“Those things you understand without explanations.”
“I went straight home. My father came home from work. I hugged him, soaking his shirt with tears, and I told him that yes, I was going to study far away. So that’s it, in a little while I’ll look for a place in Zaragoza, a city I know nothing about. We try to give meaning, a form, an order to life, and at the end life does with us whatever it wants.”
“You’re telling me!”
56
PLUMS
You ask yourself, was it worthwhile? And the only answer is the silence of these walls, your face older and older in the mirror, the window with its bit of sky that reminds you there is life and birds and colors outside—for other people. And if you ask yourself what bad thing did you do, the answer comes back: nothing. You sacrificed yourself for Euskal Herria. Very well, dear boy. And if you ask again, the answer comes: I wasn’t smart, I was manipulated. Are you sorry? He has days of depression. It pains him that he did certain things.
This is his life for one year and another and another until he loses count. He thinks, he rethinks. You have to fill in the loneliness somehow, don’t you? The truth is that with every day that passes it’s harder for him to stand the presence of his comrades in jail. Should he pray? No, that’s not for him. For his mother, yes. She comes to see him once a month and says:
“My boy, every day I ask Saint Ignatius to get you out of jail or at least to put an end to your being so far away and bring you closer to home.”
At first, he looked for company. In the patio, he would chat about sports with the regular prisoners. Within the ETA prisoners group, he was known to be a hard man, loyal, orthodox. The years, the silent walls, his mother’s eyes in the meeting room ate away at him, forming an internal hollow as if he were just the bark of an old tree. More recently he would use any pretext to be by himself, and precisely in this instant, when he hadn’t foreseen he would be remembering, he sees himself in the telephone booth just outside of town, a finger in his ear to block out the sounds of passing trucks. Josune, nervous, doesn’t want problems. In the town, everyone knows they took Koldo away and that the Guardia Civil tried to capture them. They agreed that Josune would tell Gorka to come up to the quarry. And so many years later, in his cell, Joxe Mari realizes that if Josune’s line had been tapped by the police he would have put the girl in serious difficulties, and let’s not even talk about Gorka.
Jokin:
“What does Chubby have to say?”
“That she’ll look for my brother and that we shouldn’t get her into trouble.”
“Did you tell her she should ask Gorka for some size 42 shoes?”
“I forgot.”
“Your brother, what size does he wear?”
“How the fuck would I know?”
Patxi’s envelope also reappears in his memory. Its content wasn’t at all bad: six thousand pesetas. This is beginning well. And a note that ended with words of encouragement and a Gora Euskadi askatuta. In the note, an address in Oyarzun and the nickname of the person who would meet them there. They should ask for Txapas. There’s no signature, no letterhead, nothing that might lead the police to the Arrano in case the letter was intercepted. A smart guy that Patxi, not like me or poor Jokin. They robbed him of his life, they robbed me of my youth.
It was a good distance to Oyarzun and Joxe Mari hadn’t eaten. On top of that these bicycles are more for riding around town than for highways. Jokin, too, hadn’t eaten or had breakfast that morning or eaten dinner the night before. Sure, but it isn’t the same; he isn’t as big, doesn’t have the same appetite Joxe Mari does. They made a pact. Because of course they couldn’t be arguing out on the highway and they couldn’t waste time with a three-course dinner and turn up late for their appointment in Oyarzun. They would stop to eat on the road. Okay. They went into a bar in Rentería and calmed their hunger at the bar with some sandwiches.
“We could have taken a bus in Donostia and saved ourselves the trouble of all this pedaling and sweating.”
“What we have to do is save money. We can’t just spend it all on the first day.”
The man they met with in Oyarzun, fortyish, was fully informed; but you could see he was suspicious. An unwelcoming face on him.
Later on, alone, just the two of them:
“Maybe he doesn’t like being called Txapas.”
“He can go screw himself.”
He greeted them, drily, in Basque. He stared at them without blinking, asked yes-or-no questions, it being understood that we’re not here to make small talk. Little by little his brow softened, and eventually he brought them to a cellar where they could spend the night. A strong smell of carpenter’s glue. No bed, no mattress. Not even a stinking sink. And when Jokin made even a slight complaint, the guy said that if they didn’t like it, they could leave. Alone: this is the struggle. What were they expecting? Luxury, comforts? Joxe Mari emptied his bladder in a corner. Then they spread some cardboard boxes on the floor. A night in the ruined house at the quarry and now this. Two days in a row without supper. Fatigue helped them sleep. They didn’t sleep much, but something is better than nothing. Early in the morning, on a whim, Joxe Mari decided to poke around. Going out a low door at the end of the hall, he walked into a garden that flanked the house. Nothing much, a garden wall, grass, and four plum trees. The plums were unripe, but some were turning yellow. Joxe Mari nibbled at ten or twelve where they were least sour. A short time later, Txapas appeared. In cutting, authoritarian fashion he said:
“We’re leaving.”
