The Sacred Beasts (40 page)

IN THE EVENING, Ruth and Monserrat sat in the living room beside
Idoia Ibarruri, a sociology professor and socialist councillor in the Basque
country. She had arrived earlier just as Monserrat had described to Ruth,
through underground Civil War tunnels and their entrances to the house. A woman
was in the secret lookout tower on the roof, watching all activity on the
street and another was close to the house. Idoia had the typical Basque
features; she was small with short dark hair, gold earrings and a formidable
nose that she was not self-conscious about. A few women were present who
Monserrat had carefully screened, professors and writers, several from the
Basque country. All admired Idoia’s political career and courage, and they
talked very little, treating her as an honored guest and woman to be protected.

“I love it here,” Idoia said. “This is more freedom than I have
anywhere else in Spain.” She smiled and brushed a few tears from her eyes.

“Is it getting any better?” Monserrat asked. “So many ETA soldiers
are in jail now.”

“Ah! No, it’s actually worse. They’re all taking university
correspondence courses in jail to think up new ways of killing me. I still have
three offices, so they can’t assume only one place could be bombed. There are
cardboard boxes all over the floor at them all; it’s a mess wherever I work. I
still have two bodyguards so they can’t assume only one could be killed. I
still don’t use the elevator and of course, I’m as far-sighted as ever.” There
were sympathetic murmurs from the room; everyone knew ETA had tried to bomb her
office, put a bomb on an elevator she regularly used, and the police had
detected one plan with instructions that said read, “she’s so far-sighted that
you can just go right up to her and shoot her in the head.”

“The doors of my armored car hurt my arms. I’m so furious and
envious when I see how freely the nationalists live. All the socialists and
conservatives have to take precautions as elaborate as mine. It just makes me
so mad. At rare, rare moments, it’s actually funny. ETA has been calling me
‘socialist whore’ again. Apparently, they think that redistribution of income,
which we’ve never actually supported, applies to sex, too.” She smiled through
tears.

“But aren’t there some friends, too, people you’re close to?”
Monserrat asked, a look of pain on her face.

Idoia looked down, even more desolate. “I’ve had both men and
women as lovers, you know. I’ve never told you that, but I have. But eventually
. . . they’re all frightened off by the death threats. Those bombs will kill
anyone with me, too. So, I’m alone with my bodyguards, paid employees. That’s
cold comfort.”

“What do you take strength from?” Ruth asked.

“It all goes very deep; it’s in the bone. There are nothing but
militants and trade unionists on both sides of the family. La Pasionaria was a
cousin of my parents, and she once lived in our basement during the Civil War.
There are very powerful women on both sides of the conflict. You know how
violent La Tigresa is, and they say Riano has killed twenty-three people. We
are very strong women, matriarchal according to the legends.”

The women felt the need to distract Idoia from her suffering.
Suddenly, one was playing the txistu, a Basque flute, and another responded
with a small drum. Idoia smiled and relaxed, sinking deeper into the sofa.
“Thank you!” she said. “How I love this house! There’s a bit of the Basque
country in such a cosmopolitan atmosphere. I take strength from you, too.” She
reached over and squeezed the hands of the two musicians.

All the women rose spontaneously and squeezed her hands. “We’re
not afraid to be with you, ever,” one woman said.

“You’ll be safe with us,” said another.

Idoia smiled through tears, and her mood instantly changed. “This
won’t go on forever,” she said with sudden determination. “It will be resolved,
somehow, and I can live again. Another thing happened that was funny in a
terrible way,” she said. “ETA tried to bomb me when I spoke at the new museum,
the Guggenheim, in Bilboa. They were trying to lift the bomb into a
forty-three-foot tall sculpture of a puppy by Jeff Koons. The police found out,
and a policeman fired his gun at them and got killed; that part was awful. We
saw him die. But, it was intended for me, and I wondered what on earth they
would have said in my obituary.”

“Death by exploding puppy?” offered one of the writers with an
appalled look on her face, and everyone laughed. Idoia smiled and looked
relaxed. “Tell us the story of your mother,” said the same writer.

Curiosity shone in Idoia’s eyes. “Whatever for?”

