“The most wonderful night of my life.”
Julia’s shocked that the story of the most wonderful night of Lynn’s life starts off with the revelation that Sagastizabal still exists and that her cousin, the new etxeko-jaun—landlord—has had a child with a little Peruvian woman who’s apparently called Argi, and that they’re going to call him Peru; she thinks it’s because of her amazement that she doesn’t comment sooner, as Lynn would have liked her to, on how “wonderful and magical” the double meaning of the child’s name is. And then doctor Abaitua’s name comes up—except that he’s no longer Abaitua, he’s Iñaki now—and after saying his name, her words come pouring out, so quickly that Julia has to ask her to speak more slowly, so that she can understand what she’s saying about how in the middle of the night on “that wonderful night,” he called her from the hospital to say that he had come across the couple and, seeing them looking really concerned, taken pity on them and decided that that he would help the Peruvian woman—whose name he still didn’t know to be Argi—to give birth at home, but above all, how he made the decision because of her, Lynn, because she had convinced him of the advantages of home births and of the need to respect different cultures. So he teased her—she was to blame, and she was going to have to be the midwife. It was moving to have the chance to take part in a birthing. She ran out of the house, and everything since then has seemed like a dream to her. There were four of them there—Argi, the owner of Sagastizabal, Iñaki, and herself—all waiting calmly for Peru to arrive; they talked about this and that and various Basque subjects, and finally, when the child made his appearance, it was all very easy, each of them knew just what to do, and she’s never had such a moving experience.
Then, while mother and child rested, they watched the sun come up and went on talking, and everything seemed simple and easy to understand to her. Love, life, death—everything seemed beautiful to her—the river, the valley, the little Sagastizabal field, the goat, which was so white, the red rooster, and even the silent industrial buildings and the cranes surrounding them. Energy in storage, force, that’s what they suggested. Then lights started coming on, the birds started chirping, noise coming from the road and the trains going by, and they gave a toast in the name of life, they ate boiled chorizo and cheese, drank soup, and she thinks she’s still drunk, and she doesn’t want the sensation to go away.
“I’m in love.” She shakes her head slowly as she says it, giving the impression that more than anything else, it’s an unavoidable fact that’s been cast upon her and the only thing she can do is to give way to it. Julia isn’t at all uncomfortable hearing about it, and she doesn’t think it’s because Lynn’s told her in English. She’s astonished to realize that it’s something nobody else has ever told her—leaving to one side Harri’s histrionic declarations about the man at the airport—and above all, it’s the sureness with which Lynn says it that moves her, as if she were telling her that she was having her period, something that cannot be doubted—a known, undeniable physiological fact.
Although she looks darker against the light, there’s a copper-colored aura around her, and the peachy down on her legs looks more golden than usual. She once told her that she doesn’t have to shave her legs. What luck. Julia would say she’s got full breasts, and she’s realized recently that she always wears a bra, even when she wears informal T-shirts around the house. She admits to herself that she’s even hated her at times because of her bare thighs and the way her breasts move from side to side as she walks down the stairs. She’s very lucky, Julia says, and Lynn replies, after agreeing and moving her head slowly from side to side, that she doesn’t know just how lucky—even if for no other reason, last night alone would make her whole life worth living. Then she keeps quiet, as if wanting to make sure that Julia is taking what she says seriously.
“Do you think I’m crazy, too?”
Julia could ask her why she says “too,” but she doesn’t get the chance, because Lynn immediately adds, “I think I’m crazy.” She, too, used to distrust happiness. She used to think it would make her pay at some stage, abandoning her and leaving her with an unbearable vacuum. But she’s no longer afraid, because she’s seen real love. So it’s no longer a matter of faith, she’s actually felt it, its ability to transform things. She’d seen the man alone, weighed down by his circumstances, sunk in sad skepticism, and now her love has given him the energy to shake things out, to want to live. ¿Qué te parece?
