B0040702LQ EBOK (4 page)

Mothers in Obaba tell their children a story in which
a daughter asks her wicked father if he believes he will
ever die. The father tells her that this is most unlikely
because, as he explains: `I have a brother who is a lion
and lives in the mountains and inside that lion is a hare
and inside that hare is a dove. That dove has an egg. If
someone finds that egg and breaks it on my forehead,
then and only then will I die.' However, the person
listening to the story knows that the little servant of the
house will discover the connection between all those
things and that the father, who is in fact a demon, will
die. But I lacked the little servant's ingenuity and was
unable to answer my own questions. Perhaps I was slow;
perhaps the thread that led from the boar to Javier was more difficult to find than that linking the father's life to
the dove's egg.

However, subsequently, things happened so quickly
that there was little time for reflection. For on the third
day of the hunt, the boar pursued and wounded a
straggler from one of the hunting parties.

The letter continues on the eighth page of which the top half
is well preserved, the sheet having been placed the other way
up from the preceding pages. Of the lower part, however,
about eight lines remain illegible.

The man's companions considered that the white
boar had again acted with prudence and discernment,
waiting amongst the leaves and watching the party until
one of them, the man whom he later wounded, was
alone and defenceless. Old Matias summed up the
thoughts of all of them:

`It would be best if from now on you cover your
faces. Especially those of you who did Javier wrong. It's
clear he wants vengeance.'

It was on one such day that I suddenly realised that
spring was upon us and that the fields were fragrant and
full of the lovely flowers the Creator provides us with.
But for me and for the other inhabitants of Obaba that
whole garden of flowers bloomed in vain; no flower
could perform its true function there, no flower could
serve as a balm to our spirits. The pinks and lilies in the
woods bloomed alone and died alone because no one,
not the children or the women or even the most hardened of the men, dared go near them; the same fate
awaited the mountain gentians, the thickets of rhododendrons, the roses and the irises. The white boar was
sole master of the land on which they grew. One of the
broadsheets published in your own town put it well: `A
wild animal is terrorising the small village of Obaba.'
And do you know how many nights it came down to
visit us only to ...

The eighth page stops here. Fortunately the next two pages
are perfectly legible. In this final part of the letter, Canon
Lizardi's handwriting becomes very small.

... what Matias had foretold came to pass with the
exactitude of a prophecy. Night after night, without
cease, with the resolve of one who has drawn up a plan
and does not hesitate to carry it out, the white boar
continued to attack the houses of those who were
members of the hunting parties. Then, when panic had
filled every heart, the old man came to see me at the
rectory. The moment he came in, he said: `I've come
to ask you a question and the sooner I have your
answer the better. I want to know if I can kill the
white boar?'

His words filled me with fear and not just because of
the brusque manner in which he spoke. For, since in his
eyes there was no difference between the boy he had
known and the boar currently plundering our valley,
what the old man really wanted was for me to give my
blessing to a crime. I must confess that I myself had my
doubts on the matter. I was wrong, you will say; a simple
priest has no right to doubt what has been proven by so
many theologians and other wise men. But I am just an
ordinary man, a small tree that has always grown in the
utmost darkness, and that animal, which in its actions
seemed to exhibit both understanding and free will, had
me in its power.

For all those reasons, I wanted to avoid a direct
answer. I said:

`There's no point even trying, Matias. You're an old
man. You'll never catch an animal like that, one that has
made fools of our best hunters.'

`It will be easy for me,' he replied, raising his voice
and not without a certain arrogance, `because I know
Javier's habits.' Then he added: `Anyway that's my affair.
What I want to know is whether or not I can kill the
boar. You have a duty to answer me.'

`But is it necessary? Why kill an animal which, sooner
or later, will leave Obaba? Provided that ...'

`Of course it's necessary!' he broke in almost shouting
now. `Have you no pity for him? Don't you feel sorry
for Javier?'

`Matias, I wouldn't want to ...'

But again he would not let me finish. He sat up in
his chair and, after scrabbling in the bag he had with
him, placed a filthy handkerchief on my table. Do you
know what it contained? No, how could you? It was the
bloody foot of a boar. It was a ghastly sight and I stepped
back, horrified.

`Javier is in terrible pain,' the old man began.

I remained silent, unable to utter a word.

`The people of Obaba are cowards,' he continued
after a pause. `They don't want to meet him face to face
and so they resort to snares and traps and poison. What
do they care if he dies a slow and painful death? No
good hunter would do that.'

`It's only natural that they should be afraid, Matias.
You're wrong to despise them for that.'

But I wasn't convinced by what I said and it was
an effort to get the words out. The old man was not
listening anyway; he seemed to be in mid-soliloquy.

`When a boar falls into a snare, it frees itself by
gnawing off the trapped limb. That is the law it lives by.'

He spoke hesitantly, breathing hard.

`Don't you think Javier's learned fast?' he asked, looking into my eyes. The smile he gave me was that of a
father proud of his son's achievements. I nodded and
thought to myself how utterly justified his feelings were
and that on the last day, God our Father would not have
the least hesitation in bestowing on him the paternity he
claimed. Yes, Matias was Javier's true father; not the one
who abandoned him at birth, nor the other one who,
having taken him in, treated him only with contempt.

