Homeland

by Fernando Aramburu

  “My brother is afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “He’s afraid that Bittori will go to the newspapers with some statement of his where he asks forgiveness. His comrades might find out.”

  Coming from way down the hall, there appeared a smile filled with white teeth, an examination robe no less white and clean, and a young face: the chatty physiotherapist, who spoke with sympathy:

  “What’s this, my beauty, you’ve got a visitor?”

  Arantxa hastily wrote something on the iPad screen. The physiotherapist immediately showed she agreed. She then asked Nerea to wait there without moving, that they would call her. Nerea waited alone in the corridor. What can these women be dreaming up? To judge by their faces, it had to be something amusing. In a bit, they did call her. She walked into the rehabilitation room. They’d prepared a surprise for her. Arantxa standing up, on each side a physiotherapist. Insecure, tense, she managed to take a step without help, no one holding on to her, a short, stumbling step, oh God don’t let her fall, two, four in all. And from behind they brought over the wheelchair so she could sit down. Praise, applause from all those present. Nerea too applauded. And then she was on the verge of tears.

  She said goodbye to Arantxa a few minutes later, not without promising she’d come again. Nerea walked down the hall, lost in thought, actually in worries. Her mother, of course. And just before she reached the stairs, I’m happy I came, a voice greeted her from nearby, with a hello that was dry, cutting, and to which Nerea responded without taking the time to see who’d greeted her. She turned her head. She saw Miren’s back as she made her way toward the corridor. Is that Miren? Of course it was Miren, accompanied by a boy about eight inches taller than she and a very pretty girl with long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Judging by their age, by the fact that they were with Miren, and because it couldn’t be any more obvious, she concluded they were Arantxa’s children.

  119

  PATIENCE

  That night, Nerea called her brother. She’d promised she would. She told him, without getting tangled up in too many details, how her visit with Arantxa that afternoon had gone. She did not forget to tell him that Miren had said hello to her.

  “It can’t be. Are you sure?”

  “Well, there was no one next to me, so the greeting had to be for me. A rapid hello. She didn’t give me enough time even to see her face.”

  She concluded by bringing up the matter that most concerned her.

  “Arantxa knows all about ama’s sickness.”

  “I can’t imagine what kind of information she has. I still haven’t told ama what the diagnosis is.”

  “Ama is no fool. She knows that no one goes to the oncologist to cure a sore throat. For sure she intuits what’s wrong with her even if she can’t put a name to it.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d pay her a visit and lay the groundwork. Right now, I’m a little down.”

  “Take it easy. I’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Do me one favor. If she disagrees with you, don’t argue with her.”

  Nerea bought her mother a bouquet—a bad idea, as she soon found out. Passing by a florist on the way to her mother’s house, she thought: I’ll give her some flowers as a sign of goodwill. Bittori, as soon as she saw them:

  “Hey, I’m not dead yet.”

  Patience. Before she went in, standing on the landing, Nerea asked about the doormat she’d brought from London.

  “You’ve asked me about it before. You might have figured out that I didn’t like it.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “Dear daughter, there are things you just don’t have to say.”

  Patience, patience. She remembered her brother’s request: that she please not argue with her.

  “What’s going on with your husband? Have you separated again?”

  “He’s still around.”

  “That guy’s always around somewhere.”

  “Ama, he’s got a lot of work. Don’t be so nasty.”

  Bittori put the bouquet in a vase with water. She said they smelled nice and that on Saturday, if you don’t mind, I’ll bring them to Txato. Nerea complained that it was cold there in the living room. She said it looking at the balcony door, which was wide open.

  “It’s in case the cat comes home. I’m starting to think something terrible has happened.”

  “Yesterday I visited Arantxa in the hospital.”

  “She told me all about it this morning.”

  “I see. Actually, I came by to tell you, but if you already know everything…”

  “I know her part. Not yours.”

