Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  Harri is not interested in the linguistic side of it. Content is what matters, and Bihotzean would be good in any language. To make the American girl realize how important a piece of work it is, she tells her that Martin received death threats when it was published. The writer waves it away—just some poor madman. But Harri insists—whether from a madman or otherwise, he did receive threats. Martin, quite roughly now, tells her to drop it. It could seem to be humility on his part, and that’s probably what the young American takes it to be. But it’s a tricky subject, and they haven’t brought it up for some time. Almost since it happened. The reason for this is that when he told his fellow writers that he’d received anonymous letters, the rumors that they were made-up began spreading immediately. Julia thinks they doubted whether Basque literature in general and Martin’s work in particular could have any influence on society. He was putting himself forward as being more than he actually was by letting on that ETA members were angry about one of his books. Martin heard about the rumors from Jaime Zabaleta, who had the nerve—or the good will, or the sadistic desire—to tell him that nobody in the profession was talking about anything else, and then he took the occasion to say that he didn’t believe him, either. Harri had never liked the man much, and ever since then, she’s hated him. But Martin didn’t mind hearing it. He seemed to accept as a matter of course that people would think the anonymous letters were fake, and Julia doesn’t know why, but she thinks he believes that to be her opinion, as well. And is it? She doesn’t know. She wouldn’t be too surprised if they were fake, and she wouldn’t mind if they were, either. There are certain things that lead her to suspicion. He gets worried by anything, and yet he wasn’t particularly concerned by the threats. He didn’t report it to the police, though that’s understandable to an extent, because he wouldn’t have achieved much by doing so, but it is likewise surprising that someone who never throws away a single piece of paper hasn’t kept a single one of them, if only as a souvenir. But what is most significant is his enormous sense of guilt, which is limitless and on display for all to see, and which he calls “the syndrome of coming out of it alive,” whenever they talk about it, the clear need behind it to be redeemed, to be able to approach victims as a victim himself, and those anonymous letters, whether genuine or fake, are just the absolution he needed. Perhaps he thought that it wasn’t his fault if the ignorant ETA members didn’t read, or didn’t know how to read, or chose not to care about what he sees as the direct criticisms leveled against them in Bihotzean. And if he—who pays so much heed to the opinions of those around him, who would rather die than look like a fool—accepted the rumors so easily, then Julia supposes it was because he knew that nobody would take the falsified letters as a ploy to garner fame for himself but rather, in the worst case, as an expression of the need to redeem himself and, through him, Basque literature as a whole. When it comes down to it, Julia thinks it’s just as dignified to feel the need to invent death threats as it is to actually receive them. She thinks Jaime Zabaleta may be of the same opinion. With Harri, of course, you can’t question the veracity of the threats.

  Harri realizes that Martin doesn’t want to talk about it, and she tells the American girl that he also receives fan mail and that he’d get even more if he listened to her and wrote a few stories of a different type. Julia is sure that she wants to talk to them about her own story, her search for the man from the airport. Wanting to be good-willed, she shows an interest, asks her if she’s heard any more, and Harri in reply lets out quite a dirty laugh as she asks if they haven’t read the newspapers. They’re amazed that the press has sought to report on the developments in her story. Julia says she’s only glanced at the headlines, Martin gave up reading the papers a long time ago for reasons of “mental hygiene,” and Lynn doesn’t say anything. After quite a long silence, Harri takes a copy of the El Correo newspaper out of her green leather briefcase and holds it out to Martin. He flicks through it, and nobody says anything for a while, until she takes it off him again, roughly, as if exasperated by his inability to find the right place, opens it to the personal ads, and reads the Spanish text aloud.

  “I saw you in the departure lounge at Heathrow, and I fell in love. On the plane, after your little accident with the bag full of books, you offered me Montauk, and I stupidly declined to accept it. I hope you give me another chance.” And after reading it, she says, “¿Qué te parece?” She looks straight at them, as proud as a magician who’s just put a handkerchief into a hat and pulled out a dove.

