Martutene

by Ramón Saizarbitoria

  “Does it frighten you that I say these things?”

  “What things?” he blurts out, avoiding answering.

  “The things I’m telling you. Do they frighten you?”

  He supposes she wants to ask if they make him feel uncomfortable.

  “They make me feel uncomfortable.”

  “They make you uneasy?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Why not?”

  It could be something to do with culture. They’ve already talked about that. In fact, it was Kepa who talked about the timidity of Basques and all that when they were in Ainhoa and Bordeaux. They laughed a lot. When he imitated Edurne telling him not to get all Andalusian with her. They don’t trust the hidden agendas that might be lurking behind the compliments they’re paid.

  Pilar, when he would say she was beautiful: “Don’t be ridiculous, I do look at myself in the mirror, you know.” Sometimes, just occasionally, he’s managed to get her to say she’s glad when he says she looks good, to really believe, at least to an extent, that he actually feels what he’s saying. But in general, she doesn’t like such enthusiasm. He’s always thought it was because she was distrustful by nature; although very different from Kepa’s wife, she is equally reticent of pretty, flattering words—he might just be saying them to ask her to forgive him for ruining her life. To put it another way, she would prefer something more than just words; but now, and from what he can gather from the feelings he himself has been experiencing just now with Lynn, he wonders to what extent it is his inability to respond to such statements of affection that makes them so awkward for him.

  Lynn says, “I think I understand your problem now.”

  Kneeling on the sofa, he can see the barge and his father-in-law’s mastless yacht anchored on the river through the sash window. And the clinic, too. They’re both quiet, silent, sitting elbow to elbow, looking out the window, and Abaitua has the sensation that they’re up in a tree house, which is something he would have liked to have had when he was a child, and when he was older than that, too. Lynn says it makes her sad to see such a beautiful boat. And so it was, made of beautiful varnished Burmese teak. He thinks he’s already told her it was his father-in-law’s.

  She’s learned to say zorioneko gizona zara—meaning “you are a fortunate man.” She says Julia taught her. The Lynn in Montauk says it to the writer at least once—“You are a fortunate man.” This Lynn says it to him all the time. When he complained to her one day that he’d been in the operating theater until late, hadn’t had time to eat a proper lunch, and was really tired, she said he was fortunate because he was able to cure sick people and was healthy himself and was able to sleep peacefully on soft sheets when he was tired. Or times he’s told her he went for a walk in Urgull and couldn’t wrap his head around the beauty of the scenery, or that he fell asleep reading Archives of Gynecology, or listening to La Bohème, or that he was having trouble writing an article about cervical dysplasia—whatever he tells her, she tells him again that he’s a fortunate man. And he usually asks her why, sometimes a little irritated by the comment, because he doesn’t think whatever he’s just told her has anything to do with being fortunate but rather just the opposite, or at best that it’s something anyone might say. And she replies, quite seriously, “Yes, I think you are a fortunate man,” and then, to prove it to him, she repeats the trivial things he’s just told her about, going for a walk in Urgull, or reading Archives of Gynecology, or whatever it was. Last week she told him he was fortunate because he has a well-modulated man’s voice, and ever since then, Abaitua’s been listening to people’s voices carefully, realizing that there are voices that really make your hair stand on end, and comical voices, too, and perhaps he is fortunate to have a gift he’s never been aware of before; his voice, at least, doesn’t make people’s hair bristle.

  She tells him he’s fortunate—twining her fingers with his—because he knows how to caress a person so well, because he’s so sweet. Nobody’s given her so much pleasure. He’s got to believe it.

  Lynn lies against the arm of the sofa again, with the tartan travel blanket wrapped around her feet. The two of them just fit under it. The cat, on the seat back, looks at them, purring whenever they touch it. “Do you think it’s possible to die of love, Max?” And then, completely seriously, “Are you not answering because you’re ashamed we’ll think you’re a sentimental old fool of a cat, or because you want us to think you’re skeptical about it all, or because you haven’t thought about it, which is more or less the same thing?” Abaitua remembers the title of a film from back in his day, Mourir d’aimer. It was based on real events. A high school teacher, an older woman, falls in love with a pupil and finally, afflicted by society’s incomprehension of her situation, the poor thing commits suicide. The pupil or the teacher, Lynn asks. The teacher, he thinks. He remembers it was Annie Girardot that played her.

  Lynn turns around to give him a quick kiss. Everyone knows what the French are like, but she’s a young American, healthy and sensible, and she believes in life above all else. They’re arm in arm again, and they stay that way, the silence broken only by the cat’s contented purring, watching the gray shadow of the magnolia tree on the ceiling. Abaitua thinks about the dichotomy of Lynn, which so often amazes him: she uses gushing phrases that would be more at home in some cheesy bolero with just the same ease as she uses precise terminology to express sensible points of view. He remains in stoical silence while she, her arm raised to pet the cat, says, as if addressing it, that she loves him madly, she would kill, she would die for him, but that he shouldn’t be afraid, she won’t. He shouldn’t be afraid because of her loving him so passionately, it’s her problem, she’s happy to feel what she feels, and he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to, doesn’t have to take on the responsibility for anything.

