For my sobrina, Samantha, the most innocent person I know.
– Todd Gilbert
Foreword
In the Spring of 1996, in an effort to forge a path of adventure and cultivate stories from life experience, I returned to Spain – specifically the Basque Country in the Pyrenees Mountains – to rid my life of conveniences and force myself to clear my head and find the peace to make a life-altering decision concerning my future. What I found was far from peaceful, but the result was clarity in many areas of life that I hadn’t considered. My mind was pushed to its limit as I struggled to communicate and express feelings to keep my sanity in an unfamiliar place.
Communicating, I found, is a human necessity. Without it you perish in mind and even body. A wet blanket of depression is the gun in your hand opposing a will to reach the light that shines faintly in the distance. The pilgrimage to that light was arduous, but I’m sure that I haven’t experienced anything more rewarding in my life since reaching it.
This isn’t a victory story, but a journey narrative that ends without full closure. To this day I struggle with what it all meant to me. My eyes are more open now, and even though it’s hard to put into words, I left Spain with a better understanding of life as it is, as I wish it was, and how I planned to make it my own.
Some months before I left the States to live in Ordizia my niece Samantha was born. She was the youngest person in my life at the time, and when I started writing my journal it occurred to me that a letter to her made the most sense. She was the best example of someone who could understand what I was going through. Her eyes were new, her heart was open, and she couldn’t effectively tell anyone how she felt about anything. Not only how she felt, but also what that feeling meant to her. We struggled through expressing ourselves together, even though she didn’t have the capacity to realize it at the time.
I kept a picture of a newborn Samantha taped next to my bed in the frigid, empty, echo-filled flat at the base of Txindoki, where I pushed through for six months hoping to demonstrate who I was and what I felt to those that surrounded me and coped with my disposition during the struggle.
I used my “letter to Samantha” along with memories I collected through pictures, notes, and other accounts to write this short story that provides a clearer picture of that time in my life. This is my humble version of Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” – an account summarized later in life, as I was too immature when it happened to fully understand the weight of its meaning.
PART ONE: A Blind Leap
How can you know what you’re capable of if you don’t embrace the unknown?
– Esmerelda Santiago
1
The train rumbled north out of Madrid toward Basque Country. There weren’t many people on board, but I kept myself from looking at any of them directly for fear that they might engage me in conversation. For the past few weeks I had been living on the couch of an old friend in Salamanca who was nice enough to take care of me while I did my job search. From the moment she met me at the train station it was evident that my language skills diminished during the previous few years in Auburn as I finished my American degree. A little less than two years removed from Spain and my semester abroad program in Salamanca was all it took for me to forget everything I learned.
The scenery started to shift as rolling foothills took the place of the capital city industry. I’d been to the Basque region only one time previously, in the summer of 1994 when I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, but other than the San Fermínes Festival I hadn’t had any real experience there.
The day before I jumped on the train I received a phone call from a man named Alberto Pérez in response to my flooding the country with letters requesting employment. Sr. Pérez worked as head of purchasing for Orkli, a manufacturing plant in the heart of the province of Gibuzkoa, and his phone call to Estrella’s apartment couldn’t have come at a better time. One more night in Salamanca trying to teach English in the streets to university students and bussing glasses in the bar nestled against the Plaza Mayor for money wouldn’t be enough to solve my financial woes; I was broke and would have to return home. But then came Sr. Pérez to the rescue.
My days in Pamplona during San Fermínes were an education in fear, endurance, and a touch of debauchery, but certainly didn’t leave me with any lingering cultural enlightenment about the Basques and their homeland. That was heading toward me on the rail just as fast as I bound for it – and I had no idea.
Sr. Pérez met me on the rail deck in Beasain, a neighboring town I learned was a touch larger than Ordizia. A short walk through one to get to the other, someone unfamiliar with the area might assume they’re one place.
The sun had set when the train grunted to a stop in Beasain. Through my window I studied a lone man dressed simply for the cold. Adorned with a jacket meant for weather fifteen degrees warmer than it was, a thin woven scarf wrapped twice around a neck that held a purposeful face with short, wavy, light brown hair – maybe a little red. Sr. Pérez was the only one on the deck, and after I collected my limited items and stepped off the train in front of him I realized that I was the only soul destined for Beasain that night.
I was extremely nervous. I’ve always been comfortable in my own skin and confident in my ability to perform up to par in situations I belonged, but I wasn’t 100% sure this was one of them. I was scared that I had misrepresented myself and that the no-nonsense man standing before me would see through it immediately. For this precise reason I had crafted a statement and practiced saying it over and over with Estrella’s guidance in perfect Castilian Spanish explaining that it had been some time since I’d been in Spain and to forgive me the time it may take to get used to using the language again. At that moment I couldn’t remember a word of it. There was no question that Sr. Pérez intimidated me from the beginning.
2
I sat silent at the dinner table surrounded by his small family, afraid to say much and trying to be as courteous within the confines of a foreign language as I could be without making a catastrophic and inexcusable blunder. The flat was small, which I was used to having lived with the García family in Salamanca, but you never get used to the feeling that you’re going to make too quick a move and knock something over. We were halfway through dinner and I still wasn’t sure where I would be spending the night or what his intentions were with me at all from a business standpoint. His son stared at me across the table with a puzzled face that I was likely mirroring right back at him.
Sr. Pérez’s wife stood and asked if anyone would like wine. Being polite, I offered up my desire to make things less awkward by agreeing to a glass. At the same moment I agreed to a glass Sr. Pérez waved his wife off and calmly dismissed the idea with the shortest Spanish statement I could think of that meant, “we don’t need wine”. His wife sat back down and I cowered a bit in my chair assuming I had crossed a line by accepting the offer. He had me upended with only a few words. I was in over my head.
After dinner, we said goodbye to his wife and son and I followed him back into the common hallway of the apartment complex and toward the elevators sheepishly, no more informed than I was when I was on the train by myself. In retrospect, I came to know that the business at hand was not the thing to discuss at the dinner table. The table was for family, and his was a family I would never see again after that night.
His home was on floor six, but he pressed the button for two once we were in the elevator. The door opened and he led me to an apartment door. He produced a key, unlocked the door, and handed the key to me.
“I’ll be here to get you at 7:30 am”, he said in flawless Spanish. He went on to give me a rundown of the apartment, which evidently was mine, and was gone in thirty seconds. I found myself on the inside of a closed door; the only thing more daunting than the silence was the darkness. I fumbled around blindly until I found the light switch.
3
Home sweet home…
The apartment that Sr. Pérez and the management at Orkli gifted me was larger than the apartment in Salamanca I lived in with a family of three and a second American roommate. And I was alone here, with only cold floors and echoes to trigger my senses.
