With the arrival of spring, we began visiting the park once or twice a week. It was usually C., Monique Laxalt’s friend, who would suggest going for a stroll, saying that she needed Izaskun and Sara’s help to get her border collie, Blue, out of the house. We would walk to the park, which was only five minutes away, meet up with Earle, Mary Lore and Mannix, and do the whole circuit, which normally took about an hour. At first, Dennis used to come too, but he stopped doing so when an old college friend came down from Chicago to help him improve the university’s I.T. system.
The day after my trip to South Lake Tahoe, I spoke to the others about Sergeant Timothy Smith’s funeral service. In addition to Izaskun and Sara, there were four of us: C., Ángela, Earle and me.
“As it happens, there’s going to be a funeral here as well,” C. said. “For a Basque shepherd.” Her tone was deliberately enigmatic.
Earle expressed surprise.
“Here? At the monument?”
“And with no priests either.”
“Unheard of!” Earle said.
“Such things were unheard of once,” Ángela said. “All the shepherds were devout Catholics.”
C. did not respond at once. She had aroused our curiosity and was savouring the moment.
“Those were the dead man’s wishes,” she said at last.
“Did they kill him?” Earle asked. “The Basque community I mean, for being a bad Catholic.”
Blue ran over to us to fetch the stick that Izaskun and Sara had thrown for her, but C. picked it up first and made Blue wait for a moment, until Blue started barking; then she threw the stick as hard as she could. It fell into a bush.
“He wouldn’t have been easy to kill,” C. said “Apparently he was a giant of a man. Mary Lore told me about him. He worked on the family ranch.”
“Killing a man is easy enough, especially in Nevada,” Earle said. “Remember what happened to the boxer, Ringo Bonavena, at Mustang Ranch. A single bullet was all it took to despatch him to the next world. And Bonavena was a heavyweight who had won more than fifty fights.”
“So he was like our shepherd,” C. said
“Why? Was he a boxer too?” I asked.
“No, he wasn’t a boxer, but he was a frequent visitor to brothels, and not just to Mustang Ranch either. Mary Lore didn’t tell me that bit, of course, she’s far too discreet.”
The part of the park that extended as far as the mountains was on the other side of McCarran, and we always headed in that direction because Izaskun and Sara wanted to see the owl “who lived in a tree”. They had seen him once and, ever since, always insisted on going to visit him, even though he was rarely “at home”.
We went through the McCarran underpass and along a path. Izaskun, Sara and Blue ran on ahead and didn’t stop until they reached a small wood and a pond formed by a stream, into which Blue immediately plunged, splashing the bushes and grass all around. At that very moment, Izaskun and Sara started shouting. They had found what they were looking for.
The owl became agitated, moving his head from side to side and walking nervously back and forth along the branch. Blue kept barking, and Sara began clapping her hands.
A ranger who had been walking just behind us asked the girls to be quiet. Izaskun and Sara obeyed at once, but the presence of that uniformed woman only made Blue even more excited and she began barking even louder until C. whistled to her and she immediately ran over to join us.
“Sit!” C. said, and Blue sat.
“If you don’t leave him in peace, the owl will get angry and leave the park,” the ranger told Izaskun and Sara. She was in her fifties and had very short hair. The badge on her sky-blue uniform announced that her name was Dorothy.
“It would be a real shame if the owl were to leave, Dorothy,” Earle said, “but rather less of a shame if the geese left. Not all of them of course. A few could stay.”
Dorothy responded with unexpected good humour.
“Oh, I agree, sir,” she said and laughed loudly.
The meadows and paths of Rancho San Rafael should have been a delight for visitors to the park, but this was not always the case. There were more than a hundred geese living there and their droppings were everywhere. In some areas, it was like walking over white carpets of guano.
“It’s not entirely the fault of the geese, Earle. It’s your fault too. I think you’re the only person who comes here wearing white sneakers,” C. said once the ranger had left.
