Gijs van Hensbergen - Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon

Copyright 2008 by Dave Boling

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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eISBN: 978 1 4088 4148 8

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For the victims of Guernica...

and all the Guernicas that followed

Guernica is the happiest town in the world... governed by an assembly of countrymen who meet under an oak tree and always reach the fairest decisions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Guernica was... an experimental horror.

Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm

The painting which I am presently working on will be called Guernica. By means of it, I express my abhorrence of the race that has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.

Pablo Picasso

Pronunciation Guide

Guernica: gare-KNEE-ka

Justo Ansotegui: WHO-stow an-SOT-a-ghee

Mariangeles: mah-di-an-HEY-less

Miren: MEER-en

Josepe: HO-sep-ee

Xabier: ZHAB-yer

Alaia: a-LAY-a

Aguirre: uh-GEAR-ee

Saint-Jean-de-Luz: saint ZHON da LOSE

Lekeitio: la-KAY-tee-o

Lauaxeta: low-wa-SET-a

Bilbao: bil-BOW (rhymes with how)

CONTENTS

(Guernica , 1939)

Justo Ansotegui returns to the market now to hear the language and to buy soap. He places bars in scattered dishes where he can catch their scent during the day, although they fail to mask the odors of the livestock that have lived in his house for generations. As he sits in the evening, hell idly lift a bar to his nose. He strokes his mustache with one so the scent will linger in the coarse black hairs that droop past his upper lip and conceal his expressions. The many times when he awakens in the night, he touches a soap bar at his bedside and then smells his fingers, hoping the fragrance will invite certain memories into his dreams.

Alaia Aldecoa, the village soap maker, explains that the bars are blended with sheep milk and scented with an ingredient she keeps secret, but Justo is not interested in how they are made, only how they make him feel.

Kaixo, Alaia, its Justo, he says, approaching her booth on market day.

She accepts his unnecessary introduction. She has known him for years, and besides, his scent has preceded him. From the pocket of his suspendered wool pants, now drooping at the waist, he extracts a slippery coin. It carries a pleasant smell, as its coated with residue from a soap bar he keeps in there, too.

I would like a bar of the Miren blend, he says.

The soap maker pinches a smile at the sound of the name Miren, and, as she does every week, Alaia has two bars set aside in a separate wrap for Justo. She sells that blend to no one else. As always, she rejects his payment, and he places the coin back in his pocket. She devotes time each week to trying to imagine something she might say that would brighten his day, but once again she has nothing but soap to give him.

Its Monday afternoon, the traditional shopping day, but the new market isnt crowded. Business resumed reluctantly in the past three years, and the market is now several blocks east of the old site, closer to the river. Its smaller because traffic is scant and money scarce, and so many people are gone. Since much of the trade is restricted by government control and rationing, market day is now about things other than just buying and selling.

As he moves from Alaias booth on the edge of the marketplace, Justo listens to the clacking of the gathered amumak, like a clutch of hens, trading their only abundant currency: gossip. In earlier times the grandmothers would negotiate the purchase of beef tongue and lamb shoulders, and the mild green peppers they would dust with garlic and fry in olive oil. And they would sniff at the colorful garlands of chorizo sausages hanging from the butchers booth. The spicy links would be browned in an iron skillet along with eggs, which absorbed their rusty juices and pungent taste. Scent tentacles from the stove could lure a family to the table without conscious assent. The flavor would cause the little ones to gather at Amumas lap and exhale into her face the garlicky breath of joy.

Theres no haste for them at the market now; there is so little to choose from. So they painstakingly examine every vegetable and heft each precious egg.

These are too small, one says, triggering a flurry of critiques from the others.

These vegetables are not fresh.

I would never serve this to my family.

Are we buying today, ladies, or just fondling? the vendor asks.

They scoff in unison but are reluctant to replace the produce. Its easier to deem the food unacceptable than admit they cannot afford it. Even in good times the elderly women were particular about such matters, since cooking defined them. More than the collection, inflation, and distribution of gossip, their mission is to feed. Aging may change many things, but it cant diminish their skills in the kitchen. And to improve as a cook is a way to annex emotional territory within a family. But with so little food now there is no medium for their art. And the hunger that once chewed at them like a mean dog now seems more like an annoying houseguest who simply refuses to leave.

Justo passes their gathering. They gesture and pause, then resume chattering and bobbing, energized by a new topic. They will peck at the particulars of Justos life until another subject causes them to blink and move on. Communication is an illusion anyway, since all speak at once.

The bells of Santa Mara toll the hour, and many turn their heads to look up into the cloudless sky.

Under the blue-striped canvas awnings of the taberna, older men play mus, a four-man insult contest waged around a deck of cards.

Come, play, Justo, I will need a new partner once this one smothers under the mountain of shit hes been using for brains, an old friend calls, sparking rebukes from the other players. Successively all four grumble, Mus! and it is unanimous that the inadequate cards theyve been given should be tossed in. If all players agree, the hands are scrapped and redealt with fresh starts and new opportunities for all.

The world could learn much from this game, a relieved player says.

Justo declines the offer to play, which is only a courtesy anyway. Of the numerous activities denied a man with one arm, Justo has found that forgoing mus is among the smaller sacrifices.

So they proceed with the tics and gestures used to signal their partners, acts that are not only allowed but encouraged. The creative Basques decided that cheating could be prevented by declaring it a legal part of the game. Accordingly, if one never recognizes the existence of a border, then carrying goods across it is not smuggling, merely nocturnal commerce. And if a race believes it has always lived in its own nation, then protecting its imaginary boundaries is a matter of patriotism, not separatism.