Guernica (13 page)

“ ‘Concerned citizens’?” Justo asked Mariangeles that night. “Is that what it has come to now? People turning on each other?
I’m going to see if I can find the person who did this.”

“I don’t know what happened, Justo,” she said. “I only know that he had no chance, and Amaya is going to have problems without
him. All those children. The troubles are coming here now, too, aren’t they? I don’t want you doing anything foolish. Let’s
just try to be smart.”

Dark humor spread from man to man through Guernica’s streets and cafés. Women refused to take part, perhaps because of higher
sensitivity and delicate taste, or perhaps greater strength. Mendiola told Miguel that he knew times were hard because even
the town’s cats were looking over their shoulders as they slinked about the streets.

Coffee now consisted of recycled grounds with no sugar; bread was coarse and black, and meat was an almost forgotten delicacy.
Those who still had pigs slaughtered them at night and then hid the meat to avoid being caught with unrationed pork. Those
who had cached sacks of wheat broke into locked mills by night to grind whatever small amount of flour they could, risking
arrest for making bread. Others started eating their seed corn, and some were said to have stolen oats out of horses’ feed
bags in town, as the provender for stock was becoming a staple for humans.

Miguel spent many days in the forests felling timber and learned which mushrooms were edible. He carried a sack to hold them.
He still tried to fish in the stream for the small trout to bolster their sparse diet. Many of the streams were fished out,
though. He thought of the thousands of fish he had pulled in during his days in Lekeitio and wondered how he could have found
the process so distasteful. He thought of a grilled bream fillet and of the delicious
bacalao
.

One day he spotted a grouse in a patch of brush on a hillside and quietly dropped his saw. Never taking his eyes off the prey,
he felt the ground for a rock and creeped toward the oblivious bird. Ten yards, five yards . . . Miguel rose and fired the
rock, hitting the bird perfectly. Miguel thrust both hands into the air and shouted. He could not believe it, but almost immediately
he felt a sense of guilt that the stalking and killing had been so bereft of sport. But the bird was plump, and he brought
it home along with some mushrooms. Miren rushed to Errotabarri to invite her parents for dinner. Mariangeles had been preparing
a potato-and-leek soup and brought it along to add to the feast.

“Justo asked that we start without him and said he would be along as soon as he finished up some work,” Mariangeles said when
she arrived.

“What’s he doing that’s so important that he would miss a dinner of fresh game?” Miguel asked.

“He doesn’t want me to say anything about this, but since Roberto Mezo was arrested, he’s been spending several hours every
day trying to help Amaya and her family,” Mariangeles said as she hoisted her pot of soup onto the table, careful not to spill
any over the side. “There’s no way she could make it without his helping with some of the harder chores. Justo just tries
to get up earlier and get his work done faster at home so he can help her family after that.”

Miren tended the bird at the hearth and Miguel sliced the mushrooms and mixed them with some wild greens he had collected.

“Amaya tries to get Justo to bring home a few eggs or some grain every now and then as payment, but he refuses,” Mariangeles
added. “That would help, but they have so little, we couldn’t take anything from them.”

As they sat and finished their prayer, Justo arrived, his face and clothes dirty and his customary boisterousness markedly
subdued. Even his mustache seemed to droop.

“Did somebody mention a fat bird?” Justo asked.

Miguel carved the sign of the cross in the bread loaf and then sliced pieces off those axes, taking the first one and placing
it on the mantel “to calm the stormy seas.” Justo protested that this was no time to observe traditions that wasted food,
especially since they were many miles from the sea.

Even the mannerly Mariangeles and Miren moaned as they ate the juicy bird covered with salt and herbs. And for a time, grateful
eating was the only sound at the table.

“Papa.”

“Yes,
kuttuna.
”

“It’s a good thing you are doing, helping the Mezos.”

Justo looked at Mariangeles, the in formant.

“They need help; besides, I was losing a little of my strength, so a bit more work is good for me,” he kidded. “I would wager
she did not tell you who has been over there every day helping with the little ones and doing most of the cleaning and the
house work, did she?”

Miren smiled at her mother, who shrugged in admission.

“Did they ever hear what happened to Roberto?” Miguel asked.

“Apparently there are more rats in town than the ones that are being captured and cooked,” Justo said.

“One of us?” Miren asked. “How could people do that to their neighbors?”

