It smells of cabbage at Torrekua, even though they haven’t cooked any; the smell’s stuck to the walls after so many centuries of cooking it there. There are beans on the stove, whose own smell is overpowered by that of the chorizo, lard, ribs, and other fats; “all the trimmings,” her brother-in-law says, sounding pleased. Comme il faut. Her sister says her husband’s right, even though Julia knows that she doesn’t enjoy such heavy meals, but she’s fully integrated in the baserri atmosphere, even wearing a buruko—a headscarf. She changes when she’s at Torrekua. Her mother’s sitting by the fire on a low chair plucking a chicken. She’s gone back a century in the tunnel of time. She’s the one talking, and the rest of them—her sister, her brother-in-law . . . the younger generation—all listen with veneration to the stories she always tells.
When the owners of Etxezar suggested that her grandfather—so Julia’s great-grandfather—buy the place, her father contributed some money, even though it would later be inherited by the eldest son. Her mother’s grandfather lost his marbles toward the end of his life. He used to sit by the front door, pointing at the oven there, and say that it was actually a zulo and that there were lots of weapons hidden in there. Thinking he was senile, they didn’t pay any attention, but when they eventually knocked the oven down, they found a box full of weapons behind it. Her mother doesn’t know whether it was from the first Carlist war, the second one, or the civil war. What Julia remembers is that when she was a child, some boys came across a bomb, and when they were playing with it, it went off in the hand of the morroi—the house servant—and he lost several fingers. She also has a vague memory that after leaving the hospital, the boy stayed in their home, in Martutene, for the duration of his convalescence, although she may know this only from having heard about it, but her sister says she remembers that his hand smelled foul and that the doctor said it was a sign it was healing. Apparently, after a long recovery, he got used to living in Donostia and didn’t want to go back to Etxezar. What Julia doesn’t remember, her sister does—mostly sad memories connected with terrible shortages. They seem to her like memories of a period she didn’t live through, and she doesn’t know whether her sister is making them up or at least exaggerating them, painting them blacker, although it’s true that a difference of three years, at a certain age, is enough for her not to have retained those memories.
Her sister can remember the trams. She says they used to take them to go to the clinic and the prison; there was always some sick Otzeta resident or other they had to visit, and packages of food and clean clothes had to be taken to those in prison. It was difficult for their families to visit them back then; Otzeta was a long way off.
Stories of Etxezar.
They’re almost always the same. The one she finds most moving is the one about Modesto Oletakoa. He volunteered for the Saseta Battalion, and because his younger brother, Tomás, wanted to go with him, his mother told Modesto to look after him and bring him back alive. Julia’s mother tells the story as if she herself spent the war with them. Modesto spent his whole time at the front without ever taking his eyes off his brother—“Follow me, Tomás”; “Careful, Tomás”; “Duck, Tomas.” On one occasion, in Cantabria, during a retreat, he turned around, like so many other times, to check that his brother was following him, and he saw him get felled by a stray bullet. He couldn’t leave him there—he lifted his brother’s body onto his shoulder and took him as far as Bizkaia, burying him at Gernika. She always sheds a tear when she imagines poor Modesto returning to the baserri, feeling defeated and guilty.
Some years afterward, there was a joint political-religious act in honor of the fallen, to which all the schoolchildren in the area were taken, including Tomás and Modesto’s sister, the youngest child in the household. In the middle of the plaza, a fountain, in the baroque style, like the church, was taken down, and a large wooden cross was put up on its foundation. One of the speakers, a red-bereted priest, said in Spanish that they were burying their fallen with the cross, not with the hammer and sickle like the red separatists—“Nosotros enterramos a nuestros caídos con la cruz, y no con la hoz y el martillo como los rojo-separatistas.” And apparently the girl shouted in reply, “Mi hermano murió con los rojo-separatistas y tiene una cruz, pero no de madera: de mármol, de mármol”—My brother died with the red separatists, and he has a cross, but it’s not made of wood, it’s made of marble . . . marble! They made her drink castor oil and shaved off her hair, leaving only one lock, on which they tied a ribbon with the Spanish colors; she doesn’t know how long they made her wear it.
