‘You’re pretty blind for an artist, friend. What is it you think you know? Appearances are but obstacles, there to fool the fools … Now, run back to your hole, little mouse.’
Eduardo watched him amble off, leaving the plaza at the far end, until his shirt and cheap trousers could no longer be seen among the throng of people wandering up and down.
‘Want me to cast a spell on you, handsome?’ A gypsy in mourning, a branch of rosemary in one hand and fake gold teeth, addressed him. There were three of them, combing the tables like a military squadron on combat orders. Eduardo didn’t even bother to be polite. The woman’s sweet talk made him sick. He got up angrily.
‘There’s no magic spell that can save me,’ he murmured, pushing her brusquely out of his way.
‘I’ll put the evil eye on you, you wretch! You’ll be a wretched man for the rest of your life, I swear upon my dead!’
Eduardo couldn’t suppress an irate cackle that made passers-by turn and stare, as if he were insane.
The café where Arthur had arranged to meet him was at the bottom of Calle Fuencarral. Just on the other side of Gran Vía, two prostitutes stood by a photo booth smoking, offering themselves. One winked a lifeless eye at him, her heavy fake lashes like the rise and fall of a tragic theatre curtain. Eduardo picked up the pace. Sometimes something as simple as a crosswalk acts as an invisible border. You get to the other side and think you’re safe, in a world somehow more tolerable.
He saw Arthur sitting in a corner, talking to someone. Eduardo recognised the guy. It was the journalist from Allegro he’d seen in Gloria’s dressing room a few weeks earlier. What was he doing talking to Arthur? Eduardo got a bad feeling.
Arthur was listening to Guzmán, engrossed, deep in silence. He was staring at the wall as though something only he could see were behind it, something horrible judging by the way he was involuntarily tensing every muscle in his face.
‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Positive. It was him. The painter. He was with her in Barcelona; they had dinner in a restaurant. I waited for them to leave before going in. On top of the table was a sheet of paper, ripped in half. Guess whose face was on it when I put them together? That’s right; yours. Then they went up to Gloria’s room. I can’t say for certain what they were doing for an hour and a half, but I can guess.’ He said it with a mix of interest and disgust, as though he’d witnessed something that went against nature, something that should never have happened. It was clear that even for someone like Guzmán, Eduardo didn’t deserve the attentions of a woman like Gloria.
Arthur dug his fingers into his hair and clasped his forehead, trying to make sense of this unexpected turn of events. Eduardo and Gloria? It made no sense. Suddenly, he shot Guzmán a look of mistrust.
‘What were you doing in Barcelona?’
Guzmán stroked the rough ridges of his singed hand and smiled. He pulled out an envelope and laid it on the table.
‘What’s this?’
‘From what I understand, in the winter of 1990 you had Aroha enrolled in a special boarding school in Geneva, isn’t that so?’
Arthur nodded.
‘This is the clinical file on Gloria Tagger’s son. Curiously, when your daughter was admitted, this kid was there too. So it’s more than likely they knew each other.’ Guzmán scrutinised Arthur’s face. ‘Were you unaware of that?’
Arthur skimmed through the file quickly. It was just a page but more than enough to make him go pale. When he finished, he raised his head and saw the mockery in Guzmán’s eyes, as he sat blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. Arthur remembered Diana’s warning: Guzmán is not a door that can be easily closed once you decide to open it. Arthur could no longer stop what he himself had set in motion; he realised that when he saw the man’s hard little brown eyes glinting like a predator.
‘I had no idea. Must be a coincidence.’
Guzmán stood and straightened his jacket. He was looking at the door, and on seeing Eduardo, he smiled.
‘Let’s just say that there’s something about this whole story of your daughter’s disappearance that doesn’t add up: a rebellious girl who runs away a lot, a violinist with a backstory out of a novel and a son you accidentally ran over, an antique dealer, a financial shark … Well, maybe coincidences do exist, but when they’re this close together they stop being coincidences and become patterns, don’t you think? One door leads to another. And my job is to walk through them all.’
Guzmán passed Eduardo at the door and gave the painter a military salute.
Seeing Eduardo, Arthur leapt up from the sofa, grabbed his jacket and gave him a cloudy, absent look.
‘I need to go for a walk. I’m suffocating in here. Let’s go.’
‘I know that man,’ Eduardo said as they stepped out onto the street.
Arthur gazed up at the heavens, as though aware of how far they were from the ground.
‘There are some people it’s better not to know,’ was all he said in reply.
Arthur was taking quick anxious steps, heading for the Malasaña quarter, and Eduardo was having a hard time keeping up.
‘Where have you been all this time? I thought we had a portrait to do, you and me.’
Eduardo felt a stabbing pain in his bad knee. He couldn’t keep Arthur’s pace, and what’s more, he sensed that something terrible had happened. He leaned against the corner of a building and massaged his knee.
‘I’m calling it quits, Arthur. Actually, I think it was a bad idea from the start.’
Arthur stopped short and gave him a sinister look. That was the word. The man’s face became sinister whenever something seemed to make him uncomfortable. It was his way of drawing an invisible line that was not to be crossed.
‘Señora Tagger no longer requires your services?’
So that was it. He knew.
‘So, she’s your lover. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Eduardo faltered, averting his gaze, eyes darting from one side of the street to the other like a cornered animal. Ibrahim had called him a little mouse, and that’s exactly what he was.
‘I’m not her lover; just a tool.’
In an alleyway off Calle Espíritu Santo, one beggar was cursing another, squawking like a crow and shuffling around the other, gesticulating anxiously. They were fighting over the rotten fruit in a dumpster. Their argument grew louder as they became more riled.
Arthur couldn’t take his eyes off them.
‘Poor Gloria, the devastated mother … I’m sure it wasn’t hard for her to seduce a poor fool like you. I bet you’re in love with her. All men fall in love with Gloria A. Tagger.’
The skirmish between the two beggars was escalating. They were now embroiled in a slow-motion, clumsy, vicious brawl, reminiscent of Goya’s Duel with Cudgels. Two tattered men bludgeoning one another in some godforsaken place, up to their knees in muck. No honour at all, just brute strength, biting, scratching, vicious kicks aimed at testicles. They were literally killing each other over a rotten apple and a carton of sour milk. And neither of them would stop until they had achieved their objective. But the object itself — food — was lost in the fray. The scraps on the ground no longer mattered. What drove them to beat one another so savagely was welled-up rage, a hatred so intense and so profound there was no way to shout it out. They wanted to kill each other, kill themselves, their life stories, their past, their demons, wanted to murder their present and seal their future. Perhaps they were secretly hoping someone would come and intercede, call off the fight, declare it a tie. But no one did.
Eduardo looked on absently.
