Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  Xabier, a distant man, within the fortress of his composure, made a gesture of approval and that was all. Not one word. Only that gesture, as if saying, fine. Or perhaps, I understand, it’s okay, I don’t have anything against you.

  Days earlier, the National Criminal Court had sentenced Joxe Mari to 126 years in prison. Xabier found out from Nerea, who’d heard it on the radio. They weren’t sure they should tell their mother. Xabier thought it rotten to keep it from her and called her, but Bittori already knew everything.

  Later, the years passed. Xabier just doesn’t feel like counting them and here he stays, in his office. He spoke a bit with his mother, he looked at the door, he opened one of the side drawers on his desk, where he keeps, he has no idea why, Arantxa’s plastic bracelet along with an already-opened bottle of cognac.

  22

  MEMORIES IN A SPIDERWEB

  Nobody knows this but me. What about her? Well, maybe she does remember the kiss, unless the damage to her brain has wiped her memory. Unless in those days she’d kissed so many boys that she’d lost count, or maybe she’d been so drunk that night that she wouldn’t remember what she’d done and with whom.

  And it’s that these girls, forty-year-old frumps now, when they lost their heads with a guy, they just wouldn’t stop, while the boys were naive when it came to erotic-love matters, at least I was. What Arantxa certainly doesn’t know is that she was the first girl to kiss Xabier on the lips.

  At the end of the workday, he’d gone into his office as usual, closing the door. On the desk, the photo of his father, the bottle of cognac. And with melancholy calmness, he made an inventory of the furniture, the ceiling, and the walls in search of memories.

  He could have left by then, but at home, on a workday, there’s horror. Even if he turns on all the lights, he’s pursued by a kind of half-light that coats the room in a tenacious filth, weighing down his eyelids. Every blink, clang, a persecution, whose onslaught he can only escape with sleeping pills. He often fought his loneliness among strangers, frequenting social networks under a false identity. He exchanged salacious items. With whom? No idea. With Paula, for example, or Palomita, pseudonyms behind which might be hiding a dirty old man from the province of Soria or a teenage girl from Madrid still up this late at night. He got into forums to argue, to defend political positions that disgusted him, making sure to include as many spelling errors as possible. And he also sent sarcastic notes to comment on articles in the digital columns of this or that newspaper, just for the fun of offending, of playing behind the mask of a false identity in order to overcome his incurable timidity and to feel himself to be other than the solitary forty-eight-year-old man he actually was.

  So quite often after work, Xabier preferred to stay in his office for an hour or two in case someone from the cleaning service or some member of the office staff walking down the hall saw light under his door and came in to chat with him for a while; but he also harbored the superstition that within that room his memories were more agreeable than all those he might dredge up at home. At the same time, he read journals related to his specialization, gave reports a quick look, or thought about old and, if possible, pleasant adventures from his past, until, under the influence of the cognac, he began to lose control of his thoughts. Having reached the threshold of drunkenness, he left the hospital until the next day.

  But he still hasn’t reached that moment and he’s drinking slowly, savoring the cognac and staring calmly at the wall in search of some sequence or other from his past. In the corner where the walls meet the ceiling, there is a tiny spiderweb the cleaning people haven’t noticed, a cobweb only perceptible to the attentive eye. Barely a shred of gray gauze abandoned by the inhabitant who wove it. And his memory is caught there, the memory of Arantxa’s kiss. How old could I have been? Twenty, twenty-one? And she? Two years younger.

  Things of no importance that happen in village festivals. People dance, drink, sweat, and everyone knows everyone else, and if you’re young and a breast comes within reach, you grab it, and if some lips come too close, you kiss them. Nothing, crumbs devoured by oblivion, which does not keep Xabier’s memory from suddenly recovering them as his gaze becomes ensnared in the spiderweb.