Lynn herself answers first. “You think I’m as crazy as Harri,” she says, laughing, and Julia, too, laughs, relieved and hoping the joke will bring the moment of sharing intimate thoughts to an end. But she doesn’t know why she’s relieved, to what extent it’s because of embarrassment and to what extent it’s a matter of fear. And if it is fear, what is she afraid of? She thinks that Lynn has asked herself the same thing, she’s aware of her, Julia’s, discomfort as they both take advantage of a train going by to keep quiet. A while after it’s gone by, Lynn says that the trains don’t bother her at all.
Love exists, it’s as simple as that, she says, before walking out of the living room.
While listening to the sound of water coming from the bathroom faucet, Julia wonders whether she’s done the right thing pointing out to her that there were traces of dampness on her T-shirt near her nipples. She’s standing up and looking at the books on the shelves. She doesn’t have very many. Large anthropology volumes. Most of the literature is from the Penguin Popular Classics paperback collection, and Julia’s amused to see Martin’s Beti euria ari du between Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love. And English copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. She thinks it very surprising to see so many books about Max Frisch. Understanding Max Frisch. Perspectives on Max Frisch. The Novels of Max Frisch. The Reluctant Modernist. Contemporary Male-Female Relationships in the Novels of Max Frisch. She begins reading at random: “It might be argued that Frisch’s novels really are concerned not with love, but with the absence of love.” “Can a man’s life be so described that it becomes visible and comprehensible to others?”
Among the objects scattered around the shelves, there’s a small, A4-sized watercolor—a house that looks like a baserri, a sloping red roof, blue windows and shutters, surrounded by trees; the style’s quite naïf. The painter, who signs his name Kepa, has written “To Lynn, a souvenir from Ainhoa” at the bottom. Now Julia recognizes it: the front of the Argi Eder Hotel. On a sheet of square paper of the same size, there’s a drawing of a cross section of a woman—she has to look carefully to see that it’s drawn in pen and isn’t a printed reproduction—with the organs numbered but without any notes to accompany each number. She recognizes Lynn’s writing in the words “The first time I saw him.” A photo of the couple standing in front of a bronze statue. Abaitua looks serious, his hands in his pockets, wearing a light-colored polo shirt and pants. Lynn’s wearing the dress with flowers on it that he gave her. She’s standing a little apart from him, but her head is leaning toward him, almost touching his shoulder, and she’s looking at the photographer with her eyes wide open, a humorous look. It’s obvious that he doesn’t like being in photos and that she isn’t at all interested in looking pretty in it. The sculpture behind them is of an angel with its large wings spread open, holding a dead or unconscious young man who has a broken sword in his hand. It looks familiar to her. She imagines it must be a famous sculpture and that she’s seen it in some art book.
She asks Lynn when she reappears wearing a new T-shirt and looking as if she’s taken a shower. She doesn’t answer right away. She takes the photo and, after looking at it for a while, says, “He’s an interesting man, isn’t he?” Then they talk about the sculpture, without Lynn waiting to hear Julia’s opinion about him. She doesn’t seem to need it. She says the sculpture is highly symbolic for her, even more so than what you can actually see, and she doesn’t think that Kepa—she pauses for a moment
, smiles, and gives the impression that she’s about to add “Martin’s friend”—chose it as the background for the photo by chance. When Iñaki suggested going on the trip with them, she already knew that he wasn’t an elderly ladies’ man, one of those men who like flirting with young girls, and when she saw the sculpture, she wondered whether she would have the strength to lift him up and take him with her. Now she knows she does. And they’ve taken flight.
She asks whether Julia minds talking about these things.
This time she says no, how could she possibly think that? But then, immediately, she feels the need to tell her the truth. It’s true that she feels ill at ease. Lynn’s smile encourages her to go on speaking, but she doesn’t know what more to say, she has insuperable difficulty expressing her feelings. She knows very well it’s not a matter of embarrassment, that’s not what she feels about her inner life; it’s fear. Fear that everything Lynn is telling her may be unknown to her. To get out of the situation, she tells her it’s more a matter of envy than discomfort. “Hearing about what I’m missing out on. Ulertzen?” she explains, asking her in Basque if she understands. After looking at her for a while, very seriously, as if trying to measure to what extent she’s telling the truth, Lynn laughs. “Don’t be nasty.”
