By the river bank - Part 3

Nerea wasn’t receptive at first. She was visibly annoyed I couldn’t speak a word of Basque. She couldn’t stand how slow I was in taking orders to tables and how quick I was at cursing customers behind their backs when I got their pintxo order wrong. I hadn’t even eaten that many, but I was already tired of looking at those stale pieces of bread pinned to red peppers, and other things you wouldn’t have on bread, with toothpicks. How could anyone enjoy that?

“You’re not like the other waiters here. Where are you from?” asked a few prodding customers. My hair wasn’t as dark and my skin wasn’t as pale. My name was clearly not from the region and I couldn’t answer a few customers when they broke out in Basque. The one thing that was brushing off, though, was the attitude. My demeanour was slowly being taken over by a Basque broodiness, which didn’t feel too unfamiliar.

It didn’t take long to learn Nerea was attached to the Basque country and its history. Her and I weren’t very close, so I was surprised when she offered to take me to the Guggenheim museum.

“Sorry we don’t display many of your artists around here,” she said with a snarky smile. “I don’t come here at all, this place is for tourists.”

“I like the art.” I said, looking around at the giant female figures sculpted in papier-mâché. “In here I feel worlds away from the rest of the city.” I said, now laying my gaze on the enigmatic sculpture that stood in front of us. It looked like an oversized white dog made of glass, where mine and Nerea’s shapes were reflected distortedly, standing side by side.

“It’s all an attempt to modernise us.” Nerea retorted.

“I think it blends in well with the rest.”

“The rest of this part of town. So many people come here, see the museum and leave, and they think we are some kind of contemporary art hub. It does my head in.” I let her go on uninterrupted. “We are in the capital of the region where the local language has no traceable origins. It’s home to old customs, and people and food with history. It’s not a modern ‘city’.”

“Can’t it be both things?”

“They are too different from each other. Without an identity it’s lost in between.” She gestured, pointing to my outfit. I waited for her to look away to peek down at my clothes. The black oversized raincoat hung low. My bright red boots were a lone sign of resistance.

“I know who I am.” I said, hesitantly.

“You can have an identity crisis. Places can’t. A city is not a person.”

“When people here walk and talk everything pulses, like cells keeping a body running. To me Bilbao is just as alive as we are.” I insisted.

“You don’t need to get poetic about it.”

It wasn’t long after we parted ways and I left the museum alone. Bilbao had shapes, people and smells I couldn’t always understand. I didn’t care. That stagnant feeling I had when I arrived months ago was no longer there.

I crossed the river to the South bank. I decided I would wait for Silvia at the university. When she walked out of her usual lecture hall, she looked surprised to see me. Despite her insisting on the contrary, I decided some weeks ago I had overstayed my welcome at her apartment and moved into my own.

“I finally went to the Guggenheim museum”, I said as she approached me.

“Ah! Did it take you moving out to decide to see the things I wanted to show you?” She said, half joking, half not. I hugged her. Silvia told me she missed my company but was happy to see me well. We left campus towards the ría and stopped in front of it. She enjoyed that exercise as much as I did.

There was a long silence, until finally Silvia said, “Look, the river water… It’s flowing.”