“I started to think you weren’t coming.”
“We had some fun at home because of a surprise.”
Arantxa, furrowing her brow, wrote on the iPad: “Tell her the truth.” Then Celeste set aside her well-mannered discretion:
“Miren reprimanded me and fired me, but later she rehired me. How bad I felt. She doesn’t like it that you and Arantxa see each other.”
Arantxa agreed, nodding her head at each word her caregiver spoke, as if saying: exactly, that’s how it happened. And Bittori’s piece of paper, unfolded, was a lined notebook sheet that contained Joxe Mari’s second letter. This one wasn’t like the first, harsh, the letter of a combative militant, who was angry and bad and stubborn and.
Arantxa stretched out her hand, the only one she could, with obvious impatience and a desire to read her brother’s letter. And she did read, shaking her head. Out of disgust? More likely in a friendly reproach, with the kind of disagreement that exists between brother and sister, as if to say, this fool is on the right path, but he’s still got a long way to go. She handed the sheet back to Bittori. With a calm finger, she wrote on her iPad: “He’s scared to death, but don’t worry. I’ll make him ask you to forgive him.”
“He tells me not to write him again. What would you do?”
And Arantxa, joyful, answered: “The fish has taken the hook. All we have to do is pull him out of the water.”
Bittori, since she’s not good at understanding metaphors, asked for a clarification. “You write him. I’ll write him, too.” And right away, she wanted Bittori to push her around the church. To Celeste: “You wait here.” Bittori, astonished and perhaps fearful. The meaning of that little journey was not lost on her. A provocation. More: a challenge. When her mother finds out, and she will find out, because in this town everything is known, she’s going to hit the ceiling!
Bittori pushed the wheelchair under the roof of branches created by the lime trees in the plaza, and she went toward the jai alai court, years back covered with graffiti in favor of ETA and symbols of the abertzale left, a pure green since the attacks had ceased and the Town Council ordered the walls painted, because you have to turn the page and look toward the future and there should no longer be winners and losers. They slowly went around the church, very slowly, not so much to show themselves to the people, few in any case because it was early, but mostly because Bittori’s pain was coming back. She could barely stand it because it was intensifying and soon she had to give up and turn Arantxa back over to Celeste.
She said goodbye to them, lost sight of them, and went down the stairs holding on to the banister and went on no more than thirty or forty yards. She had to sit down on the ground, then collapse onto the dusty paving stones, and while she was being taken care of, by whom?, by some passersby, she recognized Miren’s irate voice a few steps away.
“Leave my daughter in peace.”
She did not repeat it. She added nothing. And Bittori, minutes later, when she’d recovered, wasn’t sure if she’d really heard those words or if she’d imagined them.
108
MEDICAL REPORT
Nerea telephoned her brother to tell him his name was in the newspaper.
“In which newspaper?”
“In Egin. They name you as the doctor who took care of the ETA man brought in the other day. They say, according to your statements, there had to be torture.”
“I gave no interviews to anyone, much less to that filthy rag.”
My statements? What’s this got to do with me? He couldn’t manage to think clearly. It was nine a.m. He’d gone to bed late. At what time? He didn’t remember. Between three and four in the morning. And only then because he ran out of cognac, because if he hadn’t he would have been sitting in front of the computer until dawn. Dryness in his mouth and the hint of a headache. Sleep? That would come in the afternoon at the hospital.
He went out to find the newspaper. He had yet to eat breakfast. Actually it was Nerea’s call that got him out of bed. He usually bought the paper at a book-and-stationery store near his apartment. Not every day but often. El Diario Vasco, sometimes the Spanish newspaper El País. And when something big happened, both.
He’s known the bookseller for several years. And now he was embarrassed to ask for Egin. It was the bookseller himself, a lifelong socialist, who always called the abertzale newspaper a rag. And Xabier adopted the expression.
A few yards from the bookstore he stopped. I’m not going in there. And since it was a warm morning, with a south wind and a brilliant sky, he walked to a kiosk on the Avenida. After he read the article, he tossed the newspaper into the trash and went into a café nearby to have breakfast.
It was a lie that he’d made any kind of statement.
The terrorist, twenty-three years old, walked into the hospital on his own two feet on the previous Monday, surrounded by the Guardia Civil. He was complaining of sharp pains in his side. He bent over as he walked, made suffering faces, had trouble breathing. A captain signaled to Xabier his intention to speak to him privately.
“Look, Doctor, pay no attention to anything this character says. He’s a murderer. He resisted arrest and there was nothing to be done except capture him by force. You can’t show them any consideration. You know how dangerous these guys are.”
He alleged that the terrorist was armed at the time of his arrest and that these people have instructions from their organization to say they’ve been tortured. And Xabier? He said nothing. If this officer only knew whose son I am. He looked him straight in the eye until the officer finished saying all that. Then, with composure?, actually with self-possession, he turned and entered the room where the patient was waiting for him.
“Doctor, they tortured me. It really hurts right here. I think I’ve got something broken.”