There was no entry to speak of – only an oddly long hallway that ended with a right turn down another long hallway. This second hallway had options. The first left led to a furnished living area. There was a couch, a small table with one chair, and a lonely bookshelf whose only tenant was the world’s smallest television.
From the living area you could access the kitchen, which was also fully equipped – not “American” equipped, but “everywhere else in the world” equipped. There was a refrigerator that was small for a family but large for a college dorm room. There was a stove with four gas-fed eyes and a small nook table, again with one chair. There were two plates, two bowls, two coffee cups, two drinking glasses, and two of every piece of silverware. There was no dishwasher, no microwave, and no garbage disposal.
From the kitchen you could exit back into the hallway and continue down. The next option to the right was a small bathroom – the only one in the apartment. A sink, a toilet, and a shower.
The hallway ended with another right turn, but first, straight at the end was a furnished bedroom. If you took the short right, there was a second unfurnished room to the left.
My bedroom had a small desk with a lone chair to the left along the wall as you entered. On the right was a single bed with the traditional Spanish space-saving drawers below it. One pillow, a single sheet, and a thin wool blanket completed the ensemble. Built with the bed was a small bookshelf to the right as you lie down. At the foot of the bed, also along the right wall, was a small closet, which was more than enough to house the few things I was able to carry on my back from Salamanca.
I had no idea what to expect with the morning. I had a long day of travel, an awkward meal, and now I was alone in an apartment, which seemed impossibly empty, cold, and solemn. I put on the warmest thing I had and crawled into my new bed. Before I turned the light off to sleep, I wedged a picture of my newborn niece Samantha between the creases of my bed’s bookshelf. On the opposite side of that shelf I wedged a picture I had cut from the USA Today newspaper I was reading before I left the Atlanta airport a few weeks before. It was a picture of a newly discovered country singer that I found quite attractive. In my mind, she had the quintessential American “girl next door” look. She’d been with me, along with Samantha, the past few weeks. I didn’t want to forget what an American girl looked like during this break from my norm. Her name was Faith Hill.
~
That first night was a lonely one, and the frigid apartment became unbearable at some point during my attempted slumber. I hustled down the hallway and squatted down in front of the radiator to assess the situation. I was more familiar with the typical European heating system having lived in Salamanca so long, but it was still such an inexact method. I cursed the stupid thing under my breath and cranked the regulator up. I could feel the heat start to fill the coils. Satisfied, I shuffled back down the hallway to my bed.
4
The knock on my door came around 8:00 am. I had showered, dressed in clothes matching the dress code Sr. Pérez had given me, and sat for about an hour waiting nervously for him to come get me. He was wearing a thin, worn, light mustard sweater, a heavy coat, dark corduroy pants and held a dripping umbrella. I looked at the umbrella, one more thing I didn’t have, and in my best Spanish gave him a short acknowledgement that I understood it was raining, then made a gesture with my empty hand indicating my lack of one. He looked at me like I was crazy and we headed down the elevator.
The walk to Orkli, where I would be working for the next several months, was as awkward a voyage as I’ve ever experienced. I understood about half of what he was saying as he attempted to hold the umbrella over both of us. One thing I definitely caught was the moment he stated that he would bring me an umbrella. It was evident that he assumed I wasn’t capable of procuring one myself.
That morning was spent meeting everyone around my station, which was situated just next to Sr. Pérez’s desk. Facing me across a walkway was Anún, a middle-aged attractive lady with light blonde hair, red lipstick, and an unstoppable smile that put me at ease immediately. To her left (my right) was Mesonero, a short, balding, homunculus of a man that seemed to be perpetually on the phone, his brow forever huddled in a look of concern and confusion with whomever he was talking to. Next to Anún to my left was Vicente, a terrifying man who spent most of his day yelling, whether it was on the phone or in someone’s face. He had a salt and pepper beard that probably would have been solid black if it weren’t for hypertension. He would stare at me often with a distasteful “what are you doing here” look. Vicente scared me.
During a tour of the factory, Alberto, which he now insisted I call him, explained to me how he saw things working with me at Orkli. I would assist him with his duties as Director of Purchasing by communicating with the English-speaking suppliers. This ended up being all the European countries other than Spain, Italy, and France. Orkli manufactures components used in space heating, water heating, and plumbing systems, and parts are purchased from all over the world to complement the manufacturing process.
The apartment was owned by the company and would be part of my deal. This was quite a relief, because I was penniless. On top of that, Orkli would automatically deposit 90,000 pesetas every two weeks in an account they had already set up for me. This was roughly $600 in US currency. He handed me an ATM card and told me the pin number. I was shocked at this but tried to mask my surprise. I assumed this would be a volunteer job where my general expenses were covered, but after some quick calculations it came to me that I might actually be able to have a life here in Ordizia.
My first day was full of nervous energy, but I think I did pretty well. The degeneration of my language skills didn’t seem to be as noticeable as I thought it might. For this I was thankful, but certainly not out of the woods by any stretch.
5
My first day at Orkli initiated a relationship with Vicente’s administrative assistant, Aitor. Aitor and I, it seemed, were set up by Alberto to become friends. I think Alberto was looking out for me, trying to get me plugged into the local young adult scene the best he could.
Aitor and I hit it off right away, mainly because we were around the same age and he was as interested in American culture as I was in the Basque way of life. We met after work for a drink and some of his friends joined us. This was the beginning of a complicated web of social experiences the likes of which I haven’t experienced since. Aitor and his friends introduced me to the “Cuadrilla” – a group of lifelong friends in the Spanish culture.
As Americans, we are familiar with the concept of “goodbye”; small town Spanish youth for the most part isn’t. As small town Americans, we live our young lives with a group of friends for several years. If we never move, this could be a stretch of eighteen years or even more. College usually brings on an entirely different collection of people as our personalities are sculpted, and once we enter the general workforce and our single professional lives another group shows up. By the end of our lives there are so many changes that it’s hard to keep track of all the characters.
Spanish small town youths form “cuadrillas” and they stay together for life. Most Spanish towns will have a “Cuadrilla Day” where the small groups of friends make themed shirts and hit the town together. I’ve experienced this a few times and it’s pretty unreal. There will be collections of cuadrillas of all ages roaming the streets partying. Senior groups standing next to 20-something groups, all drinking, singing and dancing together.
After my first day at Orkli, Aitor walked me to Beasain, which was not only the larger of the two towns, but also the more active community. In a small bar in the town center, Aitor’s cuadrilla started to assemble as I met one after the other. In all, there were about five members.
