“I can smell exhaust fumes from here.”
Txato knew it all along: God himself couldn’t figure that woman out. At home, she went on and on about the need to leave the village, to bring the trucks to some peaceful place and lose sight of all these evil and envious people surrounding us here, and no sooner did he initiate some plan so they could move away, Bittori smashed it to bits.
Some time later, Aránzazu brought news of a new apartment for sale. She quoted her brother’s words. That it would be crazy not to take advantage of a bargain like this. More bargains. This time father and son agreed to leave Bittori out of the purchase process. They walked up a piece of the Aldapeta hill.
“Just wait, you’ll see that ama will have all kinds of objections to this climb.”
They examined the flat. A fourth-floor with elevator; the property of three heirs who did not get along with one another and who were in a hurry to translate into cash the inheritance they were now selling cheap. And Aránzazu’s brother, representing Txato, bought it for a considerable sum; nevertheless, a much lower price than the one the three owners could have asked if they’d been smarter.
Bittori wasn’t present for the handing-over of the keys. But finally it was impossible to hide the purchase from her any longer. Aránzazu picked her up in her car and as they waited for her to arrive, a beautiful afternoon, nice temperature, Txato and Xabier went out onto the balcony. The island of Santa Clara was visible. Urgull was visible, as was the peak of Igueldo along with a stretch of sea under the yellow afternoon sky.
“This is pretty. Ama will like it.”
“I don’t think you know her. Even if you were to give her the Alhambra in Granada, she’d rather stay in the village.”
Father and son rested their elbows on the railing. In front of them was a horse chestnut tree that needed only a yard more of growth to reach the fourth floor. They looked at the nearby buildings, the parked cars, the deserted street. A calm place, a well-to-do neighborhood.
“Do you change the route you take to work?”
“Sometimes, if I remember.”
“You promised you would.”
“Those people, if they want to get you, they’ll get you. I can go this way today, that way tomorrow. But sooner or later you’re going to pass the spot where they’re waiting for you.”
“What worries me is that you’re so calm.”
“Do you want me to be nervous?”
“Not nervous. Alert.”
“Look, Xabier, the bastards who telephone to insult me and threaten me—the ones who paint the graffiti—those I don’t worry about. They don’t scare me. They’re just jerks from the village. What do they want? For me to be scared at home or for me to move somewhere else. I’m not afraid of them. Ama thinks they’re trying to make life impossible for us because we’re not poor anymore. They knew us in tougher times, when we were like them, poor bastards. Now they see we have a son who’s a doctor, a daughter who’s at university, they see me with my trucks, and they can’t stand it, so by one means or another they try to make my life bitter. They think that all I have I’ve robbed. So, having worked the way I’ve worked has screwed us.”
“These people are bad: all the more reason to take precautions.”
“Bah, let them come. I’ll invite them to dinner, see? And since they’ve been busting my balls, this year I’ll skip my contribution to the festival. They’re going to learn who Txato is. I’m more of a Basque than all of them put together. And they know it. Until I was five, I didn’t speak a word of Spanish. A blast of machine-gun fire destroyed my father’s leg (may he rest in peace) while he defended Euskadi at the Elgueta front. Even when he was old, he gritted his teeth every time the pain came back. What is it, does it hurt? we would ask him. Fuck Franco and his whore mother is what he’d answer. And they had him in jail for three years, that they didn’t execute him was a miracle.”
“Aita, what are you trying to tell me with all this? Do you think ETA cares about what happened to your father?”
“What the hell, don’t they say they’re defending the Basque people? Well, if I’m not the Basque people, then who is?”
“Aita, please! You have to understand that ETA is, how should I put it?, an action mechanism.”
“If you want me not to understand you, just keep talking that way.”
“ETA has to keep acting without interruption. They have no other choice. A long time ago they became automatons. If they aren’t causing damage, they don’t exist, they have no other purpose. This Mafia style of theirs has nothing to do with the will of the individuals in ETA. Not even the chiefs can stop it. Sure, they make decisions, but that’s mere appearances. There’s no way they can stop making decisions, because the terror machine, once it gains speed, can’t be stopped. Understand?”
“Nothing.”
“All you have to do is read the newspapers.”
“I think you worry too much.”
“They killed Yoyes in cold blood and he was one of their leaders. They don’t have any pity for their own and you want them to pity you because your father fought fifty years ago in a battalion of gudaris? Come on. What worries me is how naive you are.”
“My boy, I haven’t studied like you. Everything you’re saying sounds like philosophy to me. I can’t understand how a bunch of guys who claim to be defending Basques can kill euskaldunes. They want to build Euskadi, so they kill Basques? It’s different when they kill Guardia Civil officers or people from outside. That’s bad, but within the logic of the terrorist, it makes sense.”
“There is no such logic. It’s nothing more than delirium and more likely nowadays a business.”
“We’ve got to let things cool down. Time will go by, they’ll forget me. You’ll see. They can screw themselves. Look, the only thing that annoys me is that I can’t ride my bike on Sundays. But aside from that, they don’t even mess up my hair.”
