“When is all of this going to come to an end?”
They ask when it’s all going to come to an end several times. A cousin of Julia’s brother-in-law says she went to Cadiz the weekend before to visit her brother, who’s in the Puerto 1 prison there. He’s been inside for twenty-five years now. She made the journey in vain—after a humiliating body search, they didn’t let her in to see her brother, because of some administrative problem. She doesn’t seem to pay any attention to politics herself. She says she’s against ETA’s violence, because it isn’t getting them anywhere and only creates suffering. She doesn’t think her brother is in favor of it, either. He’s become a vegetarian and exercises a lot now. So he’s very fit and looks really good, even though he’s only allowed half an hour a day in the courtyard. Julia asks what they discuss when she goes to visit him. They don’t have a lot to talk about. In any case, he doesn’t regret what he did and isn’t going to sign on to the government-sponsored Langraitz deal for better sentencing conditions in exchange for a public renunciation of ETA—he’d rather keep his head held high for the two years he’s got left. Julia doesn’t dare ask what he’s in for.
“When is all of this going to come to an end?”
They talk about how unfeeling the people who consider themselves to be democrats are when it comes to the situation of prisoners; they complain about how nothing happens when cases of torture are reported because it’s assumed ETA is ordering all inmates to allege torture at the hands of guards as a general rule. Julia ventures to say that it isn’t hard to work out how they’ve arrived at the current situation—it’s because of all the savagery. Her sense of dignity won’t allow her to just accept everything they say. But she does believe there’s been torture, that seems undeniable to her. Nothing excuses torture. She says that above all for Zigor’s sake, because she sees him looking at her nervously, worried she might come out with something to make everybody else angry. He wants normality, he doesn’t want her to stand out.
Nervous silence. Julia’s sister washing the dishes is the loudest noise. But that doesn’t last for long, and the conversation starts up again. It’s about other things now—how easy it is to grow kiwis here, the way the tomatoes got spoilt this year. And then there’s a conversation that brings a calmer atmosphere with it. Nowadays tomatoes have such thick, plasticky skins that the insects can’t get into them. Most people agree with that, but there’s a belligerent minority insisting the tomatoes at Otzeta are the same as ever. The children go outside, and the men agree to go down into town to watch the pilota game. So as usual, the women are going to be left alone, and Julia finds the conversations between the women even more irritating. She can’t say why. She prefers men when it comes to talking about frivolous matters, soccer included, and when it’s deeper issues, she’ll forgive men for things she wouldn’t tolerate in women; when it’s all women, they usually end up quarreling. They all sit together at one end of the table. She remembers that at one time, young mothers used to talk about their fear that their children would join ETA, and there was always somebody who would ask what they would prefer, having their children go to prison for being members of ETA or for being delinquents. It seemed a reasonable question to them, and to Julia, too, and nobody ever had any doubts about the matter.
She decides to get away. She tells her sister she’s got tickets for the film festival, although she knows it’ll seem like a weak excuse for leaving the boy with her. Zigor’s happy, he’s never seen a professional pilota game, and she thinks he’s also pleased that she’s going to the cinema. They drop her off in the town plaza on their way to the pilota court, just in time for her to catch the bus.
On Kanpandegi Kalea, sitting sideways on the stone bench with her arms crossed over the wrought iron back. Lots of people below her are walking up from the port, more than are going down to it. Further on, above the entrance to Konstituzio Plaza, the peaks of Igeldo and Mendizorrotz stand out against the cloudless sky. Kanpandegi Kalea is deserted, as ever. An old woman is walking up from De Lasala Plaza, carrying a heavily laden bag and leaning on an umbrella. Wanting to disguise the fact that she’s using it as a walking stick. Notes from an accordion. A Donostian contradanse, Julia knows it but can’t remember its title. Yo no sé por qué; pero esas melodías sentimentales, repetidas hasta el infinito, al anochecer, en el mar, ante el horizonte sin límites, producen una tristeza solemne. It means, “I don’t know why, but these sentimental tunes, endlessly repeated, at dusk, at sea, before a limitless horizon, bring about a solemn sadness.” Elogio sentimental del acordeón is her favorite short story by Baroja, along with Mari Belcha. She knows the beginning of that one by heart, too. She likes this part of town, where you can feel the souls of Baroja and his father, Serafin, and also those of Toribio Altzaga and Bilintx and Martzelino Soroa—all liberal urban-dwelling enthusiasts of Basque culture. The bells of Santa María ring out loudly, as befits a basilica, and those of San Pedro answer in a lower, humbler tone. She’ll end up being late for the movie.
