Mariangeles never doubted that Justo would protect her, care for her, keep her fed and safe, and give her a house filled with strong, healthy children. Coming from a large, mostly happy family, Mariangeles had envisioned a similar life for herself. But when her prolonged delivery extended more than a day, leaving Justo limp from imagined possibilities, he made his first demand.
“That’s it; no more,” he said when baby Miren was three days old.
“No more what?”
“Babies.”
Mariangeles was nursing and still raw from the delivery and the lack of sleep, and she was not prepared for a debate.
“This is the one thing that puts you at risk,” Justo said. “I don’t want you to go through this ten times, or five times . . . or even twice. Maybe you can survive it, but I never will.”
“Justo, my mother had no troubles, and I’m sure I won’t, either,” Mariangeles offered.
“Yes, your mother had no troubles,” he said, raising his voice. “And mine didn’t either until she died in that bed.”
They passed a day drifting separately inside Errotabarri without speaking.
They met at the cradle when baby Miren awoke from a nap. Justo handed her to Mariangeles, who lay back on the bed to nurse. For the first time, he told her the details of standing on that spot, seeing his mother, seeing baby Xabier wailing on the floor, seeing his father drift toward a vanishing point. Mariangeles extended the arm that was not holding their baby. She pulled Justo close, and he joined her on the bed, leaning his head on her shoulder.
Manfred von Richthofen awoke congested. The cold and misty weather didn’t help, as a strong easterly wind carried a chilly bite. His allergies compounded the problem, attacking him as they did every spring. He took medication to clear the congestion. After all, it wouldn’t do to have the Red Baron, who had just claimed kills seventy-nine and eighty the previous evening, going around with the sniffles.
Aggressive and deadly in the cockpit, the Red Baron was nonetheless admired for his chivalry, a carryover from the nineteenth-century mores that guided his caste of Prussian noblemen. Stories told of him writing letters of sincere regret and condolences to the widows of victims. One wounded British pilot was shepherded by von Richthofen to a German base to be taken prisoner. On his second day in the German field hospital, the English pi lot received a half-dozen cigars, a present from the Red Baron.
His “Flying Circus” had recently added another von Richthofen. In addition to his brother Lothar, a veteran ace with his own renown, von Richthofen now also commanded his young cousin, Wolfram von Richthofen. Although new to flying, Wolfram was given a precious Fokker triplane.
“If we come across the Lords, circle above the action,” the Red Baron told his cousin, using his pet name for British fliers. “Watch and learn.” Veterans told new pilots that they could fly above the skirmishes and not be targeted; it was how young pilots on both sides eased into combat.
Royal Air Force planes from the aerodrome in Bertangles, near the Somme River in northern France, spotted nine Fokker triplanes and engaged. As the combatants met and separated into lethal pairs, the Red Baron circled behind a British Sopwith Camel and opened fire, but his guns jammed. Above him, Wolfram von Rich-thofen strayed too close to the action, and an eager young enemy pilot could not resist the target. Seeing his cousin’s peril, the Red Baron disengaged from his dogfight to drive off the British attacker, who veered wildly up the Somme canal.
Perhaps unable to free his weapons, perhaps sluggish from the medication he’d taken, the Red Baron failed to score the kill. The normally omniscient von Richthofen also did not notice a Camel rallying from behind and diving steeply in his direction. At little more than a hundred yards from von Richthofen’s flame-red Fok-ker, the RAF pilot opened fire. The wounded Red Baron broke off into a climbing bank to his right.
Whether struck by fire from the plane or by rifle shots from nearby Allied ground forces, the Red Baron absorbed a mortal wound. He managed to land the Fokker in a paddock near the Saint Collette brickworks. British and Australian soldiers raced to the plane as von Richthofen shed his goggles and tossed them over the side of the cockpit. He turned off the engine to reduce the chances of a fire. When the soldiers arrived, the famed Red Baron looked at them with resignation and uttered his final word.
