Guernica (3 page)

It had been all too much talk of art. And when they talked, their art rose from their heads, not their guts, and their paintings
went back and forth like day-old conversations.

He didn’t need Paris now; he needed Spain. He needed the people and the heat and the unshakeable feeling of belonging.

Fernande would sit for him now and wouldn’t talk about his painting. She knew better. He had come back to Spain for a short
break, come to this quiet town in the mountains, to tear art to pieces, to make it something it hadn’t been, or perhaps something
it had been long before. This was a place he could
feel
art. It came up at him from the dirt and radiated down in waves from the sun. It was time to shatter art and reshape it, as
one might do with bright pieces of broken glass.

Justo promised his brothers this: No one would work harder. But even as he made that vow, he conceded to himself that he knew
very little of the business of operating a farm. So he began making social visits to neighbors, slipping into the conversations
questions about the timing of planting certain crops or tending fruit trees and managing stock. Most neighbors were sympathetic,
but they had little time to worry about somebody else’s farm—unless they had a daughter who happened to be his age. Most would
consider Justo something well short of handsome, but this boy nonetheless owned his own
baserri
.

Justo inquired of the neighboring Mendozabels how he might establish hives for bees that would pollinate his fruit trees and
provide honey. Mrs. Mendozabel informed him that they would be delighted to help him, that in fact they should all visit over
“a full dinner, which you surely don’t get much of at Errotabarri, not the kind that our Magdalena makes every night.” Justo
arrived in his work clothes, consumed dinner without conversation beyond that of the
baserri
, and took little note of Magdalena in her white Sunday dress and the “special pie” she baked for him. He was too busy for
Magdalena and all the rest of the Magdalenas who were successively dressed, powdered, and trotted out for his inspection.
The dinners were pleasant, though, the information helpful, and yes, it was true, he didn’t bake pies at Errotabarri.

Small farms could not be considered flourishing businesses, but few noticed the poverty on the hillside above Guernica. Families
were fed, and whatever was left over was carted to market or traded for those goods they could not produce themselves. Justo
envied the neighbors who enjoyed an abundance of help from children. By comparison, he faced a manpower shortage. Josepe and
Xabier helped, but they were less invested in the chores now. Justo rose in the darkness, worked without break through the
day, and fell asleep shortly after eating whatever it was he bothered to toss into a pot that night. Josepe never complained
of the food; Xabier did so only once.

Justo discovered a few tricks but never cut corners on chores that would affect the land or animals, only himself. He did
not sew or mend clothing and never washed his or his brothers’ garments, he told them, because they would only get dirty again.
If his brothers wanted to clean themselves, he did not complain, as long as the chores had been done.

“You look nice this morning,” one charitable woman commented to Justo when the three boys showed up to mass at least partially
groomed.

“Yes,” Xabier cracked. “But our scarecrows are bare today.”

And so, Justo spent no time arranging for his own comforts, and he gave no thought to entertainment or diversion.

At times in the field, hypnotized by the rhythmic swinging of the scythe through the grasses, he discovered that he had been
talking to himself aloud. He would look around to be certain Josepe or Xabier had not come upon him silently and heard his
words. In these moments he realized his problem. He was lonely. The chores that had been so exciting in the presence of his
brothers had become mere labor.

The only break he allowed himself came on feast days when he would finish his chores in the morning and then walk into town
to take part in the competitions, the tug-of-war, the wood chopping, the stone lifting. He won many of them because of his
imposing power. And because these exposures to people were so rare, he attempted to share with everyone all the jokes and
examples of strength that went unappreciated during his seclusion at Errota-barri. If he became outrageous and self-inflated,
it was entertainingly so, and those in the town anticipated his visits and cheered his many victories. For someone so lonely
at home, the attention felt like the first warm day of spring.

At one of these outings he met a girl from Lumo who had come downhill to join the dancers. Her name was Mariangeles Oñati,
and she caused Justo Ansotegui to reevaluate his approach to personal hygiene and self-imposed solitude.

Josepe Ansotegui smelled the Bay of Biscay long before he could see it. Having walked the serpentine mountain road north from
Guernica for two days, past the caves and the jagged marble quarry and beyond the well-tended farms, he descended steadily
in the direction of the breeze that carried the briny musk of low tide. When he arrived at the Lekeitio harbor in the softening
dusk, clusters of women in aprons and scarves were prying small fish from nets along the quay. They chatted and sang in pleasant
harmony.