  It’s before he goes into the army, and he’s studying medicine in Pamplona. He’s got a reputation for being a drip, being formal, locked within himself; in sum, for being what he is, a serious guy, why not be frank? Friends? His usual gang, before successive marriages disbanded them. Not a drinker, doesn’t smoke, is not a glutton, not a sportsman or rock climber, but despite all that well thought of because he’s part of the human landscape in town, he went to high school with the other boys, he’s Xabier, as much a part of the village as the balcony on the town hall or the linden trees in the square. You might say that the future is waiting for him with open arms. He’s tall, good-looking, but even so has no sex life. Too rational, too timid? According to his friends, at least some of that must be the case.

  He takes a sip of cognac without taking his eyes off the small spiderweb. Why is he smiling? It’s just that it amuses him to evoke the episode. On one side of the plaza the Saint John’s Day bonfire is blazing. The streets are packed with people. Children are running around, happy faces are shining, tongues are licking ice cream, uninhibited neighbors are shouting to one another from one side of the street to the other. Heat. But isn’t he living in Pamplona? He is, but he came to spend a few days with his family (and to have his mother wash his clothes), to enjoy the old village and have a few drinks with his buddies. It’s just at sunset when they’re coming down the street and run into Arantxa and her girlfriends. Laughter, more bars, and she’s talking to him, about what? He can barely understand her in all that revelry. And she goes on talking to him, he realizes that for sure, with her face very close to his. Her face, and despite mascara and lipstick he only sees the oldest daughter of his parents’ best friends, almost a cousin he’s seen as a little girl playing with Nerea a thousand times.

  Which is why when, in the red half-light of the pub, she suddenly puts her hand on his fly, Xabier doesn’t understand the meaning of the move. He thinks it’s a joke, some mysterious mischief. And he stares as in a dream at the tiny remnant of the spiderweb and sees himself kissed, and powerfully, by someone he considers practically a member of his own family. Arantxa’s anxious tongue seeks his own. It’s as if he’s paralyzed by shock, also by a growing terror, when he understands that this fusion of lips lasts longer than it should and seems to be getting serious, and some family member, some acquaintance, his own friends, Nerea, who’s in the back of the bar, might at any given moment turn their eyes toward them. Arantxa, sweat and perfume, presses her body against Xabier’s side. She growls into his ear, I’m soaking wet, and asks him if he wouldn’t like to slip out with her and go somewhere where no one can see them. For Xabier, even now, an incestuous proposition.

  Now, in his office, he starts laughing. How could you pass up an opportunity like that? The girl offering herself, the girl filled with desire, and desiring and willing. But no, because of Pamplona, the career. He felt embarrassed, wouldn’t dare, was guided in the secrecy of his student room by masturbatory laws that led just as directly to pollution but without the complications of having a girlfriend. And he looks at the spiderweb and laughs. And he looks at his father’s tranquil brow and laughs. And he takes another swig from the cognac bottle and laughs. He laughs without knowing why, because in reality he feels dirty, slimy, moldy with sadness. Be just, be upright. Yes, aita. He notes that he’s reached the point where if he drinks one more drop he’ll have to leave the car in the lot and take a taxi. So he puts the bottle back in the drawer, damn the whore, why didn’t I screw her? Answer: because you are an asshole. His father, from the photo, and Xabier gets insolent: you shut up. It would definitively be better to call a cab.

  23

  INVISIBLE ROPE

  He thought: it’s only five minutes. I’l
l go down and come back. He’d previously found out when she’d be arriving and when he was just about to enter the corridor that led to the physiotherapy room, Itziar Ulacia called to him from behind. Dr. Ulacia was alarmed, waving her arms, as if to stop him. They know each other, and spoke familiarly.

  “Let me warn you that her caregiver isn’t with her today. Her mother is. You’ll see.”

  Xabier thanked her and retraced his steps.

  The next day, at about the same time, Dr. Ulacia called him on his cell. That if he wanted to see Arantxa he could go downstairs perfectly well, because this time she’d come with Celeste.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The Ecuadorian woman who takes care of her.”

