The Heart Tastes Bitter

by Victor del Arbol

  To my friend Magnus. Ian Mackenzie, Berlin, 01/03/1999

  ‘He absolutely loved film,’ she muttered with a smirk of irritation. ‘He spent a fortune on his toys — old movies, books, autographs, objects that had belonged to famous actors. He would pay outrageous sums to anyone who could get him originals. That’s how he met the director Ian Mackenzie.’

  Guzmán examined the photo carefully. Gloria Tagger’s husband was certainly a good-looking guy, as had been her son.

  ‘Magnus met him at the Berlin Festival, the year his most famous film came out.’ She waited for Guzmán to realise what she was talking about, but the guy had no idea, so she finally spelled it out, exasperated. ‘Everyone Lies? It was a milestone in cinematography, despite receiving poor reviews at first. Magnus guarded that picture like one of his greatest treasures.’

  ‘So the connection between the Taggers and Magnus came not so much from music as from your husband’s interest in film?’

  ‘That’s right. I think at first Magnus didn’t even realise that Ian was married to the violinist. He found out later, after they became friends. I remember Gloria A. Tagger, we met at a dinner, at their home in the Madrid suburbs. That was where she told us the story of the violin that had been in her family for decades, and her unsuccessful attempts to get it back. At the time, Magnus had contacts in every arena that involved big money, and as you can imagine the world of antiques and auction houses moves quite a bit of money. I don’t think I’m revealing any big secret if I say that auction houses and galleries, on more than one occasion, have been used as giant money laundering machines, whitewashing black-market cash. My husband was so taken with Ian and his wife that he moved heaven and earth to win them over. A few months after that dinner he found the violin at a Vienna auction house and the Taggers got their instrument back at an exorbitantly high price. And with that, Magnus rose in his friend’s esteem, and his wife’s.’

  ‘What kind of friendship did they have?’

  ‘Magnus belonged to a very select film club. So select, in fact, that sometimes I thought they were more like a secret Masonic society or a sect or something. As far as I know, they met at an antique dealer’s place close to our apartment in Madrid a couple of times a month to exchange rare films, books, findings, photographs. My husband showed off his signed pictures with Ian and even got the man to come give a talk once. He’d paraded him around like his own wild game animal.’

  ‘Just out of curiosity, what was your impression of Mrs Tagger?’

  Judging by the face she made, it couldn’t have been very good.

  ‘I’d say that by that time she and her husband were going through something more than a marital crisis. They argued a lot at dinner, which was quite awkward for us as their guests. Later, I learned that these arguments were normal, and they didn’t care about attracting attention in public. She drank a lot, and it was clear she had a caustic tongue. Actually, I felt sorry for her husband. He spent the whole time trying to appease her, but she refused to cut him any slack.’

  ‘What were they fighting about?’

  ‘They talked a lot about their son, Ian junior — who, by the way, I only saw once or twice, but he seemed like a great kid. Quiet, a bit reserved, but very handsome, with the sort of elegance that can’t be taught, it was just something in his bearing; he was sensitive and cultured. I think his parents couldn’t agree about his upbringing. They referred vaguely to health problems, the boy had some sort of disease — though honestly he never seemed sick to me. His father was in favour of sending him to some kind of boarding school somewhere in the Austrian Alps, an elite private sanatorium. Gloria steadfastly refused to be away from her son and accused her husband of inventing the illness as a way to keep the boy away from her. She swore he was fine and that he could be treated in Madrid or Barcelona without being locked up at that institute. I read in the papers that he died a few years ago, in a terrible accident, and that a few months later his parents divorced.’

  Guzmán nodded. By his calculations, that happened more or less a year after Mrs Tagger got her violin back, thanks to the efforts of Magnus, and then the Olsens and the Taggers became friends. But none of that got him any closer to Arthur’s daughter, the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, or her possible whereabouts.

  ‘You’ve been very kind. I won’t take up any more of your time. All I ask is that you give me the address of the antique dealer’s where your husband and his film-buff friends met.’

