Nevada Days Read online

  NEVADA DAYS

  Also by Bernardo Atxaga available from Graywolf Press

  Obabakoak

  The Accordionist’s Son

  Seven Houses in France

  NEVADA DAYS

  A Novel

  BERNARDO ATXAGA

  Translated from the Spanish by

  Margaret Jull Costa

  GRAYWOLF PRESS

  Copyright © 2013 by Bernardo Atxaga

  English translation © 2017 by Margaret Jull Costa

  The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  First published in the Basque language as Nevadako Egunak by Pamiela in 2013. First published in Spanish as Días de Nevada by Alfaguara in 2014. First published in English in 2017 by MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd, a Hachette UK company.

  This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Graywolf Press

  250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

  All rights reserved.

  www.graywolfpress.org

  Published in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-55597-810-5

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-860-0

  2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

  First Graywolf Printing, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953358

  Cover design: Scott Sorenson

  Cover images: Shutterstock

  CONTENTS

  Silence

  The House in College Drive

  Second Night in Reno

  August 21, 2007, NIGHT

  Television

  The Dream

  That Night’s Film

  Supper at Tacos

  The Painful Eye and the Vigilant Eye

  August 27, 2007. MARY LORE

  Dennis

  The Spider

  Telephone Call to My Mother

  The Exterminators

  The Bottle Imp

  Helicopters

  A Dose of Morphine (A MEMORY)

  September 12. WHAT TO DO IN DANGEROUS SITUATIONS

  A Stroll through Downtown Reno

  The Visit

  A Drive in the Desert

  The Shepherd and the Desert

  Message to My Friend L. RENO, SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

  Buying Books in Borders

  The Spider is Still Alive

  Excursion to Pyramid Lake

  Pyramid Lake (2)

  From Sutcliffe to Reno

  Death of a Horse (A MEMORY)

  October 2. THE FIRST SNOW

  Telephone Call to My Mother

  In Hospital with My Father (A MEMORY)

  October 12, 2007. DIFFERENT MESSAGES

  October 14. BARACK OBAMA’S SPEECH. “TURN THE PAGE ON IRAQ”

  Textbook Brokers

  Sexual Assault

  Farewell to Steve Fossett

  In Search of the Sonic Arrow

  The Woman who Read Reader’s Digest. A REFLECTION ON PEOPLE FROM POOR PLACES

  Halloween. Monsters

  Another Monster: Leviathan

  Warning from the Leviathan Three Days After Halloween. MEMORY OF A RURAL HALLOWEEN

  My Father’s Hospital Room-mate

  Steamboat Springs

  The Fighter. THE STORY OF PAULINO UZCUDUN’S FATHER

  The Boxer Meets the Press

  A Reflection on the Image Left Behind by Paulino Uzcudun

  Virginia City. MINING TOWN

  THE SILVER QUEEN HOTEL

  THE BUCKET OF BLOOD SALOON

  Walgreens Drugstore

  Message to L. RENO, SEPTEMBER 9, 2007

  November 11. Veterans Day

  VETERANS DAY. NIGHT.

  MESSAGE TO L.

  November 14. ANOTHER ATTEMPTED RAPE IN COLLEGE DRIVE

  Liliana

  November 20. THANKSGIVING DAY

  José Francisco (A MEMORY)

  The Man and the Echo

  Aguiriano (A MEMORY)

  Message to L. RENO, DECEMBER 9, 2007

  December 15. MISSING DOG

  December 17. CONVERSATION

  December 23. ON THE WAY TO SAN FRANCISCO

  San Francisco

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  TELEPHONE CALL TO MY MOTHER

  OUT AND ABOUT

  ALCATRAZ ISLAND

  RETURN TO RENO

  December 31. BACK IN COLLEGE DRIVE

  Telephone Call to My Mother

  New Year’s Eve

  SUPPER

  DESSERT

  Victor and the Snow (A MEMORY)

  January 6. DENNIS AND THE SWAN

  January 7. A VISIT TO THE PAIUTE MUSEUM

  January 11. THE SOLDIER DAVID J. DRAKULICH

  January 12. THE LETTERS

  January 14. BARACK OBAMA SPEAKS AGAIN

  January 18. HILLARY CLINTON AT THE GRAND SIERRA RESORT

  Lunch at Harrah’s Casino

  Journey to Italy (A MEMORY)

  Brianna Denison

  Review and Summary of What Happened in the Days Following Brianna Denison’s Kidnapping

  SNOW

  THE HELICOPTER

  SPECIAL AGENTS

  RENO POLICE BULLETIN

  DESCRIPTION OF THE SUSPECT

  DESCRIPTION OF THE VICTIM. BRIANNA ZUNINO DENISON

  A BABY’S SHOE

  MESSAGE TO L.

  QUICK RESPONSE FROM L.

