The Bird in Last Year's Nest Read online

  Ugalde walked Basa to the street. “All this paper, Julio,” he said, “all these dossiers. Tell me, does the State also know how often we draw breath in a day?”

  “About forty-two thousand times in a normally active day,” Basa said and began the walk back to his prison. Mercedes Aloys had the balm he needed. It would help also to thrash that bull’s arse of a boy with a riding crop. By God, that would be satisfying. He felt apprehensive and was unable to define his apprehension. It reared up in his head into anger. Something was threatened, something important to him. How it was threatened he wasn’t sure. Whether it was threatened he wasn’t sure. It was a fear. A need menaced by a fear. It was that boy, that Goddamned boy. That stupid Goddamned boy. He had known so little friendship in his professional career, so little warmth. What he had known meant much to him; till now he had not known how much. That Goddamned stupid boy.

  Stupid. Dion had taken it well—at the time. When he thought more about it, how would he take it? And how would Maria-Angeles take it? That woman, he thought, is strong. Stronger than Dion.

  Ugalde went back to the kitchen. Maria had not moved from the table. Her hands were still folded under her breasts. “My legs are trembling,” he said and touched her head. “A very small push would put me down.”

  Maria said nothing, feeling her own heartbeat.

  He sat across the table from her, watching her face. How beautiful she was. Her hair was drawn tight against her head, gathered at the nape of her neck. But there was nothing severe about her face, only a terrible composure; her skin was clear, and her eyes dark; liquid, he thought, because he had read that somewhere. He thought of her as a girl long ago. Then, she was merely pretty, full of young liveliness; now she was ripe, full of love and strength and resourcefulness and courage. He remembered the times when he wilted in the anonymous silence of their lives. In those times she took his hand and held it to her face and said, “Dion, we have one another. That is always enough.”

  One another once meant Dion and Maria-Angeles and Mauro and Christina. It meant Dion and Maria-Angeles and Mauro now. They were one. That was what their contract with life had given them. That was enough. Mauro had the future.

  “Dion,” she said softly, “is Mauro an Arrabal?”

  “He’s ours,” he said.

  “Has he done something?”

  “I don’t know. He’s living with a man who has a cause. In Spain, that’s a crime.”

  “They’ll not have him,” she said and rose and left the kitchen and came back quickly with a Bible. “Hear me, Dion,” she said and opened the book and read: “ ‘And he said, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.’ ” She read the story of Abraham and Isaac, of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son because God required it of him. “Not even for God,” she said and closed the book. “Not even for God. He is not a sacrifice. He is ours.”

  “There may be nothing, Maria,” he said.

  “Nothing or everything,” she said. “He is ours. Abraham?” she said contemptuously. “He was not a man.”

  “Don’t worry, my love. I am not Abraham.” He went around the table and held her head against him.

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “And Basa is not God.”

  “Go to Mauro, Dion. They’ll not have him—no matter what, they’ll not have him. They took yours. They took mine. They have had enough.”

  4

  Some men expect to find bacon where there are no pegs in the smokehouse.

  SPANISH PROVERB

  Up in Portugalete, in the block of workers’ flats opposite the new church of San Adrian, there was no elevator. The Mendez lived on the top floor, the eighth.

  It was much warmer in Bilbao, sitting in its deep saucer by the sea, than it had been when Ugalde left Burguete. It was the sort of day on which a man is too warm in an overcoat and chilled to the spine without one. He climbed the stairs slowly, sweating, nervous of what was to come.

  The stairs were wide and their walls painted a sickly green pocked with big white holes, dug, he supposed, by the children who lived here. Even in the poor light given by one naked bulb for each half-flight, his faint shadow passed him, fell behind and passed him at every turn. By the time he got to the fourth floor, he felt haunted by himself. It was ten o’clock at night. There was no sound of children in the flats, no adult voices. He could feel its habitation; the silence was not hollow like the sound of an empty building; the silence was solid. Nobody passed him on the stairs.