  Martin says she’s gone crazy; Julia doesn’t know what to say. She isn’t sure why Harri goes to such lengths to make them enjoy her airport story. Finally, she asks her what chance she thinks she has. First, will the man read the ad? And second, if he does read it, will he even remember—and she doesn’t think it very probable—that Montauk was the book he offered her and thus realize that it’s he she’s looking for?

  She chose the newspaper and the language for statistical reasons, but even though she can’t calculate the probabilities of the man reading the ad, she’s sure that if he does, he’ll understand her message. She looks at Julia angrily, as if to say “you always try to spoil things,” and when she asks Lynn’s opinion, the American girl, after thinking for a moment, asks—and Julia doesn’t know how serious she is, but she does at least look completely serious—if it wouldn’t be easier and more effective to go straight to the airline and give them some excuse or other and try to get in touch with the man that way.

  The main problem is that she doesn’t know anything about the man, not even what seat he was in.

  Still, they play around, like in a game of I-spy, with different possible reasons she might allege for having to get in touch with him. They agree that if they do get the airline to contact him and bring up Montauk, it’s essential for him to know they’re calling on Harri’s behalf; but they don’t think the airline employees will help much if it’s just a matter of getting a book back to someone, people won’t go to so much trouble over a simple book, so they decide that it can’t be just the book itself, she has to be trying to get back something she had between the pages, something extremely important, a check, for instance, a long-lost friend’s address that she’d finally managed to get ahold of, her only photo of her dead mother, the poem her husband wrote for her just before he took his last breath. Something of vital importance, something you would keep between the pages of a book. I-spy. They think the best thing is to tell the airline people about the bag that broke, that she helped him to pick up his books and in the confusion the man or she herself put one of her own books, the one with the important thing between its pages, back in with his. Obviously the man hasn’t realized about the book, or hasn’t opened it—otherwise he would have gotten in touch with the airline himself to tell them he had found the important document—and they have to warn him as soon as possible not to lose it or give it away to anyone or, worse still, throw it out. An indispensable condition, as much as the airline’s willingness to help, is that the man must understand not only the details about the bag breaking and so on but also why she’s looking for Montauk, and the hypothesis that he will understand is the only one that Harri is interested in, otherwise it would mean that the man isn’t especially smart, which she doesn’t believe to be the case, or that the feeling between them wasn’t mutual, which she doesn’t believe at all, and what’s more, if either of those were the case, then why should she even be interested in the man? Lynn suggests that for all sorts of reasons, it would be much better to tell the airline people that she wanted to return a copy of Montauk rather then get one back—when the books fell out and she helped him pick them up, she had unintentionally kept one, which she now wants to give back, because she thinks it may be important to him, and she can easily come up with any old excuse she likes to explain the supposed importance. That way, it would be easy for her to slip a message into the book and there wouldn’t be any chance for the man to misunderstand why she’s looking f
or him. She would very gladly offer her own copy of Montauk for the operation, although she also hopes to get it back once Harri’s found the man, she says, laughing. Is Harri serious about doing this? It seems she is, and Martin also seems to be when he says that he thinks the second option is better. Although, in general, he’s skeptical. He thinks that even if the man fell in love with her at first sight, like Harri, and remembers everything just as she does—the bag breaking, her helping him to pick up the books, and, above all, Montauk being the book he offered her—it isn’t likely that he’ll work out who it is that’s looking for him and why, not even if he’s the smartest man in the world. Obviously, before that can even happen, the attitude of the people at the airline is crucial—if they simply ask him if he lost a book on his journey from London, it won’t be easy for him to realize, as Harri wants him to, that a woman who is in love with him is looking for him. And then there’s a problem even before that stage, because the people at the airline, even if they want to be as helpful as possible, have to follow strict confidentiality norms. But Harri doesn’t want to hear any of this. She says they’re always trying to spoil things for her. That’s how she says it, in the plural. She accuses all three of them of being spoilsports, because they’re all sure the man won’t answer the ad in the paper. She asks the American girl, who is holding the newspaper, to read it aloud, she wants to know what it sounds like, and nodding as she listens to it, she says it couldn’t be clearer and that if the man from the airport reads it, she has no doubt he will reply.