Josepe scanned the boats moored along the perimeter of the harbor wall, looking for crews still at work. The first man he
approached about a job responded with a laugh and a head shake. The second told him that fishermen came from fishing families,
and farm boys were meant to be farmers, as was life’s order.

“My older brother took over the family
baserri
, so I thought I’d give fishing a try,” he explained. “I was told there was always work to be had on the boats.”

“I’ve got some work,” a man on the adjacent boat shouted. “Let’s see if you can lift this crate.”

With great strain, Josepe hoisted an overflowing crate of fish to his knees, then up to his waist, and off-loaded it to the
dock. He looked back with a sense of triumph.

“Yes, you’re strong enough,” the fisherman said. “No, I don’t have any work for you—but thanks anyway.”

In the aft of a boat closest to the harbor mouth, a fisherman stood alone scanning the sky. “
Zori
,” the man said of his skyward focus when Josepe approached. “The old fishermen looked for
zori
, for omens, by reading which way the birds were flying.”

“And are the birds saying anything special this evening?” Josepe asked, glancing at a squadron of gulls that bickered above
the harbor.

“I think they’re saying they’re hungry; they’re circling the processors, waiting to dispose of our messes.”

The two shook hands.

“I’m Josepe Ansotegui of Guernica, I’m almost seventeen years old, and the only fishing I’ve done is in a stream with a string
and a pin,” the boy said. “But I’m told I’m smart, and I’m looking for work.”

“Did you catch anything with your string and pin?”

“I caught a fat trout once, yes,” Josepe offered pridefully.

“Did you gut and clean the fat trout?”

“Yes, I did.”

“That’s all you need to know about fishing right now; you’re hired,” Alberto Barinaga said. “We’ll worry about your intelligence
later.”

Barinaga, owner of the
Zaldun
, welcomed Josepe on board and into his home. Perhaps he had foreseen a productive relationship in the flight of the birds.
In time, Barinaga became impressed by Jo-sepe’s stories of growing up in a pack of playful boys following his mother’s death,
and he admired his strength and his attitude. But mostly he came to appreciate his dedication to learning the business of
fishing. In daily tutorials, while he scrubbed gunwales or repaired nets, or while at the family’s dinner table, Josepe absorbed
the encyclopedia of maritime lore and culture the veteran captain presented.

“We chased the bowheads and cod to the shores of the Americas,” Barinaga preached at dinner. “The
Santa María
was one of our caravels, and Columbus had a Basque navigator and crew.”

“That is why he ended up in the Americas instead of the Indies,” his eldest daughter, Felicia, needled.

“Magellan had our navigators, too,” the captain continued.

“Some have suggested that we are so good on the waters because our race began on the lost island of Atlantis.”

Barinaga paused for effect, nodding his head as he buttered a thick slice of bread. “It is a possibility that I would not
discount.”

Josepe, in turn, learned of his
patroia
from the gossipy crews of other boats. Barinaga was much admired among the family of fish-ermen. On several occasions, his
seamanship allowed the
Zaldun
to arrive in rescue of foundering boats and endangered crews. Jo-sepe pulled in the lessons with both hands. He learned the
songs of the sailors and joined in the singing as they repaired fraying nets on the days when rough seas sentenced them to
work ashore.

Josepe repaid Alberto Barinaga’s hospitality by having sex nearly every night with his daughter Felicia in the bedroom directly
beneath her sleeping parents.

When Xabier returned from school one afternoon and rushed to help his brother turn hay to dry with the long trident forks,
Justo noticed scratches and purple welts across the back of his hands.

“What happened to you?”

“I gave an answer in Basque,” Xabier said.

Justo hadn’t been to school for years, but he remembered the teachers who belittled them at every opportunity and used a ruler
or a willow branch to swat students who spoke Basque instead of Spanish in class.

“I’ll take care of this.”

At age eighteen, shirtless beneath unwashed coveralls, Justo went to school the next morning. Once the class was seated, save
for Xabier, Justo approached the teacher, a bespectacled Spaniard with a marigold boutonniere.

At the front of the classroom, Justo lifted Xabier’s raked hand toward the teacher and said two words.

“Never again,” Justo said in Basque.

The teacher responded with a showy bluff, expecting the young farm boy to be daunted. “
Vete!
” he demanded in Spanish, pointing toward the door.

The teacher paused. He turned to the class and saw every student focused on the showdown. “
Vete!
” the teacher repeated, chin raised.

