An endless minute later, as the streetlights slowly came back into focus, I felt Nere’s hand at the back of my neck. We rounded the corner, and I saw we had nearly returned to the apartment building where we started.
“Are you OK?” she began to say. But before she could finish, Ramón jammed the brakes of the car, and Asier was pointing across the street to a man and a woman leaving the building. The woman was tall and thin, dressed in dark slacks and a blue rain jacket. Her eyes had dark rings under them. The man with her was pushing a stroller covered by an umbrella. It was the first time I saw José Antonio Torres in person.
The pain continued to ease as we watched, all four of us trying to act casual when the couple made their way past the car.
“She’s pretty,” Nere said absently, watching the three. She kept her hand on my head, her fingers pushing lightly through the hair at the base of my neck. “He did well for himself, didn’t he?”
She was right. The woman was too thin to be entirely healthy, but it was obvious even from a distance that she was beautiful.
“Take a note, Asier,” Ramón said, exhaling smoke into the Croma. Asier flipped open his school notebook and held his pen above the page, waiting. “Five twenty-seven. Councilman leaves apartment with wife and child.”
11. MARIANA
In the months before the doctor in Bilbao made her diagnosis, the anemia brought on by two barely functioning kidneys had left me lethargic, hardly able to leave the sofa to get Elena dressed. José Antonio had diagnosed it as a mental health issue, a sort of late-onset postpartum depression, and though I never said as much, I tended to agree with him. I was on my own most of the day with Elena and felt suddenly isolated in Muriga, the town that I had spent the greater part of my life in. Occasionally, I’d meet up with Victoria, my oldest friend, at the park on the Paseo de los Robles, and Elena would play on the brightly painted jungle gym with Victoria’s son César. Victoria and I would talk for a while about old boyfriends or about our husbands’ jobs. But inevitably we ran out of things to talk about, and we would sit in silence and watch our children laughing or screaming as they ran around the little park. I found myself missing Sevilla and the self-centered existence I had there.
But almost immediately after the operation, my energy began to return, and with the new energy came the smells, the cravings, the edges of these new memories. They kept me company, in a way. When they came, I would tap the black stitches on my abdomen and wonder what my new kidney was trying to tell me. When Elena was asleep for her afternoon nap, I would go to the living room mirror and lift up my shirt.
“Who are you?” I’d ask the incision, and as if in response, I would smell a whiff of hashish or feel a humid warmth on the underside of my arm, as if I’d just passed my hand over a boiling pot of stew.
It became a game. On the days that I smelled the hashish, I would speculate that the kidney had belonged to a Moroccan man who had sold cigarettes on the streets of Zaragoza, and on the days that I felt the heat on the underside of my arm, I would picture my kidney pumping away inside a heavyset woman working in the kitchen of an old restaurant.
Soon, though, certain sensations began to crowd out the rest. It was as if the kidney were trying to communicate something to me, something more specific than “I existed before you. I belong to someone else.” I found myself craving the smell of burning sulfur, so that I would light a match just to wave it out, then repeat the action. Late at night, I would sit at the kitchen table lighting match after match, touching the pink scar and theorizing that my kidney’s original owner had died in a house fire, or perhaps in a burning car.
Eight weeks after the surgery, I began to take Elena to the library in the basement of the Muriga city hall in the afternoons. I would point to Javier Gamboa, a friend of my mother’s who had worked as a security guard at city hall for as long as I can remember, and Elena would say, “Arratsalde on,” in her high child’s voice. Javier would lower himself to Elena’s height on his brittle knees and say, “Arratsalde on, Elena. Zer moduz?” Good afternoon, Elena. How are you today?
While Elena stumbled around the empty aisles of books or slept in her blue stroller, I would scroll through rolls of microfiche, scanning through six weeks of Spanish newspapers for the day of March 4, 1997. When I first told Joni about this new pastime of mine, he had shaken his head in a way that suggested not judgment but real worry. It was a look I had been used to seeing from my mother, or from José Antonio, but never from Joni.
“What do you hope to gain from this new hobby, Mariana?” he had asked during one of our morning coffees at the Boliña. It was his use of my name that did it, that changed it from a question to a warning. The change in tone had annoyed me.
“It’s not that I hope to gain anything, Joni,” I said. “It’s interesting, is all. More interesting than staying at home with a two-year-old, anyway.”
* * *
ON THE first day of my investigations, I learned that there had been no house fires in all of northern Spain the day of my operation, and there had been only two fatal car accidents. According to public record, ninety-eight people died on March 4 in the region of the country that my new organ had come from, though nearly all of these had died of old age and would not have been donors. Of the list of the dead, I found only five viable candidates: an eleven-year-old girl struck down by a car in León; two men in their forties killed in an auto accident between Pamplona and Vitoria; an eighteen-year-old girl who had committed suicide in Pasajes; and one other.
The last death was mentioned on the front page of every newspaper that appeared the day of my surgery. It was accompanied, most often, by a series of three photographs.