Aitor collected a “bote” because it was his turn. A bote, in this case, is a pot of money. Each time they gather, one of them takes point to handle the bote. A denomination is decided on – $5 to $10 normally – and the person in charge collects it from each of the others. The point person then does all the ordering and paying. There’s no discussion as to whose drink might cost more. It’s simple and efficient. If they run out of money, another collection takes place.
Aitor’s friends were soft-spoken, sweet people. I felt comfortable with them and they went out of their way to make sure of it. No one in the group could speak English, but they enjoyed trying. And they enjoyed helping me with my Spanish. I also got a crash course in Basque, which they would drift into randomly in the middle of any of their conversations with each other. It was easy to tell when that happened because the two languages are vastly different. In fact, there’s no relationship between them at all. Another easy way to tell was the mere fact that I suddenly couldn’t understand a word. It was frustrating at times, but I got used to it.
~
I returned to my flat that night feeling accomplished. I survived my first day at Orkli without showing my hand too bad, I’d met a group of friends that welcomed my company, and I’d settled in to a now very warm and cozy apartment thanks to my middle of the night radiator adjustment. The foundation was set. During my first few weeks in Ordizia I fell into a routine of sorts. I would go to work in the morning, spend a full day completing odd jobs for Alberto, either meet Aitor and his friends after work or go for a run through town, read, write, and go to bed. My language skills were slowly coming along, but there were still a lot of gaps that needed to be filled with knowledge and fluency. I hadn’t spoken a word of English, which was starting to wear on me. But all in all, things were going well. Then, one Saturday morning, there was a knock at my door.
6
I opened the door earlier than I needed to, after a long night out with the cuadrilla, to find Alberto standing there. He said something that I didn’t catch and walked past me into the foyer hall. I was uneasy about him just coming in without me inviting him, but technically it was his apartment more than mine. He continued to talk and walk as I followed him down the hallway. I tried to translate his words in my head, but having missed the beginning, I was lost. His destination was the radiator.
He squatted in front of my heat source, felt the heat in the coils, and turned the knob down. Now that I realized what his intentions were, it was easier to translate his ramblings. In a condescending way, he was explaining how a radiator works and the general concept of utilities and their costs like I was ten years old.
I experienced this type of talking down to when I lived with the family in Salamanca. In their culture, the men are taken care of by their parents until they marry, and the new wife takes over from there. He assumed that I was too immature to know anything about how life worked, and that I was being wasteful because of that ignorance. But something about this instance bothered me more than any one prior.
The flat got pretty cold that night, but the heater was still on, just fixed at a lower setting. It wasn’t as cold as that first night, but cold all the same.
On Monday morning I entered the office with my tail between my legs. I had reached a point with Alberto that I wanted to please him, and I felt that I blew that in a way. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since he left the flat.
My fears were confirmed. My frivolous ways were the talk of the plant. Not just the people in front of me day to day – Anún (whose motherly manner prompted me to start calling her Tia Anún), Vicente, Mesonero, and Alberto – but the random guys I would casually run into on the factory floor as well. Alberto was so interested in my day-to-day thoughts and actions that I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep the radiator incident to himself. I absorbed continued ribbing throughout the day, but the real trouble came when I was unable to truly defend myself due to my lack of fluency with Spanish. Once their attitudes toward me, and Americans in general, mixed with the mental frustration I was enduring with my language skills, I started to get angry.
When I returned to the flat I marched straight down the hall and stood in front of the radiator. The apartment felt pretty cold at that moment, but my inability to defend myself with words meant I had to defend myself with actions. Another millimeter of force and the knob would have snapped and fallen to the floor as I turned the radiator off completely. That was the last time I touched that regulator. It was off and it stayed off.
I looked out my window as the sun set on the other side of Txindoki. The majestic mountain was covered in snow and the wind whipped around the tip, blurring the summit against the sky. It was quiet, and I was spooked by the prospect of facing another night like my first one. I walked down the hallway to my bedroom and assessed the situation.
I had warm clothes, which I separated from the others. I put on the thickest socks I had, a hooded “California Track and Field” sweatshirt I owned for some reason, and a pair of flannel pajama pants. That would be my bedtime attire for the foreseeable future.
Faced with this new stand I was taking, I knew the most important thing in my possession was my zero-degree sleeping bag. When I came to Spain on this journey I had no idea what would happen. I certainly never could have predicted that I would have my own apartment in the Basque Region. I could have just as easily ended up backpacking around until I ran out of money. I’d done it before and it was where I was headed had I not landed the gig with Orkli. For that reason I had my bag, my backpack, and even a tent. Two years prior I spent five nights making my way from the north end to the south end of Portugal, sleeping on beaches the whole trek. That trip’s accommodation plans were budget-related, but I did it without any gear. This time I was prepared.
I unraveled my bag and laid it across the bed. It was certainly up to the task of keeping me warm through the night. It was built for exposure. Outside of that bed, however, I knew things were about to get challenging.
I made dinner and watched some TV. All the channels were in Spanish except for two: a cartoon network and Turner Classic Movies. I watched a Humphrey Bogart movie and then the Flintstones. Sometime during an argument between Fred and Thelma was when I started to see my own breath.
The next morning was the first of many challenging mornings to come. My bag was zipped over my head with only my mouth visible to anyone that might walk in, and my back ached from having a limited range of motion through the night. When I unzipped the bag a rush of cold air consumed me and I quickly zipped it back in place over my face. Inside the bag it was toasty, almost sweaty. But outside was a different story. I’d never felt an interior space that cold before. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to waste. I had to be at work and I don’t think that me calling in and claiming sickness was really going to help me make any headway with the respect quotient I craved from my coworkers. I sucked it up and unzipped the bag.
Once I was in the bathroom and had the shower running I thought it might get better, but the water took too long to get hot. I stood there as long as I could take it and then ran back down the icy tile hallway to the bedroom and climbed back into the bag. I heard the water running and thought, “Now I’m wasting water”. That’s when it occurred to me that I could be more efficient. Why get out of the bag until it was necessary? I stood up with the bag sucked tight around me and hopped down the hallway back to the bathroom. Once inside, I shut the door and waited until the mirror started fogging with steam. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen.
I showered, dried off in the steam filled room, returned to the security of my bag, and hopped back down the hallway to the bedroom. I actually got dressed inside the bag, stepped out, put on my shoes and jacket and headed out the door. It was early, but I didn’t care. I could add ‘arrives early’ to my list of things proven.
~
And so it went on. My nights were active with Aitor’s cuadrilla, my days were spent proving myself to a building filled with people that had a pre-conceived negative notion of Americans, and the hours in my flat were an exercise in frozen efficiency.