Justo struck so quickly the teacher was helpless, grabbing the extended arm and pulling it down between the teacher’s legs.
Spinning around the bent-over teacher, Justo took the wrist with his other hand and lifted it so that the teacher straddled
his own arm. In the span of a second, the teacher went from imperiously pointing toward the door to being bent in half, with
his own arm between his legs and pulled up tightly against his scrotum.

Justo’s grip on the teacher’s wrist tightened as he lifted his arm even higher, causing the teacher to rise onto his toes
to reduce the pressure on his groin. The teacher groaned. Students sat in stunned silence.

Justo bent and looked around at the teacher’s sweaty face and said two words. “Never again.”

Justo lifted him higher for an instant, then released his grip. The teacher dropped to the floor.

The first colorful installment of Justo Ansotegui’s legend passed from student to parents that afternoon, and every father
relayed it to friends that evening at the
taberna
. The teacher did not show the next morning or the following one, and he was replaced. When Justo next appeared in town, several
men he didn’t know stepped from storefronts and clapped their hands in approval. Justo smiled back and winked.

Xabier never needed his big brother’s assistance to get good marks. Not nearly as physical as his brother, Xabier instead
felt himself grow stronger with every bit of information he committed to memory. He had no property and few possessions, but
these facts were his: history, mathematics, grammar. So he assumed the role of dutiful student. If he had to act as if he
were accepting of these Spanish teachers’ politics, he could easily pretend. By sixteen, he had consumed everything the public
school teachers offered.

The next move was Justo’s, and he proposed it with typical bluntness at dinner.

“You know, Xabier, you’re not much help around here, and I may want to get married someday; have you ever thought about going
into the seminary, maybe in Bilbao?”

Xabier was as devout as any boy, and he certainly had done nothing that would serve as an obstacle to joining the clergy;
he simply had never considered it. He admired the parish priest but never sought to emulate him. But it would be a way to
continue learning.

“Priests live comfortably; they’re respected in town,” Justo continued. “Besides, you’ve got no hope with women anyway.”

Xabier was not insulted, as he assumed Justo was right on that account. But Justo was his brother, not his father, and who
was he to tell him what to do? He was about to question Justo’s authority when his brother made a final point.

“Mother would have liked it.”

The issue spurred all-night introspection. And when he rose at dawn, Xabier was reasonably certain it was a good idea. He
informed Justo—with reservations.

“I thought there might be something more dramatic about a big decision like this. I thought priests felt some calling, that
they heard some kind of heavenly voices.”

Justo, his muscled shoulders and arms extending from his ruf-fled apron, scooped eggs from a skillet onto Xabier’s plate.

“You did hear a voice,” Justo said. “Mine.”

CHAPTER 2

Justo Ansotegui’s reputation rose uphill to the village of Lumo. There, Mariangeles Oñati heard that he was a defender of
causes, a wit, and a wag, although some suggested he was an overeager curator of his own mythology. Most often she’d heard
that he was the one to watch during the strength events on feast days. One friend claimed that he had carried an ox into town
across his shoulders and then celebrated the feat by throwing the beast across the Oka River.

“Yes,” Justo said when asked of the story. “But it was only a small ox, and downhill most of the way into town. And the wind
was with me when I threw it.”

Mariangeles came to dance at one of the festivals with her five sisters. She also decided it was time to watch the men’s competitions,
which she usually avoided.

The largest young man standing beside a skinned log at the start of the wood-chopping event joked with the gathering as he
removed his boots and sad gray stockings. Going barefooted seemed to Mariangeles a foolhardy act for one who would be fl ailing
an ax so near his feet.

“After all these years of competitions, I still have nine toes,” he said, proudly wiggling the four remaining appendages on
one of his bare feet. “But this is my only pair of boots and I can’t afford to damage them.”

The man bent at the waist and tore into the pine log between his feet. Halfway through, he hopped 180 degrees to work on the
other side. The log split beneath him well before any others in the competition. Justo was seated, nine toes intact, replacing
his socks and boots before the second-place finisher broke through his log.

In the wine-drinking event, Justo was less impressive. Unpracticed in the use of the
bota
, he sprayed wine over much of his face. After coughing and spitting, he took what was left in his bag and squirted shots
into the mouths of grateful friends, who had turned up their open mouths as if awaiting the sacrament.

