Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  It was a shame she’d met Klaus-Dieter too late, when he only had a short time left in his half year in Zaragoza before returning to the University of Göttingen, where he was studying. Since the two of them were aware of that situation, they fell in love quickly. But wait: not in a compulsive way (okay, on some nights it was compulsive). They loved each other without stopping, which is not the same thing. Nerea did everything possible to be near her blond boy at all hours of the day and night. She stopped going to her classes and instead went to his or waited for him outside, sitting on a bench in the corridor smoking. They ate together, they slept together, and from time to time they even showered together

  Some mornings, when she woke up before Klaus-Dieter, Nerea would remain still for a long time in wonderment. His charming features, his well-formed body. She would bring a hand close to his mouth; she loved to feel the slow exhalations of air on her palm. Or, carefully so she wouldn’t awaken him, she would playfully roll a lock of his hair around her finger. And she even cut off a lock near the back of his neck with stealthy scissors. A beautiful little sheaf about two or two and a half inches long. Why did she do it? To possess something of him she could look at and touch when he’d gone back to his country.

  During the luminous beginnings of day, Nerea liked to caress Klaus-Dieter’s face with a nipple. His lips asleep, his eyelids shut, his cheek still unshaven, with tiny blond hairs that pleasantly scratched her most sensitive part. And she awakened him softly. He, knowing the game, would smile without opening his eyes. I’ll bet no woman in your cold land has ever loved you like that. Sometimes Nerea said it aloud; but he, what was he going to say when he didn’t understand even half the words?

  Then Nerea went on caressing him with her warm breasts all the way down along his body. And she paused at his stomach and the inner face of his thighs lightly covered by down, and she kissed and licked his sex, and the morning light came through the window, and that was a daily delight which would not last long, but was marvelous while it lasted.

  Willing to please her German boy, she became fond of tea, she who had been such a coffee addict before. And we’re not talking about the typical teabag dunked without charm or mystery in a cup of water. Klaus-Dieter brought the tea with him from Germany in a metal box. And the cloth strainer, black from use. In the kitchen, a fascinated Nerea observed the simple ritual, taking careful note of the various steps, the proper quantity of tea, the exact amount of time the strainer remained submerged in the hot water in the teapot. And no sugar or milk was allowed. He usually took the first swallow with his eyes shut, pushing his lips forward as a precaution against scalding himself, and she, always at his side, silently watched him as if witnessing a sacred ceremony.

  And the fact is that communication was not really easy between them. Klaus-Dieter spoke Spanish poorly. Nerea did her best in her rusty English. Their ignorance of each other’s language kept them from conducting conversations of any depth. Even so, they understood each other simply because of the total commitment they brought to the matter, whether they used signs mixed with individual words and brief phrases, or by using the dictionary. His Spanish improved quite a lot because he practiced it with her. And she, who didn’t touch a single book in any of her courses during those three weeks of love, began her first German lessons with the help of a manual she found in a bookstore in Plaza San Francisco. Not only Klaus-Dieter but his roommates Wolfgang and Marcel collapsed in laughter every time Nerea pronounced some German word. To enhance the fun, the little bastards would point to one obscenity or another in the dictionary so she could read it aloud.

  Klaus-Dieter was a vegetarian. Nerea wouldn’t eat meat when she was with him. He also didn’t eat fish or seafood, though he did make an exception for grilled shrimp. He simply adored them. “In Germany little this,” he would say. On some afternoons, they would walk to El Tubo and stuff themselves with shrimp and langoustines, which for Klaus-Dieter were both the same: small shrimp and big shrimp. He didn’t smoke. That was more problematic for Nerea. Fearful of annoying him, she would smoke in the bathrooms of bars. And on other occasions, as when she waited in the hall at school for him to come out of class, she would chain-smoke.

  One day, in bed, Klaus-Dieter, very serious, revealed he was a believer.

  “I believe on God.”

  “In God.”

  “I believe in God. Do you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. And Nerea, who was seriously considering living with him in Germany, was willing to change her religion just to please him.

  He got the idea of her visiting him in Göttingen—without fail. He insisted:

  “Will you come me to visit?”

  She promised she would. Because, of course, I’m not letting this one get away. Where would I find another one like this? And she promised again in the El Portillo train station, as they, totally infatuated with each other on the platform, used up their final moments of tenderness. Wolfgang had to yank his friend’s arm to get him into the car. A few seconds later, the train pulled out.

  Standing at the window, she watched him disappear. Goodbye, blond mane. Goodbye, charming smile. She loved him so much; but so, so much. Other cars followed with other heads at windows and other hands waving goodbye. In barely a minute, the platform was empty of people. Nerea stood there alone, her eyes fixed on the landscape of poles, cables, and rails along which she’d lost sight of the train. Sad? Yes, but not weepy, since they’d agreed to meet in Göttingen at the end of summer, when a new semester would begin for Klaus-Dieter. He promised to write her as soon as he got to Germany. Will he write me or not? If he keeps his word it means there’s love; if he doesn’t, it means I’ve been nothing more than a simple instrument for achieving orgasms.