  THE FIRST SUSPECTS

  DENNIS’S CONTRIBUTION

  PSALM 37

  FEBRUARY 17. POLICE STATEMENT

  Message to L. RENO, FEBRUARY 18, 2008

  L.’s Response

  The Office Noticeboard in the Center for Basque Studies

  Wolf Pack vs. Houston Cougars

  Moment

  Conversation at the Funeral Home (A MEMORY)

  The Subject of Steve Fossett Returns. FEBRUARY 15, 2008

  Dream

  Indian Country Guide Map

  Marking the Map

  Message to L. BEATTY (NEVADA), MARCH 19, 2008

  Message to L. LAS VEGAS (NEVADA), MARCH 22, 2008

  Message to L. SPRINGDALE (UTAH), MARCH 23, 2008

  Message to L. TORREY (UTAH), MARCH 26, 2008

  Message to L. KAYENTA (ARIZONA), MARCH 27, 2008

  Message to L. ET IN ARCADIA EGO: DEATH

  Message to L. ET IN ARCADIA EGO: VIOLENCE

  March 30. THE MONSTER

  The Cat Man

  Back in Reno

  April 9. AN ARTICLE FROM THE RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

  Funeral of a Soldier Killed in Iraq

  Funeral for a Basque Shepherd

  The Story of Adrián and Nadia (ACCORDING TO THE VERSION HEARD ON THE BANKS OF THE TRUCKEE RIVER)

  Wild Horses

  Ringo Bonave
na and the Angels. A FANTASY (BOB EARLE’S VERSION)

  May 7. THE COST OF LOOKING FOR STEVE FOSSETT

  Telephone Call

  May 12. SEVEN TELEPHONE CALLS

  Dream Following the Death of L.

  Last Supper in Reno

  Telephone Call from San Francisco

  Farewell to Reno

  Final Piece. IZASKUN IS IN EIBAR

  News (POST SCRIPTUM)

  Reno Gazette-Journal, November 26, 2008

  SFGate, October 31, 2008

  Message from a Mother on the school website, May 2, 2009

  Reno Gazette-Journal, June 3, 2010

  SILENCE

  Reno is always silent, even during the day. The casinos are airtight edifices, carpeted inside, and no noise spreads beyond the rooms where the slot machines and the gaming tables stand in serried ranks. You can’t even hear the traffic on the busiest road, Virginia Street, or on the freeways that cross the city, the I-80 and Route 395, as if they, too, were carpeted or as if the cars and the trucks were moving very stealthily.

  When night falls, the silence, or what you subjectively experience as silence, grows even deeper. The mere tinkle of a bell would put the city police on guard. If a firecracker were to go off in a house, they would race there in their patrol car, lights flashing.

  The silence was the first thing we noticed on the day we arrived in Reno, on August 18, 2007, once the cab from the airport had driven off and left us alone in front of what was going to be our house, 145 College Drive. There was no-one in the street. The garbage cans looked as if they were made of stone.

  We unpacked our cases and went out onto the verandah at the back of the house. In the darkness, we could make out shapes, nothing more: rocks, tall plants that resembled reeds, and cactuses. The garden was quite big. It sloped uphill and was flanked by trees and bushes.

  Ángela pressed a red button next to the back door, and the spotlights on the wall lit up about 100 or so feet of the garden. At the top of the slope was a large house, and to the right, where the trees were thickest, a shack.

  Izaskun and Sara ran towards the shack.

  “There’s something over there!” Izaskun exclaimed, grabbing her sister by the arm.

  Near the cabin, I could make out two points, two small yellow holes, two shining eyes. They did not move or blink, inhuman in their fixity.

  Before we left home, I had read a travel guide to Nevada, in which, among other dangers to bear in mind – in second place only to the sun – they listed rattlesnakes. However, according to the photographs and other information, they never left the desert. Those two small yellow eyes could not possibly belong to a reptile, I thought, but were more likely to belong to a cat. I couldn’t be sure though.

  There was a stick near the shack door. I picked it up and took a step forward. I was expecting some noise, some movement. Nothing. Only silence, the same silence we had noticed when we got out of the taxi.

  My eyes were gradually getting used to the dark. I could make out a small head, and behind it, a striped tail.

  “It’s a raccoon,” Ángela said.

  Izaskun and Sara wanted to get closer, but, despite what Ángela had said, I told them not to. The guide to Nevada had not included raccoons among the possible dangers awaiting the visitor, but it had mentioned that some might have rabies.

  THE HOUSE IN COLLEGE DRIVE

  It could have been a mansion like the ones you find in wealthy areas in American cities, because it had steps and a porch, and there was a delicate harmony in the design of roof, windows, walls; the steps, however, were crumbling, and the porch was barely big enough for one rocking chair. Inside, the habitable space was, at most, 130 square feet. The house was a mansion, but in miniature.

  There were two bedrooms, one of them a reasonable size, large enough for a double bed, but the other so small that two single mattresses only just fitted in. The bathroom was narrow, and the corridor even narrower. The rectangular kitchen was divided into two halves. There was a fridge, sink and cooker in the first half, and, in the second – which was lit by the window that gave on to the garden – a square table with four chairs. Since there was no living room, the sofa and the television had been placed in the hall.

