Authors: Dave Boling
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.
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?
Miren touted Alaia as “the most unique person in Guernica” and bragged about her new friend as if she were a possession. Rather
than being offended at being treated as a new pet, Alaia thrived on the exposure, and before long she was able to negotiate
the market and several places in town without holding Miren’s arm, using only the walking stick the sisters had carved for
her. When the sisters heard of the success of her outings, they felt as if they’d helped nurse an orphaned animal to health
and were about to release it back into its own habitat.
On her early outings, Alaia found Miren to be as frenetic as the sisters were restrained and Miren’s hyperactivity to be as
far from her personal rhythms as were the sisters’ meditations and prayer. She had gone from the company of slumbering lambs
to guidance by a playful sheepdog puppy. After sensing Alaia withdraw a few times, Miren recognized her new friend’s need
for a slower pace and softer voice, and their trips became more relaxed. Still, Alaia could sense Miren’s spirit vibrating
at a pitch she could almost hear from a distance, humming like the sisters at vespers.
Not a heartbeat separated Justo Ansotegui’s pious “amen” to the premeal grace and the start of his detailed personal biography
for the sake of his daughter’s new friend.
“Let me explain myself to you, child,” he said as he made the first forceful incisions into the bread loaf.
Mariangeles and Miren groaned in chorus.
“I am well known to be the strongest man in Guernica, and I suspect most women would agree that I am the most handsome man
in the Pays Basque, too.”
“Papa!”
“Justo!”
“Wait, women, it is only considerate that she understand the importance of this occasion,” he said. “But she must promise
not to inform the sisters of my appeal, or the convent would be emptied by morning and Errotabarri would be crowded with those
in black habits gathered to praise my manly form.”
“Justo, that’s sacrilege!”
“Papa, that’s disgusting!”
“Alaia, pay no attention to this man,” Mariangeles said as she brought another dish of vegetables to the table. “If he is
the most anything in the country, it is the most boastful.”
“Come here, woman, let me smell those hands,” Justo said to Mariangeles.
Justo buried his face in her palms and inhaled, finally pulling away as if intoxicated.
“I love the smell of a woman who has just cut celery,” he declared. Alaia sorted through every smell that arrived as Mariangeles
ferried plates to the table. She tried to memorize the flavors of the meal, the lamb with mint sauce, the bread coated in
farm-churned butter, the beans, the paprika-dusted potatoes, the mild asparagus and peppers soaked in olive oil and garlic.
And for dessert, she devoured the sweet flan that several times wobbled off her spoon before she could track it down.
Mariangeles delighted in Alaia’s joy of food. It was one of the things that always appealed to her about Justo, too. Even
his belching seemed a compliment.
“Alaia, dear, you are welcome here for dinner anytime,” Mariangeles said.
“Yes, you must come back,” Justo said, thoughtfully combing the evidence of dinner from his mustache. “I have many feats of
strength to tell you about.”
“Papa!”
“Justo!”
Alaia was not offended. It was this meal, in fact, that most convinced her that she would move out of the convent as soon
as possible. That lamb. That mint sauce. Those vegetables. Butter. More butter, please. And that flan, oh, dear God, that
flan. Did the sisters know of fl an? How could anyone renounce fl an?
When Miren rose to lead Alaia toward her room, Justo stood and gathered them both close, one beneath each powerful arm. He
squeezed them and clenched his hands together behind their backs and rocked them in rhythm. Miren squirmed as any daughter
would, but Alaia squeezed in a matching response.
“We will be disappointed if you don’t come back often to have more of this food and friendship,” Justo said, kissing Alaia
on the crown of her head. “My little one here needs the company of others besides her boastful father and her cows and little
donkeys.”
“Alaia, may I present my dearest friend, Floradora,” Miren said, placing in Alaia’s hands the rag doll that had shared her
bed since she was a baby.
“She has shiny brunette hair . . .”
(Brown yarn.)
“. . . a graceful neck . . .”
(Stretched thin from nightly hugging.)
“. . . a shapely body . . .”
(Rags inside a stocking.)
“. . . lovely skin . . .”
(Wool petted smooth.)
“. . . a nice smile . . .”
(Red paint.)
“. . . and beautiful dark eyes.”
(Black beads.)
Alaia touched the beads.
They rested in her bed end to end, Miren with her head propped on the headboard and Alaia angled upon a pillow against the
footboard. A small grilled brazier filled with coals taken from the kitchen hearth warmed the room and released a wispy plume
of incense to collect among the beams. Miren wanted to learn of blindness and Alaia of sight; Miren, feelings; Alaia, visions;
Miren, sound; Alaia, colors; Miren, the solitude of the orphanage; Alaia, the comfort of all things familial.
“What is the worst part of being blind?” Miren asked.
