Guernica

  “I’m trying,” Miguel said, bending over with his hands on his knees, inhaling loudly. “Do you think I’m ready for the wineglass?”

  “Only if you’re going to drink from it.”

  José Antonio Aguirre brought rage with him into the confessional. He carried a page of type a reporter friend had brought him from the newspaper. The story was from Madrid, regarding the establishment of the Falange Party.

  “You’ll never believe this,” Aguirre started.

  “What about the forgive-me-fathers?” Xabier asked.

  “No time.”

  “No time for confession?”

  “Listen,” Aguirre said, tilting the paper so he could catch more light through the latticework. “ ‘José Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the former dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, proudly proclaimed this a step on the path toward the brand of totalitarianism established by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.’ ”

  “Oh, no, he wants to be Mussolini?” Xabier groaned. “The world really needs another Mussolini.”

  “ ‘The urgent collective task of all Spaniards is to strengthen, elevate, and aggrandize the nation. All individual, group, or class interests must be subordinated without question to the accomplishment of this task,’ ” Aguirre read.

  “Questioners will be shot,” Xabier mocked in an authoritarian voice.

  “ ‘Spain is an indivisible destiny. All separatism is a crime we shall not forgive—’ ”

  “Basques and Catalans will be shot,” Xabier announced.

  “ ‘Ours will be a totalitarian state. The system of political parties will be resolutely abolished—’ ”

  “Voters will be shot.”

  “ ‘A rigorous discipline will prevent any attempt to poison or split the Spanish people, or to incite them to go against the destiny of the Fatherland—’ ”

  “Fathers will be shot.”

  “ ‘We reject the capitalist system, which disregards the needs of the people, dehumanizes private property, and transforms the workers into shapeless masses that are prone to misery and despair—’ ”

  “Shapeless masses will be shot.”

  “ ‘Our movement integrates the Catholic spirit, which has been traditionally glorious and predominant in Spain, into the reconstruction of the nation.’ ”

  Aguirre and Xabier looked at each other and shook their heads, unable to come up with a clever rejoinder.

  They were Catholic, sitting in a confessional inside a basilica, and they wondered how the Fascists could announce plans to suppress practically everybody in the country but still revere the “Catholic spirit.”

  The course of young love in a village rarely strayed from well-trodden paths. A couple might dance together a time or two at that first erromeria. And if the chemistry continued to bubble for both, they would dance exclusively with that partner at the next erromeria, and on the third week, each would join with the other’s family at a table or on a blanket to share wine and food, opening themselves for interrogation.

  It was not as if the community had failed to watch their every movement in every dance prior to this. By the third week, there had been subtle inquiries made about the boy or girl; thorough examinations of their families had been completed.

  The progress along this road of courtship could be hurried if “accidental” meetings took place during the week in the village. Such was the case when Miguel convinced Mendiola that he needed to be in town at midday to deliver a repaired chair, and Miren informed her mother that she needed to be in town at midday to purchase yarn. Both executed the promised tasks, and no one could suspect anything beyond happenstance if both, while on important errands, reached a café on a sidewalk shortly before noon.

  After her customary greetings to everyone in the café, Miren assumed a seat at a table facing the street. She ordered her coffee, which was served along with a small dish of olives. She nodded at all who passed and breathed in the air of car exhaust as if it were perfumed.

  “I had to be in town to get some yarn, and a coffee sounded so good to me,” she informed the server. Having declared her purpose for stopping, she was pointedly surprised by the appearance of Miguel.

  “How nice to see you,” she said, looking around. “Here’s an open seat.”

  “Thank you. Some coffee might taste good about now.”

  Behind their backs, the server smirked at their failed artifice. Miguel sat at the next table, also facing the street. By looking in opposite directions whenever someone passed, the two further cemented their relationship through shared conspiracy. To have made plans to meet again in town was a mutual investment. To be at the café together made them accomplices; it pulled them together in a pact against absolute honesty.