There’s a line to get in, but nobody’s waiting to buy tickets. She decides to stick around by the ticket office for a while in order to offer Lynn’s ticket to somebody; it would be a pity to let it go to waste. But nobody comes by looking for tickets. Even so, she puts off getting into the line, in which most people have accreditations hanging around their necks. There are different colored cards; she thinks they must denote different categories. A man who looks slightly like Chabrol booms out that he had dinner at Arzak. Sublime. His fat lips, really fat lips, are shiny, and he’s wearing a gold-colored card. He speaks so that everybody can hear him. Julia wonders whether to just stop somebody and offer them the ticket. She would if a woman by herself walked by, but that doesn’t happen. She would use the words she’s prepared—“I’ve got a spare ticket”—in either Basque or Spanish, depending on the person’s appearance, but when she finally does see a single woman, she thinks she’s walking too fast, it looks as if she’s heading off to do something quite specific, has no time to waste, and Julia doesn’t dare.
She wonders whether there are many possible interpretations for “I’ve got a spare ticket.”
The silk jacket with leather lapels and pockets looks tight on the man. She recognizes it right away—it’s the jacket that was too big for Martin. The man’s dark, with curly hair and some gray in his beard. He’s engrossed in a thick book that has a double magazine page wrapped around it to protect it. So she can’t find out what the title is. If she had any doubts about who he was, a friend patting him on the back and saying “hi, Kepa” cleared them right up. He answers hi back. There are around a dozen people between her and them. He goes inside first but then stops to talk with a couple at the foot of the stairs leading into the viewing auditorium itself, his back to her as she walks by. His voice is pleasant, deep; she’d describe it as very manly.
The theater’s fairly full, and the few free seats are dotted all around. She chooses a spot next to the aisle. She usually tries not to annoy people by asking them to let her through, and she hates people who just tuck their legs in or only pretend to, who don’t get up. There’s a girl of around thirty to her right, sitting on the back of the seat, her feet on the upholstered cushion, talking with a man who’s standing up several rows ahead. Almost everyone’s talking from one row to another. They give their opinions about the films they saw the night before, where they had dinner, how the food was. She likes going into movie theaters with plenty of time, enjoying the thought that she’s going to see a good film. It feels good. In general she feels closer to the people she sees at the movie theater than to people in the street or in bars. Some men look at her as if they know her; she knows some of them, too, from having walked past them on the street. Four rows in front of her, a man who’s standing with his back to the screen and looks as if he’s keeping track of all the people coming in greets her seriously. She returns his greeting in the same way. As always, she has the sensation that people who go t
o the movies by themselves, especially women, get looked at as if they don’t have any friends and so, aware of this, they get uncomfortable and try to look inscrutable.
Finally she sees him walking along the aisle, looking left and right for a free seat, and she only just stops herself from asking the dumb girl next to her to take her feet off the seat. If she and the person she’s shouting with in the other row were each to move down one, she’d have a free space next to her where he would be able to sit. She’d like him to sit next to her. Right then, she looks at him, and he lifts his chin up, smiling as if he knew her. But he’s never seen her before. She, too, greets him by raising her chin, but then looks behind her, feeling ridiculous as she realizes that he could be saying hello to somebody there. When she turns around again, she sees him moving along a row with difficulty, going to sit quite a ways to her left. And he starts reading again straight away.
Max Frisch, Journal I-III
(Eine filmische Lektüre der Erzählung Montauk, 1974)
Ein Film von Richard Dindo
Frisch with his thick horn-rimmed glasses, his vision problems making one of his eyelids droop visibly, smoking his pipe with nearly imperceptible movements and almost continually.