  He imagined himself to be the wife, or the mother, or the grandmother of workers, climbing these stairs with an armful of groceries or infants. Up, and up, and up, to the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth floors. But then the wives, mothers and grandmothers of workers have fine strong legs. So have the splendid horsewomen of Hernani, but they have elevators in their town apartments and they do not carry armfuls of groceries or infants. The strong-legged daughters of workers do that for them. When he booked into the Carlton Hotel in the Plaza Federico Moyua and went to his room, Ugalde sat by the window, trying to compose himself for the coming confrontation with his son. Across the street, in the old apartment blocks with pleasant balconies and fashionable shops on the ground floor, he watched the maids, in pink and pale-blue uniforms closing shutters or drawing blinds for the strong-legged horsewomen of Hernani who brought them to town to close shutters and draw blinds and carry groceries or infants or both. Workers’ daughters, who glanced across at him, and hung their heads quickly, thinking threatened thoughts at the sight of a man and his bed, and shut the louvred shutters to keep him across the street. No doubt they squinted at him through the slats. Meanwhile, their mothers climbed.

  Ugalde and his shadow came to the eighth floor. His breathing rasped against the solid silence.

  Mendez. A stooped old man opened the door a little. Once, he had been fat. His shoulders and chest were shrunken. His distended belly hung over the band of his trousers. He was house-pale. “Señor?” he said in a whispering breathless voice and did not widen the six inches through which he was visible. A white-haired old woman stood behind him as if in support. Her fingers touched her cheeks.

  “I am Dr. Ugalde. I believe my son lives here.”

  The old man peered, searching his face. “Dr. Ugalde?”

  “Yes. Mauro Ugalde is my son.”

  A plate smashed in the apartment to the left. Only the silence followed the crash, no voices rose in protest or rebuke. The old man’s eyes turned left. His wife’s head turned left. They listened, with Ugalde, to the silence. “I’d like to see my son, please.”

  “Dr. Ugalde? Could I see, please … something?”

  Ugalde identified himself. “Come in, señor, come in.” The old man whispered his welcome and opened the door. He glanced quickly at the bag in Ugalde’s right hand. Take your medical bag, Maria said, doctors are always respected. “Come in, please, doctor,” the old man urged respectfully.

  The old woman bobbed and smiled and preceded them, beckoning, to the kitchen.

  “It’s the only room …” the old man began his apology for the kitchen. There was ironing on the kitchen table and an iron still plugged in. The old woman stood behind the table, with her back to the wall and the palms of her hands pressed against it. “I am Miguel Mendez, señor … the grandfather, you know? Please sit down.” The old man sank, breathless, onto a chair.

  “My time is short, Señor Mendez,” Ugalde said and did not sit down. “Where is my son?”

  Mendez pointed across the lobby. “That is his door. He is there, at his studies.”

  “May I go to his room?”

  “Please, doctor.”

  But Ugalde turned again at the kitchen door. The old man struggling for breath in his chair, the old woman with her frightened smile and her back and palms pressed to the wall, the unnatural silence in the large building, his own presence in it, and Mauro behind the door across the lobby, about to be surprised or shocked, all worked together to stir the
sense of the unreal that turned so many of his waking hours into a kind of nightmare. “Señor Mendez, where is your son?” He had not intended to ask the question. He didn’t think he intended to ask it. It had not been in his head—it came to his mind and his lips out of the unreality.

  Old Mendez tried to stand up and sank back weakly into his chair. A little sound that might have been a whisper or a giggle escaped from his wife’s lips. “He is in jail, doctor. I have myself no political opinions.”

  Fleetingly, the thought tripped through Ugalde’s head that old Mendez was quoting him to himself. He had said that, in exactly those words so many times to so many people, Basa among them. But maybe every survivor said them? Maybe, in one sense or another, for one reason or another, the great mass of the people of Spain said them? “I suppose that means you had political opinions once?” His own voice sounded strangely distant. He didn’t want this conversation, yet he initiated it and continued it as if he couldn’t help himself.