  This time, Xabier wasn’t as determined as he was the day before. Do I go or not? On the one hand, his mother traveled to the village every day, got off the bus at a downtown street, walked into the shops; in a word, she showed herself. And now I take advantage of these physical-therapy sessions to approach the daughter. She’ll tell about it on the iPad at home. What would her parents think? They’re always going to suspect we’ve elaborated a plan to get some kind of revenge on them.

  Compassion, an invisible rope tied around his neck, pulled hard on Xabier. Don’t deny it. You feel sorry for her because she’s an intimate part of your past. But aren’t you indirectly feeling sorry for yourself? He was talking to himself without realizing people were starting to notice. Two white robes that crossed his path interrupted him in surprise. Was something the matter? No, nothing. And he sought the solitude of his office even though he had a case that needed immediate attention.

  Heat. He unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt, tried to loosen the noose, but it was hopeless. The rope constricted, so finally he could do nothing but allow himself to be led.

  You wouldn’t believe it: all day surrounded by broken bodies, often dying, hopeless bodies; bodies with only hours left to them, mothers of two or three children who would never live to see the next Christmas, boys (most of them bikers) chosen for death in the prime of their youth, all that flesh with first and last names that would soon appear in the obituary columns, and he there, immune to compassion, keeping calm, austerely, professionally consoling desolate relatives, doing his job (be just, be honorable, be upright) with all the diligence you can muster. And nevertheless, now he was experiencing a different feeling, even though he had no medical responsibility at all for Arantxa. Or was it for that very reason that the case made such a deep impression on him: because he had no chance to establish with her the kind of connection he would have with any patient? The question remained floating in the air, in the dull light of the fluorescent bulbs. There was no time to find an answer, because he’d already left the elevator and entered the rehabilitation floor, walking quickly because of the incessant pull of the rope.

  At the end of the hall he spotted, sitting on a bench against the wall, the Ecuadorian. The diminutive woman with Andean features was guarding the wheelchair. When the doctor approached her, she quickly stood up and greeted him with a slight bow. Xabier, inexpressive, ceremonious, responded, without looking her in the eye.

  And he entered. Two physical therapists were joking with a ten- or twelve-year-old boy. They’d tied him to a gurney and stood him upright. With a clinical eye, Xabier conjectured: cytomegalovirus. He said hello, they said hello, the boy stared at him through his magnifying lenses, and a bit beyond Xabier saw Arantxa stretched out on a gurney before she saw him. The young woman who attended her signaled that she knew about his visit. She was going through a soft stretching and contracting knee exercise with the patient. As he approached, Xabier noted hypertonia and obesity. Looking at her in profile, with her short hair, he wouldn’t have recognized her at first sight. Then he did when he stopped next to the gurney, where he could see her features at close range. Perhaps to mitigate the effect of the surprise, the physical therapist had prudently informed Arantxa in a relaxed way that he’d arrived:

  “You’ve got an important visitor.”

  Xabier waited for Arantxa to react before offering her his hand. The first second was all surprise, perhaps fear. Then she offered him a smile, the result of a sudden tightening of her face. The right side of her body was paralyzed. She squeezed his hand in her right hand. Then she made a face Xabier couldn’t interpret.

  “How are you doing?”

  Awkward, inhibited, with no gift for speeches: he said he was very sorry for what happened, that Dr. Ulacia had told him all about it. Arantxa listened joyfully, with an expression of undeniable fascination, as if she couldn’t believe that the well-mannered gentleman in the white robe standing before her was really Xabier.

  “Are they treating you well?”

  She nodded.

  Xabier managed to concoct a circumstantial question to the physical therapist about the exercise she was going through with the patient, and while she gave the obvious explanations, Arantxa tried to say something and shook her good hand. At first, they didn’t understand her; but one of the physical therapists taking care of the boy a few feet away understood that Arantxa was asking for her iPad. She went out into the hall and asked the Ecuadorian woman to bring it in. Which she did. Arantxa took off the cover and wrote with an agile finger: “I’ve always liked you, you bastard.”

