by Lucy Wadham
She glanced up and smiled at him, keeping her mouth closed.
When he had shut the door behind him, she stared towards the open window at the blue sky. Paco was still seeping out of her and she could smell his spit on her face. She was growing cold but she could not move. A solitary phrase turned in her mind: I am Lola and I have a cunt. She pulled the sheet up over her shoulders.
The sound of the doorbell woke her. Her head had been lolling at an uncomfortable angle and her neck was aching. She did not move. Someone who did not know them was ringing at the main door. The bell rang again, more insistently this time. Knowing that the portico concealed visitors from her view, she went next door to Astrid’s room and looked out. A boy on crutches was making his way down the stone steps.
What do you want? she called out in Spanish.
The boy looked up at her, head thrown back.
I don’t speak Spanish, he called in French. He grinned at her. You must be Lola.
Who are you?
Carlos, he said. I’m a friend of your sister’s.
She’s not here.
Where is she?
Gone. I don’t know. And she closed the window.
He leaned on the bell.
When she opened the front door Kader was unprepared for what he saw. She was wearing nothing but a silky pink nightdress with her nipples showing through. Her blonde hair was a tangled mess and her eye make-up was smudged. She stood and scowled at him, one fist on her hip. He thought there was something of old Arnaga in the way she held her head, stiff and proud.
Who the fuck are you?
Kader. I’m a friend of Astrid’s.
I thought you said Carlos.
You can call me Carlos if you prefer.
She stared at him as though trying to work something out, then she shook her head and closed the door.
Kader used the rubber stopper on his crutch as a knocker.
He banged firmly until she opened up again.
What do you want?
I’ve come a long way. Can I come in for a coffee or something?
Lola turned and walked away, leaving the door open. Kader hobbled after her into a dark hall with antlers on the walls. The place smelt of dust and made him want to sneeze. He followed her past a wide, wooden staircase and into a brightly lit kitchen.
Lola padded over to the sink, her bare feet making a sticking sound on the linoleum. He watched her arse as she filled a saucepan and put it on the gas.
He pulled a stool from under the table and sat down. Then he began to prise the old bandage from his congealed knife wound.
So you’re Lola, he said.
She faced him.
Who are you? Where are you from?
I’m from Nanterre. Outside Paris. But I was born in Trappes, like Anelka. Do you watch football?
No, she said. How do you know Astrid?
She gave me a lift. He held out his arm. She treated this wound. But I didn’t change the bandage so it’s going septic.
You came to have your bandage changed.
But she was not smiling.
Kader went on peeling off the bandage. Lola stepped forward.
It’s not septic, she said, looking at the wound.
She smelt of sex.
Are you a doctor? he asked.
No I’m a dancer. I teach salsa.
I’ve got a friend, Kader said. A black kid called Adel. He loves that Latino shit. Goes to all the clubs in Paris. He started because he liked to hit on the white women who go to those classes, but then he got into it for the dancing. He knows all the moves.
She looked at him with new curiosity.
Adel who?
I don’t know his surname. He’s from Mauritania.
Adel Kamara, she said. He’s a pain in the arse. He tries to put African rhythms into every passe. Calls me a fascist because I stick to Cuban salsa. I like him, though. He makes me smile.
She had not smiled yet.
It’s healed, she told him, pulling back. The movement revived the smell. You’ll have a neat scar to remind you of the event. Is it a knife wound?
No, he said.
She picked up the bandage from the table and walked away, winding it into a ball. She opened a cupboard under the sink and threw it into the bin. Then she took the boiling water from the stove and made two cups of tea using tea bags. She put his cup down on the table and wrapped her hands around her own. Kader averted his eyes from the stains on her nightdress.
You should go back to Trappes, she said. If you’ve come on a love quest for Astrid, you’ll hit the wall. She’s not capable of love.
Nanterre, he corrected her.
She can’t love because she has to be in control.
Can you tell me where I can find her?
No I can’t, she said. Then she stood up and swept out of the room.
When she had gone, he went to the cupboard under the sink. He opened the bin, pulled out the dirty bandage, the only souvenir he had, and put it into the pocket of his ruined tracksuit. He poured the tea down the sink, stood for a moment, looking about him, then picked up his crutches and went out through the back door.
*
Upstairs Lola got down on her knees and reached for the wooden box under her bed. It had a transfer of an Old English sheepdog on the lid. She sat with the box in her lap and began to look through the memorabilia she had stored there as if in readiness for this moment. Here was understanding.
A school photo. Black and white. Summer term, 1971. She was nine. Astrid was fourteen. She peered at herself, looking carefully. Straight back. Open smile. A few teeth missing. A little girl standing beside her best friend, Angela Sharpe. She tried to remember. She had loved Angela, her freckles and her lisp and her fluffy pink dressing gown. She and Angela had made perfume together out of squashed petals, then they had smoked together on the roofs, then they had gone looking for boys in the village near the school. Lola liked knowing that Angela was in a ditch close by. She could sometimes hear Angela’s giggle resounding in the dappled wood. Astrid thought that Angela was simple. I like Georgina Fiennes better, she would say. She’s interesting.
