The previous year the girl had moved to Zaragoza to study law. The student apartment she shared with two girlfriends on López Allué Street had no phone. Once when she visited her, Bittori wrote down the telephone number of the bar on the street floor in case of emergency. Cell phones? As far as she could remember, few people used them back then. Until that moment, Bittori had never been in a situation where she had to call her daughter urgently. Now there was no choice.
Because of the tranquilizers, the shock, and the grief, she was in no condition to string together two phrases, so Xabier, at her request, called the bar, explained who he was, said with sorrowful calm what he had to say, and told the bartender where he could find his sister. The extremely considerate man: “I’ll send someone over right away.”
Xabier added to please tell his sister to call home as soon as possible, repeating that it was extremely urgent. He did not tell him the reason for the call, because his mother asked him not to. By then, television and innumerable radio stations had spread the news. Xabier and Bittori supposed Nerea had already learned what happened on her own.
But she didn’t call. The hours passed. The first official statements: a brutal attack, a cowardly murder, a good man, we condemn, we unconditionally reject, et cetera. Night fell. Xabier again called the bar. The bartender promised to send his son again with the note. Nothing. Nerea didn’t call until the next morning. She waited in silence while her mother finished crying, and wailing, and cursing, and telling her in a broken voice the details of what happened. Then, decisively, she said she wasn’t leaving Zaragoza.
“What?” Bittori’s sobs suddenly stopped.
“You’re to be on the first bus home. Be serious. Your father’s been murdered, and you’re happy.”
“I’m not happy, ama. I’m very sad. I don’t want to see aita dead. I couldn’t stand it. I don’t want my picture in the papers. I don’t want to put up with the stares of the people in town. You know how they hate us. I’m begging you to try to understand me.”
She spoke quickly so her mother couldn’t interrupt and so the grief that was rising from the center of her chest didn’t cut her off. She went on talking with her eyes blurred with tears:
“No one in Zaragoza can connect me with aita. Not even my professors. That will let me live here in peace. I don’t want anyone at the law school whispering about me: look, that’s the daughter of the guy they killed. And if I come back to town now and they show me on TV, every dumbbell at the university will know who I am. So I’m going to stay here, and do me the favor of not judging my feelings. I’m as broken up as you. I’m begging you: let me choose my own way to grieve.”
Nerea hung up before Bittori could get a word in. She didn’t come back to town until a week later.
She thought it through. People in Zaragoza (from the law school, the neighborhood, friends) who might know that she was the daughter of the last, soon the next-to-last, victim of ETA: her roommates. Her last name is fairly common in Euskadi and turns up frequently in other places. In case someone asks her if she’s a relative of the businessman from Guipúzcoa murdered by ETA or if she knows him, she’ll deny it all.
Before her roommates found out, that boy José Carlos came to pick her up to go to a neighborhood bar where they were supposed to meet up with other students. They all intended to go, later that afternoon, in several cars, to a party at the veterinary school. While they joked and laughed, the news hit Nerea. Taking José Carlos aside, she asked him to say nothing to anyone and to go back to her place. They locked themselves in. The boy failed to find words of consolation. For a long time he was ranting on about the terrorists and against the current government, which does nothing, and because his desolate friend wanted him to, he stayed to sleep with her.
“Are you really in the mood?”
“I need it.”
And he excused himself beforehand in case he couldn’t get an erection. He never stopped talking:
“They killed your father, fuck, they killed him.”
Unable to focus on the erotic games, he cursed while she tried to close his mouth with kisses. At around midnight, she got on top of him and they consummated a rapid coitus. José Carlos went on muttering exclamations, obscenities, categorical rejections, until finally, overcome by fatigue, he turned over and stopped talking. Next to him, with the light out, Nerea spent a sleepless night. Leaning against the headboard, she smoked, reviewing memories of her father.
The telephone rang again. This time, Bittori answered.
“Ama, at last. I’ve been calling you for three hours.”
“How was London?”
“Fantastic. No matter how much I tell you, I still won’t say enough. Have you changed the doormat?”
11
FLOOD
Three days of biblical rain. At night in bed, Joxian nervously listened to the drumming against the roof tiles and the streets. During the workday at the foundry, whenever he looked outdoors he shook his head with growing disquiet looking at the continuous flood that blurred the nearby mountains and made the river rise dangerously. The garden, damn it to hell. And it never stopped pouring. It’s been three days already and probably more to come.
The vegetables themselves were the least of his problems. I can just replace them. The trees? They can take it. Even the hazelnut bushes, the hell with it. He was more concerned about losing his tools or that the flood had washed away the wall separating the garden from the river along with the shed where he kept rabbits. He talked about it with a workmate.
“The wall, if you’d used cement, you’d have no problems.”
Joxian: “The wall or the wall’s mother doesn’t really matter. But with the wall gone, the river probably washed away a ton of dirt. I’ll have a huge hole there. More like a ravine. The rabbits most likely drowned. And the grapevine, well, I don’t have to tell you.”
“That’s what you get for putting the garden on the erribera.”
“We’re screwed, because that’s where you get the best crops.”
At the end of the workday, Joxian went directly from the factory to the garden. Was it still raining? Pouring. As he came down the hill, umbrella, beret pulled over one ear, he saw that the Ertzaintza had stopped traffic on the bridge. The rapidly flowing, filthy water was inches from lapping over the guardrail. Nice picture! If the water is almost jumping over the bridge, what damage will it have done in the garden, which is on lower ground? He detoured around a block of houses. Because, of course, it’s one thing if the river overflows and quite another if, along with flooding, it pulls things up, drags them away, and destroys everything. He pushed a doorbell button, explained his intention with his mouth next to the intercom, and they let him in. And in a friend’s house, from the balcony that overlooked the river:
“Holy mother! Where’s my garden?”
Tree trunks were like foundering canoes, branches poking up, sinking into the light-brown water. An oil drum passed by, rusty, bouncing along like a puppet. Rising from the river’s rage was a strong smell like mold, moss, and stirred-up putrefaction. The friend, perhaps to rein in Joxian’s laments, pointing his finger at the opposite bank:
“Just look over there at the Arrizabalaga brothers’ workshop. They’re ruined.”
“My rabbits, son of a bitch.”
“This is going to cost them a fortune.”
“After all the work I put into that. I even made the cages myself. Damn!”
A few days went by. The rain stopped. The river receded. Joxian’s rubber boots sank calf-deep in the water-soaked soil of the garden. The muddy trees survived; as did the hazelnut bushes and, miracle or good roots, the grapevine. The rest, enough to make you weep. The wall that bordered the river disappeared, simply yanked right out. Not a single tomato plant or leek left, nothing. On the lower part, next to the shore, the current had washed away a vast swath of dirt along with everything
that was there: raspberry bushes, gooseberry bushes, the txoko for the calla lilies and roses. The shed lost the boards on one side and the roofing. The rabbits were in their cages, caked with mud, swollen, dead. The tools—God knows where they were.
During those days, Joxian, in his free time, just sat on the sofa in the dining room, his elbows resting on his thighs, his head in his hands. A statue of sorrow. People asked him questions, he didn’t answer.
“Want the newspaper?”
No acknowledgment. Until finally Miren lost patience.
“For God’s sake, if losing the garden hurts you so much, go down and fix it up.”
Docile, he got up. It wasn’t as if he’d been waiting for orders.
The next day he seemed more animated. He went back to playing cards with his friends in the Pagoeta. He returned home from the bar almost euphoric because his friends had given him the idea of building a reinforced concrete wall between the garden and the river.
“After all, how much can it cost you? Pennies.”
He told Miren over dinner, conger eel in sauce, wine laced with soda water, scratching his right side, that Txato had offered to deliver a truckload of dirt to replace what had been washed away.
“It must be good dirt, right? From Navarra. Taking advantage of a shipment. He’ll bring it free of charge.”
But first he had to construct his wall. And before that a cleanup. Too much work for one man. When would he do it? After work?
Miren: “You figure it out.”
She told him to ask their sons to help. So Joxian waited up for Gorka to come home and said to him: Gorka, on Sunday, lend a hand, you and your brother. And the kid said nothing. That boy’s got no get-up-and-go. To put some life in him, his father: “When we three finish we’ll head for the cider bar and have a steak. What do you think of that?”
“Okay.”
He said nothing more and Sunday came. Sun, good temperature, and the river once again between its banks. Joxian abandoned taking part in the current phase of the bicycle tour because while the bike is important, the garden is more so. The garden is his religion. He said it in those words once in the Pagoeta, as a retort to some jokes his friends were making about him. That when he died, God shouldn’t bother him with paradise or other such nonsense; let him give me a garden like the one he has now. And they all laughed.
Out in the street:
“Did you tell Joxe Mari to be here at nine?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
“What? Why?”
Then he told his father, he had to tell him, there was no way out of it.
“For two weeks now, my brother hasn’t been living in town.”
Joxian stopped dead in his tracks, an expression of surprise on his face.
“Well, he never said a word to us. At least not to me. To ama maybe, I don’t know. Or did all of you know and me not? Where is he living now?”
“We don’t know, aita. I imagine he’s gone to France. I was assured that as soon as he can he’ll tell us.”
“Who assured you?”
“Friends in town.”
They said nothing more as they made their way to the garden. As soon as they got there, Joxian asked:
“If he’s in France, how the hell does he get to work?”
“He quit.”
“But he hasn’t finished his apprenticeship yet.”
“Even so.”
“And handball?”
“He gave that up, too.”
The two of them alone did the work, at opposite ends of the garden. At about eleven, Gorka told his father he had to go. He gave him, how odd, a farewell hug. They never hugged, and now, why?
All alone in the garden, Joxian went on shoveling filth until dinner. He used the hose to clean here and there, set the tools rescued from the mud out to dry in the sun. “France? What the hell has that fool got to do with France? And if he’s not working, how is he living?”
12
THE GARDEN WALL
They constructed the garden wall. Who? Joxian, Gorka, who promised to bring a friend that never turned up, and Guillermo (Guillermo!), in those days still a pleasant and cooperative son-in-law.
Years before, Arantxa, in the kitchen:
“Ama, I’ve got a boyfriend.”
“Really? Someone from our town?”
“He lives in Rentería.”
“What’s his name?”
“Guillermo.”
“Guillermo! Isn’t he in the Guardia Civil?”
Anyway, without Txato’s help they’d never have managed. How the hell could they manage? It’s that Txato, aside from lending them the formwork, arranged for a cement truck—Joxian never found out how much it cost or even if the man who operated it had charged or not charged. Txato said to him: take it easy, the construction company owes me favors. So Joxian only had to pay for the cement. He still hadn’t finished fixing up the garden or repairing the shed, but he was pleased by the sight of a shiny new garden wall that would stand up against floods, at least, according to Txato, floods like the one of the previous month.
A problem: opposite the garden wall was a hollow big enough for a fish pool. Fish this size, said Joxian, holding up an imaginary fish the size of a tuna. Txato simply said: forget it, we can fix that. He fulfilled the promise he made in the Pagoeta. He was slow to fulfill it. How long did it take? About two weeks. Until there was a shipment for Andosilla in Navarra. On the return trip, Txato ordered the driver to bring a load of garden soil. Apparently he was owed favors in Navarra, too. Many people owed Txato favors. And Joxian, of course, was thankful. And if it’s necessary to pay, we’ll pay.
Another problem: they unloaded the dirt; Txato at the wheel, the dirt of a more reddish color than the original soil, which, apparently, was good for grapevines. Moreover, they discovered that the amount they’d transported did not fill in the hollow.
Joxian: “We’d need at least three truckloads.”
Solution: “We’ll put in terraces.”
“You can divide the garden into two levels, connected by steps or by a ramp for the wheelbarrow. Then, if the river floods again, the water will settle in the lower part of the garden. With a little luck you’ll only be screwed out of half the garden and not all of it like this time.”
Txato was quick, always thinking, he had ideas. In that, everyone agreed. To him the old praise applied: cleverer than hunger itself. Joxian, on the other hand, lacked mental agility. Things as they are. If he’d been brighter, he’d have been able to be a partner in the trucking business. But he hesitated, lacked spirit. Miren talked him out of it. Txato was the businessman and the brave man. In town, all the neighbors said it until from one day to another, TXATO ENTZUN BOOM BOOM BOOM, they stopped mentioning him in their conversations, as if he’d never existed.
Yes indeed, he had ideas, but he also had a problem. What was that? This one:
“They’ve sent me another letter.”
ETA, armed organization for the Basque revolution, writes to you to demand the delivery of twenty-five million pesetas as your donation for the maintenance of the armed structure necessary for the Basque revolutionary process toward independence and socialism. In accordance with the information services of the organization, etc.
He lost sleep.
Joxian: Of course, who wouldn’t lose sleep?
“What about your family?”
“They don’t know.”
“All the better.”
To protect them from nightmares and because at first, how naive, but how naive! He thought the problem had a quick solution, as if it were a simple business transaction. I pay and I’m left in peace. The letters, signed with the serpent wrapped around the ax and the symbols of ETA, had been sent to the business. The first 1,600,000 pesetas. Without saying a word to anyone, he got into his car a
nd drove to the meeting in France with Father Oxia, ETA’s money collector, of the moment. He came back to town relieved, listening to music as he drove along the highway. A dirty trick, but what could you do about it? A few days later, there was an attack with one dead, a desolate widow, orphans, and declarations of condemnation and rejection, and Txato felt a twinge of guilt, damn it to hell, thinking that his money might have been used to buy explosives and pistols, and Joxian said he agreed, that he understood. But after all he did pay and he thought that for a time, perhaps a few years, they’d leave him in peace. Right, right. Not even four months had passed when the next letter came.
“Now they’re demanding twenty-five million pesetas. That’s a lot of money, a hell of a lot.”
Joxian, in solidarity: “These things shouldn’t go on among Basques.”
“Tell me the truth: do I look like someone who exploits others? My whole life, all I’ve ever done is work like a mule and create jobs. Right now I’ve got fourteen employees on the payroll. What should I do? Move the business to Logroño and leave them stranded without salaries, insurance, or any other damn thing?”
“They must have made a mistake and sent you a letter meant for someone else.”
“I’m not poor, no. But between the expenses, these taxes, those taxes, and other things I won’t mention so I won’t sound like a broken record, but you can just imagine: repairs, gasoline, outstanding debts, and other stuff like that, don’t think I’m swimming in liquid gold. Swimming? Bullshit! I don’t know what people think. I’m still driving the same car I did ten years ago. Some of my trucks are really old, but where am I supposed to get money to buy new ones? I took out a loan to buy two new trucks. And what really hurts is that some of the men I’ve given jobs to are probably the ones who told the terrorists all about it: listen, this guy’s rolling in cash.”
He nervously shook his head, bags under his eyes from sleeping badly.
“But it’s not just about me. Listen. That gang of murderers doesn’t scare me. They can shoot me, then I’ll have some peace. I’ll be dead, but at peace. In the letter they talk about Nerea. They know where she studies.”
Homeland Page 5