The first photograph showed an apartment building like you might have found anywhere in the Basque Country, except that it was surrounded by the dark navy uniforms and black ski masks of the Ertzaintza. There was white police tape stretched around several police cars, blocking off the entrance to the apartment building. A crowd had gathered, pushing against the tape.
The second photograph of the series was dated two years earlier, the blackened shell of a sedan smoldering in a parking garage. The car was so completely destroyed that it was impossible to even tell the make, while the windows of the two cars next to it had melted in the explosion. There was a white sheet placed on the driver’s seat of the sedan, though it was difficult to imagine that there was anything to cover up; even the car seats seemed vaporized entirely. And again the dark figures of the Ertzaintza milling through the background of the photograph. The scene looked vaguely familiar, as if I might have seen it on the news when the explosion had taken place two years earlier. The caption read: Spanish Intelligence Officer Killed in ETA Car Bomb, June 12, 1995.
As I examined the final photograph I experienced a physical reaction, a tremor of nausea and a tingling along the pink seam holding in my borrowed kidney. The picture, the largest of the series, was a police photograph. It showed a young man in his midtwenties. He had dark hair cut short. His ears were a little on the large size and his nose drifted slightly to his right. He was wearing a T-shirt, and he smiled just enough to show his crooked bottom teeth.
The caption below read: Iñaki Libano, ETA Terrorist Responsible for 1995 Assassination, Killed by Ertzaintza Tuesday in Mondragón.
12. JONI
The morning after my lunch with the Duartes I returned to work at San Jorge. The sun was just coming up over the foothills of the Pyrenees as I headed toward the main entrance of the school. I had made it a point to arrive before Robert Duarte, but when I found his new Renault already in the lot, I began to walk the perimeter of the schoolyard, finishing a cigarette.
Along the walls of the fortress, I saw evidence of the older boys: piles of broken sunflower seed shells, the crooked necks of a thousand cigarette butts, names and insults etched crudely into the stone walls with ballpoint pens. Farther up the wall, above what would have been the moat’s waterline, large divots were chipped out of the stone, scars fro
m Franco’s Falangist tanks as they entered Muriga in 1937. By the time I completed my lap around the school, stopping once to light another Chesterfield, several other teachers’ cars had appeared in the parking lot.
I arrived early that morning in order to look over the day’s lesson plan so that the new American Robert Duarte would be impressed by the old man’s sagacity. I was already aware of my desire to impress a man who was half my age, a man who I knew had come to Muriga to take my place, even though Goikoetxea hadn’t gathered up the nerve to tell me as much. But the American had defeated me even in this small contest. I considered passing by his door, rather than stopping in to say good morning. Reminding myself that I was to be his mentor for the remainder of the term, I paused outside his small office. Robert answered the door almost as I was still knocking. The windowless room was bare except for a single chair and desk, upon which rested only a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen. Taped to the wall above the desk was the room’s only decoration, a small charcoal drawing of a young woman that I recognized to be Morgan Duarte.
“I was hoping it’d be you. Goikoetxea has been checking on me every five minutes for the past half hour.”
“I think he’s just eager to impress our new American,” I said. “We get a few Americans in Muriga—college students, the sons and daughters of cousins that have moved away to the States—but none that intended to stay, Robert. You and Morgan are the first in a long time.”
Duarte nodded solemnly, as if understanding his role in a new light, even though I hadn’t meant the comment to mean much. “But Goikoetxea,” I continued, “he’s an old neurotic. He can’t help himself. He’d tuck you into bed at night if you let him.”
The American laughed, then sat back casually on the corner of the desk. “So what’s the lesson plan for today?”
“Well, I can’t remember offhand,” I admitted. “My notes are all in my office and haven’t been updated in thirty years, I’m afraid. But if memory serves me, the tenth-year students will be continuing with the imperative.”
“How is the class?”
“Intolerable,” I answered. “They’re all preoccupied with their college entrance exams this spring. Studying vocabulary is the last thing they’re concerned with. There’s a particularly tough lot of boys this year. You’ll see.”
“I did my student teaching at a low-income high school, mostly Latino kids,” Robert said.
“It’s different,” I started. “The kids with money can be even harder to deal with, in a way. We always think the poor kids don’t have anything to lose, which is scary. But these kids, sometimes it’s like they’re trying to lose it all. They think they have the most to prove. That’s really frightening.”
Again, the American nodded as if I’d said something very wise. I offered a smile; it’s always a pleasant surprise when people assume you to be a wise old man, instead of just an old fool.
“Don’t take me seriously,” I said. “They are, after all, just children. They’re nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said. “I just want to know what to expect.”
Now, I think back to the empty seats in my twelfth-year English class, where Iker Abarzuza and Asier Díaz were missing that morning, and I wonder how things would have played out if this had been the case—if we’d any idea what to expect.
13. MARIANA
The Sunday after they found the body I’d cornered Joni Garrett at a rally against political violence organized in José Antonio’s honor. It was the end of a week in which I’d slept no more than an hour or two a night, in which I alternated between hours of crying followed by long stretches when I noiselessly mouthed the Lord’s Prayer into the dark.