One afternoon as I walked through Beasain by myself, a guy walked toward me without averting his eyes. His face displayed an expression of recognition, which made me nervous – I was quite sure I’d never seen him before. He stopped me in my tracks.
“You’re the American,” he said with an air of assurance as if I wasn’t aware of that fact. I was used to that by now. Most people in the streets knew who I was just because I seemed so different. I was like an alien.
“I’m the American,” I concurred in Spanish.
“I love the U.S.,” he continued. “I’m planning to move there soon. To Miami Beach. Do you know Miami Beach?”
“I do,” I said with a smile. The guy was aggressively energetic, but I found it amusing in a way.
“My name is Jesús,” he said.
“I’m Todd, but you can call me Teo,” I answered. “I know it’s easier.” No one in Spain could say my name with any success because of the hard ending, and it was simple for me to revert to the Spanish nickname I’d acquired over the years.
“You and I are going to be great friends,” he went on.
Jesús was right, and it caused more turmoil than anything of a similar nature would have in his favorite country of America. For that reason, I never saw it coming.
PART TWO: A Cold Winter
Every nerve in my body is so naked and numb,
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from,
Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer,
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.
– Bob Dylan
7
The bloody bull gingerly stepped to the edge of the platform, its weight all the plank could handle as it bowed to a haunting creak that silenced the crowd. I treaded the crimson water just below the beast as it took its last steps in this world, its final shadow surrounding me. Its breath projected a rhythmic finality as the cadence slowed like a fading heartbeat. His eyes made one last look deep into my own, and he fell his final fall.
I woke up with a start. The violence of the nightmares was progressing. Even someone with no formal psychological training could diagnose what was happening to me: I was wrestling mental demons that were summoned by my inability to express myself. Not just to communicate, but to communicate deep thoughts and feelings. Opinions. These things, I began to realize, were necessities in the human experience. I was mentally frustrated, and it had reached a breaking point. The violent nightmares were only the beginning.
It was mid-February and I’d been a guest of the Basques for over a month. I’d perfected my morning frozen ballet, which included the innovation of never leaving my bag until I was inside the steam-filled bathroom. I could see my breath leave my body each night, but I would crawl into the bag and read before it became a problem. The bag really was my saving grace, but only in the physical realm. My mental state was another thing altogether.
I had plenty of social activity; Aitor’s cuadrilla kept me busy after work on most days and my new friend Jesús and his friends started to fill my late night schedule. I connected with Team Jesús quicker than I did Aitor’s group. We were from different worlds but our personalities gelled. It was an unprecedented admission to a second cuadrilla. There was still plenty of frustration though. Add alcohol to anything and things can get interesting. My language skills got exponentially better by injecting street experience, but I still struggled to truly connect emotionally. I continued to be a novelty to everyone around me.
Loneliness was the problem stated simply, but I had plenty of companionship. I just didn’t have any emotion. It was all work, partying, and laughter. No one really knew who I was; I was just “the American”, and I was there for everyone’s amusement.
The empty room next to mine now contained a fully pitched tent, which took up a lot of the floor space. On random nights, I opened the floor to ceiling doors in that room and slept in the tent bathing in the outside sounds. My apartment was situated next to the train route, and the noise soothed me. It was a way to escape the stillness. It was freezing outside, but with the heat off the open doors made little difference. The silence of the flat was deafening so the dark hour sounds of my barrio were welcomed and comforting.
Headaches came as often as the nightmares. They were different than any I’d ever experienced. Not migraine level, but somewhere in between. Often times I was nauseated with the pain and had to lie down. My mind was trying to break my body and vice versa, and my well-being was caught in the middle of the struggle.
The newest addition to my insanity was the conversations I had with myself in the mornings. During the time between the frigid bathroom environments and the steam-filled ones, I stared at myself in the mirror, fully donned in a hooded full-length sleeping bag, and started having conversations. I asked questions in English and answered them in Spanish. It became part of my daily routine. It was a teaching tool that I used unconsciously, and was really effective in helping me with my tenses and vocabulary. Every night we went out I would learn a new word or phrase and I started working these into my conversations using the mirror to practice before I showcased them in common interactions. It wasn’t premeditated though, and I never thought back on it until long after I left Spain. At the time, it was another trick to battle the loneliness.
8
Maite Ibáñez was her name. She was a member of my second cuadrilla and I was fond of her immediately. It wasn’t as much a physical attraction as a feeling of comfort. She made me laugh and had a way about her that lifted me from the depths I started to find myself in. When I started to suffer mentally, I became quiet and sunk into myself. I wasn’t quite there. Maite always picked up on this. She had a hard time navigating my accent – more than most anyway. For this reason she understood less of my spoken words than anyone else, but in a way she absorbed more. I could look at her, she would read my feelings, and would calmly manipulate the others to adjust their levels to accommodate my moods. It was remarkable really, and watching her do this became one of my pastimes.
Along with Maite, Jesús had four other people in his cuadrilla: Isa, Yoseba, Cristina, and Isa’s boyfriend whose name escapes me. Cristina, a cute, petite blonde, was Jesús’s girlfriend. I found it amusing that Jesús was fascinated by American culture and his girlfriend was one of the only blonde haired, blue-eyed girls in Spain. Isa had short, light brown hair that stylishly framed her face. She had big, bright eyes and smoked a cigarette like it was a sixth finger on her hand. Her boyfriend was a competitive cyclist and somewhat known in the area. Cycling was very popular across the Pyrenees region and many young Basque boys dreamed of burning through the Tour de France and its related circuits throughout their childhood. He had a small, toned frame with a buzzed haircut and glasses. Yoseba went cigarette for cigarette with Isa and was built for the bars. His head was shaved and his frame was effortlessly powerful. Redneck strong is what we would call it back home. But he liked his booze and his cigarettes, so anyone that he had a problem with could get away pretty easily. Jesús was tall, tan, and in good shape. His features were dark, with thick black eyebrows and a flattop black hairdo. His daily attire was as if America had thrown up all over him.
Maite had tanned skin and impossibly blue eyes. Her hair was dark, shoulder length and wavy. Her clothes were stylish but simple and she had a purpose to everything she said and did. She was like a big sister to me in a way, looking out to make sure that all comments remained fair and that my experience was a good one any minute we were together.
9
Basques were settled separately from the rest of the Spanish people, and their heritage is evident in both their lighter skin tone and the fact that having blue eyes isn’t uncommon. Many Basques think of themselves as superior to the Spanish populous and long for independence.