  Old Mendez gripped the table’s edge and pushed himself upright. “I fought for the same cause as Luis Arrabal,” he said. “At the end of the war I was thrown into jail and condemned to death. Ramon Arcan at the time was a leading young Falangist in Bilbao and he wanted to marry my sister. She said she would if he got me a pardon and release.” He shrugged and his head sank. “It turned out to be quite a good marriage.”

  “Why did you bring in Luis Arrabal?”

  “Because your son told me Arrabal was his grandfather. Arrabal is one of my great men.”

  “Does your son share your views?”

  “He cannot share what I have not got.”

  “Your former views?”

  “Our sons, doctor, must look at what is there to see, and make their own judgments. I was a schoolteacher when the Civil War began. I have been an odd-job man since it ended. I have swept the night streets. My son lives with that knowledge. He loves his father. What would you say to my son, doctor, if you were his father?”

  It was a long speech for a man with what Ugalde suspected was emphysema. The old man coughed and his wife ran to him around the table, holding his head, rubbing his back and saying soft, incomprehensible things.

  “Señor,” the old man spluttered, “the police were here this morning before Mauro got back. They searched his things. You should know. They said they would be back.”

  “Thank you.” He paused again at the door. “Why is this building so silent?”

  “The police come often to my home, doctor.”

  Ugalde crossed the lobby and knocked on Mauro’s door, wishing he knew what he was going to say to his own son.

  The door opened so quickly and violently that Mauro must have been waiting behind it since the bell rang. With a strong face ready for the police? His face was set, hard and hostile. It melted.

  “Father.”

  They held one another. Old Mendez struggled from his chair and closed the kitchen door.

  “I thought I wouldn’t see you again till Christmas. What brought you?”

  “You did. And the police.”

  “Yes.”

  The apparently meaningless word angered Ugalde. “Yes? What does that mean? They have been to me. They have been here searching. They are coming back. They have opened a dossier on you. They have opened again the dossiers they have been keeping for years on your mother and me. What does ‘yes’ mean?”

  “Only that I knew they were here this morning.”

  “And what did you know about Mendez and his part in this illegal shipyard strike before you came to live here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you know-how could you not know?—when you were home this weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pack.”

  They stood, comb to comb, like cocks. “What have I done?” Mauro demanded.

  “Made a damned menace of yourself and drawn dangerous attention to your mother and me.”

  “How could attention harm you? You’ve spent your life doing good.”

  “Have I? You had questions about me when you were home. I came here to move you back to your old lodgings. Then I’m going to tell you the truth and you’re going to live like a mouse. Pack.”

  “They won’t have room for me at my old place …”

  “I’ve been there. They have room for you. Pack.”

  “What happens to these old people? They have nothing.”

  “Do they matter more than your mother? Do they matter more than your future? If you want a future, you have to get out from among them. If you don’t pack at once your money stops. That’s final.” It was all wrong. He hadn’t wanted anything like this. Now that it had taken this turn, he pushed it to the limit. “What made you think you could stay here with Mendez in jail for things you know are regarded as serious crimes? Are you a fool?”

  The kitchen door opened and old Mendez crossed the lobby slowly. “Forgive me, doctor,” he said humbly and laid a shaking hand on Mauro’s arm. “Mauro. Obey your father.”

  The kitchen door closed behind him again.

  “Pack,” Ugalde said. “For God’s sake, just pack. We’ll talk later.”

  Mauro packed, sullenly.

  Ugalde knocked on the kitchen door and went in. The old couple were sitting at the kitchen table, not talking. He said, “Señora, I know I am depriving you of income by removing my son. But I hope you understand …”

  “Of course, señor,” she said. “We have a son and a grandson.”

  “Then, please, allow me to compensate you for this loss. It is not a gift but compensation for lost income.” He pressed five thousand pesetas into her hand. “It is not much. But it is all I can afford.”