  What catches the American girl’s attention—Julia supposes it’s because she’s a sociologist and anthropologist—is the fact that there are so many advertisements for prostitution, and that they’re so explicit, in a center-right newspaper that seems to be a more or less serious publication. She reads a few of the offers, which really couldn’t be more vulgar, and makes them laugh with her comments. “Select Spanish Miss. Absolute Novelty. Pour your cream into my little mouth and I’ll swallow it up.” What’s the point of the girls specifying where they come from, when one assumes you have to pay for the ads by the word? “Friendly, fun Catalan girl. Hot Basque chick. French-Basque girl first time. Cuban girl wet pussy. Japanese girl loves Greek style. Russian girl golden showers.” Do they know what a golden shower is? What happens to the mattress? Do they do it in the bathtub? Do they wear shower caps?

  “I mean it, seriously.” She holds her hands together as if she were praying, the others laugh, and Julia tells her, equally seriously, that she, too, has always wondered about that. They don’t usually talk about sex, and she’s surprised when Harri interjects and tells them to hold on a second—“Pero vamos a ver, haven’t you ever felt the need for someone to piss on you, hit you, bite you, spit at you? You don’t know what passion is.”

  As usual, she doesn’t know if there’s a comic intention behind that apparent seriousness or whether she’s actually saying what she really thinks. The writer, who probably wants to seem prudent in front of the penthouse girl, tolerant but not dirty, uses liberal arguments—he thinks it’s fine for couples to do what they want to, just as long as they do so freely and in agreement. An unimpeachable position that’s been used a lot by people recently, and which Julia would add some caveats to if she weren’t afraid of them taking her for a puritan and a reactionary. To her surprise, Lynn says what she was wanting to say, which is that she thinks sex is overrated; it’s important, but nowadays people are obsessed with getting more out of it than it can really give them. And as far as women are concerned, she’s convinced that many of them accept things that men like but that they themselves find mildly stimulating at best and only because their partner’s excitement serves as an aphrodisiac for them, not because it stimulates their desire directly.

  And the conversation stops there, because Harri has to go.

  The house cats have been walking back and forth along the rail at the bottom of the French windows for some time. They walk toward each other with their tails up and meet exactly in the middle. Julia realizes she hasn’t fed them. They come toward her, meowing pathetically, while a third, unknown cat lies down on the stone bench, waiting, watching them attentively. Lynn comes out behind her. She picks the kitten up and pets it. It’s obvious she’s used to cats. She says that her cat, Max, is shy, lazy, and clumsy but she forgives him because he’s so handsome. She says she doesn’t know what she’d do without him. She smiles. One of her fleeting smiles that means that she wants to be accepted, and Julia tells her that she agrees with what she’s just said about sex. More laughter. “I know.” Even though she thinks she understands her reply, Julia feels the desire to ask, “What do you mean, ‘I know?’” She doesn’t answer. Instead, Lynn asks Julia a question: Does she know that “golden rain” is the name of a very beautiful tree, koelreuteria elegans, a member of the Sapindaceaen family? More laughter. She says she knows more about trees than about sex.

  It’s been a long time since the neurotic thrush last paid them a visit. On the other hand, the greenish-brownish birds that turned up a couple of days ago are there. If they are the same ones. In any case, they perch on the same bush, and it’s clear they aren’t sparrows. They seem to be a couple. Although they are almost identical, the backs of their heads are different, one looks like it has a ponytail. Lynn points that out after putting her glasses on. They’re horn-rims and make her look like a teacher. Being shortsighted, she should wear them always, but because she finds them a nuisance, she usually manages without them. Julia has the same problem.