It wasn’t only his sneakers that were white. Earle was dressed from head to toe in white. He looked closer to fifty than seventy.
Earle did not respond. He was more interested in the shepherd’s funeral.
“His ashes will be scattered near the monument at six o’clock in the evening. Then we’ll all go back to Mary Lore and Mannix’s place for supper.”
“All of us?” Ángela asked.
“There’ll be about ten of us, and about the same number at the ceremony too.”
In the end, some twenty people turned up for the ceremony, more than C. had expected. The owner of the ranch where the shepherd had worked arrived accompanied by Mary Lore. He was carrying a small urn containing the ashes, and he and Mary Lore took charge of scattering the ashes on the area surrounding the sculpture. The very spot where, just the other day, Blue had been sniffing around for the stick thrown to her by Izaskun, Sara or C. was now the shepherd’s grave.
At the beginning of the ceremony, Mary Lore gave the name of the deceased, Policarpo Aguirre, then stood aside to allow the ranch-owner to speak. He began on a somewhat unfortunate note: “Apur bat ulerkaitza da hainbeste andrakaz ibilitako gizonak inor ez izatea hemen beragatik negar egiteko …” “It’s hard to understand why a man who went with so many women should have no-one here today to weep for him.”
He was wrong. A young girl of twelve or thirteen was crying bitterly. I looked at the man who was standing with his arms around her. He was tall and completely bald. Now and then he would look at me too. He seemed vaguely familiar, and I tried in vain to remember where I knew him from.
Standing next to Mary Lore was Natalie in a very elegant, pearl-grey dress; beside her stood the intellectual-looking young man who had come to the Thanksgiving supper with her; then there was Earle and the teacher at the School of Journalism who had played Beatles songs. Both men were wearing dark suits and white shirts. The suit looked rather better on Earle. The other people who had come stood in a group before the sculpture. Most looked like farmhands and seemed to be Mexican in origin.
The ranch-owner spoke at greater length in English than he had in Basque. He had been speaking for five minutes and showed no signs of stopping. Izaskun and Sara were getting bored.
“Why didn’t C. bring Blue?” Sara asked.
“Nobody takes their dog to a funeral,” Izaskun said.
“I can’t see Mannix or C. or Dennis,” I said to Ángela.
“They’re back at the house preparing supper. Mary Lore told me.”
The bald man was staring at Ángela now.
“Do you know that man over there, the one next to the tall girl who’s crying?” I asked.
Ángela said she didn’t.
The ranch-owner finally stopped speaking, and one of the Mexicans spoke instead.
“We ask God with all our heart to take our compañero Policarpo to his bosom. They say he often broke the seventh commandment, but we know nothing about that. We only know that he never broke any of the other nine commandments, and that all the time he worked at the ranch he was a good and generous friend.”
Now and then, a few people walking in the park came up to the monument, but as soon as they saw that a ceremony was taking place, they turned and went back the way they had come, in the direction of the arboretum, avoiding the ponds. The geese put in an appearance too and kept flying over our heads in twos or threes. They looked prettier in the air, cleaner.
The ceremony ended, and the ranch-owner thanked everyone present. Then I finally got a good look at the
man embracing the little girl. He was wearing a dark green velvet jacket, and, however loose and baggy, it could not conceal his misshapen body. He had a hunchback and a bulging chest. His legs seemed too long and out of proportion with the rest of his body. I was almost sure I knew who he was, and any lingering doubts vanished when he came over to me, holding out a pack of Dunhill cigarettes.
“Would you like one?” he asked.
“Adrián! What brings you here?”
When I saw him close to, his eyes took me back forty years, to the day when I first met him in the stables at Loyola. We may lose our hair, our eyes may acquire crow’s feet and bags, our eyebrows may grow sparse, but the look in our eyes doesn’t change. It might become darker, meeker, clearer, harder, but basically – beneath the disguise – it’s the same when you’re fifty as it was when you were sixteen.