Aránzazu’s car slowly came up the hill. The first to get out was Bittori. She looked up, a petulant expression on her face. She spotted her husband and her son out on the balcony. She didn’t wait until she got to the flat. From the street, not worrying that she could be heard from other buildings:
“I know you bought it without asking me.”
Txato, in a low voice, to Xabier:
“This is the one who scares me. How mean she can be!”
86
HE HAD OTHER PLANS
He heard the rain from bed. It seemed to whisper: Txato, Txato, wake up, get out of bed, time to get wet. Perhaps to postpone the moment when he’d have to expose himself to the bleak weather, or because the washed-out light filtering through the curtain made him lazy and made his eyelids heavy or because his appointment with a client from Beasáin had been canceled, he didn’t have anything much to do at the office that afternoon, he extended his siesta beyond his usual time. What does that mean? That he slept over an hour without dreams or worries while other times twenty or thirty minutes of sleep was more than enough.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he felt an almost irresistible desire to light a cigarette, but he didn’t. An addiction he’d overcome, though from time to time the temptation would come back. One hundred and fourteen days ago he smoked his last cigarette. He kept count and every day a balloon of pride expanded around it. There were a few cases of lung and esophagus cancer in his family. Also in Bittori’s family and in the village as well. He didn’t want to run the same risk. He had other plans.
He put on his shoes. What am I going to do? A superfluous question to ask this man who would live in his office if he weren’t married. Besides, you’ve got to keep an eye on things. You can’t trust the employees or leave them alone. And if the phone rings, what then? Suddenly he was in a hurry. A hurry? Remorse for having put—for just over an hour—bed before work. And he smoothed out the bedspread as best he could so that at night Bittori w
ouldn’t be complaining.
In the living room, the newspaper, open to the crossword puzzle, along with his reading glasses was still on the table. If he’d slept less, he could have tried to finish it. The fucking Philippine island four letters long, which he’s run into before, and he never remembers its name. A common fruit in the valleys of the Pyrenees. No idea. And sitting on the sofa with her arms crossed, Bittori tiredly opened her eyes as she heard him coming. What time was it?
“Just coming on four.”
“Get stuck in the sheets or what?”
Disappointment in the kitchen: there was no coffee, only some cold dregs in the pot left over from breakfast. Txato grumbled to himself. Bittori, who sleeps without sleeping, who never completely slept even at night, heard him.
“I’ll make you a fresh pot.”
He knows he wanted it the usual way, already prepared so he wouldn’t have to wait and he could dash out to work. Not without a touch of spite, he lied and claimed he was in a hurry.
“I’ll make do with what there is.”
So he drank that black liquid directly from the pot. Bittori was still stupefied with sleep on the sofa. The bitterness of the disgusting mud made Txato grimace. Finally, after muttering a curse, he went to the doorway. He didn’t go over to Bittori and she didn’t come over to him. He said goodbye, not dryly but baldly.
“See you at dinner.”
Bittori nodded her head affirmatively, as if to say: I’m responding to your words, but I’m really fast asleep, I don’t feel like talking so make do with this nod. And she closed her eyes again.
On the stairway, Txato turned on the light. The afternoon’s dark gray got into everything, chewed away colors, made shadows thicker. And when he got to the entryway, he peered into the mailbox. He wasn’t looking for mail. The mailman had already come by in the morning. Sometimes filth or papers with insults and threats written on them were stuffed into the mailbox; although for two months now they’d left him in peace on that score. On the other hand, just days before, his name inside a target appeared on the wall of the music kiosk. A neighbor woman told Bittori in whispers. Know what? If she hadn’t told her, they wouldn’t have found out because for a long time now neither of them has gone to the plaza. It was, well, it was an attack. But it’s one thing for them to annoy and offend you and another that the people of the village (okay, some of them) demand your death.
He left the entryway but didn’t go all the way out. He’d taken a step outside the house. He immediately stepped back. Rain and gray. There was no traffic: well, yes, just then a van was driving off at the bottom of the hill. No one was walking on the street despite the hour, but you wouldn’t believe how it was pouring. Standing in the doorway, he was tempted to go back for his umbrella. Bah, she’d be sleeping and anyway there’s only a short distance between here and the garage. Txato tried to gather strength to start running. However, before he did he took a confirming look at the clouds without the slightest hope the rain would stop.
There was the banner above the street, stretched between his balcony and the street lamp opposite. PRESOAK KALERA, AMNISTIA OSOA. From time to time they hang one up, not always with political content. Some are related to the village festivals. A few years ago, they asked him, he consented, unwillingly; but listen, it’s not a good idea to have bad relations with the people in the village, especially the boys. So every so often they come with a ladder and tie the end of a banner to his railing. And why his balcony and not the one just up the street or the other down the street? Because of the fucking streetlight, which had to be right opposite.
One day when they’d filled his mailbox with filth he charged up the stairs in a rage. Bittori, seeing him in a fit, cursing his head off, with a knife in his hand, asked him where are you going.
“To cut the strings on the banner.”
She stopped him cold.
“You’re not cutting anything.”
“Out of the way, Bittori, I’m pissed off here.”
“Well, just calm down. I don’t want more problems than we already have.”
