She fell silent for a while.
“What am I going to do?” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to study chemistry now. I’ll have to go back to Albiztur.”
She took a white handkerchief from one of the drawers in her bedside table and dried her tears.
When she fell asleep, I called my brothers. They weren’t there, but I left the same message for both of them: “Izaskun is in Eibar.”
She died two weeks later, without ever mentally leaving the town where she had spent her youth and where she had been happier than anywhere else. She talked a lot, but made little sense. There was just one day when she did manage to make herself understood. She confused her carer, Rosa Mari, with one of her school friends and thought she was coming back to Eibar in the train after sitting her exams in Vitoria. She was feeling happy because she thought it had all gone very well, especially the exam in chemistry, and then she started describing something ‘really funny’ that had happened during the oral exam in philosophy. A student from another school, who clearly hadn’t done his revision and kept giving the wrong answers, had so infuriated the examiner that, at one point, the latter leapt up, waving his arms in the air and shouting: “Will someone please bring me some hay for this donkey!” My mother laughed when she told the story.
“That’s how I’m going to remember her,” Rosa Mari told us when she came to offer her condolences after the funeral. “Laughing.”
*
We were in the restaurant eating callos, and some of the friends with us were discussing the best way to cook tripe. One said that he cooked it as they had in the nineteenth century, adding a glass of white wine to the sauce, another one followed a Karlos Arguiñano recipe and mixed it with other sorts of offal and coated it in batter, but left out the bay leaf.
One of the women at the table was extremely thin, but spoke with great enthusiasm. My older brother whispered to me that she talked like that not because she liked tripe, but so that no-one would suspect she was anorexic.
“It seems that in your case your enthusiasm is more theoretical than practical,” my brother said to her, pointing to her almost untouched plate.
“It’s too greasy, that’s why I haven’t eaten very much,” she said. “The chorizo definitely adds flavour, but you need to cook it on its own first to get rid of the grease.”
“Have you seen who’s over there?” said my brother, ignoring the woman’s explanation and pointing at an old man standing by a nearby table.
At first, I didn’t recognise him. Then I recalled what he had looked like thirty or forty years ago. At the time, he had criticised our mother for teaching in Spanish rather than Basque in the village school, a criticism that had wounded her deeply. Seeing the man in the restaurant, and thinking that he had probably attended the funeral, enraged my brother.
The situation was beginning to change. Our mother’s death had taken us out of the current of daily life, installing us in a separate place, a dream place. For a time, from the moment of her death to her burial, all our thoughts had been focused on her; but as my brother’s reaction showed, we were now waking up and returning to reality.
*
The Mercedes was parked in front of the restaurant, and two young men who were looking at it started asking us questions when we came out into the street. My older brother refused to answer, and they didn’t insist.
“You could have parked somewhere else,” my younger brother said to him. “Why did you have to park it here in full view of everyone? What are you trying to prove?”
My older brother did not respond, and my younger brother returned to the charge.
“Everyone’s really very impressed with your new car, not to mention the black orchids. I’d like to know just how much each of those flowers cost.”
“Your problem is that you don’t know how to enjoy life,” my older brother said.
“Look, don’t argue now. Wait until tomorrow,” I said and went off to find my own car.
We left our childhood village behind us. We left the separate place in which our mother’s death had deposited us. We went back to being our usual selves.
NEWS
(POST SCRIPTUM)
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL, NOVEMBER 26, 2008
“Reno Police arrest James Biela for Denison’s murder.
“The Reno police have arrested James Biela for the murder of Brianna Denison. According to the police, Biela’s girlfriend, who cares for their four-year-old son, found two items of women’s underwear in his pickup truck. She told a friend, and that friend rang Secret Witness on November 1.
“According to the affidavit, Biela declined to give a D.N.A. sample, saying that he had nothing to do with the murder of Brianna Denison, and that his girlfriend could provide an alibi for him.
“Biela’s girlfriend called the police saying that she could not account for his whereabouts in the early hours of December 16 and January 20, and she gave them permission to take a D.N.A. sample from her son.
“The D.N.A. matched that found at the Denison murder scene and at the scene of the sexual assault on 16 December. This was confirmed by Chief of Police Michael Poehlman. The D.N.A. also matches that found at the scene of two other attempted kidnappings that occurred in the environs of the Reno University campus.
“According to the police, James Biela worked as a pipe fitter on the new university buildings from spring to fall 2007.”
SFGATE, OCTOBER 31, 2008
Experts sure they have Steve Fossett’s remains
“The 3 Oct., 2008 picture provided by the Madera County Sheriff’s Department shows wreckage from the fuselage of Steve Fossett’s plane near Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Searchers have found what appear to be two large human bones near the crash site of Fossett’s plane in California’s Sierra Nevada, along with the adventurer’s tennis shoes and driver’s license. The investigators have carried out laboratory tests and say they are now sure they have found the remains of Steve Fossett.”
MESSAGE FROM A MOTHER ON THE SCHOOL WEBSITE, MAY 2, 2009
“Hello, my friends, I wanted to tell you what happened to Mary and a friend of hers yesterday afternoon.
“4.10 p.m. Mary and her friend were walking from Waldens to the Whire Caughlin House.
“At one point, a white Ford Mustang with a blue flash down the side drew up beside them.
“The driver wound down the window and told them to get in the car. Both girls refused.
“They turned round and walked back towards Waldens. The driver then told them that he needed their help to find a doll.
“The girls again refused and carried on walking. Then the driver got out of the car.
“The man had half his face covered with a scarf and was wearing sunglasses and a Reno University baseball cap. He said: ‘Get in the car so we can fuck.’ At this point, the girls ran towards Waldens. The man did a U-turn and followed them as far as the lights at McCarran and Mayberry.
“The girls ran to the house of a family member near Waldens.
“The guy then drove off towards Roy Gomm Elementary School.
“That night, I went to the police with my husband. The guy did everything he could to persuade the girls into his car.
“It’s just terrifying. We feel so lucky to have our little girl with us.
“Please send this message to all the mothers in the neighborhood and explain to your kids what happened.”
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL, JUNE 3, 2010
“Brianna Denison’s killer, James Biela, gets death
“The murderer of Brianna Denison, James Biela, 28, has been sentenced to death. After nine hours of deliberation, the verdict was unanimous: James Biela will die by lethal injection.”
BERNARDO ATXAGA was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet who writes in Basque and Spanish. His books, including Obabakoak, The Accordionist’s Son, and most recently Seven Houses in France, have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His works have
been translated into thirty-two languages.
MARGARET JULL COSTA is the award-winning translator of José Saramago, Javier Marías, Eça de Queiroz, and Fernando Pessoa.
Nevada Days was designed and typeset in Galliard by Patty Rennie. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
Nevada Days Page 38
