“Maybe you’ll be nicer some other time.”
She felt a sudden rush of anger. Where did he get off? And on top of that, right there in front of everyone, including her girlfriends. She refused to look at him, much less answer. He went on talking to her nape. Both flattering and brazen, pretending they’d known each other all their lives. Finally, Arantxa retrieved her coat. Then, full of rage, she turned to the boy and said, disdainfully, that he should stop bothering her, that she had a boyfriend.
“That’s not true.”
“And what do you know about it?”
“It isn’t true because Nerea told me.”
That was disturbing.
“Are you spying on me?”
He answered with provocative composure that he was and added that he was certain she’d be difficult but that in any case he was not going to give up just like that. So now you’re lecturing me? Who does this jackass think he is? Arantxa felt an enormous desire to slap him.
Now she smiles, so many years later, looking into the mirror remembering the scene. The girls gathered at the waiting area of the parking lot. Are we all here? As usual, Nerea was missing, still standing at the entrance to the discotheque making out with who knows who. Once they were all present, they made their way, happy and chatty, to the bus stop. Arantxa sat next to Nerea. She asked her friend, who said:
“His name is Guillermo. He lives in Rentería. He’s a bit serious but very good-looking. And he’s got a touch of the poet. When he dances close he says very pretty things that seem taken from books. And yes, he asked me what your name is and if you have a boyfriend. Maybe he’s fallen for you.”
“Well now, if he’s such a catch, why didn’t you keep him?”
“He’s not my type. His family is from a town near Salamanca.”
“So what?”
“Nothing, but as I said, he’s good for a dance. For more than that, no.”
She indeed had her points, not any touch of the poet exactly, but she certainly was racist and abertzale. Then things don’t go the way we’d like and sometimes go exactly where they should least go, isn’t that true?
The next Saturday came. The purple lights, the slow music: she saw him coming. I have no idea why he bothers when I’m just going to brush him off again. And she was intending to do just that, darling mirror, Saturday after Saturday, whenever he came over to ask her to dance. She imagined the question, the expectation reflected in his eyes, perhaps a reproach or an expression of disillusion as the denouement to the scene and finally his back, the back of a failed lady’s man, as he drifted away. What Arantxa did not foresee was that his cologne preceded him.
“Well, care to dance?”
Seven months later, she introduced him to her parents.
42
THE LONDON INCIDENT
Looking into the bathroom mirror, speaking without a voice: I remember; boy, do I remember. Those things you just can’t forget. After the London incident, the two of them agreed that, let’s see, first she would meet his parents—he was an only child—and later on he would meet her family. Guillermo had his suspicions, but did not fully grasp Arantxa’s strategic design.
“I wash and shave every day, I respect you, I’ve got a job. Why do you think they won’t like me?”
“My town is smaller than Rentería. In my town, everybody knows everybody. You have to introduce new people little by little.”
“What does this have to do with your family? Don’t you all get along?”
“We get along.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“You’d understand if you went into my brothers’ room and looked at the walls.”
Hold on a minute. It really wasn’t necessary for both of them to meet the respective fathers and mothers, brothers, uncles, and whatever else. So? It was Arantxa’s idea to establish a formal basis to their relationship after the London incident.
As far as we know, he behaved properly. Which did not diminish the fact that Arantxa was hurt he didn’t go with her. Yes, it hurt me, but he had to work. Except for that one thing, he was decent in everything else. If he’d been a bastard, she would have ditched him and saved twenty years of married life. The final years were awful, true, but Endika and Ainhoa wouldn’t have been born. It’s too late now to fix things, anyway.
Seeing that Arantxa was terrified, Guillermo offered to find someone reliable who could make the trip with her.
“Well, it would have to be more someone I would find reliable and not you. And above all, who’s going to pay for all of it? This is already going to cost us an arm and a leg.”
He had a heart-to-heart with Nerea. Look, this is what’s happening. Arantxa’s friend got excited about the idea of a trip. Wow, a weekend in London. My name is, I come from. And of course she didn’t have the slightest problem in hitting up her adorable aita, who after all is a businessman, for the money to pay the airfare, the hotel, and various expenses. She was euphoric, impatient to board the plane. Arantxa, worried, had to ask Nerea to calm down, and said to her:
“Look, this isn’t a vacation.”
“I understand, I get it. No need to worry. I’ll be at your side the whole time.”
She put her hands, one on top of the other, on her chest as if she were a saint on a postcard.
“Hello, London. I always dreamed about visiting you.”
“There won’t be any time for being tourists.”
“So what? The important thing is to be able to brag about being in England.”
Oh dear, Nerea was frivolous. Even so, Arantxa thought it unfair to get angry with her, since after all she was doing her an immense favor in coming with her, paying out of her own pocket (or Txato’s pocket, may he rest in peace) for the trip and the hotel.
Guillermo paid Arantxa’s expenses. All of them? Down to the last cent. Giving praise where praise is due: she didn’t have to convince him. He did not hesitate to part with a good slice of his savings. Because manias and defects, as you well know, mirror mirror, that man’s got them by the dozen, but he was never a cheapskate, never, neither with me nor with our children. Truth be told.
