All That Followed by Gabriel Urza Page A

year of 1949.
    Wonderful for me, anyway. By all other accounts, it had been a difficult year in Muriga; people barely had money for food and clothes, and several of the town’s men who were in their teens and twenties struck out for the United States and South America to try their luck as sheepherders or cattlemen. A prominent bertsolari had been arrested for performing one of his improvisational poems in Euskera at his father’s funeral, and the Guardia Civil had set up roadblocks on either side of the town, where people coming to and from Muriga would be searched for arms or propaganda. Both her brothers had threatened me, and her mother refused to make eye contact when we passed on the street, but we were untouched by the outside world, lost in the cocoon of new love.
    When we crossed through the large stone doorway into the fronton, I had realized she was the only woman present; several of the men in the stands had begun to shake their heads or to make a clicking sound with their tongues. I learned later that three of these men were Nerea’s uncles. Can I begin to call her Nerea now? If I’ve avoided her name this far, it’s only for my own safety. But it’s beyond the point of ridiculousness. Nerea, Nerea, Nerea.
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    WHEN I left the fronton three hours later with Robert Duarte—the Euskaldun , as Etxeberria and Irujo had called him all afternoon—I was drunk and it was raining.
    “You’re joining us for dinner, aren’t you?” Robert asked. “Morgan is expecting both of us.”
    “I’m not sure,” I said, though the idea of Morgan Duarte serving a warm meal was much more appealing than returning to my empty flat to walk Rimbaud and reheat the soup I’d made three days earlier. It’s times like these when I realize I’ve adopted too many of Muriga’s mannerisms, to turn down an offer at least once before accepting.
    “She’s trying to roast a chicken—I’m not guaranteeing it’ll be the best meal you’ve ever had, but she’ll be disappointed if you don’t come.”
    “Sure,” I said. I was drunk and happy now in the rain, and company sounded good. “As long as we can stop in Martín’s shop so that I can pick up a bottle of wine or two.”
    Morgan Duarte had been expecting us to arrive drunk, it seemed. When she opened the door, it was obvious that she had been drinking as well. She greeted us with a water glass half-full of white wine, and by the time we had shaken off our umbrellas and removed our wet shoes, the glass was empty. We joined her in the kitchen, the counters covered with carrot greens and grains of dry white rice and a compact disc player that played an American song I’d never heard before, as well as the empty wine bottle standing next to a corkscrew and two spent corks.
    Behind her, in the living room looking out toward the harbor, the walls were broken up by large sheets of drawing paper filled with charcoal landscapes and portraits. I recognized a face or two—Gotzone Urueta, Pantxo Ortiz de Urbina—sketched out in a minimalist style, dark lines making economic use of the negative space. A coffee table was barely visible under several open notepads, stacks of books on the legacy of Spain in the twentieth century and the Basque independence movement. I wondered vaguely why he would be so interested in the Nationalists, before reminding myself of the obvious appeal this history would have to a young American like Duarte. The romantic appeal of armed struggle for someone who’d never seen it up close before.
    “It smells wonderful in here, txakur txiki ,” Robert said, a hint of surprise in his voice. Morgan swung her arms up to grasp him behind the neck, to pull his bearded face down so that she could press her lips to the scar just below his nose.
    “I love it when he calls me that,” Morgan said, turning to me. “It’s Basque for ‘my little dog.’”
    *   *   *
    AS ROBERT had warned, the chicken had been left in the oven for too long and the