“This sort of thing changes people—some, at least,” Justo said. “You put too many chickens in the same pen, without food,
and you’ll see it. They’ll peck each other to death.”

They quietly chewed.

“Character comes easy when the belly is full,” Justo added. “It gets harder now. And could get harder still.”

It was the first healthy meal the four had eaten in some time, but the conversation left them unsatisfied, and Justo and Mariangeles
departed with brief hugs and thanks soon after the dishes were cleared. Both were already exhausted, and they were now in
the habit of going to sleep as soon as darkness came.

Early the following evening, as Justo finished his work at Errotabarri and headed to the Mezos’, Miren and Miguel arrived
to join him. Without explanation, they each took a scythe and began sweeping through the tall grasses and spreading it to
dry.

“Thank you,” Justo said to Miguel.

“It’s nothing; I don’t want to lose my strength in my old age, either.”

Amaya Mezo, having prepared dinner for her children, left the kitchen without eating more than a few nibbles so she could
join the trio in the field. As she gathered and spread hay, she began humming. Her three helpers picked up their pace. To
them, it sounded like the song of a bird, carefree and at peace.

CHAPTER 12

Most of them never had much anyway, so it wasn’t the poverty that so upset those in town. Some weren’t even troubled by the
rash of break-ins and stealing from businesses, as hunger nibbled away at people’s principles. Many understood it, recognized
it as human nature, and had considered it themselves in dark moments. It was only food, and the damage generally was small,
a broken window or doorjamb.

But something more menacing filled the atmosphere now, an uncertainty that crackled in the air, in the suspicion on the streets
that caused people to look down rather than ahead, and in the night that announced itself with the sound of lock bolts snapping
shut.

To Miguel, it seemed as if many were pulling themselves in tighter, to become smaller, impenetrable. He saw those types every
day, although they did not want to be seen. He talked to them every day, but they did not want to respond. They looked up
as if they had been in a cloud of thought, coughed a quick greeting, and hurried off in search of a place to disappear.

Others had not changed; they hailed him on the street and made jokes about their circumstances, and asked of his business
and wife.

“Until people start eating furniture, business will be slow,” Miguel kidded each time to save himself the energy of thinking
up new responses.

Miguel had been able to stay reasonably busy with small specialty orders: a chest as a gift for some other newlyweds, a few
cabinets and dressers . . . mostly fine finished work for those in town who still had a little money and cared for things
that would last into better times.

As Miren’s belly started to swell, Miguel began construction of the cradle. His slender wife approached pregnancy as she did
all other endeavors, unsparingly and with an energy that infected those around her. Her lean dancer’s figure began to fill
in early, and after years of joking at her own expense about certain inadequacies, she loved how her blouses stretched tightly
across the front. If pregnancy rendered some women too ill or uneasy to be intimate, it had an opposite effect on Miren, who
became increasingly libidinous.

After the cradle was built, Miguel painted a fish leaping from the water at the head. At the foot, he painted a woman dancer,
hands raised and a leg elevated in midkick.

“And when the baby is born and we see if it is a boy or girl, I will rout its name across the headboard,” Miguel told Miren
one night.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she answered.

“Why? It will become an heirloom for his family, then.”

“Because, dear, I don’t want you to have to keep making different cradles for each of the many babies we will have.”

Miguel hadn’t thought beyond the first. He had been so engaged in the process, so overtaken by having a child with Miren,
that he hadn’t considered later additions. Since she mentioned it, he liked the idea.

“Fine,” he said, running his hand through his hair and then clenching the back of his neck. “How about if I just carve ‘Navarro’
on the headboard? That should keep us covered for as many as we need.”

He expected fatherhood to alter his life, adding responsibilities and certain restrictions. But he could not envision it having
an effect on his carpentry business. After baby Catalina was born, Miguel found himself veering away from his typical projects
to spend time building things for her, starting with toys and furniture and progressing to things she couldn’t possibly use
for years.

Finished with her cradle, Miguel added a high chair so that she would someday be able to sit with them at the table. He then
built a small set of chairs and a table for her to use when she invited little friends for imaginary tea. He constructed a
hobby horse on wheels that she could push around, except he chose to fashion a ram instead of a horse. He took a sun-bleached
ram skull with a set of rounded horns that he had seen at Errotabarri, painted the bone a dark color so that it would be less
frightening, blunted the horn tips for safety, and attached it to the frame of the toy.