“Having to try to tell people what it’s like.”
“Do you have better hearing than us?”
“What?”
“Do you—oh . . . do you have a better sense of smell?”
“Yes, and your feet are horrible,” said Alaia, leaning over Miren’s toes.
“Do you see light at all?”
“Not really, some shadows.”
“Does it seem dark all day?”
“I don’t really know dark from light.”
“Are you angry that you can’t see?”
“Not angry, really. I’m happy I can do most other things.”
“How did you lose your sight?”
“The sisters told me that I was born too early, and that was probably the reason. I was not yet developed. My eyes are not
the only part that does not work. I also don’t get the monthly visits that the sisters told me of.”
Miren: “Lucky you.”
Alaia: “The sisters tell me that it means that I can’t have little ones.”
Miren: “Oh, no. I’m sorry. That’s something I know I want, but I’m afraid of it. My
amuma
died after having a baby.”
The girls talked through much of the night. Alaia could never tell the sisters of the boundaries she felt at the convent,
how she imagined she was living inside a box. But she could share that with Miren. She couldn’t ask the sisters how she looked,
if she was beautiful, but she could ask Miren. She couldn’t tell the sisters how wonderful it felt being in the town and meeting
people, and knowing that her blindness made her special to them. That might cause them to have doubts about the decision they
made to relinquish the warmth of others. She knew that when people met her, she would not be forgotten. But she couldn’t say
that to the sisters because it might make them feel as if they had been forgotten once they went behind the walls.
And then they wrestled. Pillows were hurled and blankets flew.
“Hey, that’s no fair . . . you’ve got to close your eyes,” Alaia said.
And Miren did, out of fairness.
The wrestling was a welcome connection to them both, an excuse to feel another body like theirs but not theirs; to judge themselves
against another by touch, size, weight, strength; to feel the softness of another’s hair and skin. Two young girls could not
just reach and touch each other in this way, but in the guise of playfulness, all was appropriate. Alaia started by grabbing
a nearby foot and shaking it, and Miren tentatively joined in after it was clear that wrestling with a blind girl was not
only tolerated but appreciated.
As they calmed, Alaia became absorbed by Miren’s quilt, feeling the varied textures of the cloth squares, the wool, the linen,
the cotton, and one of velvet, all held together with tufted yarn knots. She slept under a plain wool blanket at the convent.
Nearing sleep, Miren asked, “What’s it like not having a family?”
Alaia didn’t answer for long enough that Miren assumed she hadn’t heard. As Miren started to doze, Alaia answered softly,
“Nobody touches you.”
When Alaia readied to be returned to the convent in the morning, Miren placed Floradora in her hands.
“She’s yours now,” Miren said solemnly. “You need her company more than I do.”
Alaia hugged the doll and touched her face.
That morning Miren had removed the beads, leaving only horizontal stitching where her eyes had been.
The server was in her early forties and out of the practical range of their affections, but her prominence in the foredeck
attracted the younger, flirtatious members of the crews to the Seaman’s Café in Lekeitio. Unseasoned at romantic nuance, they
peppered her with suggestive references and were dealt rejection with a playful ridicule that was a part of the game. It served
as courting practice as they tested tactics they could use when the target was an actual marriageable female. But most were
more familiar with casting wide nets rather than the subtle use of baits.
“I could make you the happiest waitress in Lekeitio,” Dodo said.
“What, would you leave a tip?”
Dodo winked and pursed his lips as for a kiss.
“You, my friend, smell too much like my husband,” she said. “And you are far too eager. Women can smell desperation—even on
a fisherman.”
She turned and fingered the back of Miguel’s hair. “But you, the quiet one, you will break many hearts in time.”
Dodo groaned loudly, punching his brother’s shoulder, envious of the waitress’s comment.
“You,” she said to Dodo, “would be wise to learn from this one.”
Miguel flushed with embarrassment, an emotion he knew was unknown to Dodo.
“She’s just kidding me to make you jealous,” Miguel said.
Dodo laughed at his naïve brother.
“These are not the waters for finding women, Miguel,” Dodo rationalized.
Miguel had witnessed Dodo’s brief and doleful history with the girls of Lekeitio. He was playful as a pup until he began breathing
fire with his politics. His emotional elasticity wore down relationships quickly.
The waitress returned with a basket of bread, putting a conciliatory hand on Dodo’s shoulder. Misreading the gesture—which
was typical for him—he returned it with an arm around her hips. She slapped his hand with enough force to cause others to
turn. Dodo laughed overly loud to imply it had all been a joke. But the message was received.
Rebuked, Dodo moved on to his second-favorite topic, the politics of Spain, and lectured his younger brother on the varied
platforms of the Socialists and Republicans and Fascists and Anarchists.