  “You have met my mother . . . ,” Miren started, talking from the side of her mouth as she looked forward.

  “I have, and she is a delightful person,” Miguel interjected. “But I can only imagine what she had to say about my dancing per for-mance.”

  “She said that she has never seen anything like it. She wondered if your Gypsy had put a curse on you.”

  “Oh, good, she thinks I’m cursed.”

  “She was joking. She liked you very much.”

  Sensing they’d be there all afternoon at this pace, Miren surrendered the charade and turned fully to face Miguel.

  “Since you made such a good impression on my mother, I would like you to come to Errotabarri . . . to meet my father.”

  “You make it sound as if that will be a chore that I won’t enjoy,” Miguel said, turning to look her in the eyes.

  “No, no, it won’t necessarily be bad. It’s just that he is well known in Guernica. He’s probably the strongest man in town . . . maybe a little overpowering in some ways . . . at times loud . . . and some people might say frightening, although I’ve never actually seen him harm anyone.”

  Miguel thought through the possibilities. The lengthening quiet concerned Miren, who feared she had driven him off.

  “The thing about it is that I’m his only daughter, his only child, and he is bound to be a little protective of me.”

  “I would expect nothing less,” Miguel said, opening his palms. “I would not admire a man who was not protective of his daughter. That is his job in life. They obviously have raised you to be a good person. You are the best reflection of them.”

  Good, Miren thought, he has honorable instincts. But goodness, could he be ready for Papa? Should I warn him? Should I prepare him? Should I trust Mother to exert her leverage to keep Father from chasing him off? Yes, that’s the best course of action: to implore Mother to control Father. But is there any hope that it will be enough?

  Miguel had met forceful men before, and he felt up to the meeting. Miren was worth it.

  Miren stepped into Errotabarri and before she could put down her sack of yarn, her mother asked how her meeting with Miguel had gone.

  “What meeting?”

  “Mrs. Jausoro stopped by already.”

  “It wasn’t a meeting. What did she have to say? Did she say we were having a meeting?”

  Mariangeles bent slightly at the waist and slouched her neck to cause her back to hunch up before assuming a quavering voice to replicate the old woman’s dramatic report:

  “I had to tell you that I saw Miren in town, at a café, having coffee with the new young man who had come from the fishing family in Lekeitio, who doesn’t wear a beret, but who does such good work at the shop of Teodoro Mendiola. Yes, he’s handsome of course, but that fades, and they were sitting side by side in daylight on the main street, and they had olives, too, don’t you know? No, they didn’t touch, but since they were trying to act as if they weren’t up to something, it meant they surely were up to something, and a mother, you know, needs to hear these things because one can never be too careful when a daughter is of a certain age and a handsome man, although that fades, comes from a strange town where God only knows what kind of breeding he has.”

  “He just happened to
pass and decided that he wanted some coffee,” Miren said in a higher-than-normal pitch, subconsciously trying to reassume the sound of an innocent little girl incapable of guile. As had the server at the café, Mariangeles rolled back her eyes.

  “Ama, I want him to meet Papa.”

  Mariangeles began laughing and continued to the point that Miren looked as if she were ready to cry.

  “Ama, please, can’t you talk to Papa? Can’t you make him promise to be nice and not chase him away?”

  “You really like this boy, don’t you?” Mariangeles asked.

  “I really do, yes.”

  “Then why do you want him to die?”

  “How was your coffee with Miren Ansotegui?” Mendiola asked the moment Miguel stepped into the shop.

  Miguel groaned. “This town . . .”

  “Somebody came into the shop and told me about it already,” Mendiola said.

  “Of course they did. We just happened to meet at the café and coffee sounded good. That’s all it was. Coffee at the café. We talked a little. We did not even sit at the same table.”

  “It obviously fooled everyone,” Mendiola said. “Son, do you know what Justo Ansotegui will do to you if you act dishonorably with his daughter?”

