They hadn’t seen each other in a long time. How long? It doesn’t matter. Two, three weeks. Meanwhile, there was news about Bittori. Not good news; one fact, especially, was extremely worrisome. Xabier and Nerea agreed that the telephone was not the best medium for a long discussion about serious matters related to their mother. What should we do? Don’t you think? They agreed to meet as soon as possible, somewhere in the heart of the city. A cold afternoon, but sunny. Nerea suggested walking along Paseo Nuevo and conversing near the wide, blue sea. Free of obligations, Xabier had no problem accepting his sister’s suggestion.
Along the way, people, children, a row of vendors selling artisanal objects. It was almost impossible to walk because of the crowds. Up ahead, municipal workers using high-pressure hoses were scouring away ETA graffiti on a lateral wall of the La Brecha fish market. To avoid being splashed, brother and sister hugged the opposite facade.
“Some day not too far from now few people will remember what happened.”
“Don’t get worked up, Xabier. That’s the way life works. Ultimately, oblivion always wins.”
“But we don’t have to be its accomplices.”
“And we aren’t. Our memories can’t be erased with high-pressure hoses. You’ll see, though, that we the victims will be accused of refusing to look toward the future. They’ll say we’re seeking revenge. People are already saying just that.”
“We bother them.”
“You can’t imagine how much.”
When they reached the San Telmo Museum, they got to the point. Xabier asked Nerea to tell him about the cat. What was that all about? What was that?
“Ikatza is dead and ama doesn’t know it. Something tells me it’s better she not find out.”
“How did you find out?”
“Yesterday I went to her place. Quique drove me to San Bartolomé Street. He’s always in a hurry, and he never stopped complaining that he had an important meeting with a client, that it was my fault he was going to be late, so I said: stop here, I’ll walk up the hill. I didn’t have good vibrations, understand? I call ama and she doesn’t answer the phone. I call again, and again no answer. That for two days. So, it seemed better just to go take a look.”
“She spends the day in the village.”
“Sometimes she goes up to the cemetery. She hasn’t lost that fixation with aita’s grave. But I was surprised that she didn’t answer at the time she usually has supper.”
Nerea had gone up part of the Aldapeta hill. On the asphalt, she saw a mass of reddish flesh and black hair. Cars were rolling over it. The bus ran over it. And she stopped on the sidewalk for an instant, enough time to recognize the collar. She visited her mother, and after an hour, when she was about to say goodbye, she asked out of the blue about the cat.
“Where is she, I don’t see her.”
“She’s off doing her business. Any time now, she’ll turn up on the balcony with a bird in her mouth.”
Covering her mouth and nose with her hand, Nerea separated the dead animal from the asphalt. When no cars were coming, using a branch from a bush, she pushed the pieces of flesh and hair to the curb on the other side of the street, where there is no sidewalk, certain that her mother wouldn’t be able to see it. Finally, using the same branch to hook it first, she tossed the sticky collar over a wall.
She told the story to her brother with an expression of repugnance.
“You did a good thing hiding it from ama.”
“I was gagging as I walked down to San Bartolomé. So I went into the first bar I saw to have a drink. I’m not the kind who drinks at the wrong time of day, but I needed to get rid of the nausea I felt on my tongue.”
They walked from one side to the other, breathing in the morning breeze; a long, misty line of coast stretching into the distance; and below the walkway, the succession of waves that smash and foam against the breakwater. Nerea to her brother: he should tell what he’d brought up on the telephone in greater detail.
“Remember Ramón Leal?”
“The ambulance driver? Sure.”
“A week ago he came to my office because he’d been told, because someone had said. What? That our sainted mother had been seen pushing Arantxa’s wheelchair around the village square. That is, with Arantxa in the chair. Just imagine the scene: the two of them alone strolling in broad daylight where it’s impossible they wouldn’t be seen. Why? And whose idea was it? And how is it that there wasn’t a third person with them, the caregiver who comes every day to look after Arantxa? You can imagine the gossip running wild among the neighbors.”
“All that is a bit odd. It’s been so many years that our families haven’t spoken to each other. I haven’t seen Arantxa since my student days. Even so, I still think of her as a friend. She was the only one of all of them who behaved like a human being with us. Did you ask ama about it?”