“Kaput.”
Of course they heard their daughter Felicia slipping into Josepe Ansotegui’s room every night, and they recognized the sounds of frantic young lovers’ failed attempts at stealth. Moans muffled by pillows can be confused with no other sound. Alberto Barinaga and his wife acknowledged that Felicia was nearing her eighteenth birthday, and Josepe was a good young man, so they were intentionally indifferent to their couplings, and they did a passable job of voicing surprise when the two announced their plans to be married.
Every crew in Lekeitio attended the ceremony. At Josepe’s side were his brothers, Justo and Xabier, both wearing starched white shirts that Justo purchased for the occasion.
The brothers posed for a photograph afterward: Felicia was seated in her wedding dress, with Josepe standing behind her, hand on her shoulder, and Justo and Xabier at her flanks. The protocol demanded serious looks for such pictures, but the three brothers all fl ashed the Ansotegui smile, which left their eyes little more than dark slits.
“Watch the birdie,” the photographer said, pinching the fingers of his right hand against his thumb to get their attention. It was their first picture.
Several years later, the flu pandemic killed Alberto Barinaga. After having served his apprenticeship eagerly, Josepe Ansotegui took over Barinaga’s boat, which did not automatically assure his acceptance by the collection of strong-willed fishermen. His eventual consideration as patroia of patroiak was a gesture of respect for Ansotegui’s farm-bred willingness to work as hard as any crewman while on board and for his levelheadedness and vision in matters of their community.
Although among the youngest captains, he proved many times that he was concerned with the well-being of the collective. But Josepe would freely acknowledge that he did not have the background in the fishing business that most other patroiak enjoyed. He found that he did not have to go far to divine a deep reservoir of sound counsel, merely across narrow Arranegi Street, in fact, to the home of José María Navarro.
Navarro was the patroia of the Egun On (“Good Morning”—an uplifting name for early-rising fishermen). Navarro had fished since he was a boy with his father, who had fished since he was a boy with his father, in an uninterrupted skein of genetic filament stretching back before anyone could imagine. When Josepe was called upon for any administrative purpose requiring knowledge beyond his ken, he’d consult with José María Navarro aboard the Egun On or slip across the street in the evening with a bottle of wine.
José María never sought greater responsibilities in the community. Ansotegui was welcome to shoulder the task of being the leader of the fleet, as Navarro had enough to keep him busy, specifically the development of his two sons and a pair of younger daughters.
Eduardo was the family firecracker and comically called “Dodo” by his brother, Miguel, when he was learning to speak. The two daughters, Araitz and Irantzu, arrived in the second wave.
While Josepe Ansotegui and José María Navarro melded complementary strengths to guide the community, their wives, Felicia Ansotegui and Estrella Navarro, grew as close as sisters. The husbands fabricated a pair of pulleys anchored into the second-floor window frames that allowed Felicia and Estrella to hang and retrieve laundry on adjacent lines above the street and visit through the hall windows as they worked. They chatted about the children, about their husbands, about the news of the town.
“Oh, I have to start boiling the beans for this evening,” one would say, and the other would agree that it was indeed time to start boiling her beans as well. They would finish one chore and then meet in the street to go to the market, where one might see some nice corn or cabbage and both would purchase the s
ame produce. Off to daily mass, they sat side by side in the same pew for each service. In tandem, holding each other’s arm, they stopped in the square to visit with other mothers. When one spoke, the other bobbed her head in perpetual assent. They were like twins connected by laundry line. And on breezy days, the Ansotegui and Navarro bedsheets and shirts and pants and skirts fluttered together like colorful pennants.
CHAPTER 4
The animals living in Errotabarri’s basement rarely disturbed their upstairs neighbors. The wood fire in the hearth, with its tiny explosions of scented pitch pockets, and the sausages and peppers drying in the kitchen mostly covered any smells that might drift up from the lower level. That didn’t stop Justo from operatically scapegoating the livestock whenever he committed an indiscretion of the bowels.