The kitchen’s immaculate. It looks as if various coats of white paint have been put on all the containers, and their contents, too, everything, for sanitary rather than aesthetic reasons. The blue cups and plates on the drying rack are the only exception. The containers on the shelf over the fridge, with different cereals and nuts in them, are transparent. And there, on the white marble table, is the real reason why Lynn’s brought her up here: a large plate of kokotxas—hake cheeks—floating in bloodied water. They don’t look good, probably because she kept them too long in the fishmonger’s plastic bag. She says her plan is to amaze “the man who has her floating on air” by cooking it, and she wants Julia to teach her how to do it, and that’s why she bought a third ration for her. ¿Qué te parece? They both laugh out loud. Does she really want to know what she thinks. She nods. She shouldn’t even bother trying.
The girl’s look reveals that she’s trying to figure out if Julia is attempting to tell her something more than what she’s actually said, and while Julia’s chopping up the garlic, because the girl’s determined to at least practice with a few bits of the fish, and explaining how to cook the pil-pil sauce—don’t let the garlic get burned, take the pot with the fish in it off the flame for the oil to cool down, take most of it out, and add it back in as the sauce thickens, little by little, just as you would to make mayonnaise, and keep on moving the pot around, shaking it with your wrists—she realizes that Lynn isn’t paying any attention to her. Even so, Julia finishes cooking, though not without some difficulty—she has to shake the pot a lot to keep everything from sticking, because not much gelatine comes out of the fish—and the results are nothing exceptional, and then there’s no parsley to put on top. Lynn starts laughing when Julia asks if she thinks she’s got the hang of it. What’s she’s laughing about? She’s remembered something Kepa said to her: the sensuality of Cuban women dancing the Rumba is nothing compared to that of Basque women making pil-pil.
They’re laughing when they hear Martin’s voice from the floor below. He’s calling out for her, even though he knows very well where she is. What does he want now? She’s embarrassed by him calling out to her like that, shouting her name, angry because she’s with Lynn; she knows that’s what’s bothering him. Now the small entryway is the only area in darkness, and the young woman in love’s eyes shine with a different color. The Max in Montauk says that Lynn’s eyes are like slate under the water. That’s what this Lynn’s eyes look like now, too. “He needs you,” she says, and Julia wonders whether or not to answer. She could tell her that Martin used to remind her of one of the characters in his Naufragoen istorioak—or Shipwreck Stories—trying to save himself by holding onto her neck, but that now she thinks his aim is quite simply to sink her. But she only answers that she doesn’t know what he needs her for, hesitating whether to add the rest of what she’s thinking, which is that she doesn’t know why or what she needs him for, either. Finally, she says that he must have lost something and takes ahold of the door handle, and in response to that movement, Lynn makes way for her, putting her hands behind her back and leaning against the wall. As if to say that she doesn’t want to stop her from leaving but that she’s here for whatever Julia needs, and what Julia’s needed for a long time is to cry. She doesn’t know how it happens, but she falls into her arms, sobbing, in a way she hasn’t done for years, not since she fell to her knees and begged Martin to forgive her for being unfaithful. She cries for all the days that have gone by, for every day her unhappiness has lasted, and Lynn accepts her tears in silence, holding her softly in her arms. She needed to get it off her chest, she says when they move apart a little later. It’s a statement, not an excuse, because she doesn’t need to apologize; she’s not embarrassed. Now she really smiles, she really feels better, and Lynn smiles, too. She’s sorry she’s spoilt the moment, Lynn having been so happy, and she strokes her white cheek—perhaps it’s too white—with the tips of her fingers, and Lynn returns the gesture. “Don’t be silly.” Their hands, which are still clasped together, separate when she says she’s going. They give each other the usual glancing kisses and wish each other luck, as if they were going on a journey or had to do something really important. Lynn says in Basque that they both deserve it—“Biok merezi dugu”—as Julia starts going down the tricky spiral staircase. “You said it.” She stops for a moment to let her know that she really is sure of what Lynn doesn’t quite believe. “I really do envy you.” Then, when she starts off down the stairs again, she slips and has to hold onto the bannister with both hands. She turns around and looks upward once more. “One day you guys are going to break your necks,” she says, using the plural on purpose, and Lynn, at the top of the stairs, holds her arms open and pretends to fly. “I’m the angel,” Julia thinks she hears, because she says it clearly but in a very low voice, so that Martin can’t hear them from the gallery.