There is a radical sect of their people, like there is in most cultures (Ku Klux Klan, etc.), which uses violence to work toward this end. It seemed there were always kidnappings of public officials, car bombs, and aggressive demonstrations, but threats outnumbered actual injuries or deaths. They made a lot of noise but were focused in their demands and not really interested in hurting anyone. One afternoon I was walking in Donostia (San Sebastian to those other than Basques), a small town along the Bay of Biscay in northern Spain, when a car bomb detonated no more than twenty yards from me. It was loud and frightening, but there was no one in the car and seemed to be timed perfectly so that no one would get hurt. It was more smoke and fire than a Hollywood explosion, but scary all the same.
My only other ETA experience came one Saturday morning when I looked out the windows of my flat to see police cars and the La Guardia (Civil Guard) surrounding the building. There was a knock on my door and I opened it to see one of the guards asking to enter for a search. I didn’t really understand, but I had nothing to hide so I allowed him entry. It was obvious that he was looking for a person because he didn’t touch a thing. He just combed through the rooms and the closets. The next Monday at work, Alberto explained that a known ETA supporter, a woman, lived in the building with us. She was suspected as the getaway driver in the most recent kidnapping and they were hunting her. That was the last I heard of it.
The Basque culture afforded me one convenience, but my language skills weren’t good enough yet to take advantage of it. I looked Basque with my blue eyes. As long as I didn’t speak and I wasn’t in my new small town where everyone knew me, I could avoid the detection of being American – a quality with a negative connotation in a lot of European locales.
10
The explosion was deafening, intense, and threw me from my bed like I was a pebble. The heat sucked my bag around me as the air was drawn away before I could react. I writhed around desperately on the floor in a mass of melted material trying to free myself like a cocooned butterfly, but it wasn’t a miracle of nature. I was burning alive in a sea of flames and intense heat.
I kicked free of the burning bag and quickly forced myself to a standing position. My room was engulfed in smoke and flames, however something about it wasn’t right. I assumed that gaining higher ground would hurt me temporarily as the smoke started to fill the room, but it actually became easier to breathe. It was then I noticed that the flames were coming from the ceiling reaching for the floor, and the smoke was gathering about my feet instead of the ceiling.
“ETA! They found the girl the Guardia was looking for and they killed her! She lives right above me,” I thought to myself.
There was no time to ponder this. I needed to get out of my flat to safety. But the flames were like nothing I’d seen.
Everything was backwards, which posed a unique conundrum. If I gained high ground I would run myself into the flames, but if I dropped to the floor my lungs would be consumed with toxins I wouldn’t walk away from. It was burn or suffocate. Why was the smoke falling and not rising?
I made a break for the door, ducking down as far as I could without ridding myself of available oxygen. It was consumed in fire but I had no choice. I gathered force, lowered my shoulder, and barreled through it like a bull.
The door exploded in a furious starburst of light with the weight of my volition, but the other side wasn’t the egress I’d imagined. Instead, I found myself freefalling into an abyss. My apartment was gone and my stomach pushed upward as I fell endlessly through a black blizzard. Cold, black darkness. Silence.
I woke with a shudder and a small scream. The nightmares were commonplace. I lived with them.
~
March was approaching but the biting cold evenings refused to retreat, so I stayed true to my daily routine. Every day that I stood in my bag waiting for the shower’s steam to rush over me I would either stumble through my questions and answers with myself in the mirror or stand in silence thinking, in Spanish, what my day’s duties would involve. The want to please Alberto never receded as I refused to let him think of me as anything but worthy of what I was given – freezing or not.
Another thing I started to notice as the temperature in the bathroom reached a level of tolerance and I dropped the bag to the floor around my ankles was that I was starting to diminish physically. I had been running a lot, which kept me in shape, but combined with the amount of walking I did on a daily basis it was hard to take in as many calories as I was burning.
One morning at work I made my way across the factory floor to the receiving dock. The guys had a large scale they used to weigh freight – the only scale I was aware of in the country. The folks on the floor knew me well enough at that point that I stopped to joke with a few of them on my way, never lingering long enough for them to engage me to a point that I would get lost in the conversation. I kept it simple and continued moving.
Rafa, short for Rafael, was in charge of the loading dock during the normal day shift and he started yelling at me before I was within twenty yards of him. He was just one more that was fascinated that I was from the States and for some reason chose to be right here with him. One more that liked me, but didn’t understand me.
I asked him if I could use the scale and he stared me down with a confused look.
“For what?” he asked in Spanish.
“I’ve lost some weight since I got here and I want to know how much,” I replied, noticing that I thought a little less about the Spanish answer I spit out than normal. In fact, at that moment I couldn’t remember thinking about my answer at all. I hadn’t translated it to Spanish from English in my head before stating it. A bewildered smile graced my face as I stepped onto the scale.
“Setenta y séis,” reported Rafa.
“Seventy-six?” I shouted with a confused look that Rafa had no answer for. “What the hell?”
“Setenta y séis,” repeated Rafa not knowing what else to say.
I panicked for a second lost in thought.
“Kilos, Kilos,” Rafa explained pointing at the numbers on the scale. “No Libros.”
“Kilos,” I said under my breath with a hint of laughter – Americans have yet to grasp the metric system. It was still startling once I did the conversion in my head. I’d lost close to fifteen pounds.
I laughed with Rafa discussing my conversion mishap as well as general topics of the day. The conversation went on longer than it should have and I started worrying that Alberto was looking for me. I bid Rafa farewell and headed back to Purchasing.
As I walked, it occurred to me that my cracking up with Rafa was the longest conversation I’d had without using evasive tactics. We were simply talking and I wasn’t translating anything in my head. There wasn’t one thing he said that I didn’t understand. Maybe it was finally happening. Maybe I was finally making a breakthrough.
11
I wasn’t making a breakthrough – at least not a full breakthrough. Gaining comfort within a real conversation was certainly a positive change, but it only led to more frequent strife. My friends and coworkers sensed my language progression and engaged me more often. It seemed I was part of a non-stop series of conversations meant to test my skills. Every time one interaction ended another would begin. Multiple topics, different people, names, places, times, dates; it never ended. It was like juggling chainsaws on a unicycle, never having the luxury of averting you gaze or relaxing. It was the beginning of a brutal series of headaches.
The first one hit me during a weekend trip to the mountains with Aitor and Cuadrilla #1. We climbed a snowcapped Txindoki and then spent the night in a rustic cabin that belonged to one of their families.
The climb was actually a lot of fun. It’s not a technical climb, meaning the use of climbing gear and know-how, but more of a long hike. It’s 10,000 feet to the summit, and the snow makes for a labor-intensive day, but I won’t be writing any “scaling the North Face” adventure stories any time soon.