  “I won’t act dishonorably with his daughter; I enjoy her company and I’m serious about getting to know her,” he protested. But his curiosity overcame his eagerness to put the subject to rest. “All right, what would he do?”

  “He is the strongest man in Biscaya; he could snap you over his knee like . . . a dowel rod,” Mendiola said, as he was holding a slender dowel rod in his hands at the time. He considered breaking it for effect, but it had taken half an hour to mill it to specifications, so he just bent it slightly.

  Miguel understood the message anyway.

  The wine weighed more than Dodo expected as he hoisted six bottles of champagne in a pack on his back and another four in a sling pouch hanging from his shoulder.

  “I should get twice the pay,” Dodo argued when arrangements were made for him to carry the wine through a mountain pass to meet a compatriot at a venta on the other side of the Spanish border. “I have to carry it uphill.”

  If nothing else, Dodo looked the part, in a wool sweater and pants, with a shepherd’s vest and rope-soled espadrilles, all beneath his beret. He carried the smugglers’ beloved makila walking stick, carved from the medlar tree, with a horn handle and a spiked tip that could double as a weapon.

  Jean-Claude Artola had taken him along on two jobs in the mountains, and Dodo had deemed himself ready to join the silent fraternity. This would be an easy first solo mission for Dodo, and the load was not as heavy as many that were carried.

  At sunset, he crossed the valley and slipped into a pine forest until he found the stream he was to follow on the early part of his hike. He walked through patches of evening light that made the fallen yellow leaves glow like a path of gold. Yes, he thought, this is the way to make a living. There is romance in this, even in the name the smugglers use, the “travailleurs de la nuit”—the workers of the night.

  By dark, he reached the branch of a smaller stream that would lead him to the higher boulder fields, the tree line, and then to the meeting point at the pass. The small rill then branched, and after a mile the water disappeared under tight brush cover. This, he discovered, was not the way. He retraced his steps, looking for the proper path toward the shoulder of the ridge that he could follow upward. Two exhausting hours later, thick wild-rose brush encircled him, snagging his pants, pulling at his espadrilles, and several times snatching off his beret. There was no stream, no path and certainly no light. There was no direction, either; he often was uncertain if he was going up or down.

  One route that looked promising left him battling brush higher than his head. The packs had doubled their weight and his sweat had soaked through his sweater and was matting the sheep fur on his vest. Adhesive webs clutched at his face and neck, making him certain that giant spiders were walking on his flesh and were ready to bite his eyes and crawl into his ears and lay eggs. If he hated anything worse than the Spanish, it was spiders. As he walked, he now clawed at the air in front of him with both hands, trying to break down their elastic strands. For the first time in his life, his anus itched, from the stress, he imagined, and all that damned French cheese.

  He should have reached the pass long ago, but he was not prepared to give up. Retreat is impossible, anyway, when you have no idea where you are. He feared that he was circling, covering the same ground. So he picked a direction and committed to staying with it regardless of the impediments, and within half an hour he had worked himself to the edge of the boulder field.

  Now Dodo was sure he could pick up speed. Within five steps, he cracked his shin on a jagged outcrop. He felt the cold air and moisture on his leg, but it was too dark to examine the damage. Wait, I have twenty matches, he thought, I’ll light one every ten or fifteen paces and work my way to an opening. Each match burned only a few seconds, though, and it caused the subsequent darkness to seem even blacker.

  Then he heard a squeaking that sounded like the rats he used to chase out of the net boxes on the wharf. But there were so many, and they were in the air all around him, some striking the felt nib at the top of his beret. Oh, God, he thought; he hated bats even more than spiders and Spaniards. He swung at them blindly, trying to keep them off his head, once connecting with one so well that he could feel the fur and diaphanous wings. He sat, lit a match, and saw thousands of the flying devils dipping and swooping above him in thick black sheets. He would light no more matches.

  “I can do this,” he said out loud. “I’ve been in trouble before. I am a Navarro.”