At that time, he was working as a junior administrator in Papelera Española. He earned a modest salary, but what do you want? He was young, not tied down with family obligations, and could save since he lived with his parents, who went on feeding him as they did when he was a boy, if in fact he ever stopped being one.
His father, who retired that year, had been working as an unskilled laborer in the paper company since the fifties. He remembered when Franco—a tiny little man in a suit and hat—came to inaugurate the new factory in 1965. The man arrived already married from a village in the province of Salamanca. They hired him at the paper factory and there he stayed, tied to a machine until he retired. With a good record, we may add, which facilitated the company’s subsequent hiring of his son.
A third person, aside from Guillermo and Nerea, knew about the London incident. Arantxa’s mother? No. Joxian? Are you kidding? Nobody tells him anything. Who, then? Nerea’s brother. Arantxa went to him, dying of fear, urgently asking for help. This is what’s happening. And she asked him to keep it a secret and Xabier of course did exactly that. In 1985, Xabier was still studying medicine in Pamplona. It was he who made the contacts, pulled strings, and found someone to organize everything connected with the London clinic for the pregnant friend of his sister.
No one else ever found out. Not Guillermo’s family and not Arantxa’s other girlfriends. Not even, later on, her own children. She never wanted to tell them. Why do it? Tell her mother? She’d have to be insane. That was all she needed. Considering how religious she was.
Nerea flew the afternoon before on a regular plane. She had a few hours to stroll around London, see tourist sights, go shopping, take photos, and take advantage of having money and free time. Arantxa, a day l
ater, took a charter with thirty or forty women from all over Spain who were going to London for the same purpose she was. Some not as young (thirtyish, she calculated) and others just entering puberty. Among them, a girl of about fifteen accompanied by a serious-faced gentleman who might well be her father.
Arantxa had a scary moment in the luggage-pickup area. The suitcases came out one after the other but hers didn’t. Oh, ama. The people who’d traveled with her on the plane were leaving, the conveyor belt carrying the luggage moved with a noise she thought increasingly sinister, and her suitcase did not show up. Could they have lost it? Could another passenger have taken it without realizing? When finally it appeared, she let out a sigh of relief. Arantxa found herself all alone. Then she had problems figuring out where she was. It took her a long while to find the exit. Again she felt all alone. Even worse, lost. What should she do? She decided, breathing anxiously, to take a taxi. Her hands shook when she showed the driver a page of her notebook where she’d written the name and address of the hotel. Along the way the man spoke to her several times; she said nothing because she knew not a word of English. It took so long to get to the hotel that Arantxa thought: damn it, I bet this black guy’s kidnapped me. And a voice inside her was saying that the driver was probably taking the long way to run up the meter. Finally, they reached the hotel. Standing outside the entrance, a bus from which emerged some girls who’d traveled on the same plane. Son of a…If only she’d been a little wiser, she could have saved the taxi fare.
At the reception desk, there was Nerea, who promptly made her head pound telling about her adventures on the streets and in the shops of the city.
“Nere, don’t leave me alone.”
They agreed they’d sleep in the same bed that night.
“Are you afraid?”
Jesus, what a question. Afraid? No sooner had she gotten into bed than she began to toss and turn. She got up because she felt nauseated. Her bare feet on the old, worn-out carpet. Her muttering, laments?, in the bathroom. Panic had seized her right down to her bones. And it wasn’t only about the operation, though there was that, but not so much, because Xabier, over the telephone, had given her a series of calming explanations and she more or less knew what to expect. The problem was made more serious by her complete ignorance of English. She did not think herself capable of traveling alone through London, finding the places she was supposed to find, asking for help if she had to. An unbearable sensation of abandonment gripped her. And sitting in her wheelchair before the mirror she remembers that she thought: look here, if I get lost, if a car runs me down, if I pick up an infection in the clinic because of a lack of hygiene or who knows what, if I twist my knee going down some stairs, and if I can’t get home on time and, finally, if for some reason or another my parents find out, if Don Serapio finds out, if the whole town finds out, what a nightmare.
As it happened, this she found out the next day, her mother and Nerea’s mother, who in those days were intimate friends, went, as they usually did, to San Sebastián to have a snack and they spoke about their daughters, both coincidentally traveling, no kidding, using words Arantxa could easily imagine.
“Nerea took off on Thursday for London with a university friend.”
“Really? My Arantxa is in Bilbao. She went yesterday to go to a concert by some singers but don’t ask me who they are because I know nothing about modern music.”
The girls got up early. Nerea went downstairs to have breakfast. Arantxa, who could swallow no food, made do with a few sips of water. How nervous! At the agreed time they left the hotel—one confident and chatty, the other with her heart in a knot—for the street where the office of the organization that managed these affairs was located. There were recently remodeled buildings next to others that looked old; some, actually, with a lot of filth on their facades. The one that housed the organization was one of those. Nerea was the first to spot it from the opposite sidewalk.