We took some great pictures that day, and all seemed right with the world until we reached the cabin. I was used to the group switching from Castellano to Basque midsentence, but now that I understood a lot more it was frustrating. Basque was beyond my reach – many scholars contend that it’s the most complex language in history. It’s taught only in the Basque country in an effort to keep it from extinction. Many of the purists in the area took pride in only speaking Basque. I appreciated their culture, but the language switch was like nails on a chalkboard to someone struggling to hang in on every conversation.
That afternoon we had a purist with us, so there was a lot more Basque spoken than anything else. He taught me how to play an ancient Basque instrument that had me hitting blocks of wood against other blocks of wood sending different tones through the hills and valleys that surrounded us. His instruction was in Basque, so basically a bunch of noise. The cryptic conversations around me wore me down mentally until I had to retire into a bunkroom in the cabin and lay down. It was the worst headache I’ve ever had. I laid there trying to relax and was overcome with the desire to leave, but I had grown accustom to relying on my cuadrillas for everything. I had no car, no sense of where I was geographically, and therefore no control. I nursed the headache and tried to maneuver my way through constant inquiries regarding my condition. Another ailment became clear as I missed Cuadrilla #2 and wanted to be in the streets with them moving from bar to bar as they most surely were. It was a smaller, less significant version of torture.
I was bad company that weekend. Even worse, from that instance I started to make excuses with Cuadrilla #1, opting for Cuadrilla #2 when given a choice. I never meant to hurt anyone, but feelings are fragile among these groups and there seemed to be no way around it. I often lied to save face, and was even caught a few times out with Maite and Isa after declining an invite from Aitor to go here or there. It made for a few awkward situations, but I built it up in my head to an unrealistic level. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was just more comfortable with one group than the other. In a normal life, this could be dealt with seamlessly, but in the microcosm that was my Spanish life it felt more significant.
~
It was indeed a cold winter. But all winters end, and the sun did shine on my face again. The sun brought more than a change in temperature; it brought a bit of hope to my lonely, frigid home, and something about the presence of hope brought a change in me.
The nightmares got worse before they ended, but they did end. The headaches intensified before they subsided, but they did subside. And there finally came a morning when I couldn’t see my breath. I climbed out of my bag and opened the storm blinds letting a bright new sun cast its light across my tiny room. Txindoki was brilliant in the distance as I turned and walked barefoot down the hallway, leaving the bag in a crumbled pile on my bedroom floor.
PART THREE: A Spring Awakening
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
~
For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.
― Cynthia Occelli
12
A more brilliant sunlight finds its way through your windows on days when your mind is at peace. The world around you sheds a layer of worn skin and colors are bright and new like a spring bloom. For the first time the floors of my flat radiated warmth I hadn’t felt on any prior day I’d spent in Spain, including my days as a student in Salamanca when I was blinded by tender ignorance. In Salamanca, every day was blanketed with wine and song – an advantage you inevitably lose as the weight of responsibility slowly tips the scales in a direction unfamiliar to youthful eyes.
And so it happened to me on a day in April of 1996. The murky waters that flooded my everyday life in Ordizia cleared in what seemed to be an instant. An awakening of sorts I still don’t fully understand. The human brain is complex beyond our ability to grasp it, which seems contradictory; our brain isn’t evolved enough to fully understand itself.
I’ve never had a moment of clarity or visibility that matched what I felt on that day. It seemed to come from nowhere even though I knew it came from months and possibly years of a labored mental state. Your brain will finally break if you force it to. I sacrificed my mental stability in order to grow, but I wish I could say that I knew what I was doing. I certainly didn’t.
Everything that happened that day was doused with the fairy dust of my new superpower: the ability to communicate not just my thoughts, but also my feelings. It was with a more intense step that I walked across the factory floor and through the purchasing pit to my desk that morning. I was speaking to everyone who would listen and even caught myself understanding the humor of my foreign colleagues, a challenge that any bilingual person will tell you is one of the most difficult to overcome.
That day at work was my best by far, but it wasn’t until the sun set on the horizon and the sounds of the night rose and spread through the streets that my revelations fully blossomed.
Maite and Isa met me for an unforgettable night of roaming the Beasain streets, the liquid lubrication all that I needed to speak faster and understand all the night’s happenings without thinking. Not spending every moment translating all the words in my head left room for simple expression. I was able to look at Maite and Isa and tell them everything that I couldn’t get off my tongue in the months prior. I was ecstatic. Maite cradled my face in her hands at one point in the night and in a Spanish sentence unadjusted in vocabulary or speed of delivery to appease a less gifted speaker, said simply, “I love seeing you happy”. It was an elementary expression, but the weight of my understanding not just the words, but also the strength of her sentiment, seemed significant.
That night found its way to a blurry end, but not before my life in Spain was changed forever. The next few days continued with a similar flow, and it was that same week that I received the best news I’d gotten since I arrived. A letter from one of my best friends from home indicated that he and a friend wanted to stop through for a visit as they were making their way across Europe. It had been over three months since I’d seen an American or even spoken English to another human being other than a phone call to my parents every two weeks and the occasional phone call to suppliers in Germany that I had befriended over the phone at Orkli. I couldn’t wait to share my struggle and now my success with someone who actually knew me.
13
Waiting for the train to arrive that carried my friend and his traveling companion was excruciating. I was like a gossip-spitting teenager entrusted with a secret that was about to burst out of my mouth in an avalanche of words, phrases and nonsense. The last few days had been a new and enlightening experience for me. The culture, the environment, and the people no longer had a stranglehold on my psyche pushing me farther into darkness with every passing day. I was the transformed Grinch of Basque Country after meeting Cindy Lou Who. It was candy canes and sleigh bells at this point, and I was ready to show off my new town, my new friends, and my new talent.
As they stepped off the passenger car, I was taken back to my days riding the rails from country to country without a peseta to my name or a razor in my bag. They looked like I felt a week before. We hugged and it was the happiest I’d been in months.
They were well equipped for the journey they were on and appeared as seasoned travelers trying their best not to look American. My first thumbs up went to their luggage: backpacks ripe and ready for any bunking situation. I was impressed. It was only a few years before that I met two friends from college during a short stay in Amsterdam where they greeted me with rolling garment bags and collared shirts. They stared blankly in my direction as they took in the full scope of my unshaven, disheveled appearance. I was a man that had spent the last few nights sleeping on a cot above a live music bar in the Red Light District, worn down and beaten from weeks on the trail.
This meeting of friends was altogether different. They actually appeared to know what they were doing. They didn’t speak Spanish though, so I was as indispensible as I hoped I’d be. Plus, I had a kitchen.