“I think ama is suffering some kind of mental disturbance. I didn’t want to make things worse. But you should have seen the shock on Ramón’s face.”
“What can Arantxa’s aitas be thinking?”
“Joxian, I imagine, is still a simple soul who takes things as they come. But his wife?”
“Miren must have taken it like a kick in the teeth.”
“I also learned from Ramón that after her stroll with Arantxa, ama fainted on the street and people had to help her. I decided to step in, so I called you.”
The setting sun traced a fringe of nervous mirrors over the surface of the water. Boats? None. A ferry returning, near the entrance to the bay, that’s it. Xabier and Nerea leaned on the railing. Xabier covered his incipient baldness with a brimmed cap; she, who until a few years ago wore wool berets, was bareheaded. Behind them, Oteiza’s sculpture passed its boring hours, rusty, waiting for the next storm. A few steps away from them, a fisherman using a rod stared hard at the bobbing of his white cork in the undulating waters.
“I made her come with me in the car. Where are we going? You’ll soon see. I arranged several appointments for her with Arruabarrena. She promises to go, but she never does and she lets time go by and I suspected from her blood analysis that something wasn’t right in our mother’s body. Arruabarrena examined her. He did all sorts of tests. The day before yesterday he called me. I was to see him as soon as I could. The instant I saw his face, I knew he was going to give me the worst possible news.”
“He confirmed it was cancer?”
“Uterine cancer. Very advanced. If it had been detected earlier, it could have been operated on with some guarantee of a cure, but she didn’t take care of it, I wasn’t attentive enough, and now she has other organs affected, including the liver. Anyway, I’ll spare you the clinical details. They’re no fun, that I can assure you.”
“How much time does she have left?”
“At the most, Arruabarrena gives her two or three months, but she could just as easily die tonight. With surgery and invasive treatment her life might be extended to the end of the year. It isn’t worthwhile.”
“Was she informed?”
“Arruabarrena still hasn’t talked to her. He asked me if I thought it would be better if I communicate the diagnosis to ama, after all, I’m the patient’s son aside from being a doctor. I think he’s right. I think I’m largely responsible for not having seen the problem when we still had time to deal with it.”
“This is not the time for recrimination. I think ama knows more about how sick she is than she lets on.”
“In the car, she complained she didn’t need to go to the doctor, that all her life she had bad periods and stomach cramps.”
Brother and sister started walking again. They walked down the Aquarium steps and reached the port. The first lights were being turned on in the city.
“In any case, Arruabarrena and I came up with a palliative treatment. We’ll do everything possible so ama doesn’t suffer.”
Nerea rested a hand on Xabier’s shoulder. They walked along like that for a while, not speaking, not looking at each other, until Nerea broke the silence. What did he intend to do when ama was no longer with us?
“You know I only live in this city for her sake. It’s a promise I made to aita the day he was buried. I said to him: don’t worry, I’ll take care of her, she won’t be left alone. You see that after all I wasn’t up to the job. My plan is to make sure I fulfill her old desire to share a grave with aita in the village cemetery and then leave. Where? No idea. Far away, that’s for sure. Where I can be useful to people in need. What about you?”
“I’m staying here.”
They detoured around the streets in the Parte Vieja—too crowded. Their conversation began again at the bar of a café on Bulevar. As night fell, they said goodbye, serious, calm, with gentle brushing of cheeks. He went here; she went there. By then the sky was completely dark, and the bearable chill of the afternoon was being replaced by the harsher cold of the night. As he walked along Elcano Street, Xabier felt his sense of smell caressed by the warm aroma of roasted chestnuts. The chestnut vendor’s stand was at the corner of Guipúzcoa. A dozen chestnuts cost two and a half euros. As he was paying, the carillon at the Town Council building rang out eight o’clock. And Xabier, the pleasing warmth of the paper packet of chestnuts in the palm of his hand, sat down on a bench in the plaza, under the waning moon visible through the naked branches of a tree. He easily peeled the first chestnut. Very good. Just right, neither hard nor burnt. And the pleasurable warmth that extended inside his mouth thickened the mist of his breath. The second chestnut, also very good. Too good. He stood up. He emptied the almost full packet in a trash bin, so that the chestnuts fell one by one onto the garbage inside. Then he started walking toward Avenida, blending in with the crowd.