Guernica Read online

  Even in their early teens, Miguel stood as tall as Dodo and was slimmer, with stringy muscles operating the lengthy levers of his arms and legs. Miguel could reach the island and be on the inward leg of the swim before Dodo could touch the island rocks. When Dodo finally joined his brother back on the breakwater wall, he generally congratulated Miguel by shoving him back in the water, a gesture that Miguel considered meaningless since he had already proven he could swim and, in fact, do so much better than his brother.

  Once Dodo tried to gain an advantage by swimming to the island and racing back along the briefly exposed walkway to the beach, but his bare feet slipped on the mossy surface, sending him flying into the water, with his head missing the concrete by mere inches. He’d been certain the ploy would work and scheduled that race to coincide exactly with the lowest tide, the timetable of which was implanted in the mind of every fisherman’s son.

  Miren fretted over God’s opinion. As deeply as she loved to dance, to do so in a convent, in front of the cloistered sisters, seemed an unwarranted risk. She worried that it might appear as a demerit in some future heavenly accounting session.

  “Are you certain they want us to dance inside the convent?” Miren asked her mother for the third time that morning.

  “Sister Terese invited us,” Mariangeles Ansotegui answered. “She wouldn’t have asked if it were forbidden.”

  Terese, Mariangeles’s cousin, was a sister of standing at the Santa Clara convent, situated behind the Casa de Junta parliament house and the Guernica oak on the hill behind the market. Among her fondest memories from the secular world were those of her cousin dancing. Terese had danced with her in groups, and although she knew the steps and followed the beat, she could never keep up with Mariangeles, who seemed a part of the music. Her talents had not faded with time, and it was a gift of grace that was passed to her daughter, Miren.

  Sister Terese felt that an afternoon watching local folk dance would be an acceptable diversion from the monastic ritual of the convent. Besides, she had not seen Miren, now fourteen, for many months.

  “Couldn’t you dance alone?” Miren pressed her mother as they neared the outer gates.

  “Don’t be silly. Do you think God can’t see you dance everywhere else? There’s hardly a time during the day when you’re not dancing. When don’t you dance? In your sleep?”

  “No, I dance in my dreams. I dance best in my dreams.”

  “Well, if God hasn’t minded so far, then I don’t think the sisters will, either.”

  They wore the traditional outfits: black velvet vests and satin aprons over long-sleeved white blouses, their scarlet satin skirts lined with horizontal black stripes at the hem. Their hair was channeled back by cinched white scarves; the laces of their peasant slippers wound over white stockings up their calves and were tied below the knees, accentuating their lean lines.

  Sister Terese led them through the outer courtyard and into a large, empty anteroom in the main building. Along the inner wall, a grated double door sent light into the sisters’ dining quarters. Through the arabesque wrought-iron gate, Miren could see vague dark figures, a cluster of mute, ominous shadows, motionless as stalagmites. She had danced at festivals before the entire village; she had danced without anxiety in front of drunks and strangers and amid the glares of young men. But to spin her skirts for the brides of Jesus was another issue.

  When Marie-Luis, one of Mariangeles’s sisters, who was accompanying the dancers on the button accordion, eased open the bellows and pressed the first spirited notes, Miren thought nothing of her audience or the consequences. If Saint Peter called for an accounting someday, she’d dance a jota for him and let him judge for himself.

  Miren and Mariangeles began spinning in mirrored orbits, doing triple kicks and turns, side kicks and turns, arms upraised and fingers snapping. With each spin, their skirts rose outward only to gather tightly when they stopped and reversed, creating swirling eddies of red satin.

  Between dances, Miren noticed that a girl, perhaps her own age, had entered the far end of the room through a side door. Dressed in a workman’s shirt and a peasant skirt, with an apron ornamented by random stains, the girl began moving when the music resumed. She didn’t spin or kick or snap her fingers but weaved sensuously in one spot. She was neither nun nor novitiate, but she also was no one Miren had seen in school or in the village.