  Every morning, Nerea would go downstairs to the entryway to peer into the mailbox. Also in the evening, even though the mailman usually came between eleven and one and came only once. After a week, she noted the first cracks in her hopes. Then the cracks turned into gaping crevices. The tears she didn’t weep at the station, she weeps now all alone. And, accepting reality, she closes the German manual she’d kept open on her desk and puts it, the lock of blond hair between its pages, into a drawer in the cupboard.

  Days later the letter came, the first of a few they exchanged. This time the tears were tears of joy. That letter was spattered with errors, one more adorable than the other, with a heart-shaped sticker next to his signature to dissipate her doubts. She was sure the future was waiting for her in Germany. Not wasting a second, she went to the university. She asked different classmates if she could photocopy their notes. Now she missed no classes, now she went to no parties, did not go out at night. Now she spent her time in the library or in her room studying in a way she had never studied before. Her plan: get her degree in the summer, pack her bag, and goodbye.

  Just before taking her exams, she ran into José Carlos one morning on the campus. Hey, it’s been a long time since she called him, had she been sick, wouldn’t you like me to pass by your place one of these days? She looked at him as if he weren’t there. With contempt? More with indifference. She said no and went her way.

  68

  GRADUATION

  Nerea passed her examinations and got her bachelor’s degree. Two months of intensive study enabled her to put together an acceptable quantity of knowledge. On Saturday afternoons, as a reward for her dedication during the week, she would see a movie at the Palafox Theater. The film didn’t really matter. Sometimes she watched the same one she’d seen the week before simply because it had left her with a pleasant memory.

  She chose the Palafox because El Tubo was near and she liked fulfilling a ritual. When she left the theater, she went into a bar and enjoyed a plate of grilled shrimp, immersed in memories of her German boy. What can he be doing at this moment? Might he remember me? The shrimp and perhaps a yogurt late
r on, in her flat, was all she had for dinner. At night, back in her room, she was still hard at work on the books and the law notes until at about midnight, sometimes before, her head informed her: girl, enough for today. She lost ten pounds in two months.

  She turned out for her examinations supplied with more than knowledge. Some wisdom she carried in crib sheets hidden in her sleeves. More than anything out of insecurity. Like a lifejacket, she said to herself, in case she found herself shipwrecked in the unfathomable depths of ignorance. In fact, she never used the notes except to copy four bits of trivia for the philosophy of law examination.

  Any As? Not a one. She didn’t need them. It wasn’t that she had the feeling of having reached a goal but rather that she’d shed a heavy load. Are you sure? Very sure. The morning the last of her grades was announced, she stood at the exit to the school, on the entrance steps. and chose one cloud among the many—which? that one way over there—and she whispered to it:

  “Aita, now you see I’ve done what you asked me to do. Now I’m free to decide my future on my own.”

  There was no obstacle to her projected trip to Germany. Walking along the street, she laughed to herself. I’m going nuts, just like ama. Months ago, she learned from Xabier that her mother had taken to walking up to Polloe to chat with Txato’s grave. When he told her, Xabier was visibly moved. He was afraid his mother was getting depressed, but the depression was all his. He was afraid she’d never recover from that blow, but it was he who never recovered. Nerea treated it as trivial. She said, to remove all drama from their dialogue, that if you had to pay to get into the cemetery, their mother wouldn’t go. Xabier did not find the joke funny.

  Leaving University City, Nerea thought she would find a telephone booth and give her mother the good news. Should I call or not? Some considerations fed her doubts. She saw a booth and passed by. On Fernando el Católico, after more than a few hesitations, she made up her mind. Because, of course, how am I going to hide the fact that I’ve finished my studies from my mother? She inserted the coins, dialed the first three numbers, and hung up. Why? I know her. She’s going to say something that will sour my day of triumph.

  For two weeks, she hid the news. I’ll call her tomorrow. But tomorrow would come, and Nerea would put off making the call until the next day. This she did again and again. To buy time, to be at peace. Her mother had moved to San Sebastián. How about living with her? A nightmare. How about returning to the village? Even worse. The last time she was there, friends and acquaintances from old times cut her cold. She made some calculations, spoke with her roommates, and decided. To do what? To stay in Zaragoza for the summer. They warned her:

  “Zaragoza in summertime is an oven.”

  She didn’t care. It was also the place where Klaus-Dieter sent letters to her. Of course she could send her blond boy her address in San Sebastián. Could she? Which address? The only one she had was her mother’s. So forget that. She could just imagine the scene. Nerea, a letter from Germany came for you. Who’s writing to you? Have you got a boyfriend? And let’s not forget that she could just as easily open the envelope, under the pretext that she hadn’t seen to whom the letter was addressed. She could do that.

  Her roommates: one, like Nerea, canceled her rent contract at the end of July; the other, who still had a year of studies left, was hoping to stay in the apartment. What she’d do, she said, is advertise for two new roommates as soon as vacation was over. Nerea asked if she’d let her keep her room during August and September. And so that her friend wouldn’t have to pay the whole rent during that time, she offered to pay her share directly to her instead of paying the house owner. The roommate was delighted to accept.