  Lynn turns around quickly to look at him, hoping to catch some expression on his face unawares. She looks whiter in the half-light. “You don’t believe me, do you?” He dares to say he doesn’t completely believe her. “You don’t believe me, or you don’t want to believe me?” He can’t help moving around rather nervously, and there’s no doubt she’s picked up on that. He notes that her hand is cold as it moves across his forehead, and he closes his eyes. “Why are you afraid?” And she kisses his eyes. “There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  He wants to get up, but she forces him to lie down again. “Just relax.” He realizes his desire is returning as she strokes his belly. The girl’s fingers are very fine, precise, they seem to be retractable, just a touch from them is enough. “Do you like it more like this?”—her fingertips stroke him from the inside to the outside of his penis—“Or like this?”—now pressing and rubbing his foreskin in circles with great care.

  She talks to him while she strokes him, and he lets her go on; each time he tries to touch her, she makes him lie back down and keep his arms by his side. She says she loves his body, it’s welcoming. She sits on top of him with a leg to either side and strokes him with her hair. She likes his smell. She says she lost control when he sat down next to her in the meeting and she caught a whiff of him. Harri had warned her that he was attractive, but she hadn’t believed her, because Harri talks before she thinks. “You know all the women there are in love with you, right? So am I.” He jokingly asks if it might not be a simple case of gerontophilia, and as soon as he does, he realizes he uses that joke too often. She makes a gesture to say no. He shouldn’t say silly things. He only just feels her weight on his belly. He holds her gaze. He wonders if they won’t get fed up of making love, grow sick of it. She shows signs of being tired, her eyelids and lips are larger than usual. She leans further down and moves her body from one side to the other, tempting him with her nipples, first one then the other, just letting his lips touch them and moving them away as he opens his mouth. “Seductive old man who drives me crazy,” she whispers in his ear, “with his skillful hands,”
she takes them in hers and caresses them, “hands that give me more pleasure than anybody else ever has.” He only has to move his hips a little, and she lifts her arms up, hands clasped together, her head to one side and resting on her shoulder. He lifts his hands up and strokes her breasts. She asks him to squeeze them more, but he doesn’t dare to. He doesn’t want to hurt her. “You don’t hurt me.” She likes everything he does to her. But he lets his hands drop. He doesn’t want to hurt her. She takes ahold of one of her breasts. Her right breast in her left hand. He looks at her bluish-white skin. She makes very soft movements, for him, for him to see, smiling sweetly. Then she squeezes her nipple between her forefinger and thumb.

  Abaitua almost gives in and says that he loves her, too. It wouldn’t be a lie. He thinks he’s loved all the women he’s made love with, more or less. That’s why he has nothing against the expression to make love. There’s always some trace of tenderness, some element of love, when you offer your naked body and take somebody in your arms. But it goes unsaid. He didn’t say it to her, even though he wanted to. He was afraid he would call out her name, and he felt—he feels—tenderness toward her, gratefulness that almost brings tears to his eyes.

  He thinks it says “neither of them has ever said I love you” in Montauk.

  “I’m going to go pee,” she says, and he doesn’t understand her. “I have to go pee,” she says into his ear, but loudly, as if to somebody hard of hearing. He holds her back and licks her wet nipples, he’d like to make love with her again—don’t be crazy, says the girl, laughing; she seems happy to him—he pretends to bite her belly, and she protests that he’s going to make her pee all over the bed, is he looking for a golden shower or something? He lets her go, and she stands up.

  He’d like to go to the bathroom, too, but he feels too lazy. Lazy or ashamed, or both at the same time. He looks around for his pants. They’re on a chair, and Max is curled up on top of them. The cat lifts its head up and stares at him challengingly when he tries to shoo it away, and it doesn’t jump down to the floor until he pulls at one of the pant legs. It escapes down the hallway, as if to report the way it’s been treated to its mistress, and he goes to catch it. She hasn’t closed the bathroom door. She’s sitting on the toilet, there’s the sound of her peeing, and she has an elbow resting on one of her knees and her chin pressed into the back of her hand, the expression of Rodin’s Thinker on her face. Since they’re going to live together, she wants to get over having a shy bladder, she says. But it’s obvious she’s embarrassed, and to cover it up, she shoos away the cat, which is looking at her from the doorway. “Get lost, Max, don’t be such a peeping Tom.” Abaitua doesn’t turn around, he’s embarrassed to be seen from behind.

  “Do you think we’ll live together some day?”