  After several dances, Sister Terese signaled to Marie-Luis that one more would be sufficient. For the first time, Miren focused on the figures behind the grated archway. When her spins brought them into her scope of vision, Miren detected motion behind the screen. The sisters were no longer ominous black shadows but flashes of movement, arms upraised in dance. Sister Terese had not told her about this. Yes, they were nuns, fully devout and willing to renounce plea sure to abide by their covenant of hardship. But they also were Basques, and when a jota was played on an accordion, they were compelled to whirl in their habits, wimples fluttering, snapping their fingers in time.

  With that vision, Miren felt absolved; she wasn’t offending the sisters, she was performing in front of fellow dancers. She told her mother she’d happily dance at the convent as often as they were asked. Miren was particularly eager for the next performance and was determined to learn more of the curious girl swaying to her own rhythms in the corner of the room.

  The fish attacked as Miguel slept. Giant mackerels splayed their jaws wide in his face and sprayed jets of caustic, fetid slime. Ghosts of slaughtered sea creatures visited in exaggerated and distorted forms. Octopi with dozens of adhesive tentacles clutched and then engulfed him with their huge soft heads, and he would awaken to find himself wound tightly in his blankets, head buried in his pillow.

  He never actually said the words to his family, but Miguel Navarro despised fish, live or spectral.

  It was impossible for him to return to sleep after these attacks, always knowing that within a short time he would have to leave his bed and face a reality that was only marginally less grotesque than his nightmares. More troubling to him than the smell rising from the hold, where hundreds of fish slithered in their mutual slime, were the undulating waters that unsettled him the moment the Egun On sailed past San Nicolas Island, only minutes outside the Lekeitio harbor walls.

  On rough days, as the boat rose to the crest of each wave, Miguel was thrust off his heels for an instant of weightlessness, only to be cast back down with knee-buckling force when the boat bottomed into a trough. Most fishermen learn to absorb the motion with their legs, like riders on horse back, and for several hours after they return to land they seem to walk in a bobbing fashion, compensating for a motion that the ground does not make. It never came to Miguel, though, and within the first half hour on the boat, he would lean over the transom and repeatedly bow, like a pump handle, to disgorge his breakfast into the turbulent Bay of Biscay.

  “Don’t look at the waves or the deck,” his father told him. “Keep your eyes on the horizon.”

  But the horizon danced and tilted on gimbals.

  “Pray to Saint Erasmus,” Dodo said, having tried to help his brother by asking the priest for the name of the patron saint of those with stomach disorders.

  “Saint Erasmus, please help me,” Miguel often started, but sometimes he could not finish that brief prayer before having to race to the transom. Miguel’s lone relief from suffering came from the lemon drops his father gave him. The candies didn’t stop his vomiting, but they gave his bile a more tolerable citrus flavor as it surged toward the sea.

  Miguel felt a distressing sameness to it all. When he looked at his father’s hands, with the trails of white burns from lines and nets, and red scars from knife slips, and barnacle-like patches dried on the skin from the salt winds, he doubted that any physical feature revealed more about a person’s work than did the hands of a fisherman.

  To be so disturbed by it all left Miguel feeling like a traitor to his name and his race.

  “No such thing as a seasick Basque,”
Dodo would say. “That’s like a brave Spaniard or an intelligent Portuguese—doesn’t happen.”

  Miguel was proud of his family’s heritage as seamen, his father’s daily dedication, and Dodo’s ability to work without tiring, without freezing, without regurgitating, all the while singing and joking and executing pranks on everybody else on the boat.

  Even his mother’s connection to the business inspired him. At two A.M. each day, the town weatherman would scan the darkened horizon and sniff the winds to decide if the seas would be fair enough to safely send the fishing fleet to work. Sometimes a small committee of retirees would convene to offer opinions. They had little upon which to base their forecasts other than the time of year, the clouds, and what ever meteorological value came from licking one’s finger and holding it pensively to the wind. When a consensus was reached, it was passed to the callers, who would trundle through the damp darkness to the residences of the crews and sing out, “In the name of God, arise!”