“There it is, the one with the blue door.”
As soon as they entered they were making disapproving faces, then came pure, hard horror. Seriously. Why? Well the narrow staircase that led to the second floor was covered with trash. Even a toilet bowl tipped on its side. What the hell was a toilet bowl doing on a stairway? And the same question applied to the plastic bags, papers, a bottle, spilled milk. How disgusting.
“I’m going back, Nere. I’d rather have the baby.”
“Calm down. Since we’ve come this far, let’s take a look, then you can make a decision.”
Nerea caressed her hair, kissed her cheek, consoling, tender; in sum, she convinced her. And, hand in hand, they went up and waited their turn in a room holding several chairs and a leather sofa with split cushions and posters on the partitions. Arantxa recognized a girl who had traveled with her the previous afternoon on the plane. Shortly after, the girl, who was about fifteen, arrived accompanied by the serious man who might have been her father. There were more people. Also a man, half asleep and filthy, who looked like a drug addict. And the girl from the plane heard them talking and asked if they were Spaniards. Nerea said they were Basques and then the girl, without being asked, told her story.
Finally, they were seen. Nerea translated as best she could. Arantxa signed where she was told to sign. Then she was given a document for the doctor who one hour later examined her in a clinic in the heart of London. They walked down the garbage-strewn stairs. Arantxa in a low voice:
“Would you mind telling me why you and the lady in the office were laughing?”
“It was nothing. She thought I was the one who…You get me.”
Out on the street a vehicle from the organization, filled with young women and those accompanying them, was waiting. First it went to the clinic and from there, once the necessary tests were done, to a large house outside the city center. It was a residential neighborhood with low houses decorated with widow’s walks, chimneys, and gardens. Trees lined the sidewalk and the streets were clean; nothing at all like some filthy slum. Hmm, that’s better.
What else? Mirror, how curious you are. A jolly nurse who spoke broken Spanish received them. Arantxa waited in a room decorated with modern furniture and houseplants. She remembers a girl with Asiatic features, another who might have been from India, and several Spanish women who had been on her plane.
And that was it. After a forty-five-minute wait, she was given a plastic bracelet with her name on it and a paper hospital gown, and she was asked to remove her clothing. The doctor arrived, a man with pleasant features, a graying beard, and nice manners, a man who exuded serenity. Dr. Finks, that was his name. A. Finks. He did his job, did it well, and that was all, mirror. Only one thing: when I woke up from the anesthesia, I gagged as if I were going to die, but since I had nothing in my stomach, I didn’t vomit. And Sunday, early in the afternoon, that I remember as well, it was easy to sense a different feeling on the plane. All those women looked more relaxed and of course were chattier than they were on the flight out.
43
A FORMAL COUPLE
The London incident united them. From then on, they were a real couple, the kind who like to walk down the street hand in hand. Some time later, they were married. He came to meet her at the airport with a bouquet. He was consoling and tender; caressing, but courteous. He used unusual expressions in melodic phrases. His care was sincere and she pressed her forehead against his chest to show she forgave him the untimely, unexpected pregnancy.
She gave Guillermo a bottle opener she bought at the last moment in a souvenir shop at Heathrow. The handle was a miniature red telephone booth. Years later the bottle opener reappeared in the apartment they shared. Arantxa did not hesitate to toss it into the trash. The gadget brought back bad memories for her and perhaps also for Guillermo, who never missed it (or perhaps he did and just never mentioned it).
Accomplices in the secret, the two of them made a tacit agreement that they would never men
tion the matter of the abortion. But the subject was there, always there, in their conversations, in their exchanged glances and, which was worse, at least for Arantxa, like a stain following their children.
During the two decades of their marriage, Arantxa and Guillermo made several trips abroad. To Paris with the children, twice to Venice, to Morocco, to Portugal. Never to London. Neither one ever suggested it. And at times, not always, but at times, when speaking with an old girlfriend she happened to run into in the street or as she was taking care of some administrative arrangement, if she was asked how many children she had, Arantxa would stop and think. Not for long, half a minute, just long enough not to miscount. Three? Two.
Over the years, the London incident (what would that child who was never born be like today?) withdrew to the edges of her mind, never falling completely into oblivion. Suddenly, because of the stroke, it was present again in her memories. God’s punishment? Assuming God exists. Masochistic whims of a brain trapped in an inert body amusing itself with the torture of episodes from the past? And it happened right in the Palma hospital ICU. Immobile, tubes everywhere, a night she cannot forget, that painful adventure which even now, with her in her wheelchair in front of the mirror, in her parents’ house, unavoidably returns to her memory.
The episode united them. Now they saw each other every day in San Sebastián. During afternoons of fine weather they would sit on a bench; they shared a bag of roasted chestnuts or peanuts or some pastries or bonbons, and kiss. On rainy days, the only thing they could do was kiss in some café or movie. Guillermo, who was a smooth talker, would say pretty things in Arantxa’s ear. When nine o’clock came, each one would take a different bus and so, kisses and sweet words, one afternoon after another.
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