  Old Mendez struggled to his feet and took the money from his wife’s hand. “Doctor,” he said, “you mean well. My son’s wife will find work. My sister’s husband, the Falangist, will help. He has helped before.” It was the ultimate slap in the face for Luis Arrabal’s son-in-law. “We do not need your money.” He gave it back to Ugalde. “We have our family.” It was a rebuke for insufferable intrusion.

  Ugalde felt humiliated. He had bruised the old man’s pride and laid himself open to rejection. “I’m sorry.” He took some of Mauro’s baggage and began the long journey to the ground.

  Mauro said, “You had no right to do that.”

  “I know. When you have a son there are several things I have done that you’ll know not to do. We’ll come to that.”

  They drove in silence till they reached Eiffel’s Viscaina Bridge. Waiting to drive aboard, Ugalde said, “I have questions to ask you. I want the truth.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You told Basa you reached home on Friday night at three in the morning. You reached home after four. Why did you lie to him?”

  “Lie? I didn’t lie. I suppose I just made a mistake. If you say I was wrong, I was wrong. That’s all.”

  “A bomb went off at the Iruña Zarra. Did you have anything to do with it?”

  “No.”

  “Have you any connection with this Basque Homeland and Liberty crowd?”

  “Of course I haven’t.”

  Ugalde looked at his son. Mauro’s head was down, his face was dark and angry. He had never been a liar; he had never shown any interest in politics. He looks so young and vulnerable and wounded; it breaks my heart to accuse him or doubt him: Ugalde believed Mauro. “I’m at the Carlton,” he said. “Room three seventeen. Come there at ten in the morning. We’ll drive to the sea and I’ll tell you things I ought to have told you when you were old enough to hear them. I’m sorry, Mauro. I’ve been wrong, stupid and very unfair to you.”

  Mauro leaned over quickly and kissed his father. They bought their ticket and drove aboard the bridge.

  That night at the Carlton, Dr. Ugalde had shocking dreams.

  Mauro was staked out on the ground in the field below the monastery of Roncesvalles. He was fourteen. His face was open and unformed and innocent, and masked in speechless, heartbreaking terror.
A group of Civil Guards with broad brutal faces formed a circle around him and urinated in his face, hooting their malignant pleasure. Ugalde could taste the urine in his nose and mouth. He screamed soundlessly and could not move to help his son. He was failing again as a father. In all his shocking dreams he failed as a father and his family was the victim of his failure and other men’s monstrous malignancy. Wildly, he swept upright in bed, spitting urine.

  He did not try to sleep again till the small hours. Just before he tried again, a shovel clattered on the street below. He went to the window. An old man pushed a trolley down the street. It had on it two garbage cans, a long-handled shovel and a yard brush. Now and then the old man stopped and brushed gutter refuse into a heap. Then he shovelled it into one of the cans. There were no buttons on his flapping jacket and a chilly rain fell. The old man drew a long piece of rope from his pocket, wrapped his jacket tightly around him and bound it with several loops of the rope.

  Ugalde stared down hard at the ragged creature. He opened the window and leaned out over the balcony. No, it was not old Miguel Mendez. But he could hear old Miguel’s breathless voice: “I have swept the night streets.”

  Forgive me, Mauro, forgive me, Ugalde said. In the morning we shall drive to the sea and I’ll tell you the truth.

  Repentant, he went to bed and slept soundly.

  In the morning they drove to the sea, along the road that runs by the right bank of the Rio Nervion. When the journey began, Ugalde was relaxed and happy. He had been wrong. He had told his son so. He would tell him everything. Mauro would understand and act responsibly. It was a family matter. Families close ranks. If only this faint undercoating of anxiety would go away.

  “We forgot about your motorbike last night. That was my fault.”

  “It’s all right. My friend brought it over first thing this morning.”

  “What’s his name, by the way?”

  “José Duarte.”

  “The one from Pamplona?”