  Miguel’s mother, Estrella Navarro, was a caller. Her strong voice bounced off the housefronts and the pavement of the lanes, which were so narrow that only three could walk abreast. Her “arise” was sung in a pleasant vibrato that inspired awakening. Miguel was often conscious before the call anyway, disentangling from the octopus in his bed.

  It was hardly a secret that Miguel was not destined for a future as a sea captain. One morning the contractions of his stomach hit with such force he was unable to reach the gunwales in time. To vomit on his father’s decks would be an unforgivable violation. Miguel had no choice but to yank the beret from his head and fill it. He struggled across the deck and heaved the ballooning hat overboard. It floated away like a menacing black jellyfish. It would be a long time before he would wear a beret again.

  José Antonio Aguirre confessed a few pedestrian sins to Father Xabier Ansotegui, a junior priest at the Basilica de Begoña in Bil-bao. But before the priest could mete out the Hail Marys, Aguirre opened a discourse on Spain’s political volatility.

  “Primo de Rivera’s henchmen in the Guardia Civil have too much latitude; they’re vigilantes more than a national police force in some areas, and they’ve hated and pressured us for decades,” the man said. “And at this rate, there will never be rights for workers or for women, and certainly not for the Basques. God help you if you’re a working Basque woman.”

  “I think I’m supposed to give the lectures in here,” Xabier said, peering through the lattice. “Who are you?”

  Aguirre introduced himself, and Father Xabier recognized the name. A former soccer star from a family of Bilbaino chocolate makers, Aguirre was mayor of nearby Getxo and was rumored to be the leading candidate for president if the Basques ever gained independence.

  “I’m sorry, I get worked up,” Aguirre said.

  Xabier conceded that was one of his own shortcomings.

  When Aguirre discovered that the priest was from Guernica, he launched into high oratory fit for a stump speech. “More than four centuries ago, Basques held a congress beneath the tree of Guernica,” Aguirre said, too loudly for the confessional. “They declared that all Basques were equally noble before the law without exception. And any law, whether by king or court, should be disregarded if it ran contrary to liberty—”

  “Yes, I know,” the priest interrupted. “Do you have any more sins we need to discuss?”

  He did not, but for half an hour, they visited about labor problems, social issues, the dictates of the church, the alcohol content of holy wine, the best eating places on either side of the Nervión River, and poetry. Aguirre was a friend of the local poet/journalist Lauaxeta; Father Xabier was an admirer of the Andalusian poet/ playwright Federico García Lorca. Through the grating, Aguirre quoted Lauaxeta from memory, and Xabier volleyed a Lorca line about the poet who wants “to press his ear to the sleeping girl and understand the Morse code of her heart.”

  “Yes, but he’s not Basque, so it’s sadly inferior,” Aguirre said.

  “You sound like my brother,” said Xabier, which led to a discussion of Justo and farming and the phenomenon of elder siblings and the influence of birth order.

  When Aguirre finally exited, having talked his way out of penance, the elderly woman waiting for the confessional shook her head in scorn, imagining the sins he must have committed to be in there that long.

  Miguel loved the ritual of being a fisherman even if he barely tolerated the practice. He even enjoyed the predawn walk to mass at Santa María de la Asunción, across the brick cobbles slippery with the night dew that seeped up from the harbor.

  A sense of peace calmed Miguel when he stepped through the main door of the centuries-old church. The wooden floors answered their steps with a groan in the same dialect spoken by the deck planks of their boat. The Navarro crew gathered in the front of the church near a small side altar dominated by the likeness of San Miguel subduing a fearsome sea serpent. To his left the archangel Rafael proudly held a large fish like a trophy. The Navarros considered it a daily reminder of their goals: to catch bigger fish and hope that divinities controlled any threats that might rise up from the seas. Piety was no guarantee, but before leaving every morning, Miguel bowed to San Miguel, visited the sign of the cross upon his chest, kissed his thumbnail, and pointed to the heavens.

  On the short walk across the square to the harbor each morning, Dodo proudly farted as if it were performance art, but the others were always too sleepy to protest. In the dark, even the chatty gulls slept, abed on their communal perch near the peak of San Nicolas Island. But there were enough sounds without them as the rigging groaned against the moorings and the bumpers of the boats uttered rubbery squeaks when men stepped aboard and altered the attitude of the beam.

