“Vive sin dar un palo al agua.” Julia wants to find an English expression for that, for Jaime Zabaleta not ever wanting to work—she can only think of the French version, ne pas en foutre une rame—but Harri won’t let her. She says Julia always gets hung up on words. Julia, on the other hand, doesn’t know why Harri is so interested in telling Lynn about how Jaime Zabaleta has been aided by politics. Harri reminds Julia of her mother when she gets like that, and she can’t stand it. Every time her mother hears the name of this one particular woman whose husband was killed by ETA, she can’t help saying that they did her a great favor by getting rid of the man—now she draws who knows how many pension checks as his widow, and she, Julia’s mother, has heard her say hundreds of times that her husband used to beat her.
The piece of iron sticking out of the angel’s broken arm has a supermarket bag stuck on it, and it’s blowing around in the wind. It’s making Julia nervous, and she gets up to take it off, but Harri stops her by grabbing her hand. Apparently she thinks she’s getting up to leave because she’s angry.
“Come on, don’t be like that. Aren’t you interested in what happened to me?”
In fact, she isn’t in the mood to listen to her stupid stories about café terraces in Bilbao and her search for the man from the airport. But she doesn’t want to kick up a fuss in front of Lynn.
They aren’t going to believe it. The same beginning as always, but now, after the usual steps she always takes to ask them to pay attention to whatever nonsense she may be about to tell them, she comes straight out and tells them something amazing—she’s gone to bed with Adolfo. All three of them look at her open-mouthed, and this time, she doesn’t need to ask them “¿Qué te parece?” because it’s obvious they’re astonished by what she’s said. Martin’s the first one to regain his speech, and he stutters, “How come you went to bed with Adolfo?” And Julia has to stop herself from laughing, because she doesn’t understand who this Adolfo is, or why Harri’s just blurted out that she’s slept with him. “Who’s Adolfo?” she asks, while Harri is still nodding slowly at them to lend gravity to her news, and after looking at Julia with wide open eyes, she shakes her head with a mixture of pity and disdain. It’s obvious, she says, that she isn’t at all interested in the things she tells her.
Julia realizes, too late, that Adolfo is the guy who works for Iberia, the airline.
Harri, with an offended look on her face, stands and picks up her bag to tell them she’s leaving, complaining that they never pay any attention to her stories, but Lynn and Martin both protest, talking over each in an effort to tell her that she’s not right about that, that they’re dying to know, and then she sits down again and pulls a face like a child refusing to eat. After a considerable pause, she starts telling them about Adolfo, the Iberia guy. He called her that morning to give her some news about their search and asked if they could meet up at the Ercilla Hotel. They arranged to meet at midday, but apparently she had to wait a bit. He’d told her that it might be difficult for him to get away from work and that he might be late, but waiting made her nervous, and she ordered a gin and tonic. (A description of the atmosphere, the warm lighting, the discreet, shadowy corners, the respectful waiters and waitresses in old-fashioned uniforms, always on the alert, the murmur of conversations, the strains of Strangers in the Night coming from the piano, etc.) When he arrived, he asked her what the man from the airport had looked like, what his voice was like, and these were really the only two questions she could answer, though he also asked her about other details, some of which didn’t seem to be particularly relevant.
When he asked her if he looked like he was married, she remembered the quarrel she’d seen when leaving the terminal, which seemed to indicate he and the woman he was with were breaking up. Although that was a very important detail for her, it had nothing to do with being able to find the man, but she told him about it even so, and her description of the scene that the woman with the dyed-blonde hair had made got them to talking about relationships between men and women. Adolfo told her again and again that her search seemed very romantic to him and that he sometimes got the impression he was in the middle of a movie. He said he was very romantic, too, and would do anything to be desired by a woman with such passion, determined to overcome all obstacles, like Harri in her search for this man, and that’s why he wanted to help her, even if that meant doing things that were technically illegal. The Iberia employee’s words made her nervous, she didn’t know what he was trying to do. It occurred to her that he might be about to ask her for money in exchange for his help, and that idea made her feel really anxious, not so much because of the amount of money he might request as because it would spoil their relationship. She asks if they understand her, and all three say they do. She says she doesn’t want to use alcohol as an excuse to explain what happened, not at all, but she did order another gin and tonic while Adolfo filled her in on the details of the search. He said he’d been telephoning all the men who sat behind her, right back to the last row. He’d been telling them, as she’d suggested, that he was looking for the passenger from the London-Bilbao IB 5545 flight whose bag full of books had burst open as soon as he got onto the plane, and on most occasions he hadn’t had to say any more than that, because they’d hung up after saying that nothing of theirs had broken. Apparently a few of them had wanted to know what the reason behind the question was before they answered, and then he’d had to give them more information, saying that a lady had given him one of her bags—a Harrods bag, specifically, which she’d emptied and kindly offered to the man so that he could put his books, which had fallen onto the ground, into it—and she thinks she may not have fully emptied it before giving it to him, one of her own books may have still been inside it. A novel, which, for her own reasons, she was very attached to, a book called Montauk, and she wanted to get it back as soon as possible, whatever difficulties there might be. So he’d changed the story—Julia doesn’t really understand how exactly he changed it, but she doesn’t care, either—and Harri thought it sounded better this way. Be that as it may, he said he hadn’t had to go into all of that very many times; when they heard the whole thing was just about a book, most people had lost interest and hung up, but—and here Harri puts on a triumphant expression—two passengers did remember the incident happening, the man’s bag breaking and him spending a long time blocking up the aisle while he picked up all his books. One of them remembered that a woman had offered him a green bag, and that’s what Harrods bags are like, green. Harri thought those two men remembering what had happened was very significant, because it made the story more believable for Adolfo.