  Zaragoza in August: 100, 104, 111 degrees. Sun, deserted streets. Those days dragged on eternally. She dedicated herself to reading novels, to taking walks at sunset, when the heat began to let up, and to learning German. A difficult language. She couldn’t get it through her head that at this point in history, people in bakeries, hospitals, talking from window to window, could express themselves in declensions, in the style of the ancient Romans. She searched the yellow pages for a language school where she could sign up for an intensive course. In August? They didn’t even answer the phone.

  Days of stagnation, of boredom. Even so, better to spend them in this torrid solitude, in twilight strolls, and, from time to time, in the pool at the Zaragoza Hípica with a fascinating book than to dedicate them morning to night to the infinite supply of maternal reproaches. Over the telephone, the few times she called her: why was she still in Zaragoza since she had her degree? Well, you see…And she just told her any old lie. That would be followed immediately by saying she couldn’t really hear, how hard it is to hear, I can’t hear a word you’re saying, or that she’d run out of change for the telephone. From Germany and Klaus-Dieter, not a single word.

  For Nerea, the worst part of that season of solitude and suffocating heat was the absence of mail. Already in July, Klaus-Dieter’s letters were coming less frequently. In August, not a one arrived. Nerea knew why, which took nothing away from her feeling disillusioned every time she peered into the mailbox and found it, as she did yesterday and the day before yesterday, empty. What was going on? Nothing, Klaus-Dieter had taken a trip to Edinburgh, where he’d be staying for a month. During that period, she sent a dozen letters filled with German expressions to his Göttingen address. Some of those expressions she copied out of the manual; others, less conventional, she composed helter-skelter with the precarious aid of the dictionary. At the beginning of September, she received, hallelujah, an answer. He’d returned from his trip, missed her, I missing you, and reminded her that she promised to visit him in October.

  Her father brought her to Zaragoza. Xabier brought her back.

  “Ama asked me to do it. And since I don’t have to work today, here I am.”

  The reason for driving to her? To transport her abundant belongings. It took them a long time to pack them into the car. Just the books filled two large boxes. Xabier folded down the rear seats to make the trunk space larger. He filled it to the brim.

  “Where can we eat?”

  Before starting out, brother and sister went to a nearby restaurant. They chewed, drank, spoke.

  “Ama was worried because you didn’t come home.”

  “But I told her I had things to take care of before I left Zaragoza.”

  “That’s what I thought. University things?”

  “Romantic things.”

  The succinct expression, uttered in a juvenile, challenging tone, did not upset Xabier, who went on cutting up his veal cutlet as if nothing had happened. Sometimes, distracted, he glanced over at the other people eating at nearby tables. His sister’s confessions didn’t seem to arouse his curiosity or make any impression on him at all until he heard the word. Which word? Which do you think? “Germany.” The fork poised in the air with a piece of meat speared on it: Xabier fixed his eyes on Nerea. Was it shock? In any case it was alarm.

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “On the ninth, I’m taking the train there. I’m buying a one-way ticket.”

  “Does ama know about it?”

  “For now, only you know.”

  The conversation frayed. The remarks made by each speaker flowed along separated by islands of silence. And the discontinuous, slow-moving verbal river was ideal for carrying evasions, circumlocutions, trivia. Xabier did not finish his meal and asked for the check.

  “Or did you want dessert?”

  “What?”

  “If you have dessert, we can stay a bit longer. I don’t want to hurry you.”

  “No, no. Do you mind if I have a cigarette before we get going?”

  Twenty minutes later they’d left behind, according to Nerea, what could be considered the last building in Zaragoza. Xabier drove and she, assuming a theatrical, celebratory pose and a tone of fals
e nostalgia, improvised a brief farewell speech. She waxed satirical, lowering her voice. That she was finishing a stage in her life, that she would take with her a fine memory of the city but that she did not intend to return until three thousand years had passed.

  Xabier waited a long time before breaking his silence.

  “I see ama as being very alone, and I’m afraid that she’s going to lose all sense of reality. I try to spend as much time as I can with her, but my work absorbs me. She has the illusion that you are practicing law. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “I hate the law.”

  “Okay, well, I don’t go to the hospital just for fun. We’ve all got to make a living, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, but not by doing any old thing and for me being a lawyer is worse than any old thing. To tell the truth, I see my future far away from here. I met someone. I’m going to give it a try.”

  “You seem very happy.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Not at all. All I ask is that you avoid the subject when ama is around. You can imagine that in our family not everyone has a reason to be happy.”

  “Brother, I know that hole. And I’m not going to fall into it. May I ask you a question? Just out of curiosity. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” Without taking his eyes off the road, Xabier nodded. “Ever since aita died…”

  “He didn’t die, he was murdered.”

  “The result is the same.”

  “For me there is an essential difference.”

  “Fine. Ever since he was murdered—it will be a year ago soon—have you laughed even once? I don’t know, in a spontaneous way, at some silly thing someone at the hospital said, maybe seeing a movie. Have you ever forgotten everything just for a moment and given out even a tiny giggle?”

  “It’s possible. I don’t remember.”

  “Or have you disallowed yourself any happiness?”