  From various parts of the harbor, in primitive, wordless communication, came the coughs of the fishermen. Years of dank mornings and days aseainflamed their respiratory systems. Each cough was distinctive, and without looking up from his work in the predawn chill, Miguel could recognize who was aboard the various crafts by their bronchial signature.

  With the physical work of net preparation resting with his sons, José María Navarro would sit on a gunwale breathing deeply of his final cigarette before casting off. Each inhalation caused the tip to brighten and cast a red glow across the terrain of his face. The ember light showed his eyes clenched in pleasure and left dark shadows in the lines radiating from the corners of his eyes, like the wakes of tiny boats, carved deep by the years of staring into the sun that skipped off the water.

  As lines were cast off, Miguel already could hear the plangent waves. And past the breakwater he saw them crest and curl and die white against the seaward rocks of the island. The Egun On slipped out of the harbor, leaving a ripple that spread and vanished as they headed into the still-dark sea. At this point, a surging tide of dread started rising in the slender passage at the back of Miguel’s throat.

  CHAPTER 5

  When Miren Ansotegui asked about the girl at the convent, Sister Terese recounted the heartrending history of Alaia Aldecoa’s blindness and abandonment by her parents. She did so with a motive.

  “She has a sense of independence,” Sister Terese said. “She has so many questions that she’s afraid to ask us. We hope to find someone to take her outside to see how well she could do in town. We’re happy to have her, and she can stay forever if she wants, but we think she would rather live out there.”

  The sisters intentionally didn’t indoctrinate Alaia to their lifestyle. If she were called to it, that would be fine, but they didn’t push. She was sequestered because of others’ neglect, not her own choice. They were renunciates, she the renounced. They taught her soap-making as a potential vocation, and they helped her manage an impressive degree of mobility. Having been raised inside a simple, walled compound, Alaia had little need for guidance other than her walking stick. With this experience in an enclosed environment, she developed a sense for detecting obstacles and hazards that would carry over outside the convent.


  “Would it be all right if I took her into town?” Miren asked.

  Sister Terese had hoped for that exact offer without wanting to impose.

  What Alaia discovered in the first moments outside was that Miren Ansotegui was more of a challenge than the unknown open spaces. Outside the walls, Alaia spoke at the same deliberate pace with which she walked. Miren was the opposite, skipping, spinning, gesturing, and tossing out possibilities at a withering rate.

  “First, we’ll go to the market and get some fruit,” Miren said. “The apples are wonderful now.”

  “I would . . . ,” Alaia said.

  “And then we can go to the houses of some of my friends, so you can meet them. And then we can stop at the café to get some lunch. And then we can go to the town square.”

  “. . . like that,” Alaia continued.

  “Maybe I can find somebody with an accordion and I could teach you some of our dances.”

  Alaia stepped back from Miren, as if distance could protect her from the avalanche of words. She might go months without having to absorb so much language at the convent, and she had never needed to sort through so many options. Yes, it was exciting, but goodness, enough.

  Alaia’s slight retreat caused Miren to speak louder.

  “And then we can go to my house for dinner,” she added. “And you could meet my family. And you could spend the night in my room.”

  “Miren . . . ,” Alaia broke in. “I’m not deaf.”

  Guernica embraced Alaia Aldecoa. It didn’t hurt that she was towed in the wake of Miren Ansotegui, the graceful young dancer who happened to be the daughter of the town’s renowned strongman and the much-admired Mariangeles Oñati. Their curiosity over Alaia’s condition quickly gave way to admiration as they watched her open to others and adapt and compensate for her disability. She seemed so fearless, to walk around like that. After the two girls left a shop or café, those within often tested themselves with the voluntary onset of blindness, closing their eyes for a few steps before stubbing toes or cracking their legs on furniture, or giving in to the urge to peek through eye slits. What a shame, they agreed, and such a pretty girl, too. Didn’t she already show womanly bulges in that sackcloth dress with the rope sash?