Mendiola always chided Miguel for the sin of overbuilding, saying his projects were created to a shipwright’s tolerance. Partly
as a joke for Mendiola, Miguel designed Catalina’s carriage in the shape of a boat. The sides were made of lapstrake oak,
and the exposed upper edges were capped like gunwales and joined at the pointed prow. Miguel liked the theme of the little
“craft” and was able to show Mendiola how easily it could be pushed with its oversized wheels.

“And this hood can be pulled down for storms at sea, correct?”

“There might be some foul-weather walking involved some days, sure,” Miguel answered. “Why not build it to last? Who knows
how many children are going to end up using this thing?”

“And if flooding becomes a problem, Catalina could go for a boat ride instead of a stroll, right?”

“And fish while she’s doing it,” Miguel said.

Soon there was little room to walk through the clutter of furniture in their house. Miren viewed each piece as a family treasure
and marveled at her husband’s skills but pointed out the impracticality of storing so much children’s furniture. When she
mentioned the surplus to other young mothers she knew, some expressed interest in buying what Miguel had already made or ordering
similar pieces for their children.

His business evolved as demand for cabinets and chests and chairs and tables diminished, but the requests for children’s furniture
kept him busy. His added touch of routing the family name into each crib or cradle increased interest and allowed him to charge
higher prices, as these now were being valued as long-term family possessions. Miguel had to tactfully deny this feature for
some patrons. When Cruz Arguinchona asked for a cradle for his baby, Miguel had to break the surname into two parts on the
headpiece, which Cruz understood and appreciated. But when Coro Cengotitabengoa ordered a cradle, Miguel told her he would
have to carve the name across the headboard, footboard, and both side pieces.

They settled on a nice wood inlay of a
lauburu
.

Before Catalina was a month old, Miren could scarcely recall a time when she had not been a mother. At night, Catalina would
whimper or cry only a few notes before either parent would rise. Miguel often would go to the cradle next to their bed, retrieve
Catalina, change and clean her, and then bring her to Miren for feeding. At times Miren would sit in the rocker Miguel had
built and nurse while cooing to the baby. Other times she might just double the pillows behind her head and sit up in bed
to nurse. Miguel then would wedge his pillow behind him, too, and regardless of the hour and the darkness and how soon he
might have to head up into the forest, he watched the sublime connection.

“
Astokilo
, go to sleep, you don’t have to be awake for this,” she always said to Miguel. “There’s not much you can do to help this
process, you know.”

But he always waited until Catalina was finished and had been patted on Miren’s shoulder before taking her back to her cradle.
He would kiss her head and smell her feathery hair and the breath of milk she sleepily exhaled. Then he would return to bed,
kiss his wife—who often was already back to sleep—and thank her for feeding their baby girl.

In the evenings, Miguel and Miren sat beside each other and babbled at Catalina. After all, there had never been such a child,
so intelligent and beautiful and well behaved. Why had no one told them of the wonders of parenthood? “Did you see how she
grasped my thumb?” one would say. “That must be a sign of early advancement. Here, watch how her eyes follow my face when
I move from side to side. And that smile . . . she will break hearts once she sprouts teeth.”

Miren worked with Catalina on her dance steps before she was able to support her own head. Holding Catalina in the hammock
of her skirt, Miren would put her hands out so that Catalina could grasp her thumbs. Miren raised her daughter’s arms over
her head and moved them in a gentle rhythm.

“This is how you do a
jota
,” she said. She then took the baby’s bare feet and kissed the tender arches until Catalina emitted a giggle that sounded
like tiny bells. She wiggled her feet as if quick-stepping to a tune.

“You, my dear girl, will be the finest dancer in Guernica one day soon.”

When Catalina saw Miguel over her mother’s shoulder, she began frog-kicking furiously, excited by the sight of him.

“Isn’t that always the case?” Miren said in baby tones. “Papa is for fun; Mama is for food.”

“But we’ll let Mama be responsible for the dance lessons,” Miguel said, also assuming the high pitch of excitement he used
to delight his daughter.

The parents soaked in the image of their baby girl, the dark, clear coloring, the wispy black hair and dark almond eyes that
were already starting to resemble her mother’s.

It started with Josu Letemendi, a neighbor who helped Alaia Alde-coa gather the scents for her soaps. He enjoyed her company
so much that he often chopped wood, stoked the fire, heated the water, and cleaned up. They chatted casually about a number
of topics when they walked the fields or as he measured out portions of ingredients for her soap mixtures.

