“Every time I come here I swim out to that island,” Iñaki said, looking out across the sea to a little island about a half a mile from the shore. Surf was crashing onto the beach, waves three and four feet high. There was only a lone surfer in the water. “Vamos?” Iñaki asked, pulling off his shirt.
I had expected a wimpy Spanish beach, not pounding waves, and I hesitated. The sea looked too rough for me.
“I thought you said you could surf?” Iñaki said.
Yes, well, about that. I didn’t exactly tell him I could surf. Spanish people have this idea in their heads that all Australians surf, so I just went along with it. He made the assumption that I could surf, and I didn’t tell him otherwise. But standing on the sand, I realized that I should have.
The truth was, I hadn’t expected to be called on my surfing prowess. Spain didn’t seem to me to have a beach culture, and I rather enjoyed being seen as the exotic mermaid from Down Under who is most at home being buffeted by the waves, when the reality is that I hate getting water up my nose.
And now Iñaki was expecting me to run into the surf like a volunteer lifesaver on Bondi Beach, and that was not going to happen. I still carried the trauma from the swimming lessons I was forced to do in primary school. But this was not the moment to explain that to Iñaki. He had already stripped down to his swimmers and was ready to run into the water.
Here’s another thing that I hadn’t anticipated—in his spare time, Iñaki was also a triathlete. Of course. Not only was he big-screen gorgeous, a celebrated chef, kind, and considerate, he was also an Iron Man. So there would be no faking it, I realized as I pulled my T-shirt over my head. As soon as we hit the water, he would realize that I was a lousy swimmer.
But I was an even lousier poker player, and Iñaki had already seen through my bluff. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ve got you.” And before I had time to protest, he grabbed my hand and ran with me into the water.
The first wave came and lifted me clear off my feet, but I held on to him. I kicked out, trying to swim to get past the breakers. Iñaki pulled me along with him. The next wave almost pulled me away, but he held on to my wrist and we kept swimming.
I came up for air and saw that we had made it out past the surf. The island was only about a third of a mile away. Only, ha! I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t that far. A third of a mile is a stroll to the milk bar. You’ve run farther in heels to get to the bus stop, I told myself. I tried swimming my strongest stroke—breaststroke—but Iñaki was powering ahead with freestyle. So I tried to do that too. Stroke, stroke, stroke—gasp and splutter. Stroke, stroke, stroke—come up for air and see how far I’ve come…but after traveling only a few yards I went back to breaststroke.
We reached the tiny island and sat up on the rocks, enjoying the sun and looking back at the shore. It was past one, and Iñaki decided that it was time for lunch. He suggested that we go and eat with some old friends of his, so we climbed back down off the rocks and swam back to shore.
Iñaki’s “old friends” were Juan Mari Arzak and his sister, who run the famous Basque restaurant Arzak where Iñaki received his chef training. Juan Mari met us at the doorway with hugs and kisses and told Iñaki off for taking so long to come back and visit. He asked if we had come for lunch, and though it was almost impossible to get a reservation, he said that something could be arranged. But before we ate, Iñaki wanted to show me around.
First we went into the laboratory where Iñaki’s old friends were working as food scientists, investigating and designing new dishes. A young chef who had done his apprenticeship with Iñaki took us into the climate-controlled spice room, where every imaginable spice, seed, and aromatic leaf was categorized and stored in little jars. I gazed at the wall dedicated to spices from Australia. The chef opened some of the little jars and held them up for me to smell. I closed my eyes and let the aromas transport me back to our garden back home.
But there was no time to get homesick. Our next stop was the laboratory where a food scientist was experimenting with dry ice for a spectacular frothing chocolate dessert. He showed us how they would be presenting the new dish on the table, with cascading bubbles flowing from an elegant crystal glass. The house sommelier, another old friend of Iñaki’s, then took us to the wine cellar, where he proudly showed me their collection of Australian wines.
They set up a special little table for us in the kitchen where we ate while we watched the dishes being prepared around us. Large white plates with tiny delicacies were brought to us, each with its own story and an accompanying glass of wine selected by Iñaki’s friend in the wine cellar.
After lunch we drove up the winding road around the coast, into fairy-tale mountains dotted with old stone houses. These were the caseríos that Andrés had told me I would end up in.
Iñaki gazed out at them and told me that his ambition was to buy an old caserío and do it up. I asked him if he wanted to have children. Yes, he told me. Twelve. “Twelve?” I repeated. What is the Spanish obsession with having twelve children? “It’s to have a football team,” Iñaki explained. “Eleven on the field and one reserve.”
