All That Followed (11 page)

When we crossed through the large stone doorway into the fronton, I had realized she was the only woman present; several of the men in the stands had begun to shake their heads or to make a clicking sound with their tongues. I learned later that three of these men were Nerea’s uncles. Can I begin to call her Nerea now? If I’ve avoided her name this far, it’s only for my own safety. But it’s beyond the point of ridiculousness.
Nerea, Nerea, Nerea.

*   *   *

WHEN I
left the fronton three hours later with Robert Duarte—the
Euskaldun
, as Etxeberria and Irujo had called him all afternoon—I was drunk and it was raining.

“You’re joining us for dinner, aren’t you?” Robert asked. “Morgan is expecting both of us.”

“I’m not sure,” I said, though the idea of Morgan Duarte serving a warm meal was much more appealing than returning to my empty flat to walk Rimbaud and reheat the soup I’d made three days earlier. It’s times like these when I realize I’ve adopted too many of Muriga’s mannerisms, to turn down an offer at least once before accepting.

“She’s trying to roast a chicken—I’m not guaranteeing it’ll be the best meal you’ve ever had, but she’ll be disappointed if you don’t come.”

“Sure,” I said. I was drunk and happy now in the rain, and company sounded good. “As long as we can stop in Martín’s shop so that I can pick up a bottle of wine or two.”

Morgan Duarte had been expecting us to arrive drunk, it seemed. When she opened the door, it was obvious that she had been drinking as well. She greeted us with a water glass half-full of white wine, and by the time we had shaken off our umbrellas and removed our wet shoes, the glass was empty. We joined her in the kitchen, the counters covered with carrot greens and grains of dry white rice and a compact disc player that played an American song I’d never heard before, as well as the empty wine bottle standing next to a corkscrew and two spent corks.

Behind her, in the living room looking out toward the harbor, the walls were broken up by large sheets of drawing paper filled with charcoal landscapes and portraits. I recognized a face or two—Gotzone Urueta, Pantxo Ortiz de Urbina—sketched out in a minimalist style, dark lines making economic use of the negative space. A coffee table was barely visible under several open notepads, stacks of books on the legacy of Spain in the twentieth century and the Basque independence movement. I wondered vaguely why he would be so interested in the Nationalists, before reminding myself of the obvious appeal this history would have to a young American like Duarte. The romantic appeal of armed struggle for someone who’d never seen it up close before.

“It smells wonderful in here,
txakur txiki
,” Robert said, a hint of surprise in his voice. Morgan swung her arms up to grasp him behind the neck, to pull his bearded face down so that she could press her lips to the scar just below his nose.

“I love it when he calls me that,” Morgan said, turning to me. “It’s Basque for ‘my little dog.’”

*   *   *

AS ROBERT
had warned, the chicken had been left in the oven for too long and the rice was undercooked, so when there was a pause in the conversation it was most often to allow the parties a chance to chew. Robert and I continued to pour tall glasses of
tempranillo
throughout dinner, and by the time Robert put on a pot of coffee, Morgan’s chin was in her hand and her eyelids were beginning to waver.

“Tell me something, Joni,” Morgan said as her husband came back into the dining room. “You used to be married, right? That’s why—”

“Morgan,” Robert interrupted her. He now seemed entirely sober, as if he’d never been drunk at all.

“Did Juantxo warn you not to bring it up?” I said. “It’s all right. It was a long time ago. The truth is that I don’t talk about it much. People here are afraid to mention her to me, I think.”

It was silent for a moment, and I felt my head sway in the apartment’s heavy warmth, weighted down by the heat of the oven and the dark smell of the coffee brewing.

“Who was she?” Robert asked.

“Her name was Nerea. Do you know the butchers in Goiko Plaza, across from the Elizondo? The fat one with the red nose and the handsome one? Those are her brothers.”

Robert nodded. I could feel him watching me closely. His wife reached over the table and divided the last of the
tempranillo
evenly into our two glasses.

“Is that why you came to Muriga?” she asked, almost hopefully.