  Patience. Sitting down, she here, her mother on the other side of the coffee table, the vase with the flowers between them along with two cups of instant decaf coffee. Nerea explained her reason for going up to the hospital and how her meeting with Arantxa was arranged. And Bittori interrupted her every other second:

  “Yes, I know all that. And now you’re going to tell me that Arantxa took six steps without anyone’s help.”

  “Four.”

  “She told me six.”

  “When I was leaving, I saw her mother. Did Arantxa tell you that, too?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  The late-afternoon coolness, carrying a note of oceanic humidity, flowed through the balcony door. Light? Not much. Sufficient for Bittori. Nerea was uncomfortable because she felt as if she were inside a cave inside a house. If I’d only known, I’d have brought a lantern. And on the wall, the pendulum clock lazily, routinely rang out eight o’clock. The setting was weird, of a sad heaviness and with poor lighting. A characteristic scent covered the knickknacks, the walls, the furniture, not quite repulsive but exactly the opposite of cozy. And it was the same smell that emanated from her mother’s clothes and body when she hugged her.

  “Did you stop to talk to her?”

  “No way. By the time I realized who it was saying hello to me, she’d gone along with her grandchildren.”

  “Oh, she was with her grandchildren? What are they like?”

  “The boy, tall; the girl, good-looking. I only saw them from behind. But Arantxa told me a few things you haven’t mentioned to me.”

  “What things?”

  “She was sorry, she said, about your sickness. I was surprised she was better informed than I was about that.”

  “You may be informed. Because, at least I think so, you talk to your brother from time to time. What Xabier doesn’t know is that the other day I called Arruabarrena. The doctor told me that he’d talked it all over with Xabier, who has to give the explanations of what has to be explained. So, that was on Friday a week ago and here I am still waiting. During that time, your brother has called me every day. Think he told me anything about the results of the tests? Not a word. And now you turn up with flowers. You two make a great team!”

  “The flowers are a sign of affection. Nothing else.”

  “If we don’t communicate within the family, it’s natural that some don’t know what’s happening to others.”

  “Well, now you’ve got a chance to talk with me. And I’d appreciate it if you turned on the lamp. You’re sitting right there and I can barely see your face.”

  “The problem is that if I turn it on, mosquitoes come in.”

  Patience. Nerea, joking, asked her mother if by any chance she remembered where she’d put her coffee cup. And she pretended to look for it, feeling around on the table. Damn, well, turn on the light, but close the balcony door first. Nerea, delighted. Not wasting a second, she did the first, then the second.

  “I’ve lived this long and maybe I’ll live a little more. I know what I have inside my body. I’m not going to subject myself to chemotherapy or any of those other tortures. I want to join my husband, it’s about time, and no one’s going to stop me. To live one more y
ear? Two? What for? I was killed a long time ago. From that moment on I’ve been nothing more than a ghost. At most, half a person. And that only because something has to remain where you feel the pain others cause you and because, as well, with two children, you go on as long as you can.” Nerea seemed about to say something, but Bittori cut her off. “I’m talking here. You two don’t have to worry about your inheritance. It’s all arranged. No reason for you to fight. It’s fifty-fifty. And now, listen to what I’m going to say. I’m telling you because it isn’t possible to talk to your brother about these things. He gets depressed right away.”

  Nerea stared at her mother’s serene face, decisive, lucid. And it was as if she were seeing her for the first time in her life. During other moments, she’d stared at the flowers. They did look like a funeral-parlor decoration.

  “This is what I want. You’ll bury me with aita in Polloe, my coffin on top of his. There is room for one more body. Please, leave my wedding ring on my finger, the same as we did with his when we buried him. And make sure I’m wearing the white shoes I wore on my wedding day. You can find them in the closet in my room. That’s a job I can’t give to your brother. He doesn’t understand and couldn’t do it. But you’re a woman, there’s no need to explain certain things to you. Place two obituary notices in El Diario Vasco, one in Spanish the other in Basque. And in both make sure aita’s nickname appears. No funeral for me. And now, the most important thing, even though in fact everything is important. If you see that within a year or two or however many it takes, the political situation calms down, that terrorism has ended, you should move the two of us to the village cemetery. That’s all I ask of you.”

