A New Year’s Eve impossible to forget

 

‘What do not happen to me is not possible to occur in this world’ -murmured that cloudy New Year’s Day Bixente the mason. The thermometer of the Gate of Mondragon only showed two Celsius degrees that morning. ’I have walked on the roofs, not always tied with ropes, when building houses, but look, inside my house the weirdest things have happened to me! -continued to himself.

‘Bixente of Larrino, what intense and blind anger you have received from your ancestors!’-he thought

‘How would be the atmosphere in Asatza, in Goronaeta, in Ugastegi, in the filled with shepherds’ shacks   Degurixa or in my Larrino, with this intense cold?’ -kept thinking.

He didn´t get angry about everything, but sometimes he felt like he was being taken away by demons. He knew that his children sometimes took a sausage from the oil jar and took it to Santa Barbara Hill to eat it there with their friends. But that was normal for him, the usual act of pretending not to see from a father, it was nothing else. But what happened yesterday…

‘Besides, I don't complain about my children, because they are formal.  When school ends, they leave the books in the coal bunker and almost everyone goes to the farms to work. Joseba and Salbadora to Urkulu farmhouse, Anjel to Kakotegi farmhouse, Dolores to Saburdi farmhouse, Juan Bautista to Oxiña farmhouse, María Luisa to Escoriaza, Basilisa to Legazpia, Bixentiko to Arrue farmhouse, Glori to Bedoña. There they will learn what life is really like. Only Rosario is left at home’-he said to himself thoughtfully

‘Once Anjel arrived from Kakotegi, very proud and totally amazed, telling how big the farmhouse pig, Burdintsu, was. He said: Burdintsu had sixteen arrobas. Stressing with a higher tone the word sixteen ‘- Bixente said to himself, feeling a smile inside him.  

It was not the first time that anger had taken him to the limit. He remembered the anger of the chickpeas. There was his wife, Pascasi Osinaga, impassive as if she were watching a familiar scene, and he, on the other hand, was totally enraged.  They were eating and he took out the blessed chickpeas.

When he put the first spoonful in his mouth, a couple of his teeth almost broke.  ’Pascasi, these chickpeas are like stones. How the hell…’

And without letting him finish the sentence, she said: 'No, Bixente, they are well cooked’.

‘How can you say that, woman? The mortar that I use once dry is softer than this’- Bixente responded, increasingly angry.

And she again without any gesture answered him: ’ I don't want to know then what the houses you build are like.’.

’ Our house is as safe as when there is a spider on the stairs it is a sign that it is going to rain.’- Bixente responded, totally angry.

 ‘'Hey, hey, now don't start acting like a teacher, Bixente! - Pascasi responded, frowning with a mocking and disdainful gesture. That made him furious and he got up completely out of his mind.

‘Teacher my foot.  Many balls in the Basque ball court are softer than these chickpeas. Pay attention!’- said Bixente with a dull roar. And then he picked up a chickpea, threw it against the floor in such a way that it bounced up to the ceiling.

When that didn't calm his anger, he grabbed the plate, the spoon and everything he could grab from the food service and threw it out the window into the river. There he stood looking at the river, how that fleet was going down the river without sailors through the Kondekua bridge. ‘They already have a supply of chickpeas for the trip, or rather, bullets, but sailors don't go there to eat them, or rather, to shoot them at other ships’-he told himself. But what happened yesterday …

That New Year’s Eve he was completely asleep after a copious dinner. Suddenly a tremendous noise woke him up. A loud uproar came from the low level. It could hear laughter, sounds of dance steps, a deafening mix.

Without waiting for anything he jumped out of bed. Without putting on his pants, with only his camisole and the sleeping night cap, he headed downstairs. Of course, before he took the belt with his right hand.’ Surely it will be the children, they will see what they deserve’. With that thought he stumbled down the stairs. The creaking of the stairs seemed to go against his desire to surprise them, so he tried to walk as silently as a cat. ‘If I catch you in the middle of that maelstrom, you'll see how hard my belt is. In a single second they will go from youth to maturity’. And he had that dark and belligerent thought in mind as he moved forward.

He came to the door as quietly as possible.  He raised his belt and opened the door shouting: ‘If I hit you in the corner of your eye …’ And seeing what was in front of him, the rest of the phrase ('you're going to bounce') was only heard in his mind. In front of him was the whole house, only he was missing. Anjel was on the table, looking like she had been dancing on it. Around him, looking as if they had been clapping and singing, were Joseba, Salbadora, Dolores, Juan Bautista, María Luisa, Basilisa, Bixentiko, Glori and Rosario.  In a second row were all the neighbors of his age (Bixente's age) sitting, that is, Ana Mari, Joakin, Eusebio, Marcelina, Antonio, Jesús and Sabina.

There in front of him with a mocking and playful look, as if she were saying 'what has happened now to this irascible fool', was his wife, Pascasi Osinaga. He stayed there for a couple of seconds like a statue. The only sign that he was alive was the belt still moving above his head. He turned around and without saying anything else left the room.

On the way back up he couldn't even hear the stairs creak. He felt an indefinable feeling of anger and shame. She entered the flat and got into the bed directly. There he was reflecting on what had happened. What a shame! How was she going to appear tomorrow before all the inhabitants of the house? He felt totally alone. Him on one side and the rest of the world on the other side.

As a result of the fatigue, little by little his anger and feeling of loneliness began to calm down. ‘Calm down, as a wise man said this too will pass’-he said to himself. However, he had a disturbing thought before falling asleep: ‘But some things will accompany us until our last breath’.  

…

This is an authentic event and before it disappears into the black hole of oblivion, with the permission of John Archibald Wheeler and Stephen Hawking, I have decided to write it.

Apart from my clumsy literary style and the names of my grandfather's neighbors of his age that I do not know, everything else is the pure truth.

I would like to thank my cousin Pilar Otaduy for giving me the names of the farmhouses where my aunts/uncles went to.