“Where were you?”
She tells him the truth—“Showing Lynn how to cook kokotxas”—overcoming the feeling of contempt that having to explain what she’s been doing brings out in her. She doesn’t know why she’s told him that, and now it will give him the chance to roll out his sarcasm. Perhaps she hoped he would be moved by the girl’s desire to please her man, but what he actually says is that he doesn’t think the prospect of having kokotxas is what’s pushing the delivery doctor up the spiral staircase. It’s the same thing she herself thought a couple of minutes earlier, but hearing him say it makes her mad. That often happens to her. Fragebogen: Why do some observations about reality, or, more exactly, criticisms about it, which she would normally be in complete agreement with, seem like exaggerations when coming from him? (It’s something she denies when Martin says it’s due to her need to reaffirm herself.)
They don’t have time to get angry at each other, because Harri arrives and makes one of her most classic entrances—she drops down onto the sofa, out of breath, as if she’d run there. They aren’t going to believe it. What she tells them is what Lynn has just told Julia about the Peruvian woman having her baby, but she gives them the version that’s going around the hospital. Apparently, everybody’s talking about his strange decision to take the unfortunate woman who was about to give birth out of the delivery room and over to some farm building to have her baby there, and there are different interpretations of what exactly happened. Some witnesses have it that he turned up late at night on the maternity ward looking disturbed; some people say he’d been drinking. Other people say that before that, he spoke with a patient in the pediatric ICU, naming the doctors who were responsible for her son’s terrible situation, offering himself as a witness, and encouraging her to sue them. All of them said that he was shouting as he walked up and down the hall, going
on about the medical mafia, their insatiable thirst for money, about corporatism and cowardice covering up the blame for so much unnecessary suffering, and then he gathered up the materials he needed for the home delivery. Apparently, he’s been temporarily suspended, and from what she hears, if some of the allegations are confirmed, he might even have his license revoked.
“Qué te parece?”
Julia is astonished, upset too. She says she’s just been with Lynn, who doesn’t seem to know anything about Abaitua’s problems. She gives them some of the details of what Lynn’s just told her: Abaitua called Lynn from the hospital to go and help him bring Sagastizabal Peru into the world; she was convinced that it was her influence that prompted him to his decision; being a midwife was a marvellous experience for her. Julia tries to convey some of the sensations she had listening to the story of “that wonderful night,” and Harri is clearly moved. But Martin isn’t, he’s only interested in repeating what he already told her—they both tripped going up the stairs, drunk, at dawn.
“That’s the strength of love, isn’t it?” Harri says it only for Julia, as if Martin weren’t there. When he comes out with a vulgar Spanish expression about tits having more pull with men than horse-drawn carriages—“Tiran más dos tetas que dos carretas”—Julia realizes that it’s the first time she and Harri have ever understood each other so well in the company of Martin. Then she asks if it doesn’t make her feel envious, and she says that she just said that to Lynn herself, that she’s envious, although she doesn’t know how sincere she was being. Why?
She thinks she would be afraid of somebody being so influenced by their feelings for her when making what might be important life decisions, and of the consequences those decisions might have. An argument it doesn’t take Harri long to overturn, and which Julia doesn’t go to much trouble to defend, either. In any case, whenever she’s thought about Abaitua and Lynn’s relationship, she’s always seen Lynn as the victim, assuming there is one. A victim of his imprudence—momentarily lost on a one-way street she doesn’t have any doubt he’ll return to soon enough. Iris Murdoch writes about the injustices married people commit against those who come into their lives. It has never even crossed her mind that it could be a case of the older man being taken in by the belief that he has sufficient strength or energy to change his route and follow the steps of a young person who may be rather rash or naïve.
Martutene Page 77
