LITMIR.BIZ

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in touch with David, if they had any ideas that might help.

      The journalist had left out the connection with José Garovillo: she’d explained that it was too incendiary and provocative in the political climate. Reading the article, David decided this omission had definitely been a good idea; he already felt exposed enough by the newspaper piece. What if Miguel read it?

      He shut the laptop and looked at Amy, in her purple denim jacket and her elegantly slender jeans. She looked back at him, silent, and blue eyed; and as she did, he felt the oddness of their situation – like an inexplicable shiver on a very warm day. Already they were sort-of friends: forced together by that horrible and frightening scene in the Bar Bilbo. And yet they were not friends; they were still total strangers. It was dissonant.

      Or maybe he was just unnerved by the noise in the bar. The slap and laughter of kids playing pelota, the peculiar Basque sport, in the square outside, was very audible. Children were thwapping the hard little pelota ball against a high wall. The noise was repetitive and intense. She glanced his way.

      ‘Shall we go somewhere else?’

      ‘If you have time.’

      ‘Academic holiday. And I’d like to help, while my students are off shooting the police.’ She smiled at his alarmed response. ‘Hey. That was a joke. Where do you want to go?’

      ‘I want to start looking at the churches. On my map…’

      ‘OK.’

      ‘But first…I’d like to go somewhere I can have a proper drink.’ He looked at her for a long moment, then he confessed: he was still feeling the nerves, the fear, the aftereffects of Miguel’s attack.

      ‘Let’s go for a glass and talk,’ she said.

      A few minutes’ driving brought them to a hushed little village; the sign said Irurita. Old men sat snoozing under berets, outside cafes. Parking the car by the village church they walked to one of the cafes; they sat under a parasol. The clear mountain air was refreshing, the sun was warm. Amy ordered some olives and a bottle of the chilled local white wine that she called txacolli.

      The waitress served them at their shaded table with a nimble curtsey.

      Amy spoke:

      ‘You haven’t asked me the most obvious question of all.’

      He demurred; her expression was serious.

      ‘You ought to know this…if I am going to introduce you to José.’

      He drank some of his cold fresh wine, and nodded. ‘OK. If you insist. Why did Miguel attack you? He came out of nowhere, then…assaulted you. Why?’

      Her answer was fluent:

      ‘He hates me.’

      ‘Why?’

      She pressed her hands together, as if praying. ‘When I first came to the Basque Country I was…as I said, very interested in ETA. The cause of independence. I thought it was a laudable ambition, for an ancient people. I even sympathized with the terrorists. For a while. For a few months.’

      ‘And…’

      ‘Then I met José. The great José Garovillo. We became very good friends, he showed me where to buy the best pintxos in Bizkaia. He told me everything. He told me he had renounced violence, after the fall of Franco. He said terrorism was a cul de sac for the Basque people, within a democratic Spain.’

      ‘But his son –’

      ‘Disagreed. Obviously.’ She gazed straight at David. ‘But then José got me a job, teaching English at the university. And you see…a lot of the kids who come into my class are very radical, from the backstreets of Vittoria and Bilbao, ready to die for ETA. The girls are even more fierce than the boys. Killers in miniskirts.’

      Her lips were pink and wet from the txacolli. ‘I see it as my task to maybe steer them away from ETA, from violence, and the self-destruction of terrorism. So I teach them the literature of revolution: Orwell on the Civil War, Yeats on the Irish rebellion. I try to teach them the tragedy as well as the romance of a violent nationalist struggle.’

      ‘And that’s why Miguel hates you? He thinks you are working against ETA.’

      ‘Yes. I knew he’d been abroad for a while, though I did hear a rumour he was back. But I thought it was safe to go see my friends in the Bilbo. But he must have been in the bar already. Hanging out in one of the back rooms, with his ETA comrades…’

      ‘Then he heard the row.’

      ‘Yes. And he walked out. Saw me. With you.’ She grimaced. ‘And did his favourite thing.’

      The explanation was good, if not perfect. David still felt the echo of an unexplained space, a dark blur on the image. What else was she not telling him? What about the scar on her scalp?

      He stopped thinking as the waitress placed some olives on their table.

      ‘Gracias,’ he said. The girl nodded and bobbed and replied in that thick guttural Spanish accent: kakatazjaka…Then she waved to a friend across the cobbled plaza, and made her way back to the bar.

      ‘You know it’s funny,’ said David, half turning to Amy. ‘I’ve not heard any Basque being spoken. Not yet.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘I’ve been in the Basque Country for two days. I’ve seen it written on signs everywhere. But not heard anyone speaking it.’

      She gazed at him from under her blonde fringe – as if he was retarded.

      ‘That girl spoke Basque just then.’

      ‘…She did?’

      ‘Yep.’

      Amy’s denim jacket was off; David noticed the golden hairs on her suntanned arms as she reached again for her glass of wine.

      ‘And all the guys in Lesaka,’ she said, tilting her glass. ‘They were all speaking Basque. Hence their anger when you tried talking Spanish.’

      David cocked an ear, listening to the chatter of the waitress. Kazakatchazaka.

      Amy was right. This was surely Basque. And yet it sounded like they were talking a very bizarre Spanish. And he’d been hearing it all along without realizing.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it took me a while, when I first came here, to realize I was surrounded by Basque speakers. I just thought they had over-the-top Spanish accents.’ She looked beyond him – at the whitewashed church walls. ‘I think it’s because Basque is so strange, the ear and the mind can’t entirely comprehend what’s being heard.’

      ‘Have you learned any?’

      ‘I’ve tried, of course! But it’s just impossible, weird clauses, unique syntax.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Here’s an example of how mad Basque is. What’s the first phrase you learn in any foreign language?’

      ‘“Do you speak English?”’

      ‘Comedy genius. What else?’

      ‘…“Can I have a beer?”’

      ‘Exactly. Une bière s’il vous plaît. Ein bier bitte.’

      ‘So how do you say “Can I have a beer” – in Basque?’

      Amy looked at him.

       ‘Garagardoa nahi nuke.’

      They sat there in the sun, in tense but companionable silence. And then a gust of wind rippled the parasol. David looked left: clouds were scudding in from the west, thicker clouds were rolling down the nearest Pyrenean slope, like a white sheepskin coat slowly falling from the shoulders.

      ‘OK,’ said David. ‘How do we know Miguel isn’t going

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