But in the
txingas
event, Justo was unmatched. The “farmer’s walk” tested strength and endurance as the competitor carried 110-pound weights
in each hand up and back along a mea sured course until they dropped. The collapse for most competitors followed a customary
pattern. On the second lap, the knees began to bend dramatically—sometimes in both directions; on the third, the shoulders
had pulled the spine down into a dangerous curve; and finally, gravity yanked the weights and the man to the turf.

Mariangeles stood near the starting point when Justo was called. He grasped the ring handles of the weights, his face straining
as if he’d never get them off the ground. It was false drama for the audience, because he then easily hoisted them and unleashed
a proud
irrintzi
, the traditional mountain cry, rising in pitch to a shriek with quickening ululations.

Justo marched without struggle, his back rigid. The back is the trunk of the tree, he reasoned, the arms merely the branches.
Past the marks where others had fallen in exhaustion, Justo Ansotegui nodded to the crowd, gesturing at little ones who would
praise him to future grandchildren.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” a young boy asked as he passed.

“Of course, how do you think my arms got so long?” Justo volleyed, and at that moment, he straightened his arms against his
sides, a move that caused the sleeves of his shirt to ride up, making his arms appear to grow in length by a third.

The boy gasped and howled along with the crowd.

Justo’s weakening arrived so gradually no one could notice. Already the winner by several lengths, he chose not to further
delay the inevitable and set the weights gently at his feet.

It so happened that Mariangeles discovered the need to visit with acquaintances near the finish line after Justo’s competition.
And who could have imagined that a friend would say something so humorous, just as Justo walked past, that she found herself
unleashing her most feminine wind-chime laughter, which caused Justo to turn in her direction? And because it had all been
so amusing, it was natural that she still would be locked in her broadest smile—the one that gave greatest depth to her dimples—when
Justo looked her way.

Justo glanced and walked on.

“Unnnh,” Mariangeles muttered. This must be the most arrogant man in Guernica, she thought.

Behind the scenes, Mariangeles quickly arranged to present the prize, a lamb, to the winner of the
txingas
event.

“Congratulations,” she said to Justo in front of the crowd. Mari-angeles handed Justo the lamb and moved in for the ceremonial
kiss on his cheek. She took a close look at his jagged, misshapen right ear, retreated slightly, and came in for a kiss on
the other cheek.

“Thank you,” Justo said, and announced to the crowd, “I am going to fill the valley with my flock from winning these events.”

Justo waved and accepted congratulations as he worked through the crowd, lamb peeking out from inside the bib of his overalls.
Mariangeles skirted the gathering so that Justo would have to pass her again.

“Would you like to dance?” she asked.

Justo stopped. He looked down at himself, in his soiled coveralls. He looked back at her.

“We can find somebody to hold your lamb.”

She took the leggy lamb from him and hugged it to her face.

“Did somebody tell you to do this?” Justo asked.

“No, I just thought you might like to dance, if you’re not too worn out from all the chopping and lifting.”

But they didn’t dance. They sat and talked as the lamb gamboled around them and returned to “nurse” on Mariangeles’s finger
whenever she placed a bent knuckle near its mouth. Her sisters watched them, and on the walk home, they unanimously voted
against her seeing this boy.

Yes, she agreed, he was not the most handsome of her suitors. He was almost frighteningly powerful, and he was missing the
outer curl of his right ear. And for all his bombast in front of the crowd, he had been without confidence when they were
alone beneath the tree.

“He’s homely,” a sister said.

“He has character,” Mariangeles argued.

“He’s ugly,” a less generous sister offered.

“He has his own
baserri
,” Mariangeles’s mother commented from behind the group of girls.

Her mother’s frankness stilled the warm adrenaline that had driven her since she introduced herself to Justo, and even her
walking slowed from the weight of its significance. Was that at the root of her interest in this man? She was almost twenty,
the eldest in a family of six girls and a lone brother who was nine. Her father had injured both legs in a fall at the farm,
leaving him weakened and affixed to his wooden rocking chair like sagging upholstery. Did she flirt with Justo because the
time had come for her to move on? She returned home in silence as her sisters debated his many inadequacies.

Others interested in Mariangeles presented flowers or sweets when they arrived at her home and then sought private time with
her. Justo arrived empty-handed but wearing his work clothes. He gave her mother a vigorous handshake, patted the father on
his shoulder, and asked a question that instantly won over Mrs. Oñati and the sisters: “What can I do around here to help?”

“To help?” the mother asked.