  Mía — Irena — averted her eyes, looking out the window to where her kids were still beating the crap out of each other. She must have seen what was going on, and yet seemed to not notice, as if she weren’t even there. Then she looked Guzmán over, head to toe, as though she’d only just noticed his presence. She hesitated. For the first time in the conversation she seemed unsure of what to say or do.

  ‘I assume you know that Magnus committed suicide.’

  Guzmán did know, as did anyone even tangentially related to the world of finance.

  ‘Me and the boys found him, hanging, one day when we came back from shopping. It was horrific. The son of a bitch killed himself knowing the boys would see him hanging there, knowing I’d see him.’

  This time it was Guzmán who hesitated before making his next comment. The widow seemed sincere in her distress, as though her husband’s limbs were still there now, swaying before the children’s terrified faces.

  ‘That must have been awful. I’m sorry.’

  She did something strange with her mouth, a sort of clucking of her lips that seemed to sum up how tired she was of it all, of everything that had happened.

  ‘Magnus was always a coward, and he remained one until the end. When his house of cards began to crumble, he simply removed himself from the equation and left me with the kids, and all his debts and problems. You should hear the messages I get on the answering machine — insults, death threats, people harassing me and the children constantly. No one’s going to pity me and my situation … What I’m trying to say is, in the past few years all I’ve done is flee, run constantly from one place to another, always hiding from something I’m not responsible for. This is my last refuge, no more aces up my sleeve. If any of my husband’s enemies find out I’m here, my life will be impossible.’

  Guzmán told her not to worry, promised he wouldn’t say anything. For some reason, he liked this woman. Maybe it was because he liked survivors. But if he’d managed to find her without any trouble, then others would too. Hiding out in a deserted, half-built planned community that Magnus Olsen himself had developed was not the world’s cleverest decision. But still, that wasn’t his problem. He picked up the paper she’d written the address on and said a friendly goodbye, promising not to bother her again.

  8

  Eduardo and Olga’s on-again-off-again friendship meant that it had all the quirks inherent in to be expected from such an unlikely relationship. They might argue, go weeks without seeing each other, and suddenly one day, one of them — normally Olga — would pick up the phone and call the other as if nothing had happened. The strange thing about this time was the place she’d asked him to meet her: inside a church, the Iglesia de San Sebastián.

  Eduardo dropped onto a pew in the last row, from which he could see the altar lit by a candelabra full of votive candles all burning at different heights. An altar boy prepared the Book of the Gospels on the lectern, opened a silver tabernacle lying at the feet of a painted plaster Jesus, and placed the chalice and Eucharist on the altar. Mass would begin in a few minutes and Eduardo didn’t want to be there. His knee hurt like hell, but that was nothing compared to the pain of his anticlerical genes.

  It didn’t take long for Olga to appear, making her way down a dark side-passage, the sound of her heels ringing out on the sacred stone floor. When she sat down next to Eduardo, the candlelight illuminated her face.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ Eduardo
asked her.

  Olga’s head was covered with a lovely, natural silk headscarf. No one covered their heads when they entered church anymore, but Eduardo found that it gave her face a beautiful symmetry.

  ‘I come from time to time. It helps me think and be at peace with myself. Some people get that feeling on top of a mountain, or by the sea, or in cemeteries. To me, this is the place to clear my thoughts,’ she replied, settling beside him on the pew. It was odd to see the way she pressed her knees modestly together, tugging down the hem of her skirt. Eduardo looked at her, perplexed.

  ‘I’d never have pictured you in a place like this.’

  Olga gave him an understanding smile.

  ‘Madrid is full of people lost at sea, don’t you think? The waves of its invisible ocean hurl hundreds of desperate souls to its shores every day; they’re everywhere. This is like Noah’s ark to me. Besides, we all have something we need to be forgiven for, and here, that’s possible.’

  Eduardo glanced at the pews. They were nearly empty, just a few people scattered here and there, almost all well-over sixty. Maybe there really were thousands of souls out there lost at sea, but most of them were finding other rafts to cling to. Meanwhile, up at the altar a little drama was unfolding: the altar boy was shuffling from one side to the other with the as-yet unconsecrated wine in a sort of carafe, trying to make room so he wouldn’t collide with the priest, who was smoothing the white linen atop the altar, but instead he stumbled. Eduardo saw the whole thing happen in slow motion — the boy’s look of horror, the carafe falling to the floor, shattering, the wine splattering all over the altar. It lasted only a few seconds and almost no one even realised that it had happened, but Eduardo could read the priest’s lips and it looked to him as though the man had cursed the boy in Aramaic. Eduardo felt sorry for the boy, awkwardly endeavouring to clean up the shards of glass as quickly as he could.

  He glanced at Olga with a look somewhere between alarm and resignation.

  ‘I suppose I owe you an apology.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘My stupid, cantankerous comment the other day — about you not being able to have kids. I was being a jerk. I know it’s a touchy subject for you.’

  Olga nodded openly. She inhaled and gave him a wide grin.

  ‘How’s the portrait going?’

  This change of subject implied forgiveness, and Eduardo accepted it.

  ‘I found the hotel where Arthur is staying, and I’ve jotted down a few things from a distance. Today, I’m going to try to get closer, make a sketch. I’ll keep you up to date.’

  Olga kept quiet for a few seconds, trying to confirm the vague feeling she had that everything was changing between them because of that damned portrait.

  ‘Honestly, I regret having gotten you involved in this. I suppose if I asked you to forget about it, you wouldn’t listen, would you?’

  Eduardo regarded her with open curiosity. What was the matter with her? She was the one acting like a different person. In a way, he liked the change, it laid bare something clean, something authentic, but at the same time he wasn’t sure that that particular kind of purity was a good thing. He’d seen the same sort of poise and apparent serenity in people whose insides were being eaten away by worms.

  ‘Why do you keep going back to that?’

  Olga opened her handbag and placed a padded envelope on the bench between them.

  ‘I have a friend in the police who told me a few things about Arthur.’

  ‘Since when do you have friends on the police force? I thought you hated cops.’

  ‘I hate cauliflower, too, but I eat it from time to time. The guy you’re planning to paint is not your average man. In fact, Arthur Fernández is a rather shady figure. He’s amassed one of the greatest fortunes in Europe, and everybody knows he’s a speculator, a man involved in high finance and the stock market. But how he managed to create that empire is still rather murky. They say he started out in drug trafficking, human trafficking, anything that sounds illegal. He was involved in several court cases but they’ve never been able to prove his involvement in the crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.’

  Eduardo had opened the envelope. In it, he found photocopied dossiers, documents about the man’s companies, photos of Arthur in the company of some unsavoury-looking characters apparently involved in high crime. He didn’t even recognise their names.

  ‘If they couldn’t find any proof against him, that means he’s innocent in the eyes of the law.’

  ‘Innocence often depends too much on the lawyer’s fees, and he’s got the best. Did you know he was forced to flee from France when he was young? It seems he had a promising future as a poet and even published a well-received collection of poems. But one day, out of the blue, he beat up his mentor at the university — almost killed him, in fact — and then he disappeared, only to re-emerge as the successful impresario he is today. It’s an incredibly strange trajectory, don’t you think? Still, that’s not what worries me most.’

  Olga told him to look at the last page of the report.

  ‘I didn’t know he had a daughter.’

  ‘She disappeared a few months before the accident Arthur caused near Oriente that killed our client’s son. Arthur tested positive for drugs and alcohol in the police report. Although it wasn’t the first time he’d been in that kind of trouble — he’d had his licence revoked several times for speeding, reckless driving and traffic safety violations — I bet his lawyers used the extenuating circumstances in his favour, the anguish and depression Arthur has been suffering since his daughter vanished into thin air.’

  Olga’s opinion of Arthur did not seem exactly compassionate. Her voice was full of exasperation, almost contempt.

  ‘I don’t like you getting mixed up with that kind of person, Eduardo. You should let him and Gloria deal with their misery on their own.’