Daniela was her name, and she emigrated to Paris, where she worked as a maid and met Julia’s mother’s uncle Bernardo, also from Etxezar, who was working at the Citröen factory. Uncle Bernardo had fled to France because everyone in his year in the military service had been called up to go and fight in Africa. He was a gentle, quiet man who felt guilty, it was said, because the Moors ended up cutting the throat of the man who’d been sent to fight in his place. After getting married, he suddenly came back, started living in Martutene, and opened a garage there. Julia remembers them. Although they were older than her parents, they had a single daughter her same age, the rest of Daniela’s children having died at birth. They had habits she found strange, customs they’d brought back from Paris with them. They used a tablecloth and napkins, ate a lot of salad and macaroni au gratin, and Daniela called café con leche “café au lait.” She used to read loads of romantic novels and complain to everybody that her husband wasn’t loving enough, that he should be more romantic. Because he didn’t often say the things the lovers in her novels did, not even things like those the Andalusian immigrant in the neighborhood said to his wife. He could at least call her darling, my dear, or sweetheart once in a while. Julia’s mother used to say that she’d lost her mind from reading so many romantic novels and that she didn’t think it was fair of her to complain about Uncle Bernardo—he was hard-working and sincere, he earned good money, he never lost his temper, and as if all that weren’t enough, he didn’t go out drinking, unlike other men. What’s more, he was strong and had a good figure, more so than Daniela, especially when he was young, Julia’s mother says, and that’s there for everyone to see in the photos from Paris, in which Bernardo’s looking very elegant, wearing a beret and everything. He also had an attractive laugh, like his voice, he always spoke quietly, and he was especially affectionate to children, which is why she couldn’t understand her aunt complaining so much, always mocking him, saying things like “there you have the man with his newspaper, he can go the whole afternoon without saying a word.” Julia thinks it must have been the first time she ever noticed a woman sounding embittered and that she didn’t really understand her. A husband never shouting at his wife and bringing home enough money for a good life was a lot at that time. She remembers that she once went to the movie theater with her aunt and saw a film with Gregory Peck in it; her aunt looked upward and, with a voice of pleasure, said how much she liked him. That wasn’t normal, either. She used Spanish to tell the stories from her novels and from movies, and she spoke it very well, much better than her mother did. She went on being a fervent Basque nationalist all her life, and Julia originally heard the story about the cross for the fallen that her mother is telling now from her. “My brother died with the red separatists, and he has a cross, but it’s not made of wood, it’s made of marble . . . marble!” She always said marble twice. Bernardo used to tell her that talking so much would lead to trouble. “One of these days, I’m going to find you like this,” he used to warn her, and Julia’s mother holds her wrists together as if they had handcuffs on them. But what actually happened was quite different. It was Daniela who saw Bernardo being handcuffed and taken away by two Civil Guard officers. They put him in Ondarreta Prison—so this was before 1948, which is when that prison was torn down. Julia’s mother convinced her to go to Otzeta and ask the eldest son at Etxezar to find a way to use Mr. Goytisolo’s influence to get her husband out
of prison. Apparently, she went but the man didn’t listen to her. He told her that if he’d been arrested, he must have done something. The eldest son at Etxezar was a fervid Carlist and a close friend of Goytisolo, Julia’s mother always used to call him a “caballero de España”—a gentleman of Spain—but Julia doesn’t know what she meant by that. Her mother still hates him, even though he died long ago, above all because he didn’t use his relationship with the regime to bring wealth to the house; in fact, he brought it down. On the other hand, she does say good things about Goytisolo. When the Nationals came into the town, apparently it was he who prevented them from shooting anybody for being a Basque nationalist or a red.
Daniela died on Easo Kalea—called Víctor Pradera during the dictatorship—she was run over by a police jeep as she was crossing the street from the Amara station to the Carmelite church.
The old railway line passes a few feet from Torrekua and carries on along a slope. It goes up little by little until it joins the path that leads up to Etxezar. There are large stones on some stretches that make it difficult to walk, an old beam here and there, but grass has grown over most of it. Apparently, they want to asphalt it over. Julia would prefer them to leave it as it is. When the path turns east at the foothills, the scenery changes as the town disappears from view. There are still plenty of pine trees—a lot of them have what look like balls of cotton on them, it must be some sort of disease, she thinks—and there are more green patches than before, as well as local trees, clumps of fine oaks and beeches scattered around. There aren’t any new buildings, just baserris dotted around, some of them very large, with their stone walls and sloping roofs.
The Otzeta parish church is Templar in origin, and the base of the elliptic column holding up the porch is twisted around, about to fall. The station is shortly after that, or what used to be the station—only the walls are left standing. A train once derailed there, and some of the wounded were treated at Etxezar, one of them a rich man who took a long time to recover, and he promised to pay for the studies of all the children in the house. And he did it, too. Cousin Antxon, her mother’s cousin, went on to become a teacher, but he died young of tuberculosis at the Andatzarre Clinic.
Julia’s mother can’t keep quiet. She links up one memory with the next, and it’s quite startling compared to her usual silence in Martutene. “This is so beautiful,” she says, holding her arms open to take in all the countryside. And that part of the valley really is beautiful. At her feet, the green slope winds smoothly down to the stream, which is dressed in brightly colored flowers—violet, yellow, and white. They stay there for a moment, in the gentle sunlight, silent now, as if wanting to put off the moment when they’ll see Etxezar around the next bend by the clump of hazel trees. The hills around them are not particularly high. There’s only one bare-rock summit in the distance, with a rosy glow on it. On the slope leading up to it, in the foreground, there’s a brightly whitewashed hermitage with two windows and a bright blue door. “We used to dance there,” her mother points at it and says. A happy memory at last, the first for some time. Her mother wearing white espadrilles and colored ribbons in her hair for the celebration. Did they use to wear ribbons in their hair? She wants to ask her but decides not to when she hears her sigh. “It’s all over,” she says as they start off again, as if the memories of her lost youth have reminded her of the loss of the house itself.
