Homeland Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2019 by Alfred MacAdam

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Spain as Patria by Tusquets Editores, S.A., Barcelona, in 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Fernando Aramburu.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Aramburu, Fernando, [date] author. MacAdam, Alfred J., [date] translator.

  Title: Homeland / Fernando Aramburu ; translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam.

  Other titles: Patria. English

  Description: First American edition. New York : Pantheon Books, 2019

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018031975. ISBN 9781524747121 (hardcover : alk. paper). ISBN 9781524747138 (ebook).

  Classification: LCC PQ6651.R26 P3813 2019 | DDC 863/.64--dc23 | LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2018031975

  Ebook ISBN 9781524747138

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Cover photograph © Metin Demiralay/Trevillion Images

  Cover design by Adalis Martinez

  v5.4

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1: High Heels on Parquet

  2: Mild October

  3: With Txato in Polloe

  4: Where They Live

  5: Moving by Night

  6: Txato, Entzun

  7: Rocks in the Knapsack

  8: A Distant Episode

  9: Red

  10: Telephone Calls

  11: Flood

  12: The Garden Wall

  13: The Ramp, the Bathroom, the Caregiver

  14: Last Snacks

  15: Meetings

  16: Sunday Mass

  17: A Little Walk

  18: An Island Vacation

  19: Discrepancy

  20: Premature Mourning

  21: The Best of All of Them

  22: Memories in a Spiderweb

  23: Invisible Rope

  24: A Toy Bracelet

  25: Don’t Come

  26: With Them or with Us

  27: Family Dinner

  28: Between Brother and Sister

  29: A Two-Colored Leaf

  30: To Empty Memory

  31: Dialogue in Darkness

  32: Papers and Objects

  33: Graffiti

  34: Mental Pages

  35: A Box of Flames

  36: From A to B

  37: The Cake of Discord

  38: Books

  39: I the Hatchet, You the Serpent

  40: Two Years Without a Face

  41: Her Life in the Mirror

  42: The London Incident

  43: A Formal Couple

  44: Precautions

  45: Strike Day

  46: A Rainy Day

  47: What Became of Them?

  48: Late Shift

  49: Face the Music

  50: A Cop’s Leg

  51: In the Quarry

  52: A Great Dream

  53: The Enemy in the House

  54: The Lie About Fever

  55: Like Their Mothers

  56: Plums

  57: In the Reserves

  58: A Walk in the Park

  59: A Thread of Glass

  60: Doctors with Doctors

  61: A Pleasing Smallness

  62: House Search

  63: Political Material

  64: Where Is My Son?

  65: Blessing

  66: Klaus-Dieter

  67: Three Weeks of Love

  68: Graduation

  69: The Break

  70: Homelands and Follies

  71: Twisted Daughter

  72: A Sacred Mission

  73: If You’re Here, You’re In

  74: Personal Liberation Movement

  75: A Porcelain Vase

  76: Go on, Cry in Peace

  77: Evil Plans

  78: The Short Course

  79: The Touch of the Jellyfish

  80: The Oria Cell

  81: Only the Sad Doctor Went to See Her Off

  82: He’s My Boyfriend

  83: A Bit of Bad Luck

  84: Basque Murderers

  85: The Apartment

  86: He Had Other Plans

  87: Mushrooms and Nettles

  88: Bloody Bread

  89: The Air in the Dining Room

  90: Fright

  91: The List

  92: The Child She Loved Most

  93: The Land of the Silent

  94: Amaia

  95: Jug Wine

  96: Nerea and Solitude

  97: The Parade of Murderers

  98: White-Dress Wedding

  99: The Fourth Member

  100: The Fall

  101: “Txoria txori”

  102: The First Letter

  103: The Second Letter

  104: The Third Letter and the Fourth

  105: Reconciliation

  106: Captivity Syndrome

  107: Meetings in the Plaza

  108: Medical Report

  109: If the Wind Hits the Burning Coal

  110: Conversation in the Afternoon

  111: A Night in Calamocha

  112: With the Grandson

  113: Uphill Finish

  114: A Pane of Glass Between

  115: Massage Session

  116: Arab Salon

  117: The Invisible Son

  118: Unannounced Visit

  119: Patience

  120: The Girl from Ondárroa

  121: Conversation in the Meeting Room

  122: Your Jail Is My Jail

  123: Closed Circle

  124: Soaking

  125: Sunday Morning

  Glossary

  A Note About the Translator

  A Note About the Author

  1

  HIGH HEELS ON PARQUET

  Poor thing, there she goes: about to crash into him the way a wave crashes into rocks. A little foam and goodbye. Doesn’t she realize he doesn’t even bother to open the door for her? His slave and more than his slave.