“The shepherd who died was Nadia’s biological father, that’s why we’ve come. I’m her other father. Her cultural father if you like.”
As with the look in our eyes, our voice doesn’t change very much either. When I heard Adrián’s voice, I suddenly saw him as he was when he was a long-haired youth. As for his smile, it seemed more serene than I remembered.
He lit a cigarette and gestured to his daughter.
She had a Slavic air about her and bore a vague resemblance to Liliana, “the Russian flower”, who we used to see at the swimming pool.
“Hi, Nadia, how are you?” Ángela said.
Nadia was almost as tall as Ángela and Natalie. Her eyes were red from crying.
“A bit sad, but otherwise O.K., thank you,” she said. She had a very soft voice.
After supper, Adrián and I went out into the garden with the gin and tonics Mannix had made for us, and we sat down in the wicker chairs to talk. The other guests were gathered in the conservatory in two groups. To the left, sitting around a rectangular table, were the ranch-owner, Ángela, Earle, Natalie, Natalie’s intellectual-looking friend, the teacher from the School of Journalism, and Mannix himself; to the right, sitting at a round table playing cards, were Izaskun, Sara, Nadia, Dennis, Mary Lore and her three daughters. Dennis’s friend from Chicago, a man with a black beard, was with them too, and he would smile at me whenever our eyes met. The only person missing from the group of friends was C.
It was a warm night, combed (as the poet says) by the desert breeze. The red, fuchsia and green lights of the casinos seemed more muted than on other days, like boiled sweets. At that moment, Reno was, as Nabokov describes it in Lolita, a dreary town.
For a while, we sat like two surveillance policemen observing the people in the conservatory. Everyone seemed very happy. Mannix was doing most of the talking. The ranch-owner also had plenty to say. The teacher from the School of Journalism spoke quite a lot too, but seemed happier talking one-to-one, sometimes with the ranch-owner and sometimes with Natalie. Earle sat in silence, playing with his glass.
Ángela got up and joined Mary Lore, Dennis and the girls. Natalie stood up too and went to talk to Mannix. She wasn’t wearing the pearl-grey dress she had worn at the funeral, but a close-fitting red leather suit with a black top and red stilettos.
“Very sexy,” Adrián said when he saw her stand up.
C. came to the door, holding Blue by the collar.
“She’d rather be outside. Don’t worry, she won’t bother you,” she said, letting go of the dog. Blue immediately started whining. I called to her, but she didn’t want to stay with us.
Mannix came over.
“A few raccoons have made their home in a hole in one of those trees. Blue can smell them, that’s why she’s so excited,” he said.
He looked at Adrián.
“What did you think of the gin and tonic?”
“The best I’ve drunk in a long time.”
“Good, well, in exchange you can give me one of your Dunhills.”
We each took a cigarette, and Adrián lit them for us. His lighter was the same mother-of-pearl model I remembered from our schooldays.
Blue was crouched beneath a large tree in the garden, gazing upwards.
“The raccoons are in that hole in the trunk,” Mannix said. “Three babies and the mother. Blue would have to jump very high to reach them.”
He began walking back to the conservatory. He was holding his cigarette between thumb and forefinger as if it were a very delicate object.
“Come and join us if you like,” I said.
“No, I’m going back in. Alexander’s trying to solve a problem I have with my computer, and I want to see how he’s getting on. I’ll leave you two in peace.”
Alexander was Dennis’s bearded friend.
Blue followed Mannix, and as soon as she got inside, she ran over to the girls, where Sara flung her arms around her.
Adrián was still observing the group sitting at the rectangular table. Suddenly, he grabbed my forearm.
“Look over there, but be discreet. There’s a lot of below-table activity.”
Earle had his leg outstretched trying to touch Natalie’s leg, and the teacher from the School of Journalism was doing the same. Seated between them, oblivious to their manoeuvrings, was Natalie’s intellectual-looking friend, who was earnestly explaining something to her.