“We’ve recently discovered that this part of our lives is very
important.”

“They’ve been telling the stories of their mothers for the last
few evenings here,” Monserrat said. “It has been a revelation.”

Idoia relaxed again and sank further back in the sofa. Now she
looked like any other woman at Monserrat’s. “Well . . . we lived in a very old
caserio, a wide, three-story stone house with a sloping roof. It was the kind
of house you see most often in the Basque country. The people used one floor
for livestock, one for grain, and the last for the family’s living space. We
weren’t farmers, so we lived everywhere in it and had a lot of space. We were
leftist political activists, but my father worked as a police sergeant.

“One day, a bomb intended for him killed three officers under him.
During the funeral, when he looked at them in their coffins, the sight of those
young men was so painful that he shot himself in the head right there. I saw it
and I was only ten years old. My mother never stopped grieving over his death;
it was so shocking! Grief over the violence of the nationalists threw a wall
between our family and the whole world after that; it seemed like a black
curtain to me. After that, my mother used one floor of our house as a bar, and
it seemed like she was always there. She had terrible insomnia. She died in her
sleep when she was eighty-three. Toward the end, her face was as hard and lined
as a nut. They call that the fever of sadness in the Basque country.

“Yet there was strength and peace in our lives, too; it was not
all bad. My mother believed our Basque superstitions, even though she
considered herself a Catholic and a socialist. She believed in Mari, the
highest of our gods, who was a mother, and that our mountains were alive and
had spirits. Two mountain chains, the Pyrenees and the Cordilleras, meet in the
Basque country, so there are plenty of mountain caves, and Mari was said to
live there. You wondered what gives a person the strength to go on. I think it
might have been the presence of the spirits to my mother. She did live a long
life, and she believed that there were other worlds besides this sad one.

“I remember watching one of our parades protesting ETA with my
mother. It was full of our folklore. There were Joaldunak dancers in their
sheepskins, cowbells and conical hats with ribbons on them. There were pipes
and drums like the ones we listened to here and dancing girls in our native
dress of red skirts and white blouses carrying long hoops covered with ribbons.
I saw it with my mother, and we were happy that day. Time suddenly seemed to
expand endlessly into the past and future, and we felt that it had been good to
be Basque and it would be again.

“Yes, one day it will be a lovely land again, and I will be free
of these sorrows. I will look back on them, and perhaps they will seem like a
short time, a bad dream, a hot afternoon. Until then, I will do my work, which
I love, and sometimes there will be a respite like coming here, to your
wonderful house, Monserrat.” Monserrat and Ruth took her two hands and squeezed
them. The other women did so, too, and there were no tears in Idoia’s eyes. All
the women looked at one another, some with tears and some defiant, which made
their eyes shine. For a moment, you could not tell them apart.

SYLVIE AND ALEX, Ruth and Monserrat, planned
on going to the Gay Pride Day parade together, then have dinner and wine in the
city. Monserrat and Alex knew that Barcelona became even more colorful,
creative, and festive on this day, as though the buildings and the Mediterranean
came alive and joined the city’s residents to carouse and dance. They were
proud to show this phenomenon to their lovers, who had never seen it. Sylvie
was awake earliest, as usual, down in the painting room adding the last touches
to her painting of the old woman in front of her fiery forge. Monserrat was
next to awaken, as usual, and she knew exactly where Sylvie would be.

When Monserrat entered the painting room, Sylvie instantly heard
her and turned around in surprise. This would never have happened if she were
not giving the last polish to the painting; she would otherwise have been
oblivious. Monserrat came to her with a smile of delight. Sylvie did not
embrace her, and Monserrat knew better than to embrace Sylvie. Rather,
Monserrat only looked at Sylvie for a few moments. The early morning light and
stimulation of her work made Sylvie’s beauty even more colorful, luminous and
overpowering. What a superlative pagan beauty she is, Monserrat thought,
Aphrodite rising from Barcelona’s waves. No wonder they all go crazy over her.
She has the breath-taking perfection of a wild animal in movement. I will paint
her, though it must be from memory. She would never pose or sit still for me.
Was I ever like this? They said so, though I was reluctant to hold the mirror
up myself and hated even more to be photographed. Sylvie began to smile. It was
the smile she always gave to a co-conspirator. What game is this, she wondered.
She’s the only one who can’t fall in love with me.