If this boy knew what others of his kind did to my father. It was a mental burst of fire. Because, after all, I’m not made of ice. And Nerea, on the phone, said she understood him, that she doesn’t know what she would have done in his place, perhaps the same.
A patient. That’s what Xabier saw in that boy. A body in need of medical assistance. What this face, this chest, these extremities have done is none of my business. For now. When he’s finished his work, or within a few hours, or tomorrow, then, sure, it will interest me. More: it will deprive me of sleep.
The door remained open, the voices and footsteps of the Guardia Civil officers could be heard. He asked the closest if the door could be closed. From the hallway, they answered no. Not in an impolite way. The white lab coat inspired respect, this we know.
“Understand, it’s for safety’s sake.”
As soon as he saw the patient naked from the waist up, Xabier banished any trace of personal thought. Two female nurses helped the bruised man remove his clothes. He couldn’t do it alone. All they left him with were his underpants. The ETA man, the terrorist, the in-all-likelihood murderer. Now he thinks it over. In those moments, as he said to Nerea on the phone, he thought of nothing but doing his job properly.
“Damn, brother, what integrity you’ve got.”
“Don’t believe it. I just do what I’m supposed to do. That’s what they pay me for.”
The hematoma on his eye told Xabier what kind of lesions he was going to find. He confirmed his suspicions, after the patient was undressed, finally with his underpants removed as well, about the contusions all over his body. And on the left side an enormous bruise that ran from his shoulder blade to his hip, which even to the naked eye suggested there was a serious internal wound. Its origin? It was not his business to find out, though you’d have to be blind not to guess the cause of those abrasions and cuts on his knees and ankles. Xabier ordered that the patient be admitted as soon as possible to the intensive care unit. The captain:
“Are you sure?”
What did he think? That we’d put on a few bandage
s and give him back?
“He’s got subcutaneous lesions. Probably broken ribs and a punctured lung. The relevant tests will have to be made, but I can tell you that the patient’s condition is serious.”
“As you well know, the patient is a terrorist and under arrest. He will be under heavy guard. That will apply to those who enter the room where he’s placed.”
What do I care? But of course, he didn’t argue. Showing the palms of his hands as if to prove his innocence:
“I’m just doing my job.”
“So are we, God damn it.”
That challenging, thuggish, barracks style of speech accompanied by a penetrating stare intimidated Xabier. He wanted no more conversation. He was already thinking of taking an antidepressant as soon as he was alone. He reflexively checked the time on his watch. It was like raising an imaginary wall between himself and the Guardia Civil officer. And suddenly he remembered his mother. Why? If it weren’t for her, I’d be practicing medicine many miles from here, maybe even on a different continent, in those remote lands where Aránzazu went. But I can’t leave ama alone.
He was fully aware that an investigation ordered by the Police Court of San Sebastián was under way because of the forensic physician’s report. After gathering up the facts derived from his general examination of the patient, Xabier composed his own report: multiple contusions, fracture of the ninth left-side rib, pulmonary contusion, pneumothorax on the left side, periocular hematoma, left eye, with hemorrhage, subcutaneous emphysema from the cervical region to the pelvis; hematomas, abrasions, cuts on both legs. He set it all down in short, cold sentences. He added that the patient had been brought to the hospital by agents of the Guardia Civil in order that his wounds be examined after arrest. And that the undersigned declares as the origin of his wounds punches and kicks to the head, the thorax, the abdomen, and lower extremities. Once he finished, without rereading (not his usual style) the text, he included the date and signed it.
Three days later, the patient left intensive care. Xabier was informed that a gentleman wanted to speak to him. He did not want to receive him in his office. It’s harder there to get rid of pests. Besides, he’s got the photo of his father on his desk and he doesn’t like outsiders to see it. There might be the smell of cognac in the air. So he went out into the hall.
It was a man in his thirties, red-faced, thick, corpulent, and I’d bet diabetic. The brother of the ETA man, who came to thank him. Xabier: you’re welcome. And as he did with the Guardia Civil captain, he told this man that he’d only done his job.
Immediately, it was clear that this big guy hadn’t turned up in the hospital merely to express his gratitude. He was trying to see if the doctor would confirm that his brother had been tortured.
“What is your opinion?”
All Xabier did was repeat in a rather more colloquial idiom the content of the medical report, which was what appeared the next day in Egin as a statement by him to the newspaper.
Nerea on the telephone:
“You should have told him that ETA murdered our father. I’d like to see his face then.”
“I was tired. It didn’t occur to me to say it.”
“God knows if he really was the ETA man’s brother.”
“I had the same suspicion from the start. Don’t say anything to ama, okay?”
“The thought would never enter my mind. Are you crazy?”
109
IF THE WIND HITS THE BURNING COAL
They talked it over once, sitting at the table, after Txato had been dead for a few years. Should we go to meetings of terrorism victims? Never. Brother and sister and mother agreed on that point:
Bittori:
“I’m not going to put my sorrow on display in some shop window. You two can do what you like.”
It was Nerea who invented the image of the burning coal we carry within us.
“And each one of us is going to have to find their own way to extinguish it little by little.”
Ama added that if the wind blows on the coal the flame grows. The fact is that the three of them, without confessing it to one another, felt the effects of the fire they held inside themselves whenever there was a terrorist episode. It wasn’t one of the subjects that habitually came up in their conversations. They allowed ETA crimes to go by without commenting on them, as if they’d agreed in a tacit accord to keep silent. They often talked about Txato, but only rarely about the fact that he was murdered. They preferred to chat, joking, smiling, about his obstinacy and his jug-handle ears, his good heart. And from time to time Bittori would ask her children not to forget him. None of them had any intention of living the rest of their lives being mainly victims and nothing more than victims. During the morning: victims; during the afternoon: victims; and during the night: victims.
Xabier:
“At the same time, you can’t deny that we are victims.”
Bittori put the serving spoon in the soup bowl.
“True, but let’s eat before the soup gets cold.”
And the years went by along with the rains, the bombs, and the shots. A new century arrived and, some time later, one morning in November Xabier found out from the newspaper that in San Sebastián they would be celebrating Remembrance Days for Victims of Terrorism and Terrorist Violence, organized by the Victims of Terrorism in Basque Country Collective. And he wasn’t going to go because he never goes to those sorts of events, convinced that he’d leave depressed about them and then wander in the darkness of his mental labyrinths.
But by chance, he found the name of the judge who’d presided in his father’s case on the list of participants scheduled for that day and he thought it over and became curious and it occurred to him he could attend the talk as an anonymous spectator. After all, no one knows me, many years have gone by, and I can sit far away from the speakers’ table.
An hour before the start of the program, Xabier was still vacillating: fear, doubts, a touch of anxiety he tried to treat with a pill. He left his house not knowing for certain which way he’d go. The sky, already black, the streets packed with vehicles, he started walking with no plan other than to let his feet choose the route. The route he took after a detour that was hardly short ended at the main entrance to the María Cristina Hotel, in one of whose meeting rooms on the street level the judge, a writer, and other participants would speak one after another in a few minutes. My feet decided for me, and Xabier, his heart pounding, downed a double cognac and then another at the Tánger Bar nearby. Why? To calm his nerves. To gather courage. Would someone recognize me? He bided his time and walked into the room when the program had already begun and the public’s attention was fixed on the speakers.
He sat near one of the doors in the next-to-last row among people he didn’t know. Before him, rows of backs and necks, and quite a few empty chairs. Forty, fifty people? No more than that. Opposite the rear wall, the table with speakers and microphones. The judge wasn’t there. Someone finished speaking, turned the program over to the writer, there was tepid, polite applause. And he said that:
“There are books that grow inside you over the years waiting for the right moment to be written. Mine, which I’ve come to talk to you about, is one of them. The initial idea…”
With all appropriate discretion, Xabier, in the rear, tried to identify the people present. It wasn’t easy since they all had their backs to him. Not forgetting the fact that he personally knew no victims of ETA or their families. He did, true enough, know about some, the ones everyone knows about from having seen them on television or their photos in newspapers.
“And this project to compose, by means of a fiction, a testimony to the atrocities committed by the terrorists arises in my case from two motives. On the one hand, the empathy I have for the victims of terrorism. On the other, my total rejection of violence and any aggression committed against the rule of law.”
The writer then asks himself why he didn’t join ETA when he was young. An astonished silence spreads throughout the audience, which is holding its breath.
“After all, I, too, was a Basque teenager, exposed like so many other boys of my time to propaganda that favored terrorism and the doctrines on which that terrorism is founded. I’ve thought it all over many times and I think I’ve found the answer.”
There in front, in the first row, reserved for speakers, was the judge waiting for his turn to speak. The judge is famous. His head is bald, burnished, so he’s easily recognizable. Besides, at that time he appeared frequently in the media about some trial I don’t remember. As far as Xabier knew, the judge was no longer attached to the National Court.
“So I wrote against the suffering inflicted by some men on others, trying to show what that suffering consisted of and, it goes without saying, who generated it, and what physical and psychic consequences it leaves in survivors.”
And in the third or fourth row, in a moment in which the person he was observing turned his head a bit, Xabier made out a familiar profile.
“Therefore, I wrote against crimes perpetrated under the guise of politics, in the name of a homeland where a handful of armed people, with the shameful support of one sector of society, decides who belongs to that homeland and who should either leave it or die. I wrote without hatred against the language of hatred and against forgetting and the oblivion cooked up by those who try to concoct a history at the service of their projects and totalitarian beliefs.”
He wasn’t sure. A woman wearing a beige wool beret, sitting right behind the person in question, kept Xabier from getting a clear view, yes, sure, she’s so well-known, the sister of Gregorio Ordóñez. What’s her name? María Ordóñez, Ester Ordóñez, Maite Ordóñez. He couldn’t recall her real name. Suddenly: Consuelo Ordóñez. Damn, that was a hard one.
Homeland Page 52