Earle and the teacher from the School of Journalism suddenly withdrew their respective legs. Adrián chuckled, as if to say, “What an absurd world, what absurd people.” He’d had the same laugh ever since our schooldays together.
“They were both trying to touch Natalie’s leg and ended up touching each other,” I said.
This time we both laughed. Adrián lit another cigarette and sat looking at the table where the girls were sitting.
“Being attracted to a pretty young woman is fairly normal, but very different from the feelings you have for your own children. I really love Nadia, and I play her all my records. She likes the Beatles, especially ‘Yellow Submarine’, although, personally, I still prefer ‘In My Life’.”
He began singing softly: “There are places I’ll remember all my life though some have changed, some for ever not for better …’
“A great song,” he said. “I understand it now, more than I did at school.”
“Same here.”
We raised our glasses in a toast. They barely clinked.
“The other day, I visited L. in hospital,” Adrián said. “He’s in a really bad way.”
I had been expecting this news for a long time, but it still affected me deeply.
“I’ve been writing to him fairly regularly since I’ve been in Reno.”
“Yes, I know. He said he really enjoys getting your emails. Does he ever reply?”
“Sometimes, but only briefly.”
“He doesn’t have the strength. When I saw him in hospital, he could barely stand.”
Blue came out into the garden again. She raced past us and sat under the tree where the raccoons were. We shouted at her when she began barking, and she immediately fell silent.
The darkness had thickened, and the neon lights on the casinos seemed brighter. Adrián made a gesture with his hand. He didn’t want to talk any more about L. Nor did I. It was too painful.
“My favourite casino is that emerald green one,” I said, pointing to the Silver Legacy.
“If you like we could spend a night gambling.”
I couldn’t do that. Brianna’s murderer was still on the loose, and I didn’t want to leave Ángela and the girls alone in the house. The police warned us on an almost weekly basis not to lower our guard.
“Why don’t we have breakfast together tomorrow? It’s late now, time to go to bed.”
As if in agreement, the group at the rectangular table were getting up as well. C. came out into the garden.
“Come on, Blue, we’re leaving. Say goodnight to the raccoons!”
“Which hotel are you staying at?” I asked Adrián.
“Ascuaga’s Nugget. The ranch-owner is staying there too. He was the stepbrother of Nadia’s biolog
ical father.”
“I have an idea, Adrián. Tomorrow morning, I’ll pick Nadia up from the hotel and drop her off at College Drive so that she can spend the day with Izaskun and Sara. Then you and I can go for a stroll by the Truckee river. You haven’t told me anything about Nadia yet.”
At that very moment, the three girls came over to join us. Izaskun and Sara were both tall, but Nadia was almost six inches taller.
“Can Nadia come over to the house tomorrow?” Izaskun asked. “It’s Sunday, and we’re free all day.”
“It’s already arranged,” I said.
“How are you doing?” Adrián asked Nadia.
“I’m fine,” she said in her soft voice.
THE STORY OF ADRIÁN AND NADIA
(ACCORDING TO THE VERSION HEARD ON THE BANKS OF THE TRUCKEE RIVER)
Adrián was the son of the owner of the biggest sawmill in Guipúzcoa, and the gnarled, misshapen tree that stood next to the pool in the Obaba river constituted the Centre of the young Adrián’s territory. There were other important places in his life too: the Colegio La Salle in San Sebastián, the School of Engineering in Bilbao and the hospital in Barcelona where he had been operated on several times during his adolescence, but his memory avoided them as skilfully as a prudent hand avoids the nails sticking out of a plank of wood. As for places nearer to home – the bars and restaurants in the village or the cinema that was only a mile or so from his house – he only visited them early in the morning or late in the evening, when he was less likely to meet anyone. He liked his neighbours and enjoyed chatting to them over a beer or a coffee, but he preferred to be alone. Often, in a restaurant or at the cinema, he would feel a sudden urge to go back to his Centre and, on the slightest excuse, he would get up and leave.
Nevada Days Page 29