  Martin goes up to them. He says she looks particularly interesting with her glasses on, they make her look like a teacher. He, too, notices the one bird’s distinguishing feature, although he thinks it looks more like a hat. There’s no doubt the one with the ponytail or hat or whatever is the male; he says that in the animal kingdom, the males are usually the more elegant of the two sexes, and he says it as if he knew what he was talking about, which makes Julia laugh uncontrollably. She laughs at him as she looks at the sparse hair above Martin’s forehead standing on end, and laughs even more when he says he doesn’t know what she’s laughing at, it’s a scientific fact. Julia has to lean on Lynn for support, and Lynn, too, is laughing.

  8

  Abaitua parks in front of what he thinks is Kepa’s doorway, in the Morlans district. He’s changed apartments again, which he normally does to suit his financial situation, and he hasn’t visited him here before. He decides to wait outside for him, the weather’s marvelous. There’s a gentle south wind, and that changes the color of Donostia completely—the horizon stretches further, and he gets the impression that his sight becomes more acute thanks to that. A perfect day to go walking in the hills.

  The apartment buildings, which are two or three floors high, are modest, many of the balconies are full of flowers, and the atmosphere is peaceful and pleasant in spite of the ugly viaduct, but it’s obvious the area must be damp and very different when the weather isn’t so good. He reads the name of the district on a blue and white ceramic plaque. Morlans—like Urgull, Igeldo, and many other place-names in Donostia—is a Gascon word, he thinks, and that makes him slightly sad, though he’s not quite sure why. He has a vague memory of the district, of when the Civil Guard had a house surrounded there for a long time with an ETA group holed up inside. He thinks that shortly after the radio gave the news about the Civil Guard’s movements, he heard the shots and was scared by them, but he’s not sure. In his mind’s eye, it was a long shoot-out, and several young people were tragically, senselessly killed. He doesn’t know how to place the events chronologically, but they seem far off to him now, perhaps because he’d rather forget them, but the traces they left on him, which senseless though they are still persist, must be from a time when he felt more closely associated with what was going on with ETA, when he felt sorrow whenever someone was killed, and also guilty, at the end of the day, because he hadn’t met the same fate as those young people who had given their lives for him, f
or their ideas.

  There are many places that have been marked forever because they were scenes of death, where the echo of machine guns can still be felt, and where it seems you can probably still see the indelible stains left by blood—and by long-shriveled memorial flowers, as well—and Morlans is one of those places.

  He decides to go up to the third floor, which should be where Kepa’s apartment is, and make sure he’s remembered the building number correctly. When Kepa opens the door, Abaitua gets the impression he doesn’t know whether to let him in or not. He’s dressed for hiking and has a mop in his hand. “We’ve had a mishap,” he says, finally moving to one side to let him in. There are books piled up against the wall all along the hallway, as if they were waiting to be taken to more noble surroundings. It’s a shabby apartment, and there’s a great contrast between the ugly furniture and the fancy decorative objects resting on the floor and waiting to be put in place, including several engravings—he recognizes some by Chillida and others by Balerdi—and polished tin maritime artefacts. The kitchen floor tiles are wet. Kepa says not to worry about it and to come in. His mother is at the sink washing dishes. She looks much better than she had at the hospital. She’s a tall woman who was once very elegant, she has beautiful long gray hair that’s gone a little yellow, a bit like her son’s fingers, colored by smoking English cigarettes. Her son says she wets herself more and more often, and he’ll kill her when she starts soiling herself. He says it as if he means it, without raising his voice, just as if he were saying he’d give her an acetaminophen if her temperature went up. His mother doesn’t so much as flinch, but Abaitua gets angry with the son, because he doesn’t think he should speak like that in front of her, even if she won’t understand his Basque. “I know the theory: it’s a disservice to us both.” His gestures toward her, on the other hand, are full of love—he removes a speck of food left at the side of her mouth, holds her elbow to take her back to the sink. She says she likes cleaning pots. She scrubs them, leaves them on a towel, and then rinses them. And so on, without interruption. Her son puts a plastic apron on her, the type fishmongers wear. He calls her “madre,” in Spanish.