  The house was full of old newspapers, advertising flyers and unopened letters, and our first job, once we had unpacked, was to throw away anything that was clearly junk. We saved a few copies of the Reno Gazette-Journal and a letter from the Bank of America bearing a stamp saying documents and addressed to a certain Robert H. Earle.

  SECOND NIGHT IN RENO

  I got up at two o’clock in the morning and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. I found Sara in the hall, next to the sofa. Seen from behind, in her nightdress, she looked like a little doll. She was staring at the frosted glass eye of the front door.

  Seen through that eye, the casino buildings were blurred shapes, in which the dominant colour was red.

  I called softly to Sara. She didn’t hear me. I picked her up in my arms and carried her to bed.

  AUGUST 21, 2007

  NIGHT

  We went out for our first evening stroll and walked about a hundred yards down College Drive as far as the highest part of Virginia Street. From there we could see the whole city: a web of glassy white lights with the casinos all lit up in red, green and fuchsia. In the distance, the lights thinned out until they were a mere sprinkling. Beyond that lay the utter darkness of the desert.

  We walked along Virginia Street as far as the point where the I-80 passes underneath the houses, and next to a Walgreens we saw a few beggars. On the other side of the road, parked at the Texaco gas station, two police cars lurked in the shadows, watching.

  A helicopter flew by overhead, very low, signalling its position with a flashing red light. It passed over the highway and landed on the roof of St Mary’s, the hospital we had unsuccessfully requested to be added to our health insurance, only to find that it was too expensive for our coverage plan.

  We left the street and headed off towards the university campus. It was dark. A single swan was swimming on Manzanita Lake, which skirted the building that housed the dining halls and the School of Mining. The swan glided effortlessly over the water, apparently carried by the breeze coming off the desert.

  TELEVISION

  They were showing a documentary about the Second World War on television, and I stayed up to watch it after Ángela and the girls had gone to bed.

  The narrator spoke in suave, soothing tones, and the old soldiers, now in their eighties, were speaking sadly of the comrades who fell in Normandy. The soundtrack was Henry Mancini’s “Soldier in the Rain” and another equally slow, sad tune that I couldn’t identify.

  I remembered what we had seen on our way through San Francisco airport: British and Spanish flags everywhere, posters talking about the “war on terrorism” or about “America’s friends”.

  The documentary suddenly took on a new meaning. We were in a country at war. It had been four years since George Bush decided to invade Iraq, and the American army had lost thousands of men. The narrator’s suave tones, the sad notes of “Soldier in the Rain”, everything in the documentary that appealed to heart and guts was aimed at the present, not the past.

  THE DREAM

  I fell asleep in front of the television and found myself five and a half thousand miles away from Reno, in a hospital in San Sebastián. I was lying in a narrow bed, surrounded by metal bars, trying to attract the attention of the night carer my family had hired to watch over me. I needed to go to the toilet.

  The carer took no notice. She was a young woman of about twenty-two. She was talking to someone on her mobile.

  “Yes, I’m on the beach again,” she said, patting the airbed she used to lie on to relax.

  I knew that expression, and had heard it several times before. When she talked to her partner, she referred to the hospital room as the beach. It was her joke.

  Afraid I might wet the bed, I tried to push down t
he bars keeping me penned in. When they wouldn’t budge, I screamed at the carer to help me. She turned off her telephone and started scribbling on the pages of an illustrated magazine. I craned my neck over the bars and managed to read one of the things she had written: “I know that at times I may appear to be surrounded by an aura of sadness …”

  I tried throwing my pillow at her, but only succeeded in getting tangled up with the I.V. line in my right arm.

  “I want these bars removed! I’m not a monkey in a cage!”

  I woke up and opened my eyes. The black-and-white images on the screen showed a burning tank.

  The real things in the dream were all mixed up. There really was a night carer who referred to the hospital room as the beach and scribbled sentimental nonsense on the pages of magazines, and there was a bed with bars around it in that hospital. The one doing the protesting, though – “I want these bars removed! I’m not a monkey in a cage!” – wasn’t me, but my father. Besides, the carer had nothing to do with it. I was the one refusing to remove the bars, so as not to disobey the nurses’ instructions.

  THAT NIGHT’S FILM

  The military planes were getting closer and closer to the Empire State Building, aiming rounds of machine-gun fire at King Kong, who had climbed to the very top. We occasionally saw the half-naked girl the ape was holding in one hand, or the people in the street below, staring up at him; but what filled the screen most of the time were those attacking planes. First, a shot of the pilot; then, the machine-gun fire; lastly, the roar of the engine. Repetitive, wearisome images.

  When he was living on the island, King Kong had already killed the dinosaur and the giant snake, as well as abducting whole legions of young women, so he was hardly a stranger to violence, but he understood nothing about life outside the jungle. He didn’t know what the red stain on his neck was, the wounds inflicted by the invisible bullets from the machine guns, and he raged rather feebly at the planes. He finally caught one and brought it down, but he could do little else, for there was no let-up. The other planes continued hurling themselves at him, firing endlessly. Ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta.