Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  Xabier, disagreeing, acting like a professor both in tone and in gestures:

  “No, look, if that’s the case you should have hidden your plan from me. I don’t intend to keep secrets from ama no matter what the subject happens to be. It isn’t a matter of her finding out or not. I simply can’t conceive of any other relationship with her except one that’s clean and sincere.”

  “You made me the one who gets all the blame. Don’t think I’m enthusiastic about this trip, though I do hope things get better the closer I get to my destination. Last night’s argument was pretty strong. You see she didn’t come to say goodbye. She didn’t say goodbye at the house, either. Maybe if you’d kept your mouth shut and let me handle things my way we wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

  “The tactic didn’t work. Is that what you mean?”

  “What I mean is that you don’t have to be my tutor. I’m a big girl now. I’m not being spiteful, you can be sure of that. I know where I’m going and I know why I’m going. Look around. Do you see a single one of my girlfriends here to say goodbye? I don’t have any friends of either sex on this planet. What am I doing in a place like this? Rotting away on my own? Should I be living with ama, eating roast chicken with her and you every Sunday, the three of us pouring out a few tears for dessert?”

  “You’re being unfair and spiteful, even if you deny it.”

  “You’d like me not to make this trip, right?”

  “Not at all. I came to wish you all the best.”

  “Thanks. But if you’d like to know something, brother, I’d be in a better mood if you could be a bit more joyful.”

  “The joy I leave to you.”

  “And that, wasn’t that said with spite?”

  “We’re at the end of the line here. The fact is you’re doing the right thing by going. Anyway, what are you leaving behind? A broken family, a murdered father.”

  “What I’m leaving behind are you and ama. Not aita. I’ve got aita here inside.”

  And she energetically, vehemently brought her hand to her heart.

  “Well said, sister. I’m not going make a big deal about our sorrows. All that I ask is that from time to time you call ama. Say a couple of pleasant things to her, send her the odd letter, okay? Maybe a package of things made where you are. So she feels loved, get me? It’ll cost you nothing.”

  They kept talking until the train pulled in. When do you arrive? Will someone be there to meet you? Will you send us your address? Those things and then a show of goodwill: if you need anything, if you have to do some paperwork, don’t hesitate to.

  “And what did you say his name was?”

  “Klaus-Dieter.”

  Xabier nodded affirmatively, repeated the name to himself. Was he giving her some kind of approval? And he again asked Nerea not to forget ama. Because ama and besides ama, and on and on with ama.

  As she was about to board the train, he affectionately kissed his sister on both cheeks. And he helped her lift the heavy suitcase. Then, brusquely, he turned around and headed toward the exit before the train started to move. Nerea suspected: he doesn’t want me to see him get upset.

  Her brother, Dr. Sad: a tall man, thinner every day, gray (since when?) around the temples, who walked staring at the ground. So he doesn’t have to say hello if he happens to meet someone he knows? There’s a lot of loneliness in those shoulders marching away. Would he turn to wave goodbye to his sister? He didn’t.

  And Nerea went on observing him through the window of her car. I’ll leave without crying. It sounded like the words from some song. Poor Xabier, working hard his whole life to raise himself to a good social position, to please his mom and dad. There he goes, dodging bodies, the guy who never broke a plate, the guy who doesn’t know how to buy his clothes on his own, with his navy-blue sweater on his shoulders, the sleeves tied over his chest, and his checked shirt with no one to press it. Now in a few seconds he’d be entering the station. Not even then did he turn around.

  Seconds later, the doors closed. The train pulled out. Going slowly, it entered the Gros neighborhood. There, from a few windows facing the tracks, was clothing hung out to dry. For a long while Nerea remained standing, enjoying her intense feeling of farewell. The port of Pasajes, Mount Jaizquíbel, the vacant lots in Rentería: she thought she was seeing it all for the last time and it didn’t matter to her. I’ll leave without shedding a tear. Finally, just before the border, she sat down. Her passport! With her heart pounding, she searched her bag for it. There it was. God, what a fright.

  82

  HE’S MY BOYFRIEND

  Dead tired, Nerea got out of the train at the Göttingen station at the end of the afternoon on October 10. How it was raining! You just can’t describe it. Beyond the roof covering the platform floated a fog right at ground level. As they burst, the raindrops turned into vapor. Or at least that’s how it looked. And in the distance, above the rooftops and the trees, a radiant clarity was opening a path through the storm clouds. The entire afternoon was all strange light and a noise of violent rain.

  People? Few. And her blond boy wasn’t there. Maybe inside the station itself, keeping out of the bad weather? No. Or outside in the square? No again. No doubt he just left, fed up with waiting. She should have arrived hours ago, but there was a railroad workers’ strike in Belgium, bad luck, which forced the night train to make a huge detour, and of course Nerea missed her next connection. Now she was alone in the Göttingen station with a heavy suitcase and the fatigue of more than twenty-four continuous hours of travel. She gave a satisfied look around. Soon all this will be familiar to me.

  She knew Klaus-Dieter’s address by heart. During the trip she’d practiced the pronunciation of the street and the house number. She knew how to count to one hundred in German. More: during the trip she’d studied vocabulary. Two hundred and fifty-five words she selected. Words she imagined common. In sum, names for this, for that, and some thirty adjectives, numerous verbs. And today, during the morning and early in the afternoon, she reviewed the list several times. Who knows, maybe German will someday be my principal language. Mine and the language of my three half-blond children, two girls and one boy. She had foreseen everything and she was smiling: each one with one hazel eye and one blue. Oh yes, the boy would be named after his deceased grandfather.

  She had the address written on a piece of paper: Kreuzbergring 21. Before he left for Edinburgh, Klaus-Dieter explained in a letter filled with charming errors that the street was behind the university, about a fifteen-minute walk from the station. Where is the university? No idea. The rain wouldn’t let up. Nerea felt unable to pronounce the word Kreuzbergring in a comprehensible way. And even supposing she did say it more or less properly, how was she going to understand the explanations that would follow? So instead of asking for help from a local, she got into a taxi and showed the driver the slip of paper.

  She almost fell asleep in the cab. Wishing to gather impressions of her new world, she stared through the window at details of the city as if she were looking through a cellophane veil of fatigue. This was only normal: the whole night, she’d barely slept because of the click-clack of the train. An entire night of nods, heat, the not-desired company of five unfamiliar, breathing, barefoot bodies in their respective bunks, she resting, thank heaven, on the highest, and an old man right below Nerea, wearing an undershirt, who after half an hour was snoring like a worn-out cowbell.

  The taxi ride took less than five minutes. Nerea couldn’t manage German marks, so she wouldn’t have to count her money, she paid with a one-hundred-mark bill and thinks, she’s not sure, she gave a tip that was too large. Otherwise, the effusive helpfulness of the cabbie, who carried her suitcase up to the entryway, and filled her ears with words that were no doubt friendly but which she didn’t understand.

  Nerea paused at a row of not especially clean mailboxes. There it was: Klaus-Dieter Kirsten, written
with a felt marker on a slip of paper, next to two other names. And she imagined the hand of the German mailman as he placed those letters of hers overflowing with tenderness, nostalgia, and loneliness in the mailbox, letters written during the torrid Zaragoza summer. She took her perfume out of her bag and dabbed herself twice, clutching her suitcase in two hands as she climbed creaking wooden stairs, one flight, two, three. On the landing, near the door, was a piece of furniture attached to the wall, a kind of backless dresser with five shelves packed with shoes. Nerea rapidly smoothed her hair before ringing the buzzer, already prepared for the embrace, the kiss on her mouth.

  Shortly after, some footsteps came across the wooden floor. The door opened. A girl with short blond hair stared, first at Nerea’s eyes, then at her suitcase, and then again at her eyes. The girl, chubby, thin lips, made not the slightest attempt to converse with her or to invite her in. Putting on her best smile, Nerea asked:

  “Klaus-Dieter?”

  The girl repeated, corrected?, aloud the name, with her face turned toward the interior of the apartment. And without waiting for the person she called to appear began to scold in her language. Nerea didn’t understand a single word but it was as if she understood. The expression tending toward rage, the voice loud: that’s universal. Klaus-Dieter immediately appeared at the door. Timid, ashamed, serious, he stuttered out a hello devoid of charm, empty of affection, and formally extended his hand toward Nerea without stepping out to the landing to hug her, without inviting her in. He was wearing enormous, worn-out indoor clogs. And his wool jacket with elbow patches was unlikely to make a princess fall in love.

  For the first and only time, the girl spoke to Nerea. In English.

  “He’s my boyfriend. And who are you?”

  By then Nerea had understood the meaning of the situation. She first answered the girl in English, carefully pronouncing her words, without losing her calm:

  “I thought he was my boyfriend.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned to him, looking him straight in the eye:

  “Do I have to sleep in the street?”

  It was obvious that the girl was driven wild by the attempt of a strange woman to communicate with her partner in a language incomprehensible to her. Now she was shouting more loudly and pointing a threatening finger at Klaus-Dieter as she slapped his arm. She went back into the flat howling. Klaus-Dieter was now alone with Nerea. Not even then did he have the decency to step out onto the landing. In his poor Spanish he said:

  “I sorry for problem. You wait here please. I call Wolfgang, okay? He big apartment for you sleep.”

  As he slowly closed the door, he nervously repeated in defective Spanish, faintheartedly, his face close to the diminishing open space, that he would call his friend Wolfgang. Nerea remained on the landing for about a minute. Do I laugh, do I start crying? What the hell do I do? Through the partition, she could hear the groans of the girl. You keep him, sweetie. He’s my gift to you.

  She went down to the street with her heavy suitcase. Had everything been, from the very beginning, a misunderstanding? Perhaps he didn’t know how to express himself, perhaps I misunderstood. But why, how, and the letters, and his insisting I visit him, and the address, and my arrival date, and. The guy, is he simply a jerkoff? In other words, did I fall in love with a jerkoff? I got on the wrong side of my own mother because of a jerkoff? Isn’t it that the jerkoff here is me? And now what do I do, so tired I’m falling down, in a foreign country?

  It was still raining, though not as hard, and the clear area from before had become larger and was almost over the city. Night had yet to fall, but it would come soon. She asked in English where the city center was. She started walking in the direction pointed out to her. As she crossed what seemed to be a university campus, she would have sworn that a boy walking in the opposite direction who passed about thirty feet away from her was Wolfgang. She wasn’t sure and didn’t bother to find out. These boys were one thing in Zaragoza and something else here.

  Her eyes were shutting from sleep, she was thirsty, her legs hurt. She wasn’t thinking about anything. Not thinking about anything? I swear, in those moments nothing at all mattered to me. On the other hand, she studied the facades in search of the saving word. Which word? What else? Hotel. On one of the many streets she found one. Expensive, dear, clean, filthy? She was unconcerned. As soon as she got into the room, she emptied a bottle of mineral water. That was her dinner. It wasn’t even nine o’clock when she went to bed. She instantly fell asleep.

  83

  A BIT OF BAD LUCK

  At eight in the morning, after an invigorating shower, Nerea went downstairs to have breakfast. As she filled her plate, she thankfully remembered aita. The fact is that without you I couldn’t allow myself these luxuries. Yesterday’s disappointment left her with no sorrow whatsoever. How strange, no? Shouldn’t she be in a state of despair? To what do we owe this sensation of relief? She figured it out: the boy she was attached to in Zaragoza was not the one she saw yesterday in the clogs and wool jacket. The accent of the other Klaus-Dieter when he spoke Spanish seemed delightful; the accent of yesterday’s idiot, even if it was the same, was disgusting. What about those three half-blond children? Actually, my dear, they’re no problem, because other, different ones will be born in their place. We come into this world like people who’ve won the lottery. John Doe, congratulations, it’s your turn to be born; you get a body, a place is found for you in a uterus, and finally a person we usually refer to as mother gives birth to you. She took two croissants. Careful, Nerea, happiness is fattening. The tray holding jars of marmalade and honey of various sorts looked excellent.

  In a good mood, rested (she’d slept eleven and a half hours straight through), clean, breakfasted. And now, what? She opened the curtains, looked through the window of her room: clouds but no rain, low buildings, a garbage truck, two workers wearing safety vests working in a ditch. This looks like a small town to me. The possibility of running into Klaus-Dieter and his chubby girlfriend (your vegetarian lover betrayed you: he ate shrimp and langoustines) or any of the other German students from Zaragoza was sufficient argument against exploring Göttingen. Go home? A nice humiliation that would be! You’re back so soon? Yes, it’s that.

  Before departing, she lightened her luggage. Out with the CDs, books, Pilar sweets, the box of Frutas de Aragón, the four little bottles of beer like the ones she and he drank in the Zaragoza bars, and other gifts for the love of her life. Out as well with the thick Spanish-German dictionary, the grammar book, the exercise manual with answers at the end, and other things that, in truth, only had meaning in case of a prolonged stay in Germany. The hotel staff will be overjoyed when they see that Santa Claus’s niece has spent the night in this room. And the lock of blond hair, the relic of an amorous passion, venerated even yesterday, today hated as a repellent excrescence (Nerea, don’t be mean!), she flushed down the toilet.

  The receptionist gave her a map of Göttingen so she reached the nearby station easily. Her intention: get on the first train that would take her to an interesting city, so she could experience new places; in sum, so she could wander around Europe before going home and getting her law degree, find a job, get pregnant, let’s see.

  At one in the afternoon she was in Frankfurt. She booked into a downtown hotel, less expensive than yesterday’s; ate a dish of penne all’arrabiata in an Italian restaurant—it tasted wonderful; went shopping, strolled about in no particular direction. In a two-story bookshop she sat down to leaf through an atlas. With the book open on her lap she studied possible routes. To Munich first, that for sure. There she would decide whether to go to Austria or to Switzerland, or to head for Freiburg and the Black Forest. If I go to Switzerland and the mood takes me I’ll go on to Italy.

  Later on she called her mother from the hotel room. She would have told her that she’d gone from being a lovebird to being a tourist; but Bittori was unc
ommunicative, so dry and brusque that Nerea lost her desire to bring her up to date on her adventures, and after reciting to her mother a few ambiguous remarks about weather and food, she said goodbye. She didn’t even tell her where she was calling from. And Bittori never asked. She didn’t even ask how everything had gone or even if the trip had been okay. She asked nothing.

  The sun came up on October 12. A clear day and a pleasant temperature were an invitation to stroll around Frankfurt. And with that idea, her camera, and a map of the city Nerea left the hotel at midmorning. The next day she would begin a new phase, so that in each city on her program she would spend two nights and one full day, unless the place dazzled her and she extended her visit. She would decide en route. After all, she was doing her own thing, just as I intend to do until the day I die. And insofar as the expenses are concerned, she took them as a reward for getting her degree. Since my mother did not see fit to reward my efforts, I’ll give myself this trip, and let them try to take it away from me.

  Calm, taking photos, she looked for the river and accidentally found the house where Goethe was born. She read the prospectus the hotel staff had given her: reconstructed after the war. She didn’t go in. Why, when it wasn’t the real thing? Even so, standing opposite the famous facade she lusted after culture and history. And to balance the day, she divided it into an instructive morning, lunch in a place frequented by locals, and an afternoon of fun and shopping.