  With all the strength in her facial muscles, she smiled. A bit of saliva collected at the corner of her mouth. She looked so happy, with such a joyful expression on her face. So now or never: Xabier took the bracelet out of the pocket of his robe, grabbed Arantxa’s right hand as if he were going to take her pulse, and slid it onto her wrist.

  “I’ve been saving it for you all these years. Please, never give it back to me.”

  She stared up at him for a while, serious, before writing: “What are you waiting for? Give me a kiss.” He kissed her on the cheek. Then he said he had to go, that he wished her the best, and muttered other polite things. Arantxa signaled him to wait a moment. She wrote, using one finger on the keyboard, and then showed him the screen: “If you have a stroke, we can get married.”

  24

  A TOY BRACELET

  A simple geranium put her in a bad mood and now this. This is worse than the geranium, but the fact is (what did they think, that I was just going to give in?) it’s part of the same maneuver. If she’d discovered the pot on her own, she’d have remained perfectly calm. So, a flower pot, who cares? But no, this one and that one had to come with the gossip:

  First Juani:

  “Did you see? She’s put a geranium on her balcony.”

  And Miren kept silent and did not take a look. After a while, walking down the street, another woman:

  “Hey, did you see?”

  This time, too, she had no desire to see, even if there were only a few steps separating her house from the one belonging to those people.

  The geranium drove her crazy that night, because Joxian came home from the Pagoeta telling the same story, that someone had said what will Miren think when she sees it. So the next day she went to see the famous pot, and there it was. A common geranium plant with two red flowers, as if saying I’m back, I’m planting my flag here, and now you’re all just going to have to get used to it.

  To Joxian she said:

  “A crappy geranium, and when the cold comes, unless she puts it in the house, goodbye.”

  “It’s her house. She can do what she likes with it.”

  And just when she’d convinced herself that the best thing to do was forget about it and go on with her life, which gave her more than enough headaches by the way, and besides, what’s she going to do to me when I’ve got the whole town on my side, the doorbell rang. She opened the door and before Celeste had crossed the threshold with the wheelchair, Miren recognized the bracelet. That’s all I need. First the geranium and now this. She took advantage of the greeting kiss to examine the bracelet closely. There wasn’
t the slightest doubt. Images of a distant summer flooded into her mind, a hot afternoon with a village festival. Franco had died the year before; that, too, she remembers. The two couples strolling along with all their kids. They’d all laughed at the bertsolaris’ songs. Miren less than the others because Joxe Mari was ruining her afternoon. A restless boy, a difficult boy, a damn nuisance. Always hanging from the side of the bandstand and a bertsolari chewed him out. He tried to jump off the merry-go-round while it was still moving, somewhere along the way he’d gotten a grease stain on his shirt and Joxian was proud of the fact that he had a son who behaved like a mountain goat.

  “He’s not a mountain goat, my dear. He’s a healthy boy.”

  And then he split a seam on one side of his trousers, and I felt like giving him a good smack right there on the street. All the work involved in washing and sewing was for her. She muttered: “Just you wait and see when we get home.”

  Joxian bought each child an éclair. And that pig Joxe Mari finished his in two bites. He then took a bite of Nerea’s and of course she didn’t want to eat it after that. And Joxian bought her another—what, are we rich or what? Then Joxe Mari tried to steal Gorka’s; the poor little guy couldn’t have been more than five, but still he defended himself, and his brother got mad and smashed the éclair in his face and we had to clean him up with a napkin from the bar. He also stained his T-shirt. More work for me.

  Txato and Bittori were about to go on vacation with their kids to Lanzarote, where they would buy us an ugly statue of a camel. Out of respect, we put it on top of the television set, because they might come by the next day and ask about it. And Bittori going on about Lanzarote, the hotel, showing off, laughing because neither Joxian nor Miren knew where Lanzarote is. So, it got a bit late and the two families decided to go home to give the children dinner and put them to bed. That way they could go out later without their kids and enjoy the night, and Miren, well, all she really wanted to do was to get into bed and rest.