“Vulgar cows!” he’d shout, looking down at the floor.
“Vulgar cow, indeed,” Mariangeles countered each time, causing them both to laugh as if it were the first time they’d shared the exchange.
Miren found the shared housing arrangement comforting. She grew close to the animals, helping milk the cows in the morning and evening, leaning her head into their warm, fat sides and telling them about her day, elaborating whenever one would turn its head to express specific interest.
At night, the sounds of the animals’ low groans and rustling in the straw rose through the floorboards, providing soothing background sounds. And as she slipped into sleep, she sometimes confused the rumbling fl atulence of grass-fed cattle with a storm thundering in the mountains. They were peaceful beasts who were partners in the enterprise that was Errotabarri.
When sleep wouldn’t come, she often slipped to the floor in the dark and whispered to the animals through fissures in the planks. The sheep, placid in all circumstances, were oblivious to her overtures and never considered the importance of messages being sent from above. They slept in fluffy clusters and could not be roused by a soft human voice.
Cows, though, were sociably curious. Miren would call lightly to them, sometimes mimicking their gentle moo-eh, and one directly below would tilt its head, allowing a huge brown eye to peer up at the source of the disembodied voice. Had it been their nature to reflect and expand, these could have been the genesis moments of bovine religious movements.
Sometimes she’d whisper her secrets to these friends, feeling the relief that comes from saying words aloud, even if only to beasts. She’d speak the name of the boy she liked at the moment or confess her hopes and doubts. The cows were generous with their attention, their upturned eyes sensitive and somehow understanding. They seemed to say, “Go ahead, dear, I’m listening.” In the warm months, when the stock grazed and slept in the upper pasture, Miren missed their company and for weeks would have trouble falling asleep without their muffled lullabies.
For a time, Justo kept donkeys, breeding and selling the yearlings at the market. When the mares would foal, Mariangeles and Miren would midwife the process. The birthing was frightening, but the foals, in their leggy romps, so frisky and clumsy, delighted Miren. They entered the world as a fuzzy collection of outsize ears and trembling legs, and Miren could not help but constantly kiss their soft-whiskered muzzles and stroke their bristle-brush manes.
She loved their vigor and the way their ungainly sprints implied aspirations beyond life as a mere donkey. When weeks old, they would nurse in the paddocks and suddenly, as if jolted by unseen lightning, let loose with their little honk-and-whistle bray and dash in tumbling circles around their mothers. With imaginations faster than their legs, they splayed and rolled and reared and kicked, falling flat and rising without shame to race in circles again, perhaps recalling a connection to distant ancestors that branched off to become Arabian stallions. And following a lap or two of frivolity, they suddenly would stop and return to their mothers’ milk, fueling for the next imaginary race upon the sands of some great forgotten dunes.
Their performances would entertain Miren for hours, so she always claimed donkey care as her own chore. She once asked her father if a foal could stay in her room at night and sleep in her bed. He did not reject the idea because the animal needed to be with its mother and it would be frightened in such a situation. Instead, knowing his daughter’s own energetic disposition, he kidded her that she would keep the poor thing awake with her attentions, and everybody knows that a little donkey, an astokilo, needs its rest. That made sense to Miren, and in her natural concern over the foal’s welfare, she conceded that it would be against sound judgment.
The only truly offensive part of sharing her home with domestic beasts came in the coldest months, when her father butchered chickens on the first floor rather than fight the weather while doing the job outside. The decapitation was noisy and the chicken died without dignity. Blood was everywhere.
A neighbor boy who sometimes helped her father with the process delighted in gathering up an amputated chicken foot and clasping the exposed tendon to maniacally manipulate the foot as he chased young Miren. She knew these were only the severed feet of chickens, but she still would race out into the cold to escape. Those nights, she’d awaken, shaken by dreams of clenching talons. She would roll over, hear the comforting sound of a cow pissing prodigiously downstairs, and float gently back to sleep.