  The priest rang the bell. Mass was about to begin. Eduardo glanced at the altar boy. He was as pale and stiff as a Vatican sculpture. The sight of the downcast little boy saddened him. They exchanged a quick look and Eduardo gave him a smile. Don’t worry; some things just don’t always work out, he attempted to communicate.

  ‘I think I can handle it on my own.’

  They walked out of the church, and there beneath the ceramic figure of Lope de Vega, Olga lit a cigarette and snatched off her headscarf with a nervous gesture. With that one move, the calm that had enshrouded her inside the sanctuary vanished. She was once more the same tense woman as always, the one who held her cigarette too tightly between her fingers, and constantly frowned as though upset or on the verge of hurling an insult.

  ‘You said in there that you come here because we all have something to be forgiven for. So what is it you need to be forgiven for?’

  Olga exhaled smoke, angrily.

  ‘Did I say that? I must have been high from all the incense in there.’

  Eduardo recalled the first time he saw her.

  It was a few weeks after he was released from the hospital and he was still recovering from the accident. He’d started drinking heavily during that time, and had stopped taking care of himself. His father came to visit every once in awhile, bringing clean clothes that he bought at the flea market and which often didn’t fit since Eduardo was losing an alarming amount of weight — he wasn’t eating and hardly slept at all. All he did was drink and smoke, smoke and drink.

  It must have been about that time that his father told him he’d been diagnosed with oesphageal cancer. Eduardo couldn’t remember, now, whether his father had been afraid, had said it calmly, or simply mentioned it in passing. He hadn’t wanted to add to his son’s sorrow and anguish over the deaths of Elena and Tania. He also couldn’t recall if the surgeon who operated on his father had mentioned that it wasn’t really worth doing, that the cancer had metastasised and spread very quickly to his liver and lungs. Perhaps he whispe
red that the man had maybe three months to live and the best thing would be to offer palliative care, administering morphine. No chemo. He robotically accompanied his father to his blood tests and biopsies. He’d wait for the nurse to call them, go in with him to the doctor’s office, and listen to what they were told without taking it in. Then he’d go home. He didn’t call his father, didn’t ask him how he was doing. He didn’t even know if he cared. Most likely, he now understood, he simply didn’t have room for any more pain. So he had blocked it out.

  The day Olga had showed up at his door, Eduardo was weeping. Actually, by the time she’d knocked, he’d stopped and was simply sniffling like a kid who’d worn himself out crying. One by one, he had flipped through the records and dust jackets of his father’s jazz collection. Twenty minutes earlier his father had brought the whole collection over. ‘I want you to have them,’ he’d said. All of them: Mildred Bailey, Barbara Lea, George Benson, Louis Armstrong, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis … all his treasures. He’d left them in a cardboard box on the kitchen table, kissed his son, and departed. That was when Eduardo could no longer keep pretending that he didn’t know what he knew. Charlie Parker’s ‘All the Things You Are’ was on the record player when the doorbell rang. At first Eduardo thought the girl on the other side of the door wasn’t real, that she was a hallucination, just another mirage. He wanted her to leave, wanted to get rid of her and keep losing himself in the sax and piano, sinking into that dark sea of bubbles where everything is hopeless. But the young woman rang insistently, so he finally opened the door.

  Olga was, at that time, very young — practically still a minor. She turned up in mud-caked hiking boots and a soaking wet khaki-coloured duffel coat. Her hair was bright orange and her eyelashes matted with a thick layer of mascara, the water dripping down her cheeks, leaving jet-black trails. Her breasts were small, like little potatoes, and she was anxiously rubbing her palms together the way heroin addicts do when they’ve gone too long without a fix. But Olga wasn’t a junkie looking for spare change, and she wasn’t asking him to show solidarity to some pretend cause, by signing up for something, so she could bankroll a vice. She introduced herself quickly and said she’d heard his story on the radio, heard about Elena and Tania dying four months earlier. She said she lived very close to the place where the accident had occurred and she’d seen something, something that she had to tell him about.