen Jaime Zabaleta take. Zabaleta worked at the time in the Spanish central government delegation. Zabaleta is a deserter from the world of medicine who, like many others in the field, left his original calling to take part in professional politics. Abaitua owes him a big favor. He knows he used his influence to stop the Ertzaintza—the Basque police—from making any objections to the explanations he and his son gave of the incident, namely, that the boy didn’t know about his friends’ criminal activities and told his father as soon as he found out that they were hiding bombs on his grandfather’s mastless old yacht, and that father and son wasted no time calling the Ertzaintza; although their version was essentially true, a few points could have been questioned. It was also thanks to Zabaleta that he found out that there were no signs of threats, which, reassured him to an extent, and indeed, they’d received none—unless his son had and hadn’t told him. But sometimes, depending on his mood, Abaitua does get scared that he might become a victim of some sort of revenge attack for having reported them.

  On the sidewalk on the other side of the street, just across from him, there is a young man leaning against a car. He thinks he’s seen him around a few times with a neighborhood girl, but he’s not sure, and he decides to stay where he is, because he could be standing there waiting for him, waiting to give a signal to some hidden wrongdoer who’s ready to attack him as soon as he leaves. He instinctively thinks of taking a step back, but he puts his feet on the threshold again and, ashamed that fear has taken ahold of him so easily, stands up straight, staring at the young man, who, having realized he’s there, looks back at him. Apart from the shivering and murmuring of the leaves the south wind is blowing around, everything is still and silent; he wonders if it wouldn’t be easier for him to go out into a noisy street full of people, but then he remembers what happened on San Martin Kalea, the same street where his old office, in which his son Loyola now lives, is located, and being on one of Donostia’s busiest and noisiest streets hadn’t stopped Fernando Múgica from getting killed with two shots to the back of the neck as he left his place of work. His autonomic nervous system gives him an immediate response to that memory, a reaction that, despite the situation, he finds rather fascinating. A flash of light. A drop in blood pressure and then a short fainting sensation, absolute darkness that lasts a second or two. The young man leaning against the car comes out of the mist again and, another two or three seconds later, his vision of him becomes more precise. He has to unfasten the top button of his shirt to breathe properly. He inhales deeply, his arms held out slightly from his body for the sweat to run off, and after regaining his biochemical balance, he wonders if he might not be addicted to epinephrine. He promises himself it’s the last time he’ll let himself
be taken in by that macabre game of suggestion.

  Without thinking about it any further, he steps down into the street, and the young man lifts up his chin to greet him. Of course, it could be a signal. But now his tendency to fall into morbid ways of thinking makes him smile, and as he replies to the young man’s greeting by raising his own head, he also lifts up a hand, convincing himself that a greeting is the only reasonable hypothesis. Then he checks that there is nobody else on the short street, which is a private access road for the four villas now converted into apartments that are located on it and overlook the bay.

  The car’s parked outside, not in the garage. Pilar used it the night before. She never parks inside the garage, however often he reminds her that there’s a lot of saltpeter in the air and it isn’t good for the metalwork. The tires are Dunlops. He gives them a few insignificant kicks and leans down to look beneath the car, as if he were checking to make sure no oil is leaking out. He used to take those same precautions, although he knows, of course, that they’re probably no use—there are most likely plenty of ways a bomb can be stuck on in such a way that anyone who isn’t an expert won’t notice it. But that didn’t stop him from looking. It was a matter of dignity, and he worried that some neighbor might realize it was a ritual he went through every morning and think him paranoid, or even that his painstaking safety measures might attract someone’s attention or give them ideas.