Fifth Avenue Hotel. A uniformed employee sitting behind a desk says he remembers him well. He remembers, for instance, that one morning, at around ten, Frisch dropped his pipe as he came out of the elevator and when he, the employee, picked it up, Frisch thanked him. Thank you, thank you. They guy actually says “zank you, zank you,” imitating Frisch’s German accent. He also imitates him sucking on his pipe like a child with a lollipop. Then he asked him, “What is the weather like today?” continuing to imitate his voice.
Trattoria da Alfredo also appears, and it doesn’t look as agreeable as you would think from reading Montauk. It’s noisy, anyway.
Overlook. The sign promising a view across the island, the sign where Lynn suggested they meet. The lighthouse and the group of houses that appear on the cover of the English translation of Montauk. The beach is sad, and the hotel, which you get to by going down a feeble wooden staircase, is disagreeable.
The storyteller’s voice reads passages from the novel. A Ping-Pong table. Two solitary deck chairs on the sand. A girl with rolled-up blue jeans running along the shore.
Frisch and Brecht.
The heads of the Berliner Ensemble.
The still photo of Marianne. One of those beautiful, dark Germans. Marianne and Frisch. The house at Berzona doesn’t look particularly pretty, either. It’s ugly, in fact.
Ingeborg Bachmann on the television. She, too, is beautiful, but not as much so as Marianne. She has the swollen face of a woman who drinks.
Frisch in his television appearances. His speeches.
Triptych. Extracts from the French version of the play, which she finds boring.
She’s only interested in what Frisch says.
More shots of Montauk, the lighthouse, the sad beach, the deck chairs.
A woman who pretends to be Lynn wearing tall boots, with her hair down to her waist, apparently dyed straw blond, crossing First Ave / 46th St., where, apparently, Max lost sight of her.
There’s a quarter of an hour break before the second film. Several spectators get up and leave, but most of them stay there and are talking vivaciously. People saying hello, making arrangements for the night . . . Not much being said about what they’ve just seen. The girl next to her, who’s sat on the back of the chair again, didn’t find it very interesting. She looks Italian, quite good-looking and sophisticated. A large bald man dressed all in black suggests they go out and have a wine, “porque todo esto es un rollo”—because all of this is very boring—and the girl takes him up on the offer.
Julia stays sitting down, looking at the man, who hasn’t lifted his eyes up from his book. At one moment, he looks back, as if realizing she’s been looking at him, and now she’s absolutely sure he’s looked at her and gets embarrassed. She decides to get up. She still has the slight hope that Lynn might turn up and say she’s been away for a while and wasn’t able to get there on time. She asks the doorman if there’s any problem if she goes out to have a drink and then comes back, although she knows there isn’t. Many people do that. She’s hungry, she hardly touched the beans with all the trimmings, and she decides to grab a sandwich. That way she won’t have to make the inevitable French omelette by herself since her mother and Zigor won’t be back until after dinner.
She decides to go to Paco Bueno, because it’s close and they do good battered hake sandwiches. It’s all traditional fare. There are people there, but it’s not crammed. The hake looks good—the batter is thin, the egg isn’t splattered, it’s light-colored but with a touch of yoke. She orders a glass of wine, too. She seldom goes into a bar by herself and mostly just to grab a café con leche, never wine—cultural mores.
“Did you like it?” the man says from behind her. She doesn’t answer right away, because her mouth’s full, and in any case, she doesn’t know quite what to say. “The film, I mean; I know you like the sandwich.” She can’t help laughing. She points to her cheek to say that she can’t answer because her mouth is full. She wouldn’t like to give an opinion he doesn’t agree with, or be negative. He orders a hake sandwich for himself, and she, finally, tells him the truth: it’s a little disappointing. Not too much, she adds, because she wasn’t expecting much in the first place. Lynn had warned her it wasn’t great.