Monserrat invited Sylvie to have coffee with her, and the two sat
together in the living room. This is like a lioness trying to make small talk
with a tigress, Monserrat thought, but I must get it over with! Later, we will
laugh and love one another. Laughter is our brief respite from the animal in
us. Monserrat then explained the existence and purpose of the feminist press
and that she wanted to publish a book filled entirely with Sylvie’s paintings
of Spain and a brief text, to be entitled,
The Other Spain
. Sylvie
instantly metamorphosed into a child and whooped, cheered, covered Monserrat
with kisses, embraced her again and again, and nearly made love to her on the
sofa. So, the tigress shall lick the lioness like a kitten, violating all laws
of nature, Monserrat thought. But, I expected it. Then they laughed and
laughed, caressing one another and embracing and kissed several times. Now we
will be good friends that always embrace and kiss, probably lifelong, Monserrat
thought. She had another daughter, which delighted them both. At last, I’m so relieved,
she thought. It is unbearable to be hated by your own kitten. What pain her
mother must have felt!

When Sylvie was alone again, she smiled and thought, well, I’m
doing two books and my lovers are only doing one apiece.
That
should
impress them, and I’m sure they both think I’m the most decadent woman they’ve
ever found irresistible! With one elegant line and one rough daub of color, the
painting was complete, and she could go upstairs and tell Alex. Alex and Ruth
both enjoyed the very long, sound sleep of the sagacious who often laugh.

Upstairs, Alex was surprised out of the remnants of sleep to see
Sylvie dressed and watching her with a look of intense love. They had returned
from the Basque country late the night before, and Alex only remembered her
last troubling thoughts before falling asleep. Still clouded with sleep, she
asked, “Did Ruth tell you all that stuff about bonobos and everyone wanting to
be ravished by a woman just before she seduced you?” Alex looked like a leggy
fawn with sprigs of dark, loamy forest floor sticking out from her head.

Sylvie laughed uproariously. “Oh, heavens, no! That’s exactly what
a man would be idiotic enough to think. Ruth never seduced me at all. I
definitely seduced her! I had it in my mind at least a year before it even
entered her spotlessly noble mind. She could
not
, truly not believe that
a woman my age would want her.”

Alex smiled. “You are the ultimate polymorphous perverse: she
should have known better!” Alex was rapidly waking up and her eyes were now
bright and looked slightly hunted.

“Like many women, she can believe the worst of anyone but the one
she loves.”

“She loved you all that time, years?”

“Oh yes, she loved me on sight—romantic, ridiculous,
instantaneous,
comme un monstre sacré
.”

“Did you love her like that, too?”

“Oh-god, yes! One sacred beast adores another. How naïve you are,
for such a brilliant mind. But, I’ll put up with you. In fact, I’ll give you
the finest unsentimental education.”

“Did you love me like that at first?”

“No, actually, not until I thought you were a sex maniac. That, of
course, was irresistible.”

“You think that of me?”

“No, but I’d been in bed with you for hours and hours before I
thought otherwise. Then, I knew you were a sacred beast for other reasons.”

“Some day, I will ask what those reasons are. At the moment, I’m
horrified and think I’ve heard enough about this.”

“I love that, too. I must keep a few secrets from you!”

This conversation seems as erotic to her as being undressed by her
lover, Alex thought. What a secret that is! Is there any human dignity left
after all the secrets are told?

“Oh and by the way, Monserrat is publishing all my paintings of
Spain in a book entitled
The Other Spain
. She thinks I’m a budding
genius! What do you think of
that
, my love?”

Alex smiled in pleasure and peace. “Congratulations! That’s great
news. We must thoroughly celebrate, even beyond gay pride.” She closed her eyes
in relief, which surprised Sylvie. The human race has been left with its
dignity, she thought. There’s still art and work.

She’s smiling, almost going back to sleep, Sylvie thought. Was I
too rough on her again? How mysterious she still is to me!

It was the mystery of genius, Alex thought. They are a bit
perverse.