Josu had never been a handsome boy, with a large head bracketed by perpendicular ears. He received little attention from girls
at school or at any
erromeria
. He found himself more at ease around Alaia than he ever had been with the girls of the village, even though she was infinitely
more beautiful and exotic.

At times in the cottage it became easier for Josu to simply put a hand on each of Alaia’s shoulders and direct her to a jar
or con-tainer holding a specific ingredient she needed. Alaia found herself anticipating those touches. Josu positioned her
in front of the milk and a stir-pot one afternoon. Instead of feeling out for her ingredients, Alaia backed up slightly, slowly,
so that her back touched his chest.

The bow knot of her apron tie made contact just below his waist. In a moment, he pulled her in, closer, until her hair touched
his face.

“Uh . . .” Josu asked permission with a tentative syllable.

“Yes,” Alaia said.

The soaps went unattended for many days.

Within six months, though, Josu was called to Bilbao to work in the
taberna
of an uncle. He would return to Guernica several days a month to see family and also to help Alaia with her projects, but
both knew the distance would keep the relationship from advancing beyond what it had been, a time of joyful discovery.

It was then that Mr. Zubiri stepped in and began helping Alaia, and he, too, soon provided her with a physical outlet that
carried no expectations other than touch and secrecy. It was different with the patient and grateful Mr. Zubiri. But it was
still fulfilling for Alaia and certainly a highlight for the widower Zubiri. In time, a man who sometimes brought her eggs
initiated similar attention.

Alaia became well attuned to the delicacy and timing of human contact. Men were appreciative, and their groaned approval caused
her to become more inventive and eager. The partner made little difference to her, and the man’s appearance certainly did
not affect her. Her visitors learned that the enterprise was not a social function; she had little patience with explanations,
commentary, and complaints about former relationships, politics, or the status of crops. She was not available to hear confessions
or offer absolution. She accepted trade, services, chickens, eggs, bread, wine, cordwood, or supplies for her soaps.

In a gossipy town that prized fidelity, hers was not a volume business, but there were a few regulars. Alaia’s clientele consisted
mostly of widowers, inquisitive strays, and unmarried young men whose thoughts were dictated by flowing sap. Alaia’s arts
were largely wasted on the latter, as it was her practice to wash them with warm water and one of her special soaps beforehand,
an activity that many times cured the problem spurring the visit in the first place.

If some of the more devout in town heard of Alaia Aldecoa’s activities, they might easily have gathered and burned her out
of her home, blindness be damned. But most practiced the more fundamental orthodoxy of pragmatism. Had this been a girl with
a full complement of God’s gifts, she would have been reviled, perhaps stoned in the market by the women in town.

It was this matter of need that made her different. If not honorable, Alaia Aldecoa’s position was viewed as excusably practical
and was tolerated if not ignored by most of the community. As hints of her activities inevitably seeped into town, she was
spoken of as the village soap maker, rarely anything else. How could the chattering
amumak
ignore a prostitute in their village when a neighbor’s flirtatious glance might trigger de cades of hostility? Because Alaia
Aldecoa, relinquished to a convent when her parents discovered she was blind, was one of God’s needy children.

That she could support herself despite impairment was judged slightly more admirable in its enterprise than scornful in its
immorality. She was unofficially shunned by many who knew the whispered secret, and they turned away without comment. But
most rationalized that the girl was providing relief for widowers and for young men who might otherwise seek out and assault
their unsuspecting daughters and granddaughters.

Another factor played into the community’s forbearance: All knew that Justo Ansotegui held her in high regard and would tolerate
no demeaning comments. All knew and respected Mariangeles Ansotegui without reserve. And Miren Ansotegui? She was as close
to the sightless girl as a sister, and to say something harsh about Alaia would feel like impugning Miren. Few would consider
that.

Alaia had no way of knowing how the village had shaped a consensus on her lifestyle, just as she did not fully understand
how comforting to men was her lack of sight. It amounted to the gift of anonymity at a time when being unrecognized was a
man’s second priority. She knew who they were, most of them, at least. She could tell by their voices, having encountered
them at times in the market. But there was never a name, never a discussion, sometimes no talk at all. A man might appear
at her door with a plucked chicken, a clutch of eggs, a string of chorizos.