“It’s not
why
I came,” I said. “I came here to teach at San Jorge, because I was young and wanted to get away from my parents, and because I read too much Hemingway as a teenager. But I stayed because of her.”

Another silence.

“Juantxo told you what happened, I’m sure,” I said.

“Just that she died when she was very young,” Robert said.

He said it in a manner that was free of affect or emotion, so there was no way to tell exactly how much they had been told. I reached for the glass of wine on the table but instead of drinking from it just held it in my lap.

“It was a car accident,” I said. “It was 1955. God, we were practically children, when I think about it now.”

While Robert stood to retrieve the coffee, I placed my wineglass on the table. Morgan was poking absently at the silverware that was still on the table. Her jaw was sliding slightly back and forth, a nervous habit I hadn’t noticed before, and then I realized that she was about to cry.

“Does Robert ever teach you any Basque?” I asked her, trying to change the subject.

She shook her head.

“He should,” I said. “Have you heard the saying around here? That the best way to learn Basque is to look at a Basque ceiling?”

Her jaw stopped its strange movement, and she looked at me questioningly.

“It means that the best way to learn Basque is to sleep with a Basque,” I explained. “Lucky for you, you’re already married to one.”

She smiled, and I kept talking. I found that I enjoyed making Robert Duarte’s wife smile. And because I had been drinking, I spoke about the woman.

“She taught me a few words of Euskera, you know. Nerea did,” I said.

“Yeah?” Morgan said, brightening.

“Sure,” I said. “
Eskerrik asko
. That means ‘Thank you.’”

“Even I know that one,” she said. “And what else did she teach you?”

“Well,” I said, looking around the room. “Let’s see. ‘Table’ is
mahaia
.” I patted my hand on the table. “
Mahaia
. Try it.”

“
Mahaia
,” she said. Her small voice filled with delight at this new game. “
Mahaia.
”

“How about this?” she asked, holding up her empty wineglass.

“I’m not sure about that one,” I said. “We never got to that lesson. Euskaldun!” I called into the kitchen. Robert looked up from where he was carefully pouring hot milk into the three cups of espresso. “How do you say ‘wineglass’ in Euskera?”

“
Edalontzia
,” he said. He was smiling now, thankful that the conversation had veered away from Nerea.

“This is a fun game,” Morgan said, laughing. “How about this?” she said, holding up a wooden-handled knife. She pointed it toward my chest in a mock threat.

“
Aiztoa
,” I said, my heart dropping as I said the word.

“
Aiztoa
,” Morgan Duarte said. “
Aiztoa
.”

Suddenly I didn’t care for this game at all. “
Bai
.
Aiztoa
,” I said again, standing to leave.

19. MARIANA

“So what is the second form of infidelity?” Joni Garrett asked me.

I had spent the years after Jos
é
Antonio’s death imagining what I would say if I ever spoke to the old man again, things that I hadn’t remembered to say when I cornered him at the rally. A laundry list of things carefully crafted to inflict the most damage, to cause the most pain. But now it felt good to simply chat again as we used to. The last of the crowd at the Beatriz Mart
í
nez wedding was still milling around half-empty bottles, still picking at their desserts; the dance floor was nearly empty. I took a breath, readying to tell him something I’d never revealed to anyone.

The second form of infidelity, I told him, is more disturbing. And not because of the physical activity itself (which might not even be as bad as the more “normal” infidelities) but because it isn’t a version of love at all. It’s something completely selfish.

“You’ve had one of these infidelities?” Joni asked. He was watching me carefully now. “The second kind?”

“Yes,” I told him. He handed me another Chesterfield and an orange lighter. “Yes, I think I have.”

*   *   *

IT WAS
a Thursday—I remember this for several reasons. I remember that when the alarm went off, our apartment smelled of the pork soup that our neighbor Do
ñ
a Maite still starts each Thursday morning. And Jos
é
Antonio was packing his suitcase to leave for Bilbao, which always happened on a Thursday. In addition to knowing it was a Thursday, I can tell you it was also the second week of March 1998. Ten days later Jos
é
Antonio’s body would be found washed up on the rocks below the old bunkers on Monte Zorroztu. Those are weeks you remember, whether you want to or not.

