Larrazabal

Larrazabal is a driver whom Lola encounters during her stay near the Mondragón asylum, where she is trying to see the poet. He offers concrete help as her circumstances deteriorate: money, a place to stay, meals, and rides to the asylum. Yet Lola remains oriented toward the poet and eventually leaves for France. Larrazabal’s kindness makes him an ally in her wandering, not its destination.

First Encounters

While waiting near the asylum, Lola accepts a driver’s offer to visit the Mondragón cemetery. Among the graves, most marked with Basque names, he takes her to the niche where his mother is buried. He then proposes sex; when Lola points out that they are in full view of the cemetery’s main path, he agrees they should find somewhere more private. The encounter is brief, and afterward he tries to pay her. She refuses.

In the car, Larrazabal asks whether Lola has a relative in the asylum. She tells him her story, including her fixation on the poet, which he says he does not understand. Lola, in turn, tells him that she does not understand his attraction to having sex in cemeteries, but does not judge him for it. He acknowledges that everyone has obsessions. Before dropping her off at the asylum entrance, he secretly slips a five-thousand-peseta note into her pocket. His name is all he gives her: although he has a first name, he says he does not want to disclose it and asks to be called Larrazabal, as his friends do.

Help During Lola’s Precarity

When Imma fails to return, Lola is evicted from her boardinghouse and sleeps at a railroad station, in an abandoned warehouse, in the open countryside, and eventually in an empty cemetery niche. There she unexpectedly finds Larrazabal inside a family mausoleum with a prostitute. After the woman leaves, he and Lola stroll arm in arm among the graves. He presses a ten-thousand-peseta loan on her and promises to return the following day. Lola later recalls the encounter in a letter to Amalfitano as evidence that friends are a blessing when someone is alone.

The promise develops into more sustained assistance. Larrazabal invites Lola to live in his apartment and offers to drive her to the asylum each morning. He gives her money without asking for anything in return, takes her to the movies, and visits her former boardinghouse to ask whether Imma has sent word. He buys her a skirt at a street fair and brand-name jeans in downtown San Sebastián. He also tells her about his beloved mother and the siblings with whom he is not close. Lola recognizes his goodness, but his generosity does not draw her away from the poet or give her days a settled purpose.

An Unequal Intimacy

Larrazabal and Lola become lovers, but their relationship remains markedly uneven in what each wants from it. After one Saturday night when they have made love for hours, he proposes marriage. Lola reminds him that she is already married; he does not take offense or act foolishly in response. His proposal makes his attachment explicit, while her answer establishes a limit he accepts.

He also searches for her when she disappears without calling or leaving a note. He finds her at the train-station waiting room and, another time, on a seafront bench at La Concha. He makes breakfast and dinner; during the day, Lola drinks water and carries only a small piece of bread or roll in her pocket while she roams. These domestic gestures do not transform her into a settled partner. The account presents his care alongside her continued movement through stations, streets, and the asylum’s perimeter.

Departure and Narrative Role

One night in the shower, Lola tells Larrazabal she plans to leave and asks for train fare. He says he will give her everything he has, but cannot give her money to go away and never see her again. Lola does not press him; she somehow gathers enough money for a ticket and departs for France. Her route carries her through Bayonne, Landes, back to Bayonne, Pau, and Lourdes. Larrazabal’s reluctance does not prevent her departure, and the account does not describe him as following her.

He is therefore a consequential but bounded presence in Lola’s story: his assistance interrupts her isolation without resolving the longing that governs her visits to the asylum. The tenderness and material support of the relationship stand beside the cemetery, the asylum fence, and Lola’s eventual flight. Her account of Larrazabal reaches Amalfitano through letters, including a final letter bearing French stamps, so the character is encountered through Lola’s retrospective telling as well as through the scenes of their meetings. Their connection offers companionship, but not an answer to the search that keeps her moving.