LITMIR.BIZ

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Er…sí. Yes. Centre of the city. Hotel…Donostia.’

      The driver turned off the autopista and headed down into the wide and principal streets of the town. Large grey offices exuded an air of damp pomposity in the gloom. Many of them seemed to be banks. Banco Vizkaya. Banco Santander. Banco de Bilbao. People were scurrying past the sombre architecture, with umbrellas aloft; it was like a photo of London in the 1950s.

      The Hotel Donostia was very much as it had appeared on the website: faded but formal. The concierge looked disdainfully at David’s creased shirt. But David didn’t care – he was almost delirious with tiredness. He found his room and fought with his keycard; then he collapsed into his oversoft bed and slept for eleven straight hours, dreaming of a house with no one inside. He dreamed of his parents, alive, in a car – with small wild horses, cantering across the road.

      Then a scream. Then redness. Then a small boy running across an enormous empty beach. Running towards the sea.

      When he woke, he opened the curtains – and gawped. The sky was bright blue: the September sun had returned. David pulled on his clothes, filled up on coffee and pastries, then called a cab, and hired a car at the railway station. After a moment’s hesitation, he rented the vehicle for a month.

      The main road out of grimy Bilbao took him east towards the French border. Again he thought of his mum and dad and Granddad; he averted himself from the thought, and concentrated on the route. Was he going the right way? He pulled over at an Agip service station; its huge plastic logo – of a black dog spitting red fire – was overly bright in the harsh sunlight. Parked up, he took out the old map and traced his finger over the cartography, examining those delicate blue stars dotting the grey foothills. They looked like distant policelights, glimpsed through mist and rain.

      Then he half-folded the map, and for the first time he noticed there was proper writing, in a different hand, scribbled on a corner of the map’s reverse. Seen in the stark sunlight the writing was very faint, and possibly in Basque, or Spanish. Maybe even German. The writing was so small and faded it was quite indecipherable.

      It was another puzzle – and he was no nearer to solving any of it. But at least the map told him one thing: he was going the right way, into the ‘real’ Basque Country. He started the car once again.

      The drive was hypnotic. Sometimes he could see the blue ocean, the Bay of Biscay, sparkling in the sun. Sometimes the road ducked instead through those dark green shady valleys, where the white-painted Basque houses looked like cuboid mushrooms, suddenly sprouted overnight.

      At last the road divided, near San Sebastian; thence the smaller, prettier road headed for the interior: the Bidasoa Valley. It was as scenic as his research had promised. Tumbling mountain rivers ran down shady gorges, enormous oak and chestnut forests whispered in the delicate September air. Lesaka was close. He was in the Basque Navarre. He was nearly there.

      As David slowed, he noticed.

      Something was happening in Lesaka. The edge of the town was marked by big black police vans, with metal grilles over the windscreens. Surly-looking Spanish riot policemen were sitting on walls, and chatting on mobile phones; they all had very obvious guns.

      One of the cops stared at David, and frowned at the car, and checked the numberplate. Then he shook his head, and pointed at a parking space. Mildly unnerved, David slotted in the car. The policeman turned away, uninterested. He just wanted David to stop and walk.

      Obediently, David slung his rucksack over his shoulder and paced the rest of the way into Lesaka. He remembered what he had read about Basque terrorism: the campaign for Basque independence by the terror group ETA. It was a nasty business: killings and bombings, intense and surreal atrocities, men in women’s wigs shooting teenagers dead. Very nasty.

      Was this police activity connected with that?

      It was surely possible; yet it was hard to reconcile such horrible enormities with a place like Lesaka. The quiet air was cool and sweet: mountain freshness. The sky was patched with cloud, but the sun was still shining down on ancient stone houses, and an old church on a hill, and mild stone palazzos surrounding little squares. On streetcorners there were strange pillars, carved with the curvilinear sun symbol, like an Art Nouveau swastika. The lauburu. David said the word to himself, as he walked through Lesaka.

       Lauburu.

      Not knowing quite what to do next, he sat on a bench in the central plaza, staring at a large stone house hung with the green, red and white Basque flag, the ikkurina. He felt a sudden foolishness: what should he do next? Just…ask people? Like some amateur detective?

      An old woman was sitting next to him, clutching a rosary, and muttering.

      David coughed, as courteously as he could, then leaned nearer and asked the woman, in his faltering Spanish: did she know a man called…José Garovillo?

      The woman glanced warily his way, like she suspected him of some imminent street crime; then she shook her head, rose to her feet, and walked off – scattering pigeons as she departed. David watched her shadow disappear around a corner.

      For the rest of the afternoon he tried his best: he asked more strangers on the streets and stepped inside two supermercados, but he got the same blank or even hostile reactions. No one knew José Garovillo, or no one, at least, wanted to talk about him. In frustration David retreated to his car, hauled out some clothes and a toothbrush, and booked into a little hotel at the end of the main road: the Hotel Eguzki.

      The allegedly double room had a design of shepherds’ crooks on the wall, and bathtaps which coughed rusty water. David spent the evening eating supermarket chorizo, watching Spanish TV quiz shows, or gazing at the indecipherable writing on the map. He could feel the loneliness like a song in the air. A wistful old folk song.

      The morning found him more determined. His first visit was to the church, a decayed and musty building with a fragrance of mildewed leather hassocks. A stricken wooden Christ gazed longingly at the vacant pews. There were two fonts. The smaller of these was carved with a strange symbol, like an arrow, incised brutally into the old grey stone.

      He touched the stone, which had been polished to smoothness by the centuries, by a million peasant hands, reaching in for the magic water, daubing it on grubby foreheads.

       In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti…

      Enough. This was useless. David hoisted his bag and exited the church, stepping with relief into the grass-scented daylight. Where would people congregate? Where would he find life and chatter and answers?

      A bar.

      He made for the busiest street, lined with shops and cafes; then he selected the Bar Bilbo. There was music jangling inside, and through the thick windows he could see people drinking.

      A few faces turned as he entered. The dark and dingy bar was crowded. A group of teens were chattering in a corner, talking the most guttural Spanish David had ever heard. Sitting at the opposite table was a young woman, an attractive blonde girl. She glanced his way, then turned back to her cellphone. The rest of the bar was dominated by swarthy, black-haired men, downing glasses of cloudy cider and laughing along to the music.

      It was then that David recalled – the music. It was the same kind of music that had been playing at Granddad’s funeral. Wasn’t it? A vigorous, slightly discordant guitar song. What did this mean? Was there some direct link to the Basques? Was his grandfather actually…Basque?

      David had never heard his granddad speak anything but Spanish – and English. And their family name was authentically Hispanic. Martinez. Yet the stocky men actually looked like Granddad. And David’s father, for that matter.

      Another mystery. The mysteries were breeding.

      Leaning on the bartop, he ordered some cerveza in his conspicuously pathetic Spanish. Then David sat down at a nearby table and drank the beer. Again he felt paralyzed: idiotic. But he also remembered his grandfather’s words: go to Lesaka, find José Garovillo,

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