  “Have you talked this over, any of it, with Xabier?”

  “How the hell can I talk to him if he hasn’t come by in ages. And these are things I don’t want to talk about on the phone.”

  “Okay, since we’re being sincere, I’ve found out you’re determined to have Miren’s son ask your forgiveness and Arantxa is doing everything she can to make him do it. True?”

  “Why do you think I’m still alive? I need that forgiveness. I want it and I demand it, and until I get it I have no intention of dying.”

  “Your pride is really out of this world.”

  “It isn’t pride. As soon as you place the last slab and I’m resting with Txato, I’ll tell him: the idiot asked to be forgiven, now we can rest in peace.”

  120

  THE GIRL FROM ONDÁRROA

  Conditions in prison didn’t break him down. And you can believe they were tough. In some jails they’re worse than in others. We’ll soon see what the future holds for him. This whole thing is getting harder and harder. Naturally the years are taking their toll; but he doesn’t believe it’s time that split him like a dry log, though at the same time, we’re not going to discount it. It was, principally, something else. What? Joxe Mari attributes the start of his moral collapse to the girl from Ondárroa. He’s convinced. Starting with that story, which at the beginning was so beautiful, the termite of sadness got inside him, damn it to hell, you don’t notice, but it goes on eating you up, eating you up, and finally the wood’s all filled with holes.

  He saw his father cry on the other side of the glass in the meeting chamber. The old man filled him with sorrow; but it was a sorrow, how can I put it?, just on the surface, meaning that at the end of the visit the old man carried it away with him, loaded onto his back. By then he had no room left for sorrow. Euskal Herria above all else. The cause he’d sacrificed himself for, his reason for being, his everything. And seeing his father leave, he felt, what?, hell, disappointment. That’s the word. The disappointment of having a soft father, of having been engendered by a weak man.

  “Ama, it’s better he doesn’t come.”

  “Don’t worry, the next time I’ll leave him home.”

  By himself, Joxe Mari searched within himself for signs of weakness the way you might examine your body looking for who knows what, fleas or lice. He searched for those possible signs with a ferocious desire to exterminate them, I’m damned if I want some psychological nuisance to get me. And if in the courtyard, in the television room or any other place he saw a depressed comrade with moist eyes, he scolded him, demanded discipline, we’re still militants. Being weak, seeming weak? He’d rather have an arm cut off.

  Not even the hunger strikes wore him down. And you know they’re a pain in the ass. But if we’ve got to go on a hunger strike, we go on a hunger strike. Whether it’s to demand the freedom of some organization prisoner afflicted with a serious illness, or to protest penitentiary policy, or because ETA, through its prison network, has given the order, or for whatever reason. And he checked to make sure no comrade visited the prison store too often. Or to make sure no one sent one of the arruntak to buy chocolates, potato chips, and things like that. His longest strike lasted forty-one days, in Albolote. I drank tons of water. And he lost twenty pounds, so that when his mother saw him at a visit, she was horrified.

  “Hey, you don’t have cancer, do you?”

  He answered that he was as fit as a fiddle. A lie. He felt dizzy all the time and no strength to do anything. And he didn’t tell her that for a few days he’d been peeing red urine. He considered telling the doctor, but he rejected the idea so he wouldn’t have to face a bad diagnosis. Then there was an assembly, they all voted in favor of stopping the strike, and after a few days, my pixa was normal. Joxe Mari blames the hunger strikes for his habitual constipation and for a hemorrhoid that still makes him go through hell.

