Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  “Know what, amona? Yesterday, at exactly that time, I passed by that street with Carme in her car. The bomb could have blown the two of us up.”

  “Don’t shout, there are people here.”

  Ainhoa, her eyes wide, got carried away by her enthusiasm.

  “And a neighbor lady told us that the firemen had to pull body parts down from a tree.”

  “Enough, enough, we’re eating.”

  The two had walked into a bar not far from the boardinghouse to eat some snacks.

  “Try to understand that this mess with your mother is going to cost me a ton of money. So I’ve got to be very careful about how much I spend. Tomorrow we’ll buy food in some supermarket and we’ll eat it in the room even if it’s cold. So we won’t die of hunger, okay?”

  Ainhoa, still immersed in her own thoughts: “I don’t like the fact that they kill people. We’re far away from Euskal Herria. Why are the people here guilty for what happens there?”

  “Listen, did we come here to eat or what?”

  “The bomb could have blown Carme and me up.”

  “That doesn’t happen, because they’re really careful when they set off an explosion. What do you think, that they just blow anyone up? Did you ever hear of an explosion at a school or a soccer field full of people? The bombs are to defend the rights of our people, and they use them against the enemy. The same ones who tortured osaba Joxe Mari and are still torturing him in jail. If you don’t understand that, then I don’t see what you can understand.”

  Miren stared directly at her granddaughter. Ainhoa looked carefully to the right and carefully to the left, but not at the eyes of her grandmother. They were sitting at the table in a corner, and the girl, fifteen years old, was grudgingly nibbling at her snack.

  “My aita, too, doesn’t like the killing.”

  “It’s your aita who’s put these ideas in your head.”

  “I don’t know anything about ideas, amona. The only thing I’m saying is that I don’t like all the killing.”

  “They kill and they are killed. That’s how wars work. I don’t like wars, either, but what do you want? That they should go on pounding the Basque people until eternity?”

  “Good people don’t kill.”

  “Sure, that’s something else Guillermo told you.”

  “That’s something I say on my own.”

  “When you’re grown up, you’ll understand. Come on, finish up and let’s go, I’ve had a busy enough day without having to put up with your nonsense.”

  Then Ainhoa, as if talking to herself, said/whispered, her voice cut off by an attack of tears, that she wasn’t hungry anymore and left the rest of her snack, more than half, on her plate. Miren, her face stern, also didn’t finish off her own.

  20

  PREMATURE MOURNING

  Saturday morning. Ainhoa suffered a big letdown. Big? No: enormous. But it wasn’t the first: it began when her grandmother, with whom she didn’t get along, arrived. Guillermo: “Who can get along with a woman made of marble?”

  The Saturday letdown hurt Ainhoa more than a slap in the face. Before they left for the hospital, she asked her amona to buy her a phone card for her cell. Miren made a sullen face when she heard the word “buy.” Later: it’s getting late, where do you buy things like that, how much does it cost? And no sooner had the girl, in her sweetest voice, mentioned the price than Miren said no, no, and no, and she went on to enumerate all her expenses.

  “If it’s just to pass the time chatting with your girlfriends, you can wait, because you’re going on Tuesday. How lucky you are! I’ll be stuck here taking care of your mother.”

  “Ama for sure would have bought me the card.”

  “But I’m not your ama.”

  Miren went on talking and complaining and never stopped complaining, while Ainhoa, resentful, looked any which way, at the other passengers in the bus, the houses, the pedestrians, at anything but her grandmother’s face, ostentatiously refusing to speak to her.

  Talking from the hospital, alone, she told her father, aita, this is what’s going on, I won’t be able to call you, et cetera. He: “Hang on until Monday.”

  And they agreed to meet that day at a certain hour in the reception area of the hotel where Guillermo had reserved a room. Long in advance, Ainhoa was there waiting for him, very put together, with all her belongings in a suitcase, since the last thing on earth she wanted was to go back to the boardinghouse.

  And Miren, what did she say? What could she say? Well, that the father and the daughter had pulled off a good deal. When she got back to the boardinghouse at about eight and discovered that her granddaughter’s things weren’t in the closet, she understood what had happened. Well, then, so much the better. More room for me and less expense.

  Guillermo got out of his taxi at the hotel entrance. The happy girl ran out to hug him. Questions, answers, rapid words, and at the end another hug, as if he were saying: stay calm, I’m here with you now, everything will be okay now; she: it’s been horrible, thank God you’re here. They barely spoke about Arantxa. Every single day, Guillermo called to get information about her condition, which contradicted Miren’s belief that he was heartless; that his wife was of no interest to him. The only question he asked the girl was whether there had been any changes, and Ainhoa said no, that ama was still covered with tubes, but: “I think she’ll never move again.”

  They went up to the room, Guillermo showered, and then father and daughter strolled through the center of Palma. They went into one of the large stores, and Ainhoa bought the card for her cell, and before turning in, they had dinner on the terrace of a restaurant with views of the port.

  “I’m fed up with bananas and snacks.”