After our two-hundred-course lunch I couldn’t even think about eating again, but Iñaki insisted on taking me to a local cider house for dinner. It was in an old stone caserío off a mountain road. Inside were rows of giant cider barrels and little wooden tables to rest your glasses on. We were given a glass each. A man stood beside the barrels; he took a toothpick out of a tiny hole in the side of one, releasing a thin spurt of cider. Iñaki showed me how to catch the cider so that it broke against the side of the glass, giving it just the right amount of fizz. He told me to drink it straight down before the bubbles disappeared.
Iñaki ordered the traditional fare: fried green peppers, codfish, and a prawn omelet followed by cheese with quince paste and a basket of walnuts.
There were no chairs because in a cider house everyone eats standing up. It’s more friendly, Iñaki said, easier for people to move around and talk to each other. He picked up a walnut and placed it on the side of the table under his knuckle, then brought his other hand down on it, cracking the hard shell. It was a cool trick. I tried to copy it but only managed to hurt my hand; the shell was unharmed. So I let Iñaki crack the walnuts, while I ate cheese and watched the Basques catching cider in their glasses as it flew through the air.
• • •
The wedding was the next day. It was Iñaki’s cousin who was getting married, so just as Andrés had predicted, I was being thrown into a huge family event. The ceremony was in a little stone church up in the mountains. Iñaki parked the car nearby, but instead of heading to the church, we went to a little bar around the corner where the guests were drinking cups of hot broth and eating fried chistorra.
Iñaki’s father was at the bar drinking vermouth and talking loudly in Euskera to a group of big, ruddy-faced Basques. Andrés had told me that all I would understand when the Basques spoke in Euskera was the swearing. For some reason the Basques never invented their own curses, so they have to swear in Spanish. When I listened to the men speak, all I heard was: “(weird sounds) Hostia! (more weird sounds) Hijo de puta! (really weird sounds) Me cago en Dios!”
Spanish swearing is colorful and imaginative and does sound rather curious when it’s translated into English. Hostia means “the Host,” while hijo de puta means “son of the whore.” But the Spanish particularly like to talk about shitting on things: on your grandma, on your dead, in the milk, and, of course, on God himself. This last one was Iñaki’s father’s favorite expression. “Me cago en Dios!” he repeated. “Me cago en Dios y en todos sus santos!” I shit on God and on all of his saints.
Iñaki introduced me to his father, who looked me up and down then said something to me in Basque. I took a deep breath and said, “Ardo pixkat.” This made everyone laugh, and Iñaki’s father shouted to the bartender to get me a glass of wine.
After our aperitivo we made our way to the church. At the front was a group of musicians and dancers all dressed up in traditional Basque costume. The women wore white shirts and red skirts with black waistcoats and white scarves over their heads, and the men wore white shirts and pants with red berets and red kerchiefs around their necks. When the bride arrived on the arm of her father, the musicians played folk music on flutes, accompanied by a slow drumbeat, and the dancers jumped and did graceful high kicks.
After the ceremony we drove to a restaurant for the reception. After an array of seemingly endless pinxtos that just kept getting more and more extravagant, we were seated for lunch. Again, Andrés was proved right: the food kept coming. After the third course I had to pass my plates over to Iñaki. This kind of eating, I was learning, takes years of training, and the Basques have been at it from birth. After we had finished the final dessert course, it was time for gin and tonics, and cigars.
After the first round of cigars had been stubbed out in empty glasses, the music started and the bride and groom got up to dance their first dance as a married couple. The DJ played all the wedding classics, as well as some that I would never have expected, like a Spanish version of the chicken dance, which had everyone from grandma down to the flower girls flapping their arms and twisting their hips. And of course, what Basque wedding would be complete without…the “YMCA”? The whole family became the Village People. Iñaki’s father stuck his cigar between his lips and together we formed the letters with our arms.
So this is my life, I thought to myself. I had come all the way from Sydney to the mountains of the north of Spain to dance the “YMCA” with a roomful of cigar-smoking Basques. Well…why not?
• • •
That night as we lay in bed, Iñaki rolled over and bundled me up in his arms. He whispered in my ear, “Te quiero.”
There it was. The moment I’d been waiting for my entire life, when my handsome prince would take me in his arms and say those three magic words: I love you.
When I was young, I had envisioned this moment in so many ways: on a bridge in Paris in the rain, under the neon lights of some grungy diner on a busy street in New York, or on the beach in my hometown. I had never imagined it in the mountains of the Basque Country. But neither had I dared to imagine that those words would come from a man as perfect as Iñaki.
“Te quiero,” he whispered.
There was just one small problem: I didn’t understand him. The words sounded familiar—I’d probably heard them before in a song or something. But instead of looking at him, tears welling up in my eyes, and telling him that I loved him too, as I had always imagined that I would, I said what I said every time I didn’t understand him, “Sí, sí.” And I closed my eyes and went back to sleep, not knowing that the man I was falling in love with had just told me he felt the same way.