“Help—heavy lifting, woodcutting, repairs . . . whatever is the hardest for you ladies.”

Mariangeles’s mother sat down and composed a short list. Justo looked it over and nodded.

“Come on, Mari, put on your work clothes and we’ll be done with this before dinner.” When Mariangeles went in the sisters’
sleeping area to change into older clothes, her mother followed.

“You know, you learn more about a person by working beside them for an hour than you can in a year of courting,” her mother
said.

After an afternoon of work, they sat together for a relaxed meal, with everyone feeling as if Justo were already part of the
family. The sisters, who now would not have to repair the roof of their lambing shed, agreed that Justo was a more appealing
prospect than they first thought. Not handsome, to be sure, but a good catch. And looks, well, they’re not everything.

A month later, at the next community fair, Mariangeles stood in the first row alongside the
txingas
course. Justo went through his precompetition theatrics, padding back and forth along the path a few times, before stopping
in the middle of the grounds, taking a sharp left turn, and walking directly toward Mariangeles.

He collected the handles of both weights in his massive left hand, barely needing to lean into a counterbalance, and with
his right hand retrieved a gold band from his pants pocket.

“Will you marry me?” he asked the stunned Mariangeles.

“Yes, of course.” They kissed. He reapportioned the weights and went back to the competition. As Justo walked, a man overseeing
the event skittishly approached and walked beside him.

“Justo, you went off the path, you’re disqualified,” the judge informed him.

Justo continued past the mark of the winner, just to show he could have done it anyway, and rejoined his future bride, apologizing
for not adding another lamb to their flock.

Justo was right; seminary studies suited Xabier, who displayed exceptional recall of facts and details. But more relevant
to his future, he showed a trustworthy manner that inspired people’s confidence. As he eased from secular studies toward the
strictly clerical, and as he became familiar with the tasks expected of a priest, he grew more certain this was his calling.
Many seminarians question the personal costs, but Xabier had no need to reconcile himself on that issue. His most critical
self-examination instead involved the soul-baring question of whether he had the ability to truly help those who would approach
him in their time of greatest need.

His gravest frustration came from the unstable connection he detected at times between holy protocol and simple human existence,
as he discovered that sometimes doctrine failed to apply to daily reality. So many of a priest’s hours with parishioners,
he discovered, involved the mind-numbing coddling of insecure adults and constructing reassurances built on vaporous faith.
He had no doubts of his deep belief; he was more sure of that than ever. But how could he use it to benefit others?

He was instructed to advise people that deaths and hardships are tests. And when people dared ask for reasons and proof, he
was to lay down the cleric’s ultimate trump card: “God works in mysterious ways.” Xabier decided that if he ever heard himself
use that phrase, which amounted to taking an easy way out, he would give up the cloth and become a fisherman with Josepe.
So he tested himself alone at night, fabricating ghastly scenarios in which he was confronted by troubled faces begging for
answers.

An imaginary grieving mother beneath a black lace veil looks up from her baby’s grave and asks, “How could a caring God let
this illness take my child?”

Xabier decided he would embrace her and whisper his belief in her ear. “I truly don’t know how it could happen, but I . .
. I . . . believe she is in His arms right now, where she feels no more pain, where she is whole and she is happy. And she
is still in all of our hearts and can never be taken from there.” He would hold the woman then and listen to her sobs and
absorb her tears with his shoulder until she was ready to withdraw, no matter how long it took.

A bent and toothless woman, wedged against a wall and smelling of sepsis, raises a gnarled hand and asks, “Where is God’s
mercy for the poor?”

In his vision, Xabier would sit on the ground beside her. “Do you have family anywhere who can help?” If she answered yes,
he would find them and urge them to take custody of her health. If she answered no, then he would become her family. “Come
with me, sister, and we will find a place for you.” She would be poor, but she would be cared for.

A large man with an indistinct shape and hidden face asks him from a dark corner, “Is avenging a grievous wrong a sin?”

Xabier would say, “If it is a matter of pride, deny yourself; if it is a matter of honor and true belief, then ask, ‘What
is the cost of this honor?’ I believe you’ll find your own answer.”

Xabier knew he had romanticized himself as compellingly noble in these imagined situations (as well as slightly taller and
considerably more handsome), but when he repeatedly arrived at compassionate responses, he felt certain there was nothing
else he could do with his life that would have an equal impact. He also realized that his answers frequently had little or
nothing to do with faith, religion, doctrine, catechism, or papal decree.