He said that the biggest problem, unfortunately, and for obvious reasons, was that he couldn’t phone from the office, or from home, either, not while his wife was there, at any rate, because she was very jealous and wouldn’t believe the truth, and he couldn’t think up any other story to tell her. So it was taking him awhile, but he didn’t have many calls left to make.
Harri says that what she likes about Adolfo is his optimism and complicity, he’s very understanding, and he doesn’t think she’s crazy—unlike some other people—for wanting to find the man. They spent some time drinking their gin and tonics and imagining what it would be like to find the man. They thought that when Adolfo finally reached him and told him the situation—that he was looking for a man whose bag full of books had broken and all the rest of it—he would answer straight away that it was him, although they couldn’t be completely sure of that. Theoretically, if he tried to disguise the fact that it had been him, it would be because he thought they were looking for him for some other reason and so he preferred not to reply. In that case, it would all be over, but she wouldn’t mind, because she wouldn’t like to get involved with a man who was trying to hide something. But Harri doesn’t think that will happen. She says the man didn’t look as if he had many things to hide, and judging by the spark of passion she had seen in his eyes, she says that if he tur
ned out not to be attracted to her—not remembering her at all was almost impossible—he would probably still admit that it was his bag that had burst. From that point onward, there were several different possibilities, which Harri wants to explain to them one by one, counting them out on the fingers of one hand, but Martin, a little irritated, stops her and asks her to tell them once and for all why she went to bed with the hair gel-wearing Iberia employee.
As was to be expected, Harri doesn’t like the remark. For a moment, she stares at Martin with her right index finger resting on her left pinkie finger, frozen in astonishment at the very moment she was about to tell them about the first possibility, as if she can’t believe what she’s just heard, and then she gets up, threatening again that she’s going to leave, complaining that they don’t care about what happens to her, and Lynn is upset, asking her again to stay, using the affectionate tone you use to try to convince a child of something—of course they’re interested in what she has to tell them, it’s something about her, after all, and the story is so interesting per se—while Martin says that it’s precisely because he’s interested that he’s asked her to come to the point and quit wasting time on pointless details.
Julia, on the other hand, keeps quiet, already quite bored of Harri’s stories, and her hysteria, too. She knows Harri isn’t going to leave. Now Harri sounds deeply hurt as she reproaches Martin, saying that it’s incredible that a writer should be uninterested in details and what they mean. But instead of falling silent at that, the writer says that hypotheses are not the same as details. “Facts, facts,” he insists. Déjà vu.
Harri spends awhile going through a whole range of facial expressions typical of a spoilt child, but then, instead of telling them what they were interested in—in other words, what had happened with this Adolfo guy—she goes straight back to where she left off, talking about the possible reactions the man from the airport might have on receiving Adolfo’s call, as if nothing has happened, and nobody dares to say anything to her, partly not to create a fuss and partly because she said she’d keep it to just three possible options.
A) The man doesn’t remember that Montauk was one of the books he was carrying, nor that he offered it to her when he was crouching down there in the middle of the aisle. In that case, he would probably look among his books and then, after finding it, happily reply that it wasn’t missing. She says she thinks it’s the least probable option, and also the least interesting hypothesis.
B) He remembers that he had Montauk in the bag and that he wanted to give it to her. This was the most probable option, and it led, in turn, to two possible outcomes. Firstly, the man doesn’t understand the message and, consequently, interprets it in different possible ways depending on his psychological profile. For instance, he might think it strange that somebody lost a book that he also has; it could also seem suspicious and irritating to him if he had a tendency toward paranoia and thought they were asking him to give them his copy of the book. C) The second outcome of the previous hypothesis is that when Adolfo tells him that a woman has lost her copy of Montauk, and that getting it back is a matter of life or death for her, he remembers the whole scene, the two of them kneeling down in the aeroplane aisle and him offering her the book and saying “this book was written in good faith.” But in this option, unlike in the others, the man clearly understands that she is looking for him and knows why.