I had seen Garrett through the crowd at the rally, had backed him against the wall on the far side of the Plaza de Armas. An official from the Party tried to calm me, but I pushed him away and kept moving toward Joni Garrett. I shoved a finger in the American’s pale old face, held my hand above his head as if I were beating a dog. I said things I shouldn’t have, even if they were true. I told him that he was a selfish, perverted old man who had no business here in the Basque Country. That he’d betrayed me in a way that was unforgivable. That I wouldn’t speak to him, that I would never even look at him. That he would never as much as speak to my daughter again. That if I saw him on the streets of Muriga he should turn the other way.
But time is the best antiseptic, as my grandmother used to say, and when I saw him at Beatriz Martínez’s wedding in April, six years after José Antonio’s murder, I had to actually remind myself why it had been so long since we’d talked. Recently, it seems that time has become less and less dependable.
I went over to the old man after the reception was over, when most guests had already left. The tablecloths were stained purple with wine, and the waiters had begun to clear coffee cups and dessert plates. A handful of people still had no place to go (or at least were in no hurry to return), and they sat at the tables just at the edge of the lights in drunken groups of two or three. I refilled my glass with the last of a bottle of cava and made my way through the clutter to Joni.
“I saw you at the ceremony earlier, when you arrived,” he said awkwardly, standing to greet me as I approached him. “It’s good to see you. How is Elena?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Fine. With my mother until tomorrow,” I said. “My mother, who insists that I stay out. That I socialize. That’s what it’s come to, thirty-five and already a recluse.”
But Joni didn’t smile at my little joke. There were several empty glasses on the table in front of him, and I wondered if he’d had as much to drink as I had. If he was drunk, it was a different kind of drunk than mine. He seemed somber, contemplative.
“And Rimbaud?” I asked.
“Dead,” he said flatly. “I put him down last October.”
I couldn’t help putting a hand on his shoulder. He’d had the dog since before I could remember; might have been the old man’s only true friend here in Muriga, even after all those years.
He brought his glass halfway up to his mouth, then put it back on the table, as if changing his mind. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pack of Chesterfields. He tapped two out and placed them between his lips before lighting them both. I’ve never been much of a smoker, but when he held one out I took it. It reminded me of the last cigarette I’d smoked, a Lucky Strike I shared with Robert Duarte’s wife, Morgan, the year José Antonio died.
“Can I ask you something?” he said as I dragged on the cigarette. “It’s something I’ve been wanting to ask since José Antonio was killed. Since before that, maybe.”
“You don’t waste any time with small talk, do you?” I said. I paused for a moment, wondering what he might ask, and then I shrugged. It was too late for defenses. “Sure. Why not?”
He ran a hand over his mouth the way drinkers do when you ask them if they’d like another, but he didn’t say anything. The song “Pictures of You” was playing, and a few young couples rocked slowly to the music. It was a song that always reminded me of my first boyfriend in secondary school, Paulino Murillo.
“Did you love him?” Joni asked suddenly.
“Who?” I asked, thinking for a second that he meant Paulino.
“The American,” he said. He didn’t look me in the eye when he said it. “Duarte.”
* * *
IN THE six years since José Antonio’s death, I’ve decided there are two ways to be unfaithful. I tried to explain this theory to Cristina, an old friend of mine from secundaria, in the months after the funeral. But it wasn’t something that she wanted to hear. Her eyes wandered between Elena, who was digging through the damp soil in the park planter, and a thread on the sleeve of her sweater that she was picking nervously.
A few years later I tried again to explain my theory, this time with the therapist I’d agreed to see twice a month—to appease my mother after José Antonio’s death—but the therapist dismissed it as symptomat
ic of lingering, malignant guilt.
“You still feel as if your affair with the American—Duarte—brought about your husband’s death,” he said, and when I tried to clarify what I meant, he put it down as further proof that I was in denial.
“You’re not listening,” I said. “It’s more complicated than—”
“No, you’re not listening, Mariana,” he interrupted. “I’m beginning to think you don’t want to move past your husband’s death.”
* * *
OF ALL people, it was Joni Garrett who finally listened.
I breathed in two full lungs of Chesterfield. And instead of saying yes or no—neither would have been entirely true—I explained.
The first kind of infidelity, I told him, is the most common and always involves another person. It’s a way of testing out another version of what life might have looked like, if chance or fate or God or whatever you’d like to call it had turned the world slightly in one direction instead of the other. These are variations that we’ve come to know from movies like Casablanca or from stories our friends tell after swearing us to secrecy: a drunken fling after a conference with the coworker, the neighbor whose boyfriend works evenings, and so on. Or you are introduced to a handsome young American right when your husband begins to spend weekends in Bilbao, as just another example. These are the stories that we’re used to, and even if we don’t necessarily approve, at least they’re familiar. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to participate in this kind of infidelity.
Joni only nodded. He seemed far away, and when I followed his eyes there were only two kids, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, dancing to Jarabe de Palo. The girl was Ander Martínez’s daughter, but the boy I didn’t know.
“But there’s a second kind of infidelity?” Joni asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And I have some experience with this too, I’m afraid.”
14. IKER
All That Followed: A Novel Page 5
