The Heart Tastes Bitter

by Victor del Arbol

  That was death.

  The grave he was searching for now was in a fairly new wall niche, at the end of an unpaved lane, which ended at a rotunda adorned with a somewhat crude plaster archangel that presided over its quiet domain from atop a dark granite column, wings open like a bird in mid-flight. The angel wore a dazed expression, eyes cast heavenward, bare muscular arms extended toward the graves like a farmer scattering seed. The tomb was the third from the left, and on the wall of niches his was the third one up, out of seven. Someone had left a freshly cut bouquet of rhododendrons on the iron ring hanging from one end of his gravestone.

  Teodoro López Egea. Motril, 1946 – Madrid, 1991

  That was the life he’d cut short. Teodoro López Egea had been the driver of the black SUV with the licence plate Olga had given him. The man who’d caused the death of his wife and then fled like a coward as Eduardo’s daughter Tania lay dying, bleeding out beside the stream.

  Eduardo stroked the niche’s dust-covered ledge and looked down at his hand. And that was all it took for his mind to hurl downhill once more: the memory of his father leading him through an abandoned quarry, the plaster dust that covered his shoes and stung his eyes.

  Hold it properly, by the grip. Do you feel that? It’s awkward and steely, but you’ll get used to it in time. Now look through the sight and aim, gently.

  Eduardo had never liked the Astra revolver his father had taught him to shoot with. It was light but inhospitable, cold. The Astra kills before death; by the time you hear the sound of the shot being fired, it’s over before it’s even begun and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. Eduardo extended his arm and aimed at the shadow cast by the memory of a father and son doing target practice in a quarry that echoed with every shot. What would it be like to kill the dark, remorseless part of you that — though it is you — lives outside of you, hounding you insistently. The feel of a weapon in the hand of a boy is no different than it is for a man. The apathetic are guilty, he murmured, squeezing the imaginary trigger. It echoed in the emptiness of his mind. He could recall every step, every second, every sensation surrounding the death of Teodoro López Egea, taken down by an Astra that had begun to mark its final destiny many years before, in the hands of a boy being taught by his father.

  It was winter, cold and grey, you could see it on the pedestrians’ faces. Eduardo was hiding behind a dumpster and pulled out the revolver, gripping it with both hands. He felt nothing, and all he could see was people walking up and down the street, not paying him any attention. But at the same time, he felt everything — the touch of the revolver hidden beneath his clothes, the weight of his coat, growing heavy in the rain, his own ragged breath, the beating of his heart, the voice pounding in his head like a drum: do it, do it, do it.

  Amid a sea of bobbing umbrellas he managed to discern Teodoro López Egea. He could just make out part of his face beneath an enormous black umbrella with trickles of water running down its sides, happy and smiling. He was walking along, speaking excitedly to a little boy whose hand he held, a boy bundled up in a slicker, his nose almost the only thing exposed; on his other side walked a slim, muscular woman with her own dark umbrella, and she was holding his arm. They were happy, everything was fine, they were all together: father, mother, child. A family in the rain, an ordinary day. There was no reason for anything to go wrong, anything unforeseen to occur. Especially not death. The scene, far from pacifying Eduardo enough to reconsider his lunatic plan, filled him with such rage he could hardly breathe. Was that the portrait of regret? Did they even feel guilty?

  He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five metres away. He curled up behind the dumpster as if to summon his courage, squeezed the revolver tightly in both hands, counted to three and took a deep breath. As soon as they got close, he stepped out quickly and cut them off.

  Teodoro López Egea stared into the barrel of the revolver, eyes filled with incredulity, and for a second he stood there with his mouth open, not saying a word. Then he shook his head, as if to convince himself that he hadn’t seen what he’d seen, and immediately his expression became so panicked that his lifeless face was ridiculous, an embarrassment to his wife and son. The man tried to run, taking cover behind his wife’s body. Coward, thought Eduardo. A coward who lets people die, runs away, who takes cover behind the very people he’s supposed to love. Whimpering, please, please. Eduardo shut him up, forcing the gun violently into his mouth, breaking several teeth. He’d never fired a gun at a human being before, and didn’t know what it would feel like — how loud it would be, penetrating flesh, the unalterable nanosecond after which you can’t undo pulling the trigger, not once you’ve pulled it.

