Nor did he tell Graciela the truth when he called and asked her to come pick him up at the emergency room — where an X-ray had shown that his rib was cracked but not broken. Aside from his bruises, there was nothing a few days’ rest wouldn’t fix. So with a prescription for painkillers and three staples in his lip, he sat down to wait for his landlady to arrive.
‘He was just a regular guy, what can I say? He took me by surprise and forced me into the doorway. I presume he wanted to steal my watch and wallet.’
Graciela shot him a dubious look.
‘Your watch is on your wrist, and your wallet’s in your hand.’
Eduardo stroked his swollen cheek. Ibrahim could really hit like a jackhammer.
‘A woman came out of her apartment when she heard them beating me up. I assume they got scared and ran off.’
‘And they did all this just to try to get your watch and wallet?’
Eduardo recalled Ibrahim’s ironic expression, the veiled threat his words contained.
‘The world is full of evil people … Would you mind taking me home? I need a spare pair of glasses.’
‘What you need is a good dinner and a little company. Lately you’re spending too much time alone and I think the solitude is consuming you,’ Graciela said blatantly.
Eduardo didn’t have the energy to protest.
Sara was bent over a round formica table. Like all left-handed people, she set her notebook at an angle to draw, and her forearm was stained with ink, smearing the page. She wore pyjamas with green elephants holding coloured balloons — children’s pyjamas that any other girl her age would have flat-out refused to wear. But Sara wasn’t like other girls. On a bookcase close to her hand, sat her lucky cat.
‘Hello there, Sara.’
The girl glanced up and broke into a smile when she recognised Eduardo. She got up and squeezed his belly with her strong arms. Her hair rubbed his chin; she smelled of lemony shampoo.
‘How are you feeling today?’
‘The doctor monitoring her case says she’s improving for now; we’re convinced that if we’re really disciplined with her meds she’ll get better really soon, aren’t we, sweetheart?’ Graciela replied for her, using an exaggeratedly optimistic tone.
Sara nodded energetically, as though trying to physically shake off the unmistakable doubt showing in her eyes. It would take other children of the same age far longer to realise that things were not as they’d been told — and with those lies would their innocence be lost — but Sara had learned to lie to herself, and learned it a long time ago.
‘The doctor says I think a lot; she says there are some thoughts I can’t process right because I’m still too young. And I try not to think, but the thoughts think for me and I don’t know how to stop them.’
Eduardo stroked her forehead. Sara was from another world, lived in a place all her own; only when the meds knocked her out sufficiently could her brain slow down and visit this other reality, temporarily leaving behind her own promised land. She was like a ghost, a soul divided, and only a quarter of her was accessible to others.
‘But doctors don’t know everything, do they?’
The girl laughed complicitly.
‘No, they don’t. The things I tell Maneki, nobody else can know. But you I can tell, if you stay for dinner.’ Maneki was her lucky cat.
‘That’s a tempting offer, so I don’t see how I could turn it down,’ he granted.
It was a pleasant evening. Plenty of wine, and Sara — sitting beside him — as well as Graciela, who was funny and casual, kept Eduardo from thinking for a few hours about the pummelling Ibrahim had given him. He told stories about his childhood, about his father and his records, the trips he’d take up north, to where his roots were. He wasn’t trying to impress Graciela — or at least not consciously — but judging by the way her eyes shone and the way she hung on his words — enthralled, elbow on the table and cheek in her palm — she was anyway.
Suddenly, Sara got up and went to a dresser full of drawers.
‘Where do you have the old pictures, mamá?’ Sara rummaged around in a cupboard until finally emerging with the family album.
Graciela would have preferred she hadn’t found it, preferred that her daughter hadn’t sat at the table, with a triumphal air, and opened it up, with Eduardo looking on curiously. But there was no way to stop her.
‘Look, this is my mother when she was a girl, in her hometown.’
The portrait was of a girl teetering on the precipice of a modern invention called adolescence. Despite her bushy unwaxed brows, her ratty, torn black shirt and big, dirty skirt, she looked ready to make the leap. Graciela’s hesitant smile — not quite daring to be happy — was testament to a time gone by. She looked shocked by the sudden glare of the flash, nervous and uncomfortable at the photographer ordering her to pose by an old farmhouse with its zinc roof, the barn door ajar. A girl whose expression had not yet lost its glow, not earned the right to show weakness.
‘I was only ten then. My God, the rain that’s fallen since that time,’ Graciela nodded, taking the photo carefully, as though afraid she might tear it. Her words were really intended for Eduardo. While showing him photos, she conveniently brushed against his forearm, let herself get worked up by the intoxicating heat caused by the touch of his body.
Eduardo sat stiffly, his smile increasingly fake. Sometimes from his apartment he could hear Graciela singing Luis Miguel boleros. It was nice, Graciela had a good voice. The songs told stories of romantic trysts, star-crossed lovers, overflowing passion. But life was no bolero. There was nothing else he wanted to know about Graciela, he had no desire to get close to her; he didn’t want to walk through that door, the one that she and her daughter had opened and were now trying to push him through — gently, amicably, but a push nonetheless.
‘That doesn’t even look like you.’
‘Pictures just reflect an image — and over time, that image dies,’ she murmured.
Eduardo watched Graciela like a dog watching the moon: it was something far off, something that glowed, true, but something he knew nothing about, had no curiosity about.
She gazed at him, her eyes glimmering in a way that foreshadowed tears. Yet they continued looking at photos. Sara was in charge of turning the pages, hardly giving them time to see the pictures at all, much less note any details. Life went by as quickly from snapshot to snapshot as it did in her feverishly bubbling head. Graciela and Eduardo let her, smiling in weary resignation. Sara was her own little whirlwind, capable of draining anyone’s energy. She rushed on, announcing what they were going to see in each picture before showing it. Sometimes she made up stories about the photos, things she invented based on a single captured instant. For instance, that she and her mother had travelled through Africa all the way to the Lower Nile, where a direct descendant of Cleopatra had personally given Sara the solid-gold bracelet she was wearing in the picture taken at the 2000 Carnaval celebrations. And to make sure that Eduardo believed her, she raced off to her room and returned with the bracelet so he could hold it in his own hand.
‘Solid gold, it sure is,’ he declared feigning curiosity.
Sara continued her dizzying tour through the pages until, on one of them, something attracted Eduardo’s attention.
‘Who’s that girl?’
Graciela stroked the profile of a pregnant young woman, her belly huge beneath a strappy indigo-coloured dress with a full billowy skirt. She took a sip of wine, leaving a scarlet lipstick imprint on the rim. Then she held the glass, spinning it between her fingers, staring lovingly down at the photo.
‘My mother. Her name was Esperanza. When she was in a good mood, I remember, she’d sing me children’s songs. Sometimes, as night fell, we’d sit, tired but happy, on a bench in the plaza outside our little apartment in Leganés. Then she’d tell me about all the things she’d seen as a girl, at the m
ovie theatre in her hometown, in the summertime: the enormous buildings of a city projected onto the screen; the sound of convertible Fords, their horns honking; teeming streetcars. Her eyes shining, she’d describe the actresses’ dresses, their hairdos and make-up, their long legs and slender waists, the elegant way they moved, and spoke, and smoked. Once she even told me, trying to hide her wistfulness beneath a smile, about a famous photographer who wanted to take her picture as if she were a world-famous starlet. But her father — my grandfather — said no.’
They’d run out of cigarettes and the wine was gone. Sara was dozing in the armchair with a blanket draped over her, arms around the lucky cat that was now her inseparable companion. Graciela closed the photo album slowly and put it back in the cupboard. She bent over Sara and brushed her bangs from her eyes. The girl squirmed fitfully.
‘She’s obsessed with that animal. Sometimes, outside, she’ll look at real cats, trying to find one like this, and then declare proudly that none of them look like hers. She thinks Maneki understands what she tells him.’
‘Your daughter has an extraordinary imagination,’ Eduardo said quietly.
Graciela nodded. The condition she’d been diagnosed with was irreversible and she knew it, but she couldn’t help getting her hopes up whenever the symptoms abated and she seemed — for a time — capable of carrying on with a normal life. But then it would all get worse again.
‘I ask myself over and over, why it is that some people get to have a little happiness and then waste it, while others never even get a taste.’
Eduardo looked away, at what was left of dinner, still on the table. He wasn’t the right person to answer that question.
‘I’ll clear the table,’ he offered.
Graciela let him, and stood watching. She knew what Eduardo was thinking, she always knew what the men she fell in love with were thinking, but there were some defeats she wasn’t willing to accept. She went to him and stroked his hair as if he were a little boy. Then she leaned in and kissed him on the lips. Her lips were cracked and cold. Eduardo’s recoiled from her contact. Graciela stepped back, a little ashamed.
‘I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.’
‘You didn’t, don’t worry,’ he whispered, mollifying her.
Graciela regarded him with an exhausted expression.
‘I know almost nothing about you, only the part you’ve been willing to show, and I don’t know if that’s a lot or a little. But for me, it’s enough, Eduardo. You have a way forward with us, if you want. A new start. I’m not foolish enough to think you love me. Not yet. And that doesn’t matter, I can wait.’
Eduardo had rolled up his shirtsleeves and was rinsing a glass. For a split second he stopped, the soap bubbles dripping off the glass and onto the counter. Instinctively, he turned his head to the right. Sara was still sleeping.
‘I don’t think you and your daughter deserve to be saddled with a corpse like me.’
‘Don’t talk like that. You’re not dead. Even if you want to be, the fact is that you’re still here. You must have some hope. Besides, neither my daughter nor I are going to replace your family; we’re not going to cover up a hole, Eduardo. What I’m offering you is an opportunity, for all three of us.’
Eduardo found a clean cloth and dried a plate patiently, spinning it like a steering wheel.
Would Graciela know the real meaning of the French word charme? Elena had it. It’s not something you can acquire, or even learn. It’s a talent, an air that certain things have, certain people have, from the time they’re born. It’s something that makes them different, regardless of what they do; it’s in the way they behave, walk, look at you, breathe, hold out a hand or sing a song. They’re immortal; little stray angels who lost their wings in the original Fall, who now wander among humans looking for a way back home. If any of them had ever crossed her path, deigned to rest their gaze upon Graciela and smile, she might understand; if not, anything he might tell her about Elena would be in vain.
‘It’s late. Thank you for dinner, and for the company, but I’ve got to be up early tomorrow. I should go.’
‘Yes, I guess that’s probably for the best,’ Graciela accepted stiffly, like a mannequin being removed from a shop window. Without realising, she’d smeared her lipstick, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.
Eduardo went to the door. Graciela didn’t move from her place at the table, where she sat smoking, with a lost look, gazing vacantly at an empty wineglass. Eduardo turned the doorknob and opened the door, but held it there and looked back over his shoulder.
‘I killed a man, Graciela. Shot him in the head. And his wife. And I would have killed his son, too, if I hadn’t been stopped. That’s the person you say you want to have sleeping in your bed at night, curled up against your back.’
He walked out without waiting to see his landlady’s reaction.
The afternoon smelled of mimosas. A heartbreaking afternoon, too beautiful to be real — a foretaste of nostalgia, of a perfect moment that could be ruined at any second.
‘You’ve got a visitor.’
Andrea frowned slightly, displeased at the nurse’s interruption.
‘I don’t want to see anyone,’ she murmured.
‘It’s not your husband,’ the nurse replied, guessing at her thoughts.
Wooden benches were strategically placed around the edge of the large pond, inviting visitors to gaze at its green, slimy bottom, at the blue and red fish that appeared from time to time, circling slowly, begging for breadcrumbs. At one time, the pond had been surrounded by green, but now it was nothing but a patch of dried yellow grass.
Ibrahim gazed at the water, leaning against a tree. Arthur had prepared him for the worst, warning him that what he’d find was someone resembling a coma patient. ‘Talking to her is frustrating,’ he’d said, ‘sometimes even absurd. She doesn’t seem to listen, or see, or hear.’
The sound of a leaf crackling woke him from his trance.
Andrea approached with hesitant steps. Her haircut was clumsy and boyish, flat on the sides, and her eyes had an erratic look; her arms and hands hung listlessly at her sides, and her shoulders drooped lethargically.
And still, he felt his heart race.
Though wasted away, Andrea wasn’t dead — at least not completely. The girl he once knew was still there, somewhere, hiding behind those eyelashes and that receding chin, behind those sunken cheekbones and drooping mouth. Her skin was wrinkled and age spots could be seen among the folds; her muscles were no longer firm and toned; her triceps were flabby, and her hips sagged. But it was her — he was as sure as he had been when he’d first seen the wedding postcard on Arthur’s headboard.
Almost forty years had passed — they were on the verge of old age, and defeat. But there they were, face to face.
‘Hello, Andrea.’
Andrea was surprised at his voice, so unexpectedly soft. Its warmth stirred a memory of something that had happened long ago. In some part of her mind, she felt she recognised it.
‘Do we know each other?’
So you do remember me. You don’t know when or where or what part of your memories I fit into, but something deep inside you remembers me, Ibrahim thought with a strange elation. And yet, he couldn’t say ‘yes’.
‘I’m afraid not — although, like you, I was born and raised in Algeria.’
The mention of this shared place from their past made Andrea’s face light up briefly.
‘My name is Ibrahim; I’m a friend of your husband’s.’
It was a short-lived illusion. Ibrahim had pictured distrust, rancour, perhaps even some sort of unpleasant scene. He could have handled that; in fact it would have been desirable. Anything. But he wasn’t prepared for her stony look.
‘He knows you don’t want to see him, that’s why he sent me. He wants you to know that he’s doing everything possi
ble to find your daughter, and that he put me in charge of making sure she’s alright — that it will all be okay.’
Andrea tilted her head imperceptibly toward the pond. Somewhere, fallen leaves were rustling on the ground, stirred up by a gust of wind that seemed to have come out of nowhere. It was going to rain, she thought. And that one idea eclipsed all else — rain, round fat drops, as heavy as transparent mercury; rain, flooding everything, the drumbeat of it falling on dead leaves, on rooftops; ripples forming in the pond, little birds flapping wildly in search of refuge, clouds that looked almost pleated coming down from the sierra.
‘It’s going to rain,’ she said. ‘The rain here doesn’t weigh much; it’s light.’
‘Do you understand what I said, Andrea?’
‘The rain here isn’t sticky,’ she went on, eyes beseeching him from the bottom of her pupils, two dark tunnels.
Ibrahim understood. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out a hand — a hand with so much death on it — to stroke Andrea’s face, as broken as his own.
‘You’re right,’ he murmured, ‘it’s going to rain. But the rain here isn’t like in Algeria, is it? There, the wet ground gets so steamy it steals the air from your lungs.’
And then he recalled an afternoon from that summer when they had run to catch the bus after spending the day at the beach, she with her sandals in one hand, he with a wet shirt tied around his waist; wet, black hair plastered to his face; then both of them dripping, holding the steel handrail on the bus, staring at each other from up close as the storm whipped across the metallic roof of the bus, and the sea salt on their skin mixed with the smell of diesel as they headed back to the city.
The Heart Tastes Bitter Page 20