We dropped their bags at the flat, they showered and cleaned up within twenty minutes, and we hit the streets. A huge meal was followed by the first bar of the afternoon. One by one, Cuadrilla #2 started trickling into the social scene. I led the two Americans from bar to bar picking up my Spanish brethren as we went. First Yoseba joined the wave, always early to darken the door of any drinking establishment. Next came Isa, then Maite. Jesús and Cristina followed suit somewhere in the haze of the night and I was in full translation mode.
It was a hyperactive assault on both languages. I was on fire. There wasn’t one thing said by either contingent that I couldn’t put through the autocorrect in my head and spit out in the object’s native tongue without hesitation. I never stopped talking in either language. Drinks flowed and smiles went from ear to ear as two cultures gelled.
I’m certain that to this day no accomplishment in my life has been more blatantly demonstrated than my Spanish was that night. I’m also certain that reaching every milestone since pales in comparison to what it took out of me to reach that moment. By the time my friends rolled away on a northbound train a few days later, I was a different person entirely – no longer The American, but The American Local.
I lost every battle in a war of words throughout those months except the final one. Staying out there to fight when I was so clearly beaten made all the difference. It was around this time that I found myself focused again on my initial objective, lost in the muck to this point: finding my life’s path.
As fitting an end as my overcoming of the language barrier seemed, the reality I came to face was that it only served as an opening to a world full of choices that had to be made. My experiences living abroad were simply a prelude to the opportunities that came with ambition and youth. Still having no clue as to how I wanted to move along with my life, the wind of my breakthrough stymied and my sails fell dormant. My departure was imminent and I really had nothing to return to. Depression cloaked me once again, but this time I could express my feelings to those I had let in. In the end, this made all the difference.
14
Looking back now at my final days in the Txindoki villages, I envy the younger me. I lived like a rock star once my personality wasn’t lost on the locals. I was still an exotic from a faraway land, but they finally saw me for who I was as a person and not as a crude microcosm of American culture.
I made the most of the few weeks I had remaining. My first move was to accept an invitation from my co-worker, Tia Anún, to join her and a few others in a Basque cooking class. It was such an odd feeling showing up without nerves and fully confident in my communication skills – basically it was a cooking class, but taught in a different language. I was relieved to find that even with unfamiliar cooking term usage I was able to follow along without a hitch. It was taught in Basque, but they translated everything to Castellano for my benefit. This was fine with me. I knew that I could study the rest of my life and never fully understand Basque.
The class reminded me of a sailing course I took instead of following the rest of my Salamanca friends around Europe during our Spring Break two years prior. They had their fun, but I chose to travel to Barcelona by train and join five Spanish strangers making their way along the Costa Brava in a small sailboat. My Spanish was decent at that point, but the added sailing vocabulary made for a rough few days. Other than nearly perishing in a brutal storm that had me curled up below deck with four inches of water sloshing our gear along the galley floor, it was a great experience.
The cooking class brought nothing but joy in my final days. It was there that I finally felt camaraderie with people I worked with.
On the social front, other than my long nights in the bars, satisfaction came on Tuesday nights in the local movie theater. Once spring started, Tuesday nights became movie night for all young people in town, which included both my cuadrillas. They played a reasonably recent American movie dubbed in Spanish, and I was there every Tuesday.
The strangest thing happened once the reels faded the screen black and the lights came on: people I didn’t know personally started to talk to me. There was something about the magic of Hollywood that drew them in, or perhaps it was a different confidence I had in my eyes that lowered the wall, but I was suddenly in play. For four weeks I held court in the center section of the Beasain Cinema answering questions about the United States, Americans and their customs, and why it was that it seemed everyone was shooting at each other at all times. What struck me was that they had no real context to know fantasy from reality. “Are there really rogue cops running around New York City dodging explosions and killing 5-6 people a day?” “Do you personally know Bruce Willis?”
I’ve never felt more like a celebrity than I did those four nights. I think I could probably handle it given the opportunity.
15
For my last weekend in Spain I traveled to Donostia, a picturesque water town on the Bay of Biscay that I visited a few times during my stint in Salamanca. Jesús and a few of his friends outside the cuadrilla were passing through there that weekend and I made plans to meet them one of the nights. Other than that, I planned a solo excursion. Maite, Isa, and anyone else I would have liked to spend that time with were unavailable, so I chose Donostia to say goodbye to Spain. Alone.
Traveling alone is a worthwhile measuring stick for a lot of things, but especially when it comes to knowledge of language. Buying train tickets, navigating stations, finding hostels, speaking to cab drivers, and just carrying a general “I know what I’m doing” awareness keeps you moving efficiently and safe. I wanted solitude that weekend, which seemed unlikely after so many weeks of fighting the longing for companionship and understanding. I knew I would find solace overlooking La Concha and the shores of Donostia.
I slept in a small, 2nd floor room in the city center that overlooked a small alleyway filled with craftsmen peddling their wares. After a full night’s sleep I strolled down the alley on Saturday morning chatting with the people and examining their crafted products. I was looking for something to give my niece, Samantha, when the time was right that might commemorate the endurance I mustered in Spain and help pull focus to a unique, well-spent age of trial. I found a charm unique to the city, and bought it seeing that it was perfect. I then moved along through the corridor and out to La Concha, one of the most beautiful beaches in Europe.
I think that for everyone, in some way, the ocean inspires deep thinking. I assume its vastness pulls you inward and sheds light on the weight of the world around you. It makes you small. As I leaned against the wrought iron barrier with La Barandilla at my knees and peered out at the Bay of Biscay, that’s exactly how I felt.
The day before, during my final shift at Orkli, I was approached by one of the executives and proffered a six-month job doing marketing research for their possible expansion into the U.S. marketplace. It seemed to be a logical next step that would lead me into a career in international trade and possibly secure me a post with one of Orkli’s trade partners in New York City. It was logical, yes. But logical seemed boring to me, and I couldn’t shake that feeling. However, it was the only road marked at that point, and I’d reached an end to my wandering. I was in need of a direction.
I know it was in that moment, although subconsciously, that I decided to accept it. The only other thing on my calendar in the coming weeks was an appointment with a friend in Auburn who had been diligently taping every episode of Friends in anticipation of my return. Other than my picture of Faith Hill, now securely tucked in my journal, I harbored a love for Jennifer Aniston’s hair that would take precedence over any job post once I touched American soil.
16
That evening, I met Jesús and his friends in a loud club along the shore for a few drinks. Before saying goodbye and heading back to my rented room, a funny thing happened. Donostia is frequented by American students making their way to or from Spain – a way stop to destinations unknown. Loud bars on the water are like magnets to Americans, so when we encountered some I wasn’t surprised. Other than my friends from home sliding through Ordizia and Beasain, these were the first Americans I’d seen in several months, and of course, they were rude.