  It’s just a dream, he told himself. Do it and the dream will disappear. Kill him.

  He fired the gun and felt certain it wasn’t real. The sound was so faint, the flash hardly more intense than a match being lit. He didn’t even feel any kickback. But the bullet that blew his head apart was very real. Teodoro fell sideways, as though someone had just severed the invisible threads that had been holding him up.

  Then Eduardo turned to the little boy, who was now screaming, his eyes popping out of his head. Shut up, shut up. The only way to shut him up was to shoot him. But his mother threw herself between the bullet and the screaming little kid. It entered through her back, and for a minute Eduardo thought she had stopped the bullet. The woman pulled the boy down to the ground, as though her final urge was to get him out of the street; she stumbled, tripped, and fell flat on her face in the street. Eduardo saw a thin stream of blood start to flow from the hole in her back.

  It was over in seconds. The umbrellas were twisted between their bodies, rain bouncing off them indifferently, and the blood became quickly diluted. Someone hit him on the head, hard, from behind.

  Then it was quiet. The last thing he saw was the body of Teodoro. He was staring up at the sky, eyes open, palms down, focused on himself. And in his left hand he held a few bills, bloodstained, and soggy from the rain.

  And at that first moment of utter horror, of total assimilation of what he’d done, Eduardo’s mind began burying the evidence under a heavy cloak of silence and detachment.

  12

  Graciela examined the man standing before her closely. Despite the scar disfiguring his face, he must have been quite handsome in his day. He looked hard, as though every source of joy in his life had been lain waste to. And yet his deep eyes, boring into her, filled her with a fatalistic sort of tranquillity, an understanding that when nature’s fury was unleashed there was nothing to do but stop and admire the beauty of its destruction.

  ‘It’s important, señora. If it weren’t I wouldn’t be bothering you. I need to know where Eduardo is.’

  ‘Leave me your phone number. If he shows up I’ll tell him you were here.’

  They were standing by the door, at the entrance to the living room. Ibrahim filled almost the entire doorframe and Graciela was blocking his way with her body. It struck her as a meagre defence, should he try to force his way in, but in fact Ibrahim seemed to be perfectly amiable, as though his character compensated for his threatening appearance.

  Sara appeared from the back of the room, still in pyjamas and barefoot, glittery stars on her toenails, which she’d painted herself. She’d had a bad night, and had deep bags under her eyes, and dishevelled hair; she was clutching the Chinese lucky cat Eduardo had given her in one hand. Lately, it was her constant companion. She was surprised to see Ibrahim, but not intimidated. Her eyes focused on him as though she was attempting to hypnotise the man.

  Ibrahim smiled at her.

  ‘I like your cat.’

  ‘I like your scar. It must have hurt a lot. Did you deserve it?’ Sara asked.

  Graciela was about to intervene, but a glance from Ibrahim stopped her.

  ‘Actually, yes, it did. It hurt a lot, and it still hurts; you know, scars are like subterranean rivers,
like the lava flowing beneath volcanoes — they never die down. And as to whether or not I deserved it, let’s just say it no longer matters. The fact is, whether I deserved it or not, I got it and I have to live with it. So, what can you tell me about your cat?’

  Sara half-closed her eyes and then opened them slowly, not taking her eyes off Ibrahim. Although she liked that he’d treated her like an adult, she didn’t trust him.

  ‘He’s not really Chinese. He’s Japanese. His name is Maneki. I like that name for a cat. Different coloured lucky cats are for different things: money, happiness, health. But this one is really special. When he looks at me, I can keep my this’ — and with that Sara put her index finger to her forehead — ‘quiet for a while.’

  ‘I could use one of those.’