Lola looked for Georgina Fiennes. She found her in the back row: a tall girl with flaxen hair parted in the middle and falling like austere curtains on either side of her face. Astrid was right. Georgina was more interesting than Angela. At thirteen she drew anti-nuclear symbols in felt tip on her jeans and had read Plato’s Republic. Angela had gone into decline when Lola left her for Georgina. She gave up boys and spent all her time in the pottery room. She grew chubby and plain and could not meet your eye. Lola ran the tip of her finger over Angela’s beaming moon face.
Astrid was in the same row as Lola at the far end. There was the same sad look in her eye.
She pulled out one of the press cuttings about the campaign for Astrid’s release. There was a photo of Astrid taken at the press conference. She was sitting behind a microphone, looking dazed. She scrunched up the cutting in her fist and threw it across the room. She had paid too dearly for Astrid’s sacrifice. She had believed all this time that this was what it had been. But now it was no longer clear. Astrid had been to prison instead of her; this she knew. At the age of seventeen, Lola had borrowed Astrid’s ID card to get into an X-rated film. Absurdly, she had forgotten which film it was. When the police had searched Mikel’s apartment after the Donosti commando fell, they had found the card and Astrid had been arrested and charged with logistical support. Astrid and their father had both insisted that they say nothing about Lola having borrowed it. Lola was to be protected at all costs. To this day, she didn’t know why.
She pulled out the only photo they had of herself and Astrid with their father. She knew that her mother must have taken it with her Hasselblad because the image was square. It was a winter’s day in their garden in Donostia. She recognised the brutally pruned plane trees in the background. There was frost on the ground. Her father was wearing his stiff camel-hair coat. He had a hat with a narrow
brim and a scarf crossed between his lapels. Lola remembered that Eugenio had chosen the lawyer who was to defend Astrid. The choice had been a bad one. Astrid had been accused of logistical support but there was no proof of this, other than her I.D. card among Mikel’s things. Instead of debunking the charges, the lawyer had built a complex ideological argument around the idea that Astrid was being persecuted simply because she was from a politically engaged family. Nothing, of course, could have been more maddening to the judge than the accusation that he was biased, and Astrid was sentenced to five years.
Lola looked at the photo again. She was still a baby, trussed up in a tartan coat lodged stiffly in her father’s arms. Astrid was also wearing a tartan coat that looked too short for her and tights, baggy at the knees. There was a gap between her and Eugenio and it looked as though his hand was fishing for her to come closer. The distance upset the composition of the photo. Unlike Lola and Eugenio, Astrid was not looking at their mother but straight at the camera. It seemed clear to Lola that the clue to her sister’s betrayal was there in that photo.
Lola was Astrid’s link to the outside world. This was clear. Astrid had never had any connection to either her mother or her father. She had come into the world and found it hostile and had set about trying to protect her little sister from it. The path Lola took had been marked out for her by Astrid. Whenever she had tried to step off the path, Astrid had coaxed her back. Mikel had been the only real threat to Astrid’s guidance. Lola leaned her head against the bed. She felt a new pity for her sister. Sacrifice came naturally to Astrid; she was afraid of life.
THIRTY-FIVE
Txema sat high in his Mercedes, facing the newly cut field of wheat, and waited for Lorea. The sun was a huge red ball in his wing mirror and the field was alight with it. Lorea had always thought she wanted to be married to him but he knew better. When the subject came up he liked to tell her that she would be a puma in a cage if she married him. This usually softened the blow.
When she arrived, Txema watched her pick her way through the stubble. There was no doubt: this woman made him feel powerful. He hoped he was not about to throw that away.
She opened the door and climbed in and leaned across to kiss him as she always did. Then she sat back and flipped open the sun visor, looked at her reflection in the mirror and faced him with her smile.
Txema turned on the engine.
I thought we were staying here. The disappointment he heard in her voice thrilled him. Where are we going?
We’re going for a drive.
What for?
Txema did not answer. He drove out through the gap in the hedge and took the road that led into the mountains.
Lorea crossed her legs and began to sulk.
I have something to tell you, he said.
She uncrossed her legs.
What?
He glanced at her. She was wearing a pale-blue sundress with thin straps over her narrow shoulders. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wanted to touch her long neck.
Did you go to San Sebastian today?
Of course. It’s Friday.
Lorea went into town every Friday for a facial.
Did you swim? he asked.
Yes.
He smiled at her.
What is it, Txema? You’re being strange.
I’m about to put my life into your hands, Lorea. I want to make sure I know you.
What are you talking about?
But he did not reply.
He drove through the last hamlet before the border and stopped in a lay-by beside a stream. The sound of rushing water came through the open window.
Where are we? she asked.
We’re near a farm that used to belong to a man called Joakin, Txema told her. He hid Mikel and me for a night before we tried to cross the border.
Lorea always paid particular attention when he spoke of Mikel. Mikel to Lorea was an object worthy of hatred. He had been an historic member of the organisation and he had become a grass. She had never doubted this fact, probably because her imagination was more susceptible to tales of betrayal than to accounts of heroism.