Picasso spotted the young woman through the storefront windows of the Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann and prowled outside the grand department store until the attractive light-haired shopper exited. He rushed to her side before she could cross the street.
“Mademoiselle, you have an interesting face; I would like to paint your portrait,” he offered, tossing out an invitation that rarely failed. “I have a feeling that we will accomplish great things together.”
She examined the man with the wild sweep of thinning hair and dark eyes, who had not actually bothered to introduce himself before promising a productive future relationship. He sensed her initial reluctance and, as if it would explain everything, added, “I am Picasso.”
Marie-Thérèse Walter was a blonde seventeen-year-old, and she agreed to model for the artist. To celebrate her arrival at the age of majority the next year, they consummated their relationship. Marie-Thérèse would become the face of many paintings, and her gracious and placid nature came through as tincture to the art. Hers would become a mournful face in his most famous painting.
Dodo Navarro named his game the Loop. Miguel had no interest in the competition, but it was difficult to reject a challenge by a big brother. And it ultimately gave him an early victory, a sense of peace in the water, and an understanding of the Lekeitio harbor that would one day preserve his freedom.
When Dodo and Miguel were in their early teens, the Loop was strictly a circling of the harbor. They swam across the harbor mouth, scrambled up the steps of the lower breakwater wall, and sprinted through the dangerous gauntlet of flying hooks being cast by sport fishermen on the pier. With Dodo teasing Miguel with every stride, they raced through the clusters of families socializing at Independence Plaza, hit full speed in the stretch up the wharf, curved around the net boxes and fish carts at the north corner near the fish processors, and made the final sprint back down the high breakwater wall. The first to dive back into the sea, completing the loop, won.
Dodo, more mature and stronger, dominated the early races. Miguel accused him of cheating from time to time because Dodo often altered the path or shaved corners. “The only rules are to do what it takes to win, little brother,” Dodo responded. But when Dodo hurdled a baby carriage in the plaza to gain an edge and their father was lectured that afternoon at the wharf by an agitated amuma, Dodo was made to apologize. He quickly invented a new course. The next route was solely a test of swimming to San Nicolas Island, which rose outside the gates of the harbor like a humpbacked whale frozen in midbreach.
“I only have one question,” Miguel said. “Why do you get to choose?”
“Because I’m the oldest; I get to lead the way. That’s how it is. If you want to race with your sisters, y
ou get to set the route.”
“I don’t even want to race with you,” Miguel admitted.
Named for the patron saint of sailors, San Nicolas Island was covered in slender pines, tangled windthrow, and feathery sea grasses. From the harbor mouth, the island was almost a quarter-mile swim and was protected by a brisk tidal current and the white, corrugated surf.
The island, in conspiracy with the surging and retracting tide, held a secret that hinted of magic. With a tidal variance of at least a dozen feet most of the year, the island had two personalities. For all but two slivers of time of each day, San Nicolas was as protected as any coastal island. It could be visited by boat or by a strong swimmer, but its rocky perimeter discouraged even those incursions. At lowest tide, however, the sea withdrew to reveal an umbilical pathway that snaked from Isuntza Beach all the way to the southernmost point of the island. For little more than an hour twice a day, the island could be accessed via a slippery concrete trail that seemed an invitation to explore an otherwise guarded and forbidden place. If this hour coincided with a summer sunset bleeding across the hills behind town, as a sea-scented breeze caused the grasses to whisper, the atmosphere of romance often overcame young couples who had ventured to the island for privacy.
While the island seduced them to settle in and become familiar, the sea served as an intolerant chaperone. If the pair became too absorbed in their dalliance, the path would submerge again, and they would have the option of swimming to shore or spending a cold night surrounded by the judgmental sea, with no excuse to offer their parents besides the obvious.