,can I kill him?' the old man asked me. He had
grown sombre again. As you know, dear friend, pity is an extreme form of love, the form that touches us most
deeply and most strongly impels us towards goodness.
And there was no doubt that Matias was speaking to
me in the name of pity. He could not bear the boy's
suffering to continue. It must be ended as soon as
possible.

`Yes, you can,' I said. `Killing the boar would not be a
sin.

Well done, you will say. However, bearing in mind
what happened afterwards ...

The tenth page stops at that point. The first four lines are
missing on the next and last page; the rest, including the signature, is perfectly preserved.

... on the outskirts of Obaba, not far from this house,
there is a thickly wooded gully in the form of an
inverted pyramid, and at one end there is a cave that
seems to penetrate deep into the earth. That was where
Matias sensed the white boar was hiding. Why, you will
ask, on what did he base such a supposition, a supposition that later - I will tell you now - was to prove
correct? Because he knew that was what Javier used to
do when he ran away from the inn. He would hide there
in the cave, poor boy, with only the salamanders for
company.

But, as I said, I only knew all this when it was too late.
Had I known before, I would not have given my consent
to Matias. No, you can't go into that cave, I would have
told him. No hunter would wait for a boar in a place like
that. It's too dangerous. You'll be committing a grave sin
by going there and placing your own life in mortal
danger.

But God chose not to enlighten me. I made a mistake
when confronted by a question whose rights or wrongs
I could not hope to fathom and, later, there was no time
to remedy the situation. The events I will now recount
happened all in a rush, the way boulders, once their support has gone, hurtle headlong down hillsides. In
fact, it was all over in a matter of hours.

When Matias left, I went into the church and it was
there that I heard what, at the time and to my great
astonishment, sounded like an explosion. At first I could
not establish the origin of such a loud noise, so unusual
in Obaba. It was certainly not from a rifle, I thought.

`Unless the shot were fired in a cave!' I exclaimed. I
knew at once that I was right. With God's help, I had
guessed what had happened.

Matias was already dead when I reached the gully. He
was lying face down at the entrance to the cave itself, his
rifle still in his hand. A few yards away, further inside the
cave, lay the white boar, panting and losing blood from a
wound in its neck.

Then, amidst the panting, I thought I heard a voice. I
listened more carefully and what do you think I heard?
The word that any boy would have cried out at such a
moment: `Mother!' Before my very eyes, the boar lay
there groaning and whimpering and saying over and
over: `Mother, mother' ... pure illusion, you will say,
the imaginings of a weary, overwrought man; and that is
what I tell myself when I remember all I have read in
science books or when I recall what faith requires us to
believe. Nevertheless, I cannot forget what I saw and
heard in that cave. Because then, dear God, I had to pick
up a stone and finish him off. I could not leave him there
to bleed to death, to suffer; I had to act as honourably as
the old man would have done.

I can go no further and I will end here. I am, as you
see, a broken man. You would be doing me the greatest
favour by coming here to visit me! I have spent three
years in Obaba. Is that not enough solitude for any man?

With that question - and the signature that follows it - both
letter and exposition end. I would not, however, wish to conclude my work without reference to a fact which, after several
conversations with the present inhabitants of Obaba, seems to me significant. It concerns the matter of Lizardi's paternity.
Many of those who spoke to me state that Javier was, without
a doubt, his son, a belief which, in my view, a second reading
of the document certainly tends to substantiate. That fact
would also explain why the letter never left the rectory where
it was written. A canon like Lizardi would never dare send a
confession from which, in the end, he had omitted the one
essential detail.

© Bernardo Atxaga

Translated by Margaret full Costa

Bernardo Atxaga is the pseudonym of Jose Irazu
Garmendia (Asteasu, Euzkadi, 1951). He is the best known
of contemporary Basque writers and has done an enormous
amount to promote the Basque language and its literature
in post-Franco Spain. He has written short stories and novels
for children and adults, as well as poetry and songs. Two of
his novels: Gizona bere bakardadean (1994) and Zeru horiek
(1996) (The Lone Man and The Lone Woman, tr. Margaret
Jull Costa, Harvill, 1996 and 1999) deal with the social and
political situation in the Basque country. This story is taken
from Obabakoak (1989; Obabakoak, tr. Margaret Jull Costa,
Hutchinson, 1992), a collection of twenty-six stories, some
independent, some interconnecting. In Spain it won the
National Prize for Literature and the Critics' Prize and has, to
date, been translated into twenty-one other languages. Other
works include Bi anai (1995), Behi Euskaldun Baten Memoriak
(1992) and Lista de locos y otros alfabetos (1998).

To my fiancee, who told me the story

This was in the days when people still celebrated Carnival. In
other words, many years ago. Not that it matters, you won't
believe what I am about to tell you anyway. His name was
Arturo, Arturo Gomez Landeiro. He was not bad-looking
really; the only thing that obstructed his path through life was
his large nose. It wasn't exactly huge, but it was a bit larger
than normal. Because of it he toyed with the idea of becoming a sailor. But his mother wouldn't let him. The surprising
thing is that the story I'm about to relate should have happened to him. I've often wondered why, but never managed
to find an answer. It seems that extraordinary things can happen to anyone; what matters is how you react to the surprise.
If Arturo Gomez had been an exceptional man I wouldn't be
writing this; he would have undertaken to recount the story
himself, or he would have investigated further. But he took
fright, so I have to be the one to tell it, because I can never
keep anything to myself.