Gunshots in the hills. You hear them again from where you are, up high. You know, though, that the shots aren’t coming from the surrounding trees, but from inside you. Your body is just another part of the greenery. How many empty cartridges must get lost in the undergrowth, like little hearts that slowly corrode over time and yet beat on, and on, and on…
Gunshots in the hills. You’ve heard them again, from up high. And you can see the cartridges as clearly as if you were holding them in your hand. Trust cartridges, made in Eibar. Your father’s watchful gaze as he checks to see if you’ve loaded them into the shotgun correctly. Red or green, with a gold base, and packed with pellets. The pellets swiftly expand when they pierce the flesh, like some sort of evil spermatozoa. Those stupid cartridges go flying into the bushes and there’s no way to retrieve them. Not that anyone really tries. When all’s said and done, they’re just empty casings. Nobody thinks about how they continue beating and firing — bang, bang, bang — however rusty, however old.
You’ve reached the top, panting hard, having raced out of your study, leaving the computer on, and possibly also the hall light. You left without really knowing where you were going, as urgently as a diver furiously swimming up to the surface for air. Propelled more by angst than by the strong southerly wind. A familiar feeling that came back to you at your computer when you remembered yesterday’s nightmarish news about the girl found in the woods.
The news about the girl who was raped and abandoned up in the hills. Some hunters found her, too late. It turned your stomach, you can’t get it out of your head, it’s like what happened in Pamplona all over again, and you really didn’t need that. The last straw. What a hackneyed phrase, another tired cliché. No, seriously, you really can’t write any more. Your head is one big mess. One day they’ll finally find something there, a malignant tumour that prevents you from thinking. That prevents you from writing.
The news about the girl who was raped and abandoned in the woods. You’re not sure if it’s affected you more because you fear for your daughters — especially now you know that Eider was in Pamplona the night of the tragedy — or because of where it took place. Out in the wild, in the hills, a landscape that still tears at your skin like brambles, a landscape that has haunted your dreams since you were a boy.
And now here, at the top of Olarizu, a brisk forty-minute walk from your house, you ask yourself why your feet have carried you out into the woods. You wonder why the angst you feel has driven you to this precise spot, to the very epicentre of your fears.
You gaze down at the city from above, your thinning hair fluttering about your forehead. Up here, you’ve finally been able to take a deep breath and calm down a little. There’s always something so calming about being up above it all.
You haven’t been here since you were a kid. Your father brought you once or twice, soon after you moved to Vitoria, just as he used to take you to Kalamua or Ixua when you lived in Eibar, only without the shotgun. And yet the setting now fills your head with the sound of gunshots. Bang, bang, bang. Gunshots in the hills. Gunshots and dogs barking. For you, there is no more terrifying combination of sounds.
You look at the city that welcomed you when you were fifteen. A city that has grown with you, that has expanded like an ink blot on a piece of paper, losing intensity as the stain widens and spreads. It took you a moment to pinpoint the roof of your parents’ apartment building. The Church of San Pedro helped you to place it. They’ve been living in that apartment since the move from Eibar. Like their fellow residents, who also came from elsewhere: Zamora, Cáceres… In many cases, those neighbours would spend their summers back in their home towns. You reme