Explanations? Zero. So what? We didn’t ask for any, either. And the bikes? They stayed in the cellar. Who knows if twenty-odd years later they might still be there, rusty, with flat tires. Txapas used a van to transport them to a solitary spot from which, about half a mile away, you could see the parking lot of the Mamut superstore. And there was morning mist down below, but you could already see above that the sky was clear and that it was going to be a sunny day. The van stopped where a dirt road began.
“This is where you get out.”
To each one he gave a copy of the newspaper Egin and a pack of Ducados.
“You wait here alongside those trees.”
He told them to carry the newspapers and cigarettes so they were clearly visible. He reminded them of the password and wished them luck. And as soon as the two friends got out he left.
Joxe Mari:
“One of us could run over to Mamut and buy food and water. I’m as thirsty as a camel.”
“Don’t screw around. Suppose the person who’s supposed to pick us up comes along and only finds one. Hold out a little longer.”
A smile came over Joxe Mari’s face as he lay stretched out in the bed in his cell. What a pair of naive fools. At least they had cigarettes. Jokin began to look through Egin. Joxe Mari, and this is why he smiles after so many years, walked down a small gully behind them.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. He disappeared in the thicket. And for a few minutes he was hidden. He wiped himself with a couple of pages from Egin, not the front page, which was supposed to identify them, and rejoined Jokin near the trees.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
Minutes later, a car stopped opposite them.
“At what time does the crane pass by?”
“We have to sweep the snow away from the door.”
Curt greetings. This guy too wasn’t much of a talker, but much more sociable than Txapas. Sitting next to him, the only one who made small talk was Jokin. Joxe Mari, alone in the backseat, suddenly whispered to himself:
“The goddamned plums.”
Jokin stared at him without understanding. Now, in the cell, contemplating the bit of blue sky through the window, Joxe Mari finds the memory amusing.
&nb
sp; 57
IN THE RESERVES
Within his memory, he sees himself looking out another window. Not this one in his cell but the one in a country house in Brittany. Despite all the years that have gone by, boy, it’s imprinted in his olfactory memory, alive, exactly as it was, the smell of the wood. A dry smell, perhaps centuries old, that wafted from the beams and the tilted floor made of boards. Jokin and I played, each with a ten-franc coin. They made it roll down the inclined floor. The winner was the one who got the coin closer to the wall, without touching it. Jokin won almost every time because his hand is smaller and nimbler. Admit it. Yes, but it’s that my hand was used to the ball in handball, not that shitty little coin that slipped between my fingers. And, of course, it either didn’t go far enough or it hit the baseboard.
The two neophyte militants killed time as best they could.
“What does that mean?”
“New.”
“You’re a clever little fellow. My brother, Gorka, he really knows odd words.”
The slow, maddening time in the reserves in the Brittany house. In which house? In all of them. In the first, where they put the two friends up, in the last he shared with Jokin, and in the last where he lived with a new comrade before being integrated into a talde. He closes his eyes and evokes the greenness of the country, the interminable rain, the boredom. The daily program of activities: waiting. And then that absence of mountains which for a Basque, no way around it, is deadly. It gnaws away at their joy, it depresses them.
Jokin’s departure was a blow to Joxe Mari. They were company for each other, they played, they chatted. And suddenly, separation. Forever?
“I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
“In a few years, we’ll be historical leaders. You and I in charge of the whole deal. And while the others are breaking their backs and risking their hides, we’ll be cozy in Iparralde, deciding the missions and giving orders.”
Now the real struggle began, at least for Jokin. At night, the bastard couldn’t contain his joy (or his nervousness) about getting out of that isolation in Brittany. And he never stopped talking. It was as if he were on drugs. Joxe Mari, twelve midnight, one a.m., the room filled with cigarette smoke: all that chatter was starting to bust his balls. It’s that he never stopped: plans, expectations, memories, anecdotes about their town.
“Remember that time…?”
And he stopped busting them when, and now he was really being an asshole, he said, stay calm, you’ll see that five or six years from now they’ll transfer you, too.
In reality (he thinks it now, stretched out on the bed in his cell), nothing turned out as they’d imagined. While they were together they used humor to put up with the long hours of inactivity. Jokin, one day while they were strolling in the countryside:
“How the hell are we going to liberate Euskal Herria if we ourselves aren’t free, when we have to wait for orders to take a walk and they tell us where we’re supposed to go?”
“Don’t be a whiner. As soon as they give us guns you’ll see if we do any liberating or not.”
“We have to make the people from home proud of us.”
“For sure. We have to make the town look good.”