  And those heels, those red lips when she’s already forty-five years old: what for? With your standing, girl, with your position and education, what would make you carry on like a teenager? If aita were here to see…

  Getting into the car, Nerea glanced up at
the window where she assumed her mother would, as usual, be spying on her through the curtain. Even if she couldn’t see her from the street, she knew Bittori was staring at her, whispering to herself, there goes the poor thing, a trophy for that egoist who never thought for a second about making someone happy. Doesn’t she realize that a woman must be really desperate if she has to seduce her husband after twelve years of marriage? It’s a good thing they never had children.

  Nerea waved goodbye before getting into the taxi. Her mother, on the fourth floor, hidden behind the curtain, looked away. Beyond the tiled roofs was a wide strip of ocean, the lighthouse on Santa Clara Island, tenuous clouds in the distance. The weather lady predicted sunshine. And her mother looked again toward the street and the taxi, which was now out of sight.

  She stared beyond the roof tiles, beyond the island and the blue horizon line, beyond the remote clouds, and even beyond that into the past forever lost, searching for scenes from her daughter’s wedding. And she saw Nerea once again in the Good Shepherd Cathedral, dressed in white, with her bouquet and her excessive happiness. Watching her daughter leave—so slim, such a smile, so pretty—Bittori felt a premonition come over her. At night, when she went back to her house alone, she was on the verge of confessing her fears to her photograph of Txato. But she had a headache, and besides, when it came to family matters, especially his daughter, Txato was sentimental. Tears came easily to his eyes, and even though photos don’t cry, I know what I’m talking about.

  The high heels were supposed to make Quique voracious. Click, click, click—she’d dented the parquet. Let’s see if she punches holes in it. To keep peace in the house, she didn’t scold her. They were only going to be there for a minute. They’d come to say goodbye. And him, it was nine o’clock in the morning and his breath stank of whiskey or of one of those drinks he sold.

  “Ama, are you sure you’re going to be okay by yourself?”

  “Why don’t you take the bus to the airport? The taxi from here to Bilbao is going to cost a fortune.”

  He: “Don’t worry about that.”

  He pointed out they had baggage, that the bus would be uncomfortable, slow.

  “Right, but you have enough time, don’t you?”

  “Ama, don’t make a big deal out of it. We decided to take a taxi. It’s the easiest way to get there.”

  Quique was beginning to lose patience. “It’s the only comfortable way to get there.”

  He added that he was going to step outside to smoke a cigarette—“while you two talk.” That man reeked of perfume. But his mouth stank of liquor, and it was only nine in the morning. He said goodbye checking his face in the living-room mirror. Conceited ass. And then—was he being authoritarian, cordial but curt?—to Nerea: “Don’t take too long.”

  Five minutes, she promised. Which turned into fifteen. Alone, she said to her mother that this trip to London meant a lot to her.

  “I just don’t see what you have to do with your husband’s clients. Or is it that you’ve started working in his business without telling me?”

  “In London I’m going to make a serious attempt to save our marriage.”

  “Another?”

  “The last one.”

  “So what’s the plan this time? Going to stay close to him so he doesn’t take off with the first woman he sees?”

  “Ama, please. Don’t make it harder for me.”

  “You look great. Going to a new hairdresser?”

  “I still go to the same one.”

  Nerea suddenly lowered her voice. As soon as she started whispering, her mother turned to look toward the front door, as if she were afraid some stranger was spying on her. No, nothing. They’d given up on the idea of adopting a baby. How they had talked about it! Maybe a Chinese baby, a Russian, a little black one. Boy or girl. Nerea still held on to her illusion, but Quique had given up. He wants his own child, flesh of his flesh.