I had gone about my morning routine: first, coffee on the stovetop. Then I fed my new kidney a handful of antirejection medication. (By now, I had discovered that not only did my kidney tie his shoes differently, but he also loved
membrillo
and the smell of spilled wine mixed with garbage in the streets the day after a fiesta.) Next, I would change Elena and warm a bottle, and if the girl wasn’t fussing I would leave her with Jos
é
Antonio and retreat to the bathroom to shower.

Once the bathroom door was closed I would strip naked. After I had locked the door, I would angle the mirrors so that I could examine myself from all sides before showering. The affair with Robert Duarte had been going on for nearly three months, and I liked to remember the places where the American’s hands had been—from the knees up, there wasn’t a part of me that he had missed. On that particular Thursday morning Jos
é
Antonio ironed his four dress shirts—always checked and with starched collars—folded them on the bed, and squared them into the black suitcase that we bought when we moved from Sevilla, hurrying to make the 9:08 train to Bilbao.

(This scene always replays itself in slow motion, as if submerged in warm honey. I know that Jos
é
Antonio will leave the apartment to board a train that will arrive, shortly, not at the San Mam
é
s station in Bilbao but at the rocks below the bunkers on Zorroztu. It can be so easily averted—I only need to offer up a warning, an instruction to leave the train in Getxo, before it arrives back in Muriga. And yet each time I play it the routine remains the same. I don’t warn him. I don’t call the office in Bilbao, distracted as I am from thinking about the American’s hands.)

While Jos
é
Antonio finished packing the suitcase, pulling tight his dark-green tie, I lay back on the bed still wrapped in a damp bath towel, Elena now asleep (as was our habit after breakfast, before our morning walk) with her head tucked under my arm.

“Do you have to lie there like that?” he suddenly asked, looking at me through the mirror. He said it in such a way that for a second I thought he was talking to himself.

“Like what?” I finally said. I felt Elena move under my arm.

“After the shower, on the bed with my daughter.”

“What does it matter?” I asked.

“First of all, your hair is getting the pillow wet,” he said. I was still trying to understand this tone. I couldn’t place it.

“And secondly?” I asked. For all his talk of politics, of his plans to run for city council in Muriga, Jos
é
Antonio had always been afraid of confrontation. In a way I liked this new Jos
é
Antonio reflected at me in our mirror, as if a stranger had been living under our bed, in our closets for the last three years. I found myself trying to provoke him, trying to prod him out into the light of day. Instead, he only pulled again at his tie, then turned to zip closed the black suitcase.

“Do you realize that you spend more days a week in Bilbao than you do with your daughter—with me—here in Muriga?” I hadn’t planned to say it; it wasn’t even a point I really wanted to make. In truth, I enjoyed the days when Jos
é
Antonio was away considerably more than those when he was around, when we were forced to act like a family, when he felt obligated to take off his underpants (just the underpants, always leaving the shirt on) and to lie on top of me every Monday night after Elena had been put to bed.

It occurred to me, of course, that he had found out about the American, that this was what had brought about his sudden aggression. But I didn’t care if he knew or not. I’d been less careful over the last month, leaving the American’s wineglass unwashed in the sink, a pair of my underwear pushed carelessly under the corner of the bedspread. He must suspect something, I thought, and I wanted to goad him into showing his hand. I
wanted
a reaction, a fight. Over the previous few days, as Elena and I waded through the small cold waves of the harbor, or while I tied braids through her thin brown curls, I had gone so far as to imagine
telling
Jos
é
Antonio about Robert Duarte. Not just that something had occurred between us or that I had feelings for him, but in a way purposefully designed to cause the most harm, the most anger. Not a confession but an attack. That we had made love on the small bed in his daughter’s room that morning, and again the day before in the shower where Jos
é
Antonio kept his razor. That the American said things to me—filthy things—in Basque, a language Jos
é
Antonio couldn’t even understand.