Before getting into the car, Jokin, how happy he is, looked toward the window, up above, to make a final farewell gesture to Joxe Mari. His fist raised. Midmorning and again rain. Joxe Mari jokingly responded by giving him the finger. He was left alone, more alone than ever before. He saw Jokin stick out his tongue. Does he think he’s going to a party or what? And that image, Jokin with his tongue out, is the last he has of his friend.
The car pulled away bouncing along the dirt road. The owner’s tractor made the biggest ruts. And it went on raining on the grass and the row of apple trees bordering the road, and also on those other trees, oaks or whatever they were, that blocked the spire of the church there in the town, and closer, it rained on the cows of the house owner, a Breton with a red nose who had shouting matches every night with his wife and with whom they could only communicate by signs.
Months back, in Hendaya, they’d been given the usual welcome. For third-rate recruits, as Jokin said. For rubes, according to Joxe Mari. No brass band to welcome them, no members of the leadership doing the honors.
“Do you two speak French?”
“Not a word.”
The man in charge of the welcome reception got right to the point. Look, this, that, and the other thing is what you’ve got waiting for you. The guy seemed tired. I don’t know why, because of the circles under his eyes. There are no real safe places around here. You must be absolutely underground, take great care, discipline and sacrifice. All of it expressed in short sentences as if he wanted to get done as quickly as he could. He added that thing about we’re like the cherries in the basket. You grab one and five or six come out attached to it. And that’s what we have to avoid at all cost, okay? We can’t allow some to fall because of the sloppiness of others.
“The conditions are hard, we’ve got no reason to pull a fast one on you. This isn’t a game.”
He provided them with temporary lodging (and clothes and a radio and other tools) in a poultry farm near Ascain. The owner, Bernard by name, an angry Basque-French citizen. He was cold, grim, stretching his neck as if to say: are these really the ones? He seemed to be expecting other guests. More experienced guests? Of higher rank in the organization? And then in the entry to the interior patio, he gave a few shouts to the welcome guy in his own language. Jokin and Joxe Mari couldn’t figure out what the fight was about. That the farmer didn’t look happy about the presence of the two recruits was obvious. They discovered that he spoke a Basque dialect that with a little effort they could more or less understand. In the following days, there were conversations among them. They became friends. They offered to help on the farm. The guy was a sports fan, including handball. The result: after the second day, his features softened. His wife’s, too. One morning there were guffaws in the house. And yes, after three days of keeping out of sight, so as not to be completely idle, they helped a little, to clean up, to bring things in and take things out, all without leaving the farm so no outsider would see them.
One morning of sun and birds, a Renault 5 pulled in to take them away. An important meeting. That’s all they said. And as soon as they left they had to put on blindfolds. Over an hour of curves. And finally, the unmistakable sound of gravel under the tires. They were not to peek. And Joxe Mari, now inside the house, could see looking underneath the blindfold reddish tiles and stairs.
“Now you can take off the blindfold.”
When the moment for shaking hands came, Santi smiled at them. Kaixo, he said; a timid, bland kaixo from the two friends. And from the first moment, the interview flowed along well because Santi had friends in the town. That was how the conversation began. And then about the festivals and then about the dancing in the plaza. Santi had information about both of them. What he said left Jokin in open-mouthed wonder.
“So you’re the son of the butcher.”
He asked them why they escaped. They answered. Also why they wanted to join the organization.
Joxe Mari:
“Burning buses and mailboxes seemed like small stuff to us. We want to take the definitive step.”
And they did take it. They’d already taken it. For five days they were locked in a room not much larger than this cell. Three paces wide and five paces long. Maybe a bit longer, but don’t think it was much more. He remembers there was a window too high up to look out of. And in any case, it was blocked by a curtain made of thick cloth, dark blue, which practically blocked out all the light. They could hear noises outside: voices and children laughing, the clanking of a tractor or, if it wasn’t that, some other farm machine, and a bell that sounded the hours sometimes far off, sometimes close, depending on how the wind was blowing. From time to time a rooster crowed.
The best part, despite their different talents, was target practice. I remember when we used a 7.65 pistol. Bam, bam. Belarri was dumbfounded.
“Shit, guys, where did you learn to shoot like that?”
They also fired a Browning, a Sten, and a Firebird, this last with a silencer. Swish, swish, a real pleasure. Belarri, mute with shock, especially with Jokin, who never missed. Joxe Mari thinks that because of Jokin’s reputation as a marksman he was the first to be placed in a talde where a vacancy had urgently to be filled. Separation was a hard blow.
To lighten up his loneliness he could meet with Koldo, who was living nearby at the time. He didn’t like doing it. He and Jokin found him one afternoon by surprise in a bar in Brest. And yes, they did speak, but the words, the tone, the gestures were not as they were in the time they all shared an apartment in the village.
“Listen, you’ll have to forgive me. I thought I wouldn’t get out of there alive.”
“Relax. Soon we’ll give them some of their own medicine.”
Homeland Page 26
