The Land of My Fathers: A Son's Return to the Basque Country

Epilogue: Agur

EPILOGUE AGUR The time has come to say goodbye to: - The sounds of morning, of cocks crowing in a nearby farmyard, ofchurch bells tolling in the village below , ofa multitude ofbirds filling the air with song; sweet perfume from forever blooming trees, air as soft and sensual as a child's caress, white morning mists obscuring the mountains until the sun lifts the veil to reveal green mountains.... - Rainy mornings in winter when wreaths of blue smoke rise from a hundred chimneys into the clouds above, the patter of rain on a dun-colored landscape.... -Summer days when the pressure of the coming storm begins to mount so that your heart is pounding in your ears, and then the sky cracks with the sound ofartillery fire and the rains come down in torrents that hurt like arrows piercing your skin.... -Girls on the country lanes at night, singing in high soprano voices, a shepherd boy playing his flute on some mountain above, a paysan walking home to his farm alone, singing because he is happy with the world.... - Village men singing melancholy songs in bari- tone voices over a bottle of red wine in a bistro, black berets planted on their heads and elbows planted firmly on a table.... -Churches with balconies ofwarm brown wood rubbed soft with the oil often thousand hands, men singing from the balconies in deep voices and soprano voices ofwomen rising up from the nave below.... - Valleys with whitewashed farmhouses and redtiled roofs, and in contrast the stone fortresses of homes and hawk-faced men with sturdy bodies in the high mountains where my father was born .... - The thundering fury ofAtlantic tempests on the Bay ofBiscay, and the men who brave them, with scarred eyes from flying hooks and muscular arms developed from hauling in nets filled with fish.... - Midsummer Night's Eve, and the fire of Saint Jean, a huge bonfire burning at a crossroads and young men proving their manhood by leaping through the flames, as their warrior ancestors did in primitive times.... - Village feast days when townsmen and countrymen sit down together at long wooden tables in the shade of oak trees, drinking from bottles of red wine in tumblers.... 142 - The kitchen in the house where my mother was born, and the chair at the corner of the fireplace where she loved to sit, watching the fire that burned behind the gray polished steel of andirons, shining brass candlesticks on the mantle, rafters overhead with glorious hams cured with red pepper hanging from them, and the manger next to the door, neat and clean, holding a gray cow and a pig with shoats suckling noisily away.... -Distant farmhouses ofwhitewashed stone bordered on one side by vineyards and on the other by tiny figures of grazing sheep.... -Schoolchildren going home at the end of the day with arms locked, dropping offone by one at the country lanes until there is one boy left who walks alone and sings to the sunset.... -Funeral corteges through the heart of the village, the priest in his white surplice leading the procession, acolytes with candles walking behind, men in black suits carrying the casket, which is covered in macabre fashion with a black pall decorated by a skull and crossbones, women bringing up the rear ofthe procession, praying in audible voices that make a monotone.... - Deep forests of oak and beech and chestnut, cas143 cades of water flashing down to form green pools where the shadows of trout move like phantoms.... - Vineyards and gnarled vines straightened with stakes in orderly lines, resembling an army of wounded soldiers walking on crutches.... - Walking alone along a country lane at night under the uncertain light of a gauzy moon, past barns pungent with the country smell of cattle and sheep and pigs and a wind whining through the bare branches, and coming upon a draft of warm wind that is familiar out of some forgotten memory of a hundred years ago, telling you that you have walked this country lane in a life gone by. 144 ...