He repeats my question, possibly for melodramatic effect, and sinks the whiskey in a single gulp.
‘Two things happened. The first is that they set off a car bomb in Santa Pola, a bomb that killed a six-year-old girl. She was playing with toys in her bedroom. You were probably in Madrid when it happened. You probably took part in the manifestations which followed.’ ‘Manifestations’ is a mistranslation of the Spanish word for ‘protest’. ‘The E-T-A did not think to find out if the young girl was there. She was just a child, innocent of politics, of frontiers. And the day after the bombing I was very shaken, it surprised me to feel this way. I could not work, I could not sleep. For the first time I could not even talk to my wife or to my colleagues. It was as if all of my doubts about the direction of my life had been brought together by this single incident. They had printed the girl’s photograph in the newspaper. She looked like my own daughter, almost a copy. The same eyes, the same hair, the same clothes. And I thought, “This is madness, this cannot go on.” And to make it worse, a few hours after the bombing I was forced to issue a statement on behalf of the party, saying that we would be happy to “analyse” the situation. Not condemning the accidental murder of an innocent child, but “analysis”. A nothing word, a word that Rumsfeld might use, even the fucking tax inspector Aznar. The prime minister called us “human trash”, and for once he was right. Then, one week later, another bomb, and I thought, “Now the ban will go through,” and of course it did. The electricity was ordered to be shut off. No water came to any of the Batasuna offices across the whole of Euskal Herria. And in private I criticized the leadership, I told them they could not see what was going on, although of course nobody knew the extent of my dissatisfaction. Then I marched through the streets of the city with everyone else in protest against what the government was doing, because it was undemocratic, because it was stupid of the judge, Garzon, but the situation was hopeless. My heart had gone.’
Across the room, Juan emits a tight, rasping cough, like a dog with something caught in its throat. I hope he chokes. Arenaza leans on the shelf and lights another cigarette. There are dried balls of chewing gum, like little pieces of brain, lying at the bottom of his ashtray.
‘But the killing hasn’t stopped,’ I tell him. ‘Two weeks ago a police chief was shot dead…’
‘Yes, in Andoain. Eating his breakfast in a bar.’ Mikel’s face almost collapses with the pointlessness of it all. If this is an act, it is Oscar-winning. He is now in the throes of a full confession. ‘So I wanted to get out of it anyway. The ban came at the right time.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
He laughs half-heartedly. ‘Well, we confide in strangers, don’t we? I am drunk. I am not careful.’ He leans towards me. ‘This is not the sort of thing that I can tell my friends, Alec. A man does not leave the party. There are those who would take revenge.’
‘You mean E-T-A?’
‘Of course I mean E-T-A.’ He tries to drink more whiskey, forgetting that it is finished. ‘There is a younger leadership now, more brutal. And then there is the fear that we all lived with, of reprisals from the families of the victims. We were the spokesmen of the armed struggle, we appear on television, and that always made us a target for revenge.’
‘And now you’re caught in the middle?’
Upon reflection, very quietly, Arenaza agrees. ‘Yes, in the middle.’ U2 pounds on the stereo – A Sort of Homecoming from The Unforgettable Fire – while he stares despondently at the ground. When he stoops, the muscles in his shoulders swell and stretch the fabric of his sweater.
‘And the second thing?’
‘What?’
‘You said two things happened. The bomb and something else.’
‘Oh.’ His head rears up, as if regaled by memory, and for a moment all of the pain and the doubt and the sadness seems to leave him. He looks suddenly happy. ‘The second thing that happened was that I fall in love.’
‘With your wife?’
It is a stupid question and Arenaza laughs in a way that opens up his face, gives it light. ‘No, not with my wife. Not my wife. With Senorita Rosalia Dieste. A young woman. From Madrid, in fact. We meet two months ago, at a conference on new energies here in Donostia, at the Hotel Amara Plaza. She is an industrial engineer, very beautiful. Ever since – how can I say? – we enjoy ourselves.’
He is grinning manically. The ladies’ man.
‘She’s your mistress?’
‘My mistress,’ he says proudly, as if the description pleases him. I feel like giving him advice on not getting caught. Get an email account that your wife knows nothing about. Keep any presents that she gives you in a drawer at work. If you go to her house, leave the loo seat down after using the bathroom.
‘So you’ve been to see her? She comes up here and you try to get away from your wife?’
‘It is not this easy. She also has a man she lives with. A boyfriend. But next week I am coming to Madrid to be with her. On Thursday. So we spend the weekend together at my hotel.’ As an afterthought, he adds, ‘Maybe we should meet for an evening, no? You show me around Madrid, Alec?’
Is this part of the grand plan? Is this what Julian wants?
‘With Julian and Sofia?’
‘Sure. But the two of us as well. Rosalia has to go home at night so I have a lot of time in my hands. We go to Huertas, we go to La Latina. I know a wonderful Basque restaurant in Madrid, the best cooking in the city. Two men with no cares in the world. I would like to leave all of my problems behind. I have no responsibilities for five days. And we find you a girl, Alec. You have a girl?’
His hand slaps onto my biceps as I reply, ‘Nothing regular,’ and shake my head. ‘Julian doesn’t know anything about this?’
‘Julian?’
The idea seemed to take him by surprise.
‘Julian. Julian Church.’
‘I know who you mean. No, he must know nothing. Nobody knows anything, and you must speak to nobody about it.’ He starts grinning again, wagging his finger. ‘Can you imagine telling Julian this, anything that I have told you? He would not understand. He would be English about it and wave his hands in the air, trying to make it all go away. They do not understand sex or politics in your country. You do, Alec, I can see that. Maybe it is because of your family’s history, the suffering in Ireland and the Baltics.’
‘What? That helps me to understand sex?’
He laughs. ‘Of course, of course. But I tell you this. I once shared a room with Julian and he was asleep as soon as he turned out the light. No dialogue in his brain, no conscience or worry. Just a flick of the switch and – Boom!’ – Arenaza chops his hand through the air – ‘Julian Church snores. Can you imagine such a person? So peaceful. No struggle in his soul.’
Why were Julian and Mikel sharing a room?
‘That does sound like him, yes. Yes it does.’
‘But of course it was not always this way. Like all of us, he has also had troubles in his relations.’
‘Yes.’
He obviously thinks that I know Julian far better than I do.
‘For example when he was living in Colombia.’
‘Colombia.’
‘All the problems with his wife.’
‘Oh yes.’
Sofia has never mentioned anything about living in Colombia. Arenaza looks at me doubtfully, but he’s too drunk to make the connection.
‘You know about his time in South America? You know about Nicole?’
‘Of course.’ I have never heard Julian speak of any woman of that name, nor of any time spent in South America. It certainly didn’t come up when I ran checks on him three years ago. ‘He told me over lunch one day. It must have been difficult for him.’
‘Of course, of course. Your wife runs off with your best friend, this is more than “difficult”. I think it nearly killed him.’
I am grateful for the low light and the din of the taverna, because they help to smother my reaction. Julian had a wife before Sofia?