  They’re in each others’ arms as she asks him that, her standing on top of his feet with her head tilted up. He hardly notices her weight. He say they will, making it obvious, with a gesture of displeasure, that he’s only saying yes to keep her happy. He decides to go. He moves away from her and looks serious while she carries on with her joking remarks about how they’re going to distribute the limited space there in order not to get in each other’s way. Abaitua thinks he’s made it perfectly clear to her—even rudely so, in fact—that he doesn’t like this game of hers, although it’s true he’s never said it to her explicitly, in words, only indirectly, as he just has, by remaining silent and putting on unhappy faces. “This will be enough space for us, won’t it?” He says it will be, more than enough, as he reaches for his keys. Seeing him do that, she asks him if he doesn’t want to go to the bathroom to wash up first, while at the same time hurriedly putting on her checked shirt that looks like a man’s. Then she stands there watching him dress, the cat in her arms, leaning against the wall. Studiously, Abaitua thinks, as if she were drawing conclusions, and he wonders if she’s often been in that same situation, watching men get dressed.

  She puts the cat down on the floor and helps him do up his cufflinks. “Oso politak,” she says in Basque, “very pretty.” Pilar gave him those, as well; he thinks the green stones are jade.

  She says she’s sorry he has to go. She watches him knot his tie with her hands held behind her back. She’s sorry for him, she adds quickly, for having to go outside, get into his car, and get back into the hurly-burly of things. Even though there won’t be all that much traffic anyway. Abaitua doesn’t know what time it is and prefers to overcome his impulse to look at his watch. OK, he’s going. Lynn flattens herself against the wall, a gesture to communicate that she isn’t going to do anything to stop him from leaving. She picks up the cat again. It’s a fine animal. Abaitua pets it, and it purrs deeply again. Words of farewell. She’s the one who takes ahold of the doorknob, but only just enough to release it, and when she takes her hand away, the door doesn’t swing out, so he has to finish the operation of opening it. She stretches her neck out, and he kisses her on both cheeks before leaving.

  He trips on the spiral staircase and is about to fall down it. Lynn had warned him—it’s treacherous. He waits a moment, just in case somebody’s heard him and opened a door. He readies himself for the possibility—he’ll act naturally, as if nothing were going on. The automatic light turns back off, and as if the sudden darkness made his hearing sharper, he clearly hears the writer’s voice: “It doesn’t seem to be anything.” He walks down in silence, in complete darkness, thinking what a fine ending it would be to wake up at the bottom of the stairs with his skull broken. Finally, he reaches the garden. The air feels good, and he smells a flower he can’t identify that reminds him of the perfume María Amor, the Dominican woman, wears. He tries to cross the lawn without making any noise, although he knows there’s no point, because the person who might see him already has.

  “You are a fortunate man.” He blends in with the others at the train stop. Tired-looking men and women. He feels wonderful after making love on a sofa with a beautiful young woman for six hours. It’s half past nine, he’s still in time to have dinner with Pilar. Fortunately, he doesn’t need any excuse for arriving home at this late hour—she would never lower herself to asking where he’s been.

  In the car, he worries about the way he smells, but he didn’t feel up to sharing a shower with Lynn. He also feels a shadow of guilt and makes a firm decision not to peer any more deeply into it.

  He has two things to feel good about: he overcame the temptation to tell her he loved her, and he dealt clearly with the matter of the tricylical antidepressants.

  Pilar is sitting on the sofa wearing lilac-colored operating scrubs, leaning over the coffee table as usual. The television is switched on with the volume down. She turns toward him as he comes into the living room and greets him with an hola devoid of any special intonation, or so it seems to him. When she’s happy, she emphasizes the first syllable and draws out the second. She doesn’t do that today. Then she adds that she’s been calling him all afternoon, looking down at the coffee table once more. She isn’t doing her usual sudoku. She’s going over a thick ream of papers in one of the leather-bound files with straps that they use down at the clinic for board-related documents. She says she’s been calling him all afternoon because Loiola came and was waiting for him. He mumbles that he’s sorry.

  It’s the truth. He would have liked to have spent time with his son, to encourage him to go back to the States as soon as possible. As he brushes his hair back with both hands, he adds that he’s had quite a day, and as he says it, he realizes he wouldn’t know what to say if she asked him what was so special about it. “Nothing specific, just all of it,” he thinks he would say. Pilar glances at him again, but not at his face, and he feels as if she’s seen inside him. He thinks there’s only a very remote chance that she’ll ask him what he’s been doing or where he’s been. She’s far too proud for that. The few times she’s done that, he’s asked her if he needs to ask for permission to leave the house, and she won’t make that mistake
again. When she looks at him for a third time, which makes him do his jacket buttons up, it occurs to him that he could tell her, “I’ve been making love with a young woman.” “There’s some battered hake,” she says as she looks down at her papers again, and Abaitua heads off to the kitchen to get away from her.

  His intention is to have a bite and then say he’s not hungry, so he can go straight to bed. Perhaps to punish himself, too. What’s more, the light’s too bright in the kitchen, and he wouldn’t like her to follow him in there to tell him something or help him get his meal ready. That’s what she used to do when he got home late and had dinner alone, sit across from him and watch him eat while telling him about what had happened during the day, filling his glass and attentively setting his place for him. But he thinks that’s no more than a remote possibility, and it would be suspicious for him to go to bed so early.