  The long months of isolation, too, didn’t wear him down. Twenty hours a day locked in the cell. During the summer, a heat that kills you. The guards shout orders at the top of their lungs. Visits, reduced to eight, ten minutes. And the pain in the ass of nighttime checks, every two hours or whenever they felt like it. And betweentimes, they’d beat on the cell door so you wouldn’t sleep. They would suddenly burst in. Shouts, get undressed, deep knee bends. That was how it went. Along with the usual insults. But no matter what they did they couldn’t get me down.

  When Miguel Ángel Blanco from the People’s Party was executed in 1997, three guards punched him around. Well, actually one guard. The other two held him down. News of the kidnapping reached the prison three days before. As soon they heard about ETA’s ultimatum, Joxe Mari whispered to a companion that:

  “They’re going to blow that boy away.”

  At the end of the afternoon on July 12, it was revealed that he’d been shot twice in the head. They’d brought him to a hospital in San Sebastián. He hovered between life and death. At about daybreak, the news programs confirmed his death. Attacks that included fatalities created a perceptible tension in the prison. And hard stares. One of the guards:

  “Well, are you happy?”

  Joxe Mari doesn’t recall if he smiled. He might have, but not for the reasons the guard imagined. When night fell, they staged a phony cell check and they went after him. A punch here, a punch there.

  “That’s payback for your little smile from before, you ETA piece of shit. If you want more, just ask.”

  Years back, in Picassent, he got into a fight with two ordinary prisoners. It was during supper. Why? A trifle. Actually, if a couple of guys didn’t like your face that was enough. And even though he knocked them down, wham bam, with no trouble, he couldn’t prevent one of them from catching him off guard and cutting open his head with a chair. Blood by the bucket and eight stitches. The warden comes along and just like that solitary. Just one of so many incidents. There are worse cases, sometimes with deaths. Time passed, Joxe Mari was moved to another jail, he began to go bald and one day, looking at himself in the mirror, he realized he didn’t have enough hair to cover the scar.

  So many things happen. No one outside the prison finds out about them. Besides, no one likes to tell his family, to keep them from worrying. But just the same: Joxe Mari remained firm, hard as s
tone, a mast standing tall in the storm, because aside from his physical strength, he wasn’t lacking resources to help him weather adversities, low moments, and everything else that came along. What resources? Above all else, the group. The group is fundamental, the union of comrades. He told that to his mother:

  “They’re my family here.”

  To that was added ideological loyalty. What he wasn’t accustomed to do when he was free, he did now. What was that? He took an interest in politics. Before, all the palaver and theoretical crap seemed like detours on the road toward the objective. The armed struggle on the other hand was the shortcut. Now he carefully read articles, pamphlets, and any publication or communiqué that came from the organization. He wasn’t simply happy to feed his awareness that he was still involved in the struggle but actually set about gathering arguments to justify that struggle and show clearly that it was just and necessary. Oh, and supported by the majority of Basques. From that conviction, he drew courage. And whenever an opportunity arose (for example, during the weekly meetings when the ETA prisoners decided how they were going to behave inside the prison, in accordance with the slogans they received from outside), he would launch into an argument that was hot and heavy, fanatical.

  He was especially comforted when he could speak in Basque with some comrade or with a group. Sometimes they sang songs from the homeland, “Izarren hautsa,” something by Lete, by Laboa, by Benito Lertxundi, without raising their voices too high in order not to provoke. Or they told jokes. It was then that Joxe Mari felt transported far away from there, to a place without guards or walls or bars, telling the same jokes, singing the same songs as loudly as they could and drinking cider, calimocho, or beer in the company of his oldtime friends. Closing his eyes, he was able to feel the scent of his village, of the leeks his father would bring from the garden, and another scent, which for him was the greatest, that of freshly cut grass. Already in Albolote and later, with greater intensity, in cellblock 3 of Puerto I, he wrote poems. They gave him a pleasant feeling of intimacy. He never dared to show them to anyone because he knew they weren’t worth much. Also out of modesty. When he wrote them, he recalled Gorka, his love of solitude and books. What could his brother be doing just then?