“My name’s Kepa,” he holds out his hand. It’s large and warm. “I’m Julia.” He knows she’s Julia. She should ask him how he knows, but she doesn’t. But she lifts her hand up to her neck instinctively, as if he’d mentioned Flora Ugalde. “I know Martin,” he says. He seems to think that’s reason enough to have recognized her. She thinks about saying she knew he was a friend of Martin’s, but she has to admit she only recognized the jacket. He lifts his glass and touches it to hers. They drink. He takes a long sip. He also knew that she was going to be at the movie theater. Lynn told him.
Has she had any news from Lynn?
Julia tells him she hasn’t heard anything from her in days. She tells him about Maureen’s arrival and Martin’s theory that she’s killed Lynn, trying to be funny, but not managing it. She never manages to repeat his witty remarks successfully. Kepa hasn’t heard anything, either. He says it seriously. And he doesn’t know anything about Abaitua, either, only that he’s not working. Julia’s very surprised by him saying that, by him revealing so much about their friendship. She prefers to be discreet and, to change the subject, asks what he thought of the documentary.
He didn’t like it at all. Going around looking at places Frisch went to, something like “Napoleon once slept in this bed.” His television appearances were interesting, the interviews with him and the bits of conferences, all of which showed how sincere Frisch was. They laugh about Frisch being surprised, unable to understand Brecht wanting to be buried in a steel coffin. When he wondered, “To protect himself from what?” and his later reflection, “We didn’t know him.” A disappointing conclusion for somebody who wrote so much, he says, adding that Frisch, on the other hand, is somebody we know very well. He was merciless with himself, sincere, displeased with the world, frustrated by his lack of relationships with women, obsessive. They laugh again, remembering what the writer’s mother said to him when he was fifty-five: Why did he insist on writing so much about women if he didn’t understand them? Kepa liked seeing Bachmann. He only knew her from photos, as did Julia, and her voice didn’t disappoint him. She, too, thinks Bachmann looked like a drinker. “A woman who’s lived,” Kepa says. An interesting woman, in any case; she probably wasn’t easy to get along with. It reminds him of the passages Frisch writes in Montauk and in his diaries describing their life together. Their journey back from Rome in a Volkswagen with no headlights. Sitting drunk on the ground and believing she could feel the planet going around. Kepa thinks that
Beckett wrote somewhere that he had the same impression after drinking whiskey, and he’s felt the same thing himself on occasion. What they laugh most about is the passage in which Frisch and his wife are having dinner with a friend—feeling unappreciated, left out, he gets up from the table and comes back with a waste paper bin on his head and says, “Don’t worry, just go on as if I weren’t here,” unaware that the friend is his wife’s very public lover. They laugh, but then Kepa says that the scene could well be one of Faustino Iturbe’s, but as he finishes saying that, he seems confused, as if he regrets having said it. Julia keeps quiet. She would rather he didn’t mention Faustino Iturbe.
He says Frisch reminds him of Martin, or the other way around, they’re very much like each other. It’s an unavoidable subject. Julia agrees that there is a connection in their writing styles, but no more than that. She doesn’t know why she says that she doesn’t think Martin would be capable of going to Egypt with a dying friend who wants to see the pyramids. Why this sudden impulse to show her disaffection for Martin in front of this man? She doesn’t know, but she can’t help underlining the same idea by bringing up that friend of Frisch’s he only mentions by his initial, W, and who he looks up to in every sense: socially, intellectually, and even physically. Martin’s too proud for that. Martin couldn’t be friends with somebody brighter and more attractive than himself, and he would have felt humiliated if somebody richer and more elegant than him ever offered him clothes. Kepa asks her if she thinks that’s so important. “Martin himself gave me this jacket.” He pulls at the lapels as if inviting her to touch the cloth if she wants to. “In fact, it’s of the highest quality, and he never wore it,” he adds humbly. He doesn’t seem to realize that Julia really wishes she hadn’t said anything, and she goes back to concentrating on eating her sandwich. He picks up another mushroom pintxo before Julia finishes her own. There’s no doubt he’s a good eater, but she doesn’t find that unattractive. She agrees to another wine, even though she knows it’ll go to her head.
Martutene Page 93