Bittori wouldn’t step aside, and Txato, though cursing and swearing, throwing his beret against the wall, had to accept the fact that once in a while they tie a banner to the railing on your balcony.
Just as he did as child, he counted:
“Bat, bi, hiru.”
And he headed for the garage. Running? Only the first three steps. Then he slowed down. Actually he was neither walking nor running, the one so he wouldn’t spend more time exposed to the rain, the other so he wouldn’t slip on the wet pavement. What he did was adopt a trot appropriate to a barrel-assed man of a certain age. After all, he had spare clothes at the office.
And how it rained. Damn. As if the clouds had been waiting to empty themselves all at the same time on top of him. In the gutter a stream had formed. It still hadn’t struck four and it seemed night had fallen on the village. And at this time of day it’s still early to be turning on the public lights.
An agile, blurred figure emerged from between two cars parked next to the opposite sidewalk. His hood kept Txato from seeing his eyes. He was coming toward him, but not directly. Who was he? An individual a bit over twenty, some village boy who was protecting himself from the pouring rain by lowering his face. Jumping, he reached the sidewalk behind Txato. Txato kept going and only had a little way to go to reach the corner.
Then, behind his back, very close to him, a shot rang out.
And then another.
And another.
And another.
87
MUSHROOMS AND NETTLES
For a long time, disturbing rumors about the financial state of the factory had been circulating. They talked about, they said that. And Guillermo began to sleep little and badly for fear of losing his job. His son, Endika, was two and a half at the time. And the girl had yet to be born but was on the way. He and Arantxa, comfortable in their simple, lower-middle-class life with hopes for prospering in the future, were happy or that’s what they believed/said. Which, in the opinion of both, is the same thing, but all of it would come tumbling down if they lose their economic footing.
In bed, late at night:
“Without my salary from the paper mill, tell me how we’re going to make do.”
“Maybe you’ll be lucky and they’ll fire other people.”
“Who?”
“Lower your voice, you’re going to wake up the baby.”
“Of all the people in the office who would they have a greater reason to fire if not me?”
“The older ones, so they can keep the younger ones. And if they do fire you, you’ll find something. Meanwhile we’ll make do on my salary. It isn’t much, but every little bit helps.”
“It isn’t enough, Arantxa. I’ve tallied up our expenses, and it just isn’t enough. And soon there will be four mouths to feed in this house.”
She’d hidden from him an incident that took place at the shoe store. What incident? That the woman who owned the shop, dryer than dry, had scolded her for not waiting longer to become pregnant again. And then from a fellow worker she learned that the owner had been criticizing her behind her back. She decided not to tell Guillermo so as not to increase his worries.
Guillermo, in a bad mood, anguished, could not drop the subject:
“Forget about vacation, about a new car, about everything.”
“Calm down, my friend. You’ll see that we’ll get ahead if we fight side by side.”
“I wanted us to be happy, but it wasn’t meant to be. Can we ever be happy in this world? I don’t know why we were born.”
“Please, Guille. Perfect happiness only happens in the movies. You’re asking too much.”
“I’m not asking, I’m demanding. I’m a hardworking, serious man. I do what I’m told to do. I do it well. I want my share, my modest share.”
A few days later he came home earlier than usual. He dropped his termination notice on the kitchen table and hugged Endika against his chest for a long while. A two-year-old baby and he with no job, with no future prospects: a good-for-nothing.
“Don’t say that.”
“That’s what I am. A superfluous man. The factory keeps on running just fine. The typical poor slob who needs his wife to give him some change so he can have a drink in the bar.”
Guillermo: a man adrift. Mornings, he would go out into the hills, he’d return with wild strawberries, nettles, mushrooms. Sitting at the kitchen table he gave lessons: about whether the mushrooms were edible, if you can brew a tea with the leaves. What he was doing was convincing himself he was feeding the family. He’d be out at dawn, transformed into a mountaineer with his boots and his backpack for collecting. And he brought back everything, apples as well, who knows from what orchard, and hazel branches he cut into tiny pieces to build a castle for the child. Other times, weather permitting, he took his rod to fish at the mouth of the port or on the Jaizquíbel rocks. He came home silent, glancing around angrily, fond of strolling around alone, and you couldn’t disagree with him because he’d blow up. And when Ainhoa was born, worse still.
The first time he held her in his arms he told her:
“Bad luck, little girl. You were born into a poor family.”
Often, he would break his long silences to blurt out remarks like that, always with a hint of resentment in his words. Arantxa kept quiet, long-suffering, resigned, so she wouldn’t make things worse. Sometimes she just couldn’t take any more. What the hell, I have my feelings, too, you know. And she would express her opinion, trying not to get angry.
“Your pride has taken a hit.”
“What would you know about it, dumbass?”
That was the routine. Vulnerable, aggressive, bitter. And no more cutie, sweetheart, darling from before. In bed, she gave in. Because, of course, if you deprive him of that, he’ll flip out and beat me up. They had routine sexual encounters, with no pleasure for her, and a rapid release for him. Tenderness: zero. But not the opposite, either, not at all. Their sex was more or less a formality that produced a sad slapping of stomachs.
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