that’s all I have left, because the rest of my family died in the Holocaust – all those ancestors, the cousinage. They all died. So I guess I feel…a bit of an orphan.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Not unlike you.’
Amy’s yellow hair was kicking in the cool rainy breeze through the car window. Her monologue seemed to have calmed her; she seemed less alarmed.
‘Take the right here. Past the chapel.’
He turned the wheel obediently.
‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘I sometimes wonder if my Jewishness explains my attachment to the Basques, because they have such a sense of who they are, and where they belong. They’ve been here for so long. One people, living in one place. Whereas the Jews have wandered, we just keep wandering.’ She rubbed her face, as if trying to wake herself up. ‘Anyway. We are nearly there.’
David changed a gear as he took a final corner. He thought of Miguel Garovillo, the lean, menacing features, the dark and violent eyes. Amy had assured him Miguel was not going to show up at his father’s house. José had guaranteed he would not be around.
But the way Miguel had come for Amy in the bar was just too hard to forget. Wild and violent jealousy. Something more than jealousy. A kind of lustful hatred.
Amy gestured. ‘Slow down – it’s the little road here.’
It was a shaded and very rutted track, that seemed to lead directly into the misty mountain forests. Carefully David nudged the car through the muddy narrows; just as the wheels began to slither they turned into a clearing and Amy said: ‘There.’
The house was tiny, pretty, brightly whitewashed, and trimmed with green wooden shutters. The rain had stopped and spears of sunlight lanced the evanescing fog. And standing in front of the house, proudly waving a beret, was the sprightliest old man David had ever seen. He had very long earlobes.
‘Epa!’ said José Garovillo, looking at David very closely as he climbed out of the car. ‘Zer moduz? Pozten naiz zu ezagutzeaz?’
‘Uh…’
‘Hah. Don’t worry, my friend David…Martinez!’ The old man chuckled. ‘Come in, come in, I am not going to make you speak Basque. I speak your language perfectly. I love the English language, I love your swearwords. Fuckmuppet! So much better than Finnish.’
He smiled and turned to Amy. And then his smiling face clouded for a moment as he regarded the fading bruise on her face.
‘Aii. Amy. Aiii. I am so so so sorry. Lo siento. I hear what happened in the Bilbo.’ The man shuddered with remorse. ‘What can I do? My son…my terrible son. He frightens me. But, Amy, tell me what to do and I will do it.’
Amy leaned close and reassured him with a hug.
‘I’m fine. David helped me. Really, José.’
‘But Amy. El violencia? It is so terrible!’
‘José!’ Amy’s response was sharp. ‘Please. I am completely OK.’
The elderly smile returned.
‘Then…we must go and eat! Always we must eat. When there is trouble the Basques must eat. Come inside, Davido. We have a feast to satisfy the jentilaks of the forest.’
There was no time to ask any further questions; as soon as they sat down they were presented with food and drink, endless food and drink.
Fermina, José’s much younger wife, turned out to be a fervent cook; with dark eyes and bangled arms she served them traditional Basque food from her miniature kitchen, all of it rapturously introduced and explained by José. They had fiery nibbles of Espelette chillies skewered with tripotx – lamb’s blood sausage from Biraitou; they had a Gerezi beltza arno gorriakin – a cherry soup the colour of claret served with a white blob of crème fraiche; then the ‘cheeks of the hake’ decorated with olives; this was followed by unctuous kanougas – chocolate toffee – and soft turron nougat from Vizcaya, and Irauty sheep’s cheese next to a daub of cherry jam, and all of it sluiced down with foaming jugs of various Basque ciders: red and green and yellow and very alcoholic.
Between the courses of this enormous meal, José talked and talked, he explained the origins of the beret amongst the shepherds of Bearn, he declaimed on the splendours of the ram-fighting of Azpeita, he showed David a cherished ormolu crucifix once blessed by Pope Pius the Tenth, he spoke mysteriously of the cromlechs in the forests of Roncesvalles built by the legendary giants and the mythical Moors, the jentilaks and the mairuaks.
It was exhausting – but also engaging, even hypnotic. By the end