Neither of us slept, Txema went on. We smoked and talked all night. The next evening Joakin took us in his truck to the café in the village and we met the two mugas who were to take us across the border.
Lorea shifted uneasily in her seat.
You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Txema.
He leaned back into his door to get a better look at her. He had no choice. This woman was the only person in the world who could deliver him from his fear. He had stolen a large sum of money from the organisation. It had been collected from Basque companies, a month’s worth of revolutionary tax. Every single day Txema saw himself being killed. He saw himself being shot expertly in the back of the head with a silenced Browning. They could get him anywhere: in his bed, in his car, in his office. Someone with a black balaclava over their face would come up to him and ask him, Are you Txema Egibar? And he would nod or shake his head and whatever his reaction, however cowering or dignified, they would pull their weapon and shoot him in the head and the heart. Lorea loved him. Lorea was a fierce animal. If anyone tried to hurt him, she would attack, no thought for herself.
I want you to be my wife, he said.
She was looking at him now, her hand over her mouth.
I want to marry you, he said.
Txema reached out and took her hand. She was shaking. She never cried. She watched her hand in his, unable to look him in the eye, aware of how much harm he could do her. He pressed his lips to her hand to still it.
I brought you up here to tell you everything, he said.
Txema …
He kissed her hand again.
The money you took to Switzerland belongs to the organisation. It was revolutionary tax.
Lorea pulled her hand from his grasp. She looked at him now, her eyes wide with fear.
When the Donosti commando fell Mikel and I were both identified and we received orders to disappear. Months later, we were told to cross over to France and to take the money with us to give to somebody, living in Biarritz, who went by the name of ‘The Belgian’. When we began the journey, I was carrying the bag. We left with Joakin in his truck. When we got to the village it was ten-thirty on a Friday night. I didn’t know either of the mugas who were taking us across. They were brothers. Mikel had met one of them at a rally in Guernica. Txema nodded at a narrow wooden bridge that crossed the stream. We started walking from there, he said. It’s a public footpath now but it was barely a track then. That bridge wasn’t there. We jumped across. The money weighed a ton. Apart from the password, no words had been exchanged between us since the meeting. It was a clear, cold night in October. We could see our breath in the moonlight. We walked up a steep path through this old oak wood I’ve known since I was a kid. The trunks were all twisted and covered in moss and lichen. It’s supposed to be haunted. The ground was damp from recent rain so the climb was hard. The eldest brother led the way, then Mikel, then me, then the youngest brother. All of us were armed.
Lorea had stopped shaking. Her face wore an expression he had never seen before. She was listening wholly to him. Every part of her was attentive; all vanity, for the moment, had disappeared.
We were on a thinly wooded plateau, only minutes away from this pile of rocks where we were supposed to meet the other two refugees who were coming back the opposite way. They were to be escorted by our mugas to Joakin’s. At first, I thought it was a wild boar running through the undergrowth. The others scattered and I stood there, frozen. There he was, a man, four paces away, pointing an automatic weapon at me. He was in combat gear and his face was blacked out. His eyes were very white. A shot rang out. In that instant, the man’s attention wavered and I ran at him. He should have shot me but he didn’t. As I threw my weight at him, I remember thinking that he must be very young. He fell back like he was made of sticks. His head hit a rock. I didn’t think of the money then. I thought
of Mikel.
He looked at Lorea, at her eyes, full of fear and pity, and he knew that she would never again look this beautiful to him.
I heard two more shots behind me as I ran towards the border. There were about five hundred metres of open country to cross, with only the occasional tree, too thin to hide behind. The place was flooded with moonlight. As I ran I was anticipating the shot so strongly that the back of my head ached. I went on running downhill. I kept running until I reached a pine forest growing on a steep slope. I dived into it. As I lay panting beside a tree, I thought of the money. It gave me a new energy. It made me brave. It took me hours to dig the hole with a piece of rock. There were roots everywhere. When I had finished my fingers were bleeding. I buried the bag under that tree and carried a rock from the plateau to mark the spot. When I left it was dawn. The money was mine. He squeezed Lorea’s hand. Now it is ours, he said.
She looked down at her lap. And Txema knew that he would stay with her simply for what he felt for her at this moment.
I want to feel safe now, Lorea, he told her. After the money disappeared, the organisation carried out an investigation. The two mugas were shot by the Guardia Civil up there on the mountain, so all they had were Mikel’s account of his arrest and my own testimony to the French gendarmerie. Still to this day, I don’t know what Mikel thinks. No one ever managed to get hold of a copy of his cantada as far as I know. When I was questioned in France by Iñaki, the man who trained me, and Koldo whom I trained, I told them that one of the mugas was carrying the bag. I said that the Guardia Civil must have taken the money. I don’t know what Mikel told them.
Why didn’t you ask him?
He wasn’t listening. He was looking out at the narrow bridge. One thing I do know, Astrid Arnaga will lead us to Mikel.
Lorea’s eyes had lost all trace of tenderness. She was herself again.
Anxton is on her, she said. She’s at the Hotel Lagunekin. She hasn’t moved all day. She smiled at him. He has the bike. I’ll do the rest.
Txema was suddenly helpless with desire. He reached over and caught her behind the neck.