Not all Americans are rude in Europe, but a lot of them are. I certainly don’t condone it, but I do understand it. We live in an isolated state where many of the world’s standards call home. We expect everyone to speak English because most people do. That’s just one example.
These guys were about my age and behaving in a more raucous manner than the situation called for. They were being belligerent with the bartender and getting frustrated because he couldn’t understand what they were ordering. Their attempt at a solution was to order the same thing only louder. They were cursing loudly and being general idiots, I imagine because they assumed no one could understand them anyway.
Jesús decided to talk to them in his limited English and he did pretty well, although they snickered at his accent. Jesús, being so enamored with the American culture, didn’t notice anything derogatory about their attitudes. He kept laughing with them as they laughed at him. I kept silent, only speaking enough to introduce myself in a Spanish accent and pretending I was one of the many light-skinned, blue-eyed Basques.
Once I reached a level of intolerance, I followed them into the restroom. Standing shoulder to shoulder along the line of urinals doing the business we all are a slave to no matter what your country of origin, I allowed them to continue their drunken tirades of worthless rambling. Once in front of the sink, I stared deep into their reflected eyes and stated in perfect English, “You guys are behaving like imbeciles and the only reason I’m playing the part of a local out there is because I’m embarrassed to be tethered to you idiots.” I dried my hands and left without waiting for a reply. When they made their way back to the bar, they avoided our area all together. They never said another word to me.
17
It was at some point during the following week that I left Spain. I did my best to spend as much time with my friends as possible, but I found their attitudes toward my departure strange. It didn’t seem to resonate with them that my time there was over and that there would come an evening soon where I wouldn’t appear in the bars. Even with my newfound expressive abilities, I was unable to secure the sentiment I needed from them. I needed to feel missed before I was gone because deep down I knew that I would likely never see them again. If I couldn’t feel missed in their presence, I wouldn’t feel missed in their absence. I struggled mightily with this through the rest of my days in Spain.
The night before my departure I went out expecting a big final night with a mixture of both cuadrillas. After a few hours of barhopping alone, it was evident that my departure was an afterthought to everyone but me. It was a sad evening, and the alcohol didn’t help my depression. I didn’t understand why I was so ignored in those final hours and I was truly hurt. I walked home through the evening not wanting to be seen any longer.
Once I arrived at my flat, I sat down and wrote a letter in Spanish twice. One I would leave under Alberto’s door in the morning for Aitor to communicate to Cuadrilla #1 and the other I would leave for Maite to communicate to Cuadrilla #2.
As I wrote the letter, it occurred to me that the reason I wasn’t getting the somber reaction I needed from my friends could have been the fact that they had never in their lives had to say goodbye to anyone before. Not like this anyway. This was, by all predictions, a permanent goodbye. Emails, text messages, Facebook, cell phones…these were all futuristic concepts unavailable at that point for real communication. I would write letters of course, but how long would that last? This was a pure goodbye, an experience they had never endured. This cultural realization seemed significant to me, so I copied the same letter in both English and Spanish for the young eyes of my niece, who I hoped might one day follow in my footsteps.
The following morning I battened down the hatches of my flat and stuffed my worldly possessions into may frame pack. I broke down my tent and bid goodbye to the indoor campsite I created. I stood there looking at the empty room that had been a vacation home within my apartment and reminisced of the hours spent fighting a lonely madness. I seemed so far removed from that time that I had to laugh a little. It did help me in some way, so I allowed it a moment of reflection.
I rolled my sleeping bag and tightly secured it to my pack. I wasn’t denied heat, but I stubbornly denied it myself and that bag was the only thing that kept me alive as a result.
I tucked my handwritten calculation of “days endured” into my journal along with my Faith Hill picture and zipped it away with the rest of my belongings. Before shutting the door for the last time, I stood in the quiet hallway and reflected. I fought back tears as the months ran through my mind. The finality of it all was a hard thing to accept. I knew that at no point in my future would I be standing again in this moment – this stage of life that was filled with the excitement of the unknown. This apartment was the final weigh station from which my future began. Once you’re in that moment, there’s no going back. Decisions from there lead to others. There will always be choices, but your motion is perpetual. It wasn’t down the hallway of my Ordizia flat I was looking, but across a mid-life purgatory meant to force my next unavoidable step, and I knew that once the door closed, I would never be welcome on the other side of it again.
As it clicked shut, I heard the echo of the lock permeate through the empty rooms on the other side of the door.
18
The gate was latched and Maite’s family’s ice cream/pastry shop closed that morning when I stopped on my way to the train station. I had an hour to catch my train to Madrid and had left time in anticipation of seeing Maite, saying a proper goodbye, and giving her the letter I had written the night before. It was fitting, and comical in a way, that a misunderstanding of hours in my communication with Maite would be the cause of me never seeing her again.
I ripped the letter to Maite and the rest of Cuadrilla #2 from my journal, rolled it neatly, and wedged it in the latched gate for her to find. I gave the facade of Ibáñez one last look, then spun toward the train station and began my final walk through Beasain.
~
The train station was quiet and sparsely populated. I found a dark area along the Madrid-bound rail that matched my melancholy mood and dismounted my life’s belongings from my shoulders. I leaned on a support beam and settled with my back against the pack on the dirty station platform.
Over the two years I spent in and out of Europe, I gained a grand affection for train stations. They are the hearts of a traveler’s circulatory system placing every conceivable destination at your fingertips. I drank bottles of wine and broke bread with strangers on those platforms, changed the course of my direction with a coin flip, and even slept on their benches more than once. To this day I’ve never been to Copenhagen due to the last minute convincing of three Cuban girls in Salzburg, Austria for me to follow them to the beer gardens of Munich. We had quite a time in Germany, but I think I would have loved Copenhagen.
These thoughts clouded my mind as the southbound train clanged to a slow halt on the rail. I stood, stretched, and gathered my things to climb on board.
As I turned and lumbered forward, I was startled by the sudden panting presence of Maite and Isa blocking my path to the train. Between labored breaths, Isa struggled to light a cigarette before saying a word. Maite began by expressing her apology for missing me at Ibáñez and held up the letter I had left. She said a few simple words and hugged me. Isa followed suit between drags. I was lost in the emotions that had built up over the hours before and had yet to muster a response when Maite cradled my face in her hands as had become custom when she felt me hurting. She smiled, and in her eyes I saw recognition of hardship. Her hands were soft against my face as her head nodded slightly forward. After months of struggling to express myself audibly, a wordless understanding passed between us as she allowed me to go silently with closure.
I kissed them both on the cheek and lifted myself onto the train. As the car rumbled south, I stared out across the Pyrenees foothills for the last time, and in a culmination of mixed emotions, a tear fell into a solaced smile.
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