  ‘Do you like cats?’

  Ibrahim nodded. In Meco — the prison — he’d looked after a black-and-brown kitten for a time, feeding it milk and letting it sleep on his clothes. But then, he explained, the cat had grown and started to show more interest in the sparrows Ibrahim fed from his cell’s barred windows, tossing them crumbs. One day he’d found the kitten tearing off the head of a little bird, so he’d had to get rid of it — but decided not to explain to the little girl how he’d done so.

  ‘Are you going to hurt Eduardo?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘No. He has a scar, too, but he didn’t deserve it. Like mamá.’ Graciela turned so red she was scarlet, but Sara didn’t seem to notice. ‘Everyone has scars. But not everyone deserves them.’

  Ibrahim nodded.

  ‘That’s true.’

  His serious face must have convinced her. Suddenly, Sara flashed a beautiful, unexpected smile. That was her real strength; her moods, anarchic and changeable, were infectious.

  Graciela went to her and placed a soothing hand on her daughter’s shoulder, imploring Ibrahim with her eyes to understand.

  ‘I’ll tell Eduardo you were here, when he comes back.’

  Ibrahim handed her a card with a phone number.

  ‘Tell him that Señor Arthur wants to speak to him, urgently.’

  Then he held out his hand to Sara. She eyed his heavily calloused palms and, before shaking his hand, asked him very seriously:

  ‘Have you killed a lot of cats?’

  He held his hands up, making light of it; Sara had actually been quite a pleasant surprise. When she grew up, she’d be a magnificent fighter.

  ‘Only the ones that eat my birds. As long as your Maneki doesn’t eat sparrows, you can rest easy.’

  ‘I’ll keep my cat away from your sparrows. And you don’t make any scars on Eduardo.’

  Ibrahim let out a sincere laugh. But Sara remained straight-faced.

  ‘Agreed,’ he conceded sombrely. ‘A deal is a deal.’

  Sara shook his hand firmly. They’d just entered into a pact, two serious adults.

  Arthur Fernández had a magnificent office overlooking Paseo de Recoletos. Eduardo admired his books, nestled elegantly in a solid mahogany bookshelf where a complete collection of French poetry held pride of place: everything from Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine to Mallarmé.

  Arthur was standing when Eduardo walked in. In one corner, Ibrahim paced like a tamed panther. He seemed totally harmless, his attitude both solicitous and friendly. Eduardo couldn’t help but clench his stomach, remembering the painful beating the man had given him without so much as blinking.

  ‘I see your bruises have healed nicely,’ Arthur said by way of greeting, pointing to Eduardo’s face.

  ‘It could have been worse,’ Eduardo agreed. Ibrahim cocked his head. Had he been a dog or a bat he’d have tilted his ears at Eduardo, but instead he simply shot him a brief look, nodded, and blinked delicately.

  Arthur asked him to take a seat, and although there was certainly more than enough space to avoid contact, the man leaned forward, invading his space. Eduardo felt uncomfortable — perhaps that was what Arthur was aiming for.

  ‘So, you want to paint my portrait. Isn’t that what you said? Are you still interested, despite our accidental first encounter?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Arthur folded his powerful hands and placed his elbows on his thighs, resting his chin on his knuckles. For one long minute, Eduardo bore the man’s scrutiny without moving a single muscle on his face. Meanwhile, Ibrahim’s sweetish cologne wafted, reaching him each time the man paced behind him, a latent presence.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll agree if I tell you it strikes me as a somewhat odd proposal. You don’t know me, you know nothing about me. And the method you chose to introduce yourself — following me around Madrid — was a bit unorthodox. So I can only imagine you have a compelling reason, something to convince me.’

  Eduardo had practised his reply. But for some reason his words reordered themselves, coming out different than he’d intended.