Option C is the only one she’s interested in. She doesn’t believe there are any other realistic options.
She doesn’t know why, but she thinks the man will be the last on Alfonso’s list and so he’ll find him in a fortnight’s time. He’ll tell him he’s sure he does have the English translation of Montauk and that he’ll be very pleased to give it back to the lady he’s unwittingly taken it from.
Adolfo told her that, in a way, he’ll be sad when that happens. She tells them once more that she finds Adolfo’s complicity moving, he takes her story seriously, and she mentions the care with which he had written down all the different possibilities on a paper napkin, many more of them than the three summarized versions she’s just told them about. He seemed moved when he took her hand and told her they were going to find the man. She, too, was moved by him saying that he would be sorry in a way when they found the man because it would mean he wouldn’t have any excuse for seeing her again. He said he enjoyed being with her, and she ordered another gin and tonic—that made three altogether—and they talked about all sorts of things.
She didn’t mind having to pay for the drinks herself, even though it made her feel like an old lady. It did occur to her that somebody might think he was a gigolo and she his customer, but she didn’t care about that, either. Adolfo was the first to stand up. He started walking away without doing anything about the plate with drink bills piled up on it; she quickly put some money on the plate and went after him. She promises them that when they got into the elevator, she thought they were going up to street level, she almost said to Adolfo that she was still quite capable of walking in spite of all the gin and tonics, but he pressed the button for the second floor. She didn’t dare say anything and followed him along the corridor once they got there. She wasn’t capable of thinking at all. She imagines that, mostly, she was embarrassed. Embarrassed to ask him what he took her for, or that he might think her old fashioned.
She continues talking about her impressions. She thought that for a young man, going to bed with someone was something completely normal, like having another gin and tonic, and so it should be that way for her, too. She said she was also worried about saying all of that to the guy from Iberia, and about the reaction he might have if she refused to go into room 222 with him after he finally managed to unlock the door with his magnetic card on the fourth attempt. She was afraid that if she didn’t go in, he might be offended, get angry, and maybe say to her that she could look for the man from the airport by herself. That’s what she thought refusing to go to bed with Adolfo would have meant, losing the chance to find the man, but in the end, she went ahead, and not only for that reason.
If she had to write a novel, she’d write that she was prepared to prostitute herself in order to get in touch with the man, but although that wouldn’t be a lie, it wouldn’t be the whole truth. She says she was curious, too. Apart from Martxelo, she’s known no other man in the Biblical sense (to Lynn: “Can you believe it?”), and she hasn’t done it with Martxelo for a long time, either, and it’s been even longer since she’s done it in a hotel. She stepped through the door and started laughing immediately, out of nervousness, she says, but then she quickly stopped. Apparently, this Adolfo guy took great care undressing, folding all his clothes over a chair so they wouldn’t get creased.
No chance of him ripping off her clothes with his teeth, then. Everything very normal, maybe too normal. Adolfo’s phone rang as soon as they finished, and he did nothing to disguise the fact that it was his wife, giving a string of yes, dears and no, dears—”Sí, cari, no, cari.” She was glad when he said he had to go. While he got dressed, she decided to show no more of herself and stay in the bed. She had doubts about paying for the hotel room, but he had none. He didn’t have any cash, and since his wife looked at everything, it would be too much of a giveaway to use a credit card.
“¿Qué te parece? It could be a novel, couldn’t it?”
Julia knew she was going to say that and wanted to be ready in case she asked it as a straight, non-rhetorical question. But she can’t think of anything to say, and fortunately there’s no need to answer, because Harri hasn’t framed it as a real question and doesn’t say another word. She just stands and picks up her green bag. She’s late, she says.
Lynn’s leaving, too.
As soon as they leave, Martin quickly turns the television on. It’s time for Marie Lafôret. Julia asks him what he thinks about what Harri’s just told them, and he replies, “She’s off her rocker.” But off her rocker because of what she’s done, or because she’s s
tarted telling them her fantasies? It makes no difference. She’s off her rocker.
In Marie Lafôret’s supposedly exotic Basque, every time she says bertzalde—or “on the other hand”—she draws out the last syllable and almost sings it, ending on a half note. One of her charms must be her way of speaking, along with her sand-colored eyes.
Julia has a headache again, just like earlier in the morning when she read about the ailing writer’s stratagem for facing up to his doctor’s judgement with dignity, not knowing whether the story was written in a humorous tone or not. Now, too, she is unable to determine what Harri’s intention in telling them her story is, and that makes her feel dumb, like somebody failing to get a joke, which happens to her quite a lot. She guesses Martin is right when he reproaches her for not having a sense of humor. He, on the other hand, is capable of talking about the most absurd things while keeping a serious face; he calls that English humor.
Meanwhile, the wind continues blowing the supermarket bag stuck to the angel’s broken arm around.
Martutene Page 54