  His pep talk caused him to pick up speed, unwise in a hillside of sawtoothed granite, unstable scree, and gaping sinkholes. He slipped but caught himself and gave up elevation to go around a large outcrop toward a flatter meadow. Feeling each step with his toes, he made better time through the open places. But when he touched something soft with his canvas espadrille, and it felt alive, he withdrew half a step and struck a match.

  The sudden light awakened a cluster of sleeping bears.

  “Jesus, God, shit!” he screamed as he was knocked down by the startled beasts.

  “Jesus, God, shit!”

  His heart pounded through his ribs. He waved his makila as if he were a swordsman, hitting none of them but jabbing himself in the leg, cutting through his trousers. He could feel blood leaking into his shoe. And it was not a hard rock he had fallen on but his backpack filled with bottles.

  He lit a match; yes, he was bleeding.

  He lit another; good God, those weren’t bears, but some kind of small, furry horses that had regrouped and bedded down again only yards from him.

  “Don’t come near me,” he warned them through the darkness.

  He lit another; yes, the crunch he had heard and the smell of wine meant what he thought it did. Still seated, he carefully picked through the broken glass in his pouch, finding most of the bottles shattered.

  “Shit and derision,” he mumbled.

  Dodo removed the pack from his back and sat where he had fallen. Only a few of the bottles in the backpack were undamaged. He unwound the wire restrainer on the top of an unbroken bottle from his pouch, and with his scraped thumbs he worked the cork off the champagne. The badly shaken bottle spit the cork far into the darkness with a “bop” that could have been heard for miles.

  Halfway through the first bottle, he decided that pouring alcohol on the cut on his leg would sterilize it. Much of the other wine already had soaked through his clothing anyway, making it stick to his body. The sweet, fruity smell only attracted the bats in greater numbers. There was no point in fl ailing at them now.

  He was well into a second bottle before he passed out on the rocky talus, leaving the bats free to gather on him, lick up as much champagne as they pleased, and try to fly home drunk before dawn.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sit,
sit, my new friend; welcome to Errotabarri.” Justo gave the boy a reprieve; he didn’t offer to shake his hand, a gesture he generally used to measure the breaking point of a man’s finger bones. Instead, he issued a double-armed hug that was gentle enough that Miguel was allowed to continue breathing, but firm enough that Miguel sensed that he had escaped a vise that had been only partially constricted.

  That went well.

  But Miguel was forced to ask himself: How did this man sire such a daughter? He was not taller than Miguel, but he was as thick as the bole of a burled oak. His feral brows hung over his eyes like a pair of awnings, and the mustache that hyphenated his face was prodigious in three dimensions. The serrated edge of his right ear protruded from under his beret. Those who told Miguel that Justo looked like a cross between “a Catalonian bull and a cave bear” had not exaggerated.

  “You are taken by my good looks, I see,” Justo said.

  Miguel uttered a dry-mouthed laugh and looked toward Miren.

  “Since I can see you are curious, my new friend, I will tell you about this ear of mine,” Justo said. “It was gnawed off in a battle with a wolf in the mountains when I was young.”

  Justo lifted his beret and turned his head toward Miguel for better viewing.

  “Ha . . . that was his final morsel. I made him spit it back out with his dying gasp. I wanted to sew it back on, but he had chewed on it awhile and it would not have been as attractive as it is now had I sewn it back on.”

  Miguel glanced at Miren again; she nodded and tilted her head, silently saying, “Yes, yes, I know; be strong.”

  Justo’s strategy was now clear; this was not to be about physical intimidation. Mariangeles had stressed to him how much this meant to their daughter, and Justo gave his word that he would not assault the boy. No promises were made about frightening him.

  “Since your background is on the boats and you are newly arrived in the hills, you will want to hear how we do certain things,” Justo continued. “I must tell you first, before we eat, before we strengthen our friendship with food and wine, of one of our customs here on the baserri. It involves our stock.”