The three-foot-thick walls on either side hold nothing up, the roof’s fallen in, and the floor’s destroyed. There are many tiles spread out over the floor. The back wall is visible, too, because everything inside has been destroyed. There’s nothing left of the panelling at the front. Two stone columns and a line of wooden ones are still standing, propped on what were once the holdings for the beams, probably the very branches they had taken off the tree, blackened, like crosses with their arms lifting up toward the sky. Everything else has disappeared. Her mother cries with her hands over her face. A few whimpers escape out from her silent sobs.
It’s a type of crying that makes her feel something like repulsion. She doesn’t want to comfort her mother, and she’s surprised by her own lack of feeling, scared by it, in fact. It’s her sister who puts her arms around their mother. Seeing that doesn’t help Julia any, and she decides to walk on along the path. The earth is resplendent, covered with grass and flowers. There are two large trees at either end of the baserri property, she doesn’t know what type they are. Her mother’s grandfather hanged himself from one of them, unable to pay the debt he took on to pay for a new roof after another fire. Julia’s always thought they must have been gambling debts. Her mother’s sure to tell them that story any minute now. Her phone rings. It’s Harri. She’s not sure whether to answer or not, but in the end she does. Is she still angry? She isn’t angry. The murmur of the leaves in the breeze is a happy counterpoint to the silence. Harri says they should meet up. OK, they will. “I’m with Martin. I mean, he’s with me right now,” she adds. “Do you want to speak with him?” She doesn’t say anything, but she knows Harri’s going to put him on. “We can’t end like this.” Overcoming her urge to tell him it’s only a matter of deciding how to end things, one way or another, she keeps quiet. Martin again: “We can’t end like this,” and finally Julia says they’ll talk, but that she needs some time. Then she asks after Lynn, whether he’s seen her at the house, because she’s been calling her but she still hasn’t picked up, and she’s worried. Martin hasn’t heard anything. In fact, he hasn’t heard anything from her rotund girlfriend, either. He came across her once, dragging her wheeled suitcase up to the house as ever, and when he asked her about Lynn, she said she was going to be away for a while, not very politely, and didn’t give him time to ask anything else. And now she isn’t around, either. Her mother and the others come up to her, a dog barking behind them. Where is she, asks Martin. “In Otzeta. I’m not alone, I’ll call you,” she says before hanging up.
Now it really smells of boiled cabbage at Torrekua. They eat the boiled chorizo on bread after drinking the stock. She has to admit it’s good. She holds her glass out for them to serve her some wine; she wants to cheer up a bit. Everybody takes turns in the ritual of leaning over the stove and lifting the covers from the pots, closing their eyes as they smell the food, and saying, “That’s really good.” Her mother says what she always does—that used to be her daily meal, that and roasted apples and chestnuts. Julia, too, lifts the top off the pot the cabbage is stewing in—it’s a penetrating smell, bitter, the cabbage has been cooking too long. “Goxo-goxo eginak.” She hates that expression—slow-cooked and tasty—which everybody repeats, and she has a hard time not saying that greens should be chopped finer and boiled less. They’ve had the same discussion loads of times before. But her mother never gives in—they’ve always done them like that. “Goxo-goxo.”
Friends come and join them. A large man who was one of Zigor’s friends and now runs a grill house. He’s got twelve bullets in him. He lifts his shirt up to show the marks. He has innumerable scars all across his belly and ribs. “Nearly a pound of lead,” he says. The surgeons didn’t do a great job, either—that’s the way he puts it. He keeps on repeating that Zigor is identical to his father. He talks about old times in a humorous tone. Julia knows all about the incidents he brings up. The time when the German consul was abducted and his kidnappers let him escape because spending all day and night with him was so boring. He went into a bar and asked for help—“I’m the kidnapped German consul, I need a phone”—and the barman, instead of calling the police, called the kidnappers to tell them so they could come and get him again. They’d originally wanted to kidnap the French consul, too, but the plan didn’t work out. They were waiting below his apartment, near the Kontxa beach, on the corner of San Martin Kalea and San Bartolome Kalea. Two of them were standing next to the traffic lights, and the other two were sitting in the car with the engine running; but a young girl came up and stood right next to them. Time went by, and she kept stand
ing there; they started yelling obscenities to her to frighten her away—there, in the kitchen at Torrekua, he doesn’t specify all the phrases Julia’s heard him tell before—but she wouldn’t move, she just stood there calmly, quietly listening to everything, until one of them finally pretended to pick up a machine gun—he holds his left fist in front of his right and imitates the sound of a machine-gun, ra-ta-ta-ta-ta—and then, at last, the poor girl did run away. But it was a bad day for them, and when the car they were waiting for pulled up and the consul was about to step out of it, a guy who was jogging past in a track suit, a model citizen, apparently, realized what they were up to and started grappling with them, and since they couldn’t get rid of him, the chauffeur had enough time to get the car moving again, and they gave up their plan. When the guy kept going on at them, they finally had to tell him they were with ETA, and he apologized, said he was very sorry, he didn’t realize.
Martutene Page 92