  ‘I’m an artist; I spend my time doing portraits of people who for some reason emanate something different, people who have a spark unlike others, who have faces that aren’t true or false, black or white, but are an amalgam of greys. Your face, if I may, is like steel. Light bounces off it, but doesn’t go through it or warm it, doesn’t shape it. It simply reflects it. I’ve read a few things about you in the press. You’re a rich man, famous. But the experience of causing the deaths of that boy and girl in the accident in January 2001 must have transformed you. I’d like to know who it is you became after three years in prison.’

  There followed a tense silence. If Eduardo’s comments had bothered Arthur, he certainly didn’t show it. After a few seconds, he got up to have a private word with Ibrahim. They spoke in hushed tones, in French. Then Ibrahim left the office. Arthur went back to his armchair, but didn’t sit. He stroked its leather back roughly, as though his fingers were unaccustomed to anything delicate.

  ‘I hope you won’t mind my using the being informal tú with you … You want to find out who I am through a painting? Come on, you can’t be serious. You, better than anyone, should know that art is not truth: it’s nothing but “a lie that makes us realise truth. … The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” Do you know who made that incredible statement? A buddy of yours.’

  Eduardo knew: it was Pablo Picasso. And in essence, he agreed. But the truth he was searching for was not a simple metaphor, an image. He examined Arthur’s profile with a critical eye, already unconsciously sketching him. The Greeks would have no doubt called him a beautiful man, but at the same time he seemed to transcend any such frivolity, to possess something much deeper. Something that a stranger to his life would never pick up on. The man was intriguing and captivating in equal measures.

  ‘Art is the thing that brings us closest to the human psyche. We can’t lie to art.’

  Arthur smiled, as if not taking Eduardo’s words very seriously.

  ‘I remember having those sorts of ideals. I had them too myself, once. Beauty, truth. The distillation of the human soul into one astonishing sentence, one magisterial brushstroke, one magical note … But I no longer believe in art’s capacity for redemption.’

  ‘Then why did you ask me to come?’ Eduardo asked, his voice coming out hoarse.

  Arthur approached and sat on the arm of the chair, his arms crossed. He inspected Eduardo as though he were a little animal.

  ‘Logically, I, too, did a little research on you. I know everything: that you lost your family, that you killed the man who caused the accident, that you spent thirteen years locked up, and that you’ve tried to kill yourself half-a-dozen times … So my question is: is there an element of the artist in his own work? Are you going to paint me, or are you attempting some sort of self-portrait, Eduardo? What’s the link between us? Loss? Guilt? Remorse?’

  Eduardo felt like an idiot.

  ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.’
r />   Arthur remained pensive.

  ‘I also found out that the idea of doing my portrait didn’t come from you. You work for Gloria A. Tagger, the mother of the boy who died in the accident.’

  Eduardo felt the back of his neck grow hot. He went to say something, but Arthur cut him off.

  ‘Did you know that Mallarmé had a son, Anatole, who died when he was eight years old? Mallarmé wrote hundreds of fragments and notes for a funeral poem he never managed to finish. The poet wanted to bring his son back through his genius, give him back the life that Death had snatched away. He never managed to finish it — he, who could do anything with words. He never could cover the emptiness left by “the wind of nothingness / that breathes … and a wave / that carries you away”. He didn’t even dare to write that his son was dead, because doing so would have required admitting that it was true: “no I will not / tell it to you — for then you / would disappear — and I would be alone / weeping for you, me, / mingled”. I can picture his quiet, candlelit hours, pen in the air. And then his desperation, the inability of words to truly unleash and express his pain, night after night.’

  He regarded Eduardo as though he’d already gotten from him what he wanted and had no need to ask anything else.

  ‘What that woman is trying to do is not forget her child, by means of the hatred she ascribes me.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Eduardo ventured. ‘It may be that our mutual losses are something we all have in common.’

  Arthur let out a sneering laugh. ‘You don’t know much about Gloria A. Tagger, do you?’

  He’s going to say no, Eduardo thought, distressed.

  But Arthur spread his hands and nodded. ‘Where would you like me to pose?’

  That meant he was saying yes; it took a few seconds for the confirmation to reach Eduardo’s brain.