Obabakoak by Bernardo Atxaga

deliberately, she stepped in it. She reached her gray and white house feeling light and strong and, as she changed her clothes, she almost danced, swaying her body and her arms. An intense joy flooded her heart.
    Had the schoolmistress been a mature, experienced woman, the scene she’d witnessed from the landing would have passed into her life as a trivial anecdote one only recalls later at some get together, to amuse one’s friends. But she’d only just left her city on the coast and—as far as that aspect of life was concerned and apart from her nighttime fantasies—she had only the brief experience of that one night in June, the night Her Best Friend had invited her to walk with him in the dunes. She thought, therefore, that she’d done something of great significance. The wet sole of her shoe symbolized, beyond all doubt, that she had passed the Great Test set for her in Albania.
    After supper, galvanized by that new state of mind, the desire to write to Her Best Friend was reborn in her. She looked for her writing pad, pale blue in color, and opened it resolutely. A cup of coffee steamed on the table.
    Have you all forgotten about me?—she began with a steady hand—Well, frankly, I think it’s pretty bad. Awful, in fact. It doesn’t surprise me in the others, but in you it does. Surely it wouldn’t be such an effort to write me a few lines. But perhaps I’d better change the subject, I’ll only get angry otherwise. Of course, knowing nothing of your life, what you do, how you’re finding things on the ship, or indeed anything at all, it’s a little difficult to know what to write about. In fact, I have no option but to write to you about the winter, which in these godforsaken regions is extremely cold, hard, and persistent. If it’s foggy one day, then it stays foggy for the whole week. The same with the rain. So there’s no chance of going for a walk or going out to find Clysandra or Falena caterpillars. So you can imagine what fun life is here. Sunday’s the only day when there’s something to do, that’s when the young people in the village hire a blind accordionist to play for them. But I never go to the dance. And you know perfectly well why not. Although, on reflection, I’m almost sure you don’t, because you seem to be as blind as that accordionist. But now I’ve started saying things I shouldn’t again and so I’ll end the letter here.
    “And here it will stay if I get no word from you tomorrow,” she thought, mentally addressing Her Best Friend.
    “I do hope you haven’t forgotten my birthday!” She sighed.
    That night she slept more peacefully than she had for some time.
    The following day—it was Saturday and her work at the school finished at midday—she didn’t feel like going straight home to have lunch and decided to take a long detour before returning to her gray and white house, taking seven hundred steps to the cemetery, then three hundred to the hermitage, and finally five hundred to the door of her house; and once that distance was traveled, one thousand five hundred steps in all, she looked up and saw the letter the postman had left stuck in a crack in the door.
    It was a postcard covered with signatures. Her parents and brothers and sisters wished her a happy birthday and sent their love.
    She decided then that she still didn’t feel like eating and continued walking, as far as the mountain this time, and took seven thousand steps all in one go to the source of the river, then another five thousand to the hill from where one could look down onto the church and the streets of Obaba and, later, back in her own part of the village, the same number of steps again plus two thousand more. At last when—if my sums are correct—she had taken twenty-six thousand steps, she went into her kitchen, exhausted and hungry, and began preparing a special meal.
    Making the cream sponge cake took her the longest, but once she’d put it in the oven, she picked up her notebook and