  In the sunset, the masts of the boats became silhouettes. There was a light breeze, which made it exceedingly pleasant to be there. Smiling suntanned faces everywhere, elegant ladies, and sparrows on the ground hoping for some edible charity. Ainhoa asked the waiter for a second and soon a third Coca-Cola in order, as she put it, to make up for those her grandmother had refused her on the previous days.

  “Aita, I’d rather not go to the hospital tomorrow. I just don’t want to see amona. You go, and I’ll wait for you in the hotel, and then, in peace, we can take the afternoon plane. After all, ama won’t know anything about it.”

  But there was no such flight. What? A change of plans. The girl didn’t understand. Guillermo was visiting Mallorca for the first time, and, of course, wanted to get something out of it. His boss had let him take off until Thursday.

  “Wow, aita.”

  Gestures that were requests for calm.

  “Tomorrow I’ll go to the hospital by myself. I’m sure one of the doctors will explain to me what kind of future your ama faces. It doesn’t matter to me if I run into amona. But if I do see her and if it’s possible, which I doubt, to have a rational conversation with her, I’ll explain to her the future that awaits me and which you and Endika already know about. When the visit’s over, I’ll come back to pick you up, and then we’ll have two days to do whatever we like. We can explore the island, go for a sail. Whatever you like. Only fun, I promise. But let’s keep amona in the dark because I don’t want her spoiling our lives.”

  Tubes, respirator, probes, machines, and, in the bed, the immobile body, her eyes open. Guillermo, wearing a surgical gown, plastic booties, craned his neck to get his face into Arantxa’s visual field. Her reaction? Nothing. No reaction again when he kissed her cheek. Only a slight blinking. Her eyelids didn’t manage to close completely. In a low voice (he’d been given instructions as to how he should speak), he told her he’d come to take care of Ainhoa, but it was as if he were speaking to a statue. He also said he was very sorry about what had happened to her. Because you just never know, and the walls have ears, and of course she was awake.

  “Do you hear me?”
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br />   Nothing. To experiment, he slowly pulled his face back and, yes, she followed him a little, not very much, with her eyes. Then, not discounting the possibility Arantxa could hear him, he thanked her for their years together, for the children they shared and the good times; he asked forgiveness for the bad times and began to shower her with whispered and heartfelt expressions of affection when his mother-in-law burst in, brows furrowed in anger. This despite the fact that hospital regulations stated that visitors were only allowed in the room one at a time during visiting hours, but the nurses obviously hadn’t seen her.

  Miren started up with the reproaches. The first because of his black shirt. He was in premature mourning. The fact is that he, gray slacks, black loafers, decided to wear dark clothing after his daughter informed him over the telephone days before that a priest had administered last rites to ama. And he, frankly, thought Arantxa could die at any moment. So with no bad faith, he packed dark clothing in his suitcase. Besides, what did he know, since he always let Arantxa dress him—she always bought his clothes and told him, every day, what he should wear.

  The issue mattered so little to Guillermo that he didn’t even bother to defend himself from his mother-in-law’s verbal assault. God, what a harpy. He wouldn’t even look at her. But the old girl kept on swinging, breaking the rule about speaking in a low voice. And the moment came when the accusations turned to money. At that point, Guillermo, enough is enough, decided to stand up to her. And he said this, and he said that, calmly, without shouting, without obscenities. And also to put a finish to it all:

  “My definitive separation from Arantxa has nothing to do with what’s happened. We settled all that long ago. Our children know all about it and accept it. So there’s no need to take it out on me or say only you carry the load. And how about some respect, if not for me, at least for your daughter, a person I’d never call a load. Unlike you.”

  He tossed her two fifty-euro notes. “Take this to cover any expenses my daughter may have cost you.”

  And he walked out.

  21

  THE BEST OF ALL OF THEM

  He remembered his promise that if he found out any new information he would tell her immediately. So, during a break at work, he closed the door to his office and called her.

  On the desk: a computer, papers, this, that, and the other, and a photograph in a silver frame. His father. The dead man’s gaze was direct, clean, good-natured, with some slight evidence of menace in the brows: I forbid you to be unjust. The face of a hardworking and efficient man, of few but well-defined ideas and an infallible business sense.

  His mother didn’t answer. Might she be in the village? He let the phone ring a good while. Fourteen, fifteen rings. If necessary, he would let the phone ring all day, until his mother understood that this was no wrong number and no survey being carried out by the telephone company, that this wasn’t the con man of the day trying to sell her paradise in the form of an advantageous (for whom?) contract, but him, come on now, I know you’re there. Sixteen rings. He went along counting them at the same time he made a tiny check on the pile of notes, and then his mother answered.

  A suspicious whisper:

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Something wrong?”

  He wondered if she recalled Ramón.

  “Which Ramón?”

  “Ramón Lasa.”

  “The guy who drove the ambulance?”

  “He’s still driving it.”

  So this Ramón Lasa is a peace-loving man, nationalistic, but not mixed up in terrorist activities, though he no longer lives in the village he still goes there a lot to visit his family and because he’s still a member of the local gastronomic society. Xabier ran into him in the hospital cafeteria. For sure he knows something. And even if he doesn’t, no big deal. To sound him out, he went over to him and asked out of the blue, as if when he spotted him standing at the counter stirring his coffee, his curiosity suddenly got the better of him.

  “Do you remember Arantxa?”

  “Of course, the poor thing. She comes in for therapy during the afternoon. I’ve driven her myself more than once.”

  To his mother:

  “So he wouldn’t suspect I’m investigating, I told him that I’d just learned that Arantxa had a stroke and I included some details: that it was in Mallorca, that it happened in the summer of 2009, you see what I mean. Nothing he didn’t already know. How awful, right? Which is true, because frankly I’m sorry about it, because of all the members of that family she was the best.”

  “The best? The only good one.”

  “What I wanted to do was to squeeze some information out of Ramón without arousing suspicion.”

  “Okay, get to the point. What did you get out of him?”

  Well, a few details that in the village were secrets for no one. First of all: the minute she ended up the way she ended up, her husband took off. The village verdict expressed by Ramón Lasa: he’s a hopeless bastard.

  “The bit about ‘hopeless’ he didn’t say. You can believe me that it was easy to guess from the emphasis he put on the word ‘bastard.’ He told me—you won’t believe this—that the guy has custody of the children. Just the daughter, because the son’s about twenty now.”

  “Does she live with her father?”

  “That I didn’t ask.”

  “Silly boy.”

  Alberto (it’s really Guillermo, but I didn’t say anything so I wouldn’t reveal that I know more than I’m showing) lives with another woman. Married or not, Ramón couldn’t be sure, because he has no idea if he divorced Arantxa. In any case, he’s never in the village. The children turn up to visit their mother.

  And he added:

  “Are you really interested in finding out if they were divorced? My mother will know for sure. If you want I can call her. She’s awake by now.”

  “No, don’t bother. It’s just that I found out a while ago what happened to poor Arantxa, and I was just stunned.”

  There was more. This Alberto (I know, I know, Guillermo for God’s sake) sold his apartment in Rentería and gave Arantxa her share. Also that a collection was taken up in the town with little banks in bars and shops, and with a raffle, and a benefit soccer match and Ramón doesn’t know what else, but the fact is that lots of people contributed to pay the bill for transporting Arantxa from the hospital in Mallorca and for her being admitted to a specialty clinic in Cataluña.

  Xabier looked straight into his father’s eyes. Be fair, be honorable, be upright no matter what happens and no matter what people say. His mother fell silent.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Go on.”

  “Ramón didn’t tell me the name of the clinic and I didn’t ask him so I wouldn’t reveal my true intentions. And I didn’t have to. It wasn’t hard to find out that Arantxa received treatment for eight months in the Institut Guttmann. Let me explain. It’s a center in Badalona dedicated to the treatment and rehabilitation of patients with spinal-cord injuries and brain damage. The best money can buy. Of course, that involves expenses way above that family’s economic level.”

  “As long as I’ve known them they’ve had money problems. And your father helped them out secretly, never expecting to be paid back. You see how they thanked us.”

  “The fact is that Arantxa received treatment in the Guttmann until she could finally return to the village, and now she gets rehabilitation with us.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s it. Did you go to Arruabarrena’s office yesterday? What did he tell you?”

  “Oh dear, I forgot. I’m so scatterbrained.”

  “It’s important you be examined.”

  “Important or urgent?”

  “Important.”

  They said goodbye, souls in pain, with cold affection, with affectionate coldnes
s. And Xabier, wearing a white gown, stared at the dots scattered over the top sheet of the sheaf of notes. Then he looked into his father’s eyes, don’t be unjust, take care of ama for me, and beyond the desk, the white door that one afternoon, many years earlier, how many?, twelve or thirteen, opened suddenly and there she was, with a mournful look on her face, standing on the threshold.

  “I’ve come to tell you that I’m the sister of a murderer.”

  He invited her to come in and sit down, but Arantxa declined his offer and just stood there.

  “I imagine you’re all having a hard time of it. I’m really sorry, Xabier. Barkatu.”

  On her lower lip a hint of sobbing. Perhaps that was why she spoke so quickly, so her tears wouldn’t break her voice.

  Arantxa, visibly nervous, spoke about solidarity, sorrow, shame, and at the same time brusquely placed on the desk a green-and-gold object that at first Xabier didn’t recognize. Speechless, uncertain, he became suspicious. He even shifted his weight back in his chair, fearing that her act involved violence. It was a simple costume-jewelry bracelet, a child’s toy.

  “Your father bought it for me when I was a little girl, during a fair in the village. We were all walking in the street, you won’t remember, and Txato bought one like it for Nerea. I was jealous. I wanted one, too. My mother said no. Then Txato, without saying a word to anyone, brought me to where this black guy was selling cheap jewelry and bought me this little bracelet. I came to give it back to you. I found it in the house and don’t feel worthy of keeping it. I would give it to Bittori, but I don’t have the nerve to look her in the eye.”