  Bittori: “So he’s quoting the Bible now?”

  “He thinks he’s up-to-date, but he’s more traditional than rice pudding.”

  On her own, Nerea had investigated all the legal formalities involved in adoption and, yes, they satisfied all of them. The money involved was no problem. She was willing to travel to the other end of the world to be a mother. But Quique had cut off the conversation. No, no, and more no.

  “That boy’s a bit lacking in sensitivity, don’t you think?”

  “He wants a little boy of his own, who looks like him, who will play for La Real some day. He’s obsessed, ama. And he’ll get what he wants. Wow! When he digs in on something! I don’t know with what woman. Some volunteer. Don’t ask me. I don’t have the slightest idea. He’ll rent out some womb, pay whatever you have to pay. As far as I’m concerned, I’d help him find a healthy woman who’d make his wish come true.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “I haven’t told him yet, but I imagine I might get a chance in London. I’ve thought it through. I don’t have any right to make him be unhappy.”

  They touched cheeks by the front door.

  Bittori: okay, she’d be fine on her own, have a great trip. Nerea, out in the hall as she waited for the elevator, said something about bad luck but that we should never give up happiness. Then she suggested her mother change the doormat.

  2

  MILD OCTOBER

  Before what happened with Txato, Bittori had been a believer. When she was young, she’d nearly become a nun. She and that friend of hers from the village. Better off not remembering her. Both of them abandoned the plan at the last moment, when they had one foot in a novitiate. Now all that stuff about the resurrection of the dead and eternal life and the Creator and the Holy Spirit seems like fairy tales.

  She was annoyed by something the bishop said, but she didn’t dare refuse to shake hands with such an important gentleman. Instead, she looked him in the eye, silently communicating that she was no longer a believer. Seeing Txato in his coffin undermined her faith in God.

  Still, from time to time she’d go to mass out of habit. She sits on a bench in the back of the church, looks at the shoulders and necks of the priest’s attendants, talks to herself. It’s that she’s so alone at home. She’s not the kind to hang around in bars or cafés. Shopping? Only for necessities. And only because Nerea makes a point of it, because if she didn’t she’d be wearing the same clothes day after day. After Txato’s death, her coquettishness vanished.

  Instead of wandering the shops she prefers sitting in church and practicing her silent atheism. The faithful gathered there were forbidden blasphemy and contempt. She looks at the statues and says/thinks: no. Sometimes she says/thinks it shaking her head as a sign of rejection.

  If there’s a mass in progress, she stays longer. Then she methodically denies everything the priest says. Let us pray. No. This is the body of Christ. No. Again and again. Sometimes, with all due discretion, she takes a little nap.

  When the sky was dark, she left the Capuchin church on Andía Street. It was Thursday. The temperature was pleasant. At mid-afternoon, she’d seen a neon sign in the drugstore that read 68 degrees. Traffic, pedestrians, pigeons. She spied a familiar face. Without hesitating she crossed the street and entered Guipúzcoa Plaza. She followed the path around the pond, amusing herself watching the ducks. She hadn’t strolled around there for such a long time. If memory served her, not since Nerea was a little girl. She remembered black swans that were no longer to be seen. Ding dong ding. The carillon in the provincial government office jolted her out of her daydream.

  Eight o’clock. A temperate time, a mild October. Suddenly, she was reminded of the words Nerea had said to her that morning. That she should change the doormat? No, that there’s no reason to give up happiness. Bah, just nonsense you say to old people to cheer them up. It wasn’t hard for Bittori to accept that it was a stupendous afternoon, but that wasn’t enough to make her happ
y. She needed more. For instance? Who knows? That they’d brought my husband back from the dead. She wondered if after so many years she shouldn’t think about forgetting. Forgetting? What’s that?

  A smell like algae and ocean moisture was floating in the air. It wasn’t even the tiniest bit chilly, no wind blowing, and the sky was clear. A good reason, she said to herself, to walk home and save the bus fare. At Urbieta Street, she heard her name. She heard it clearly, but she didn’t want to look around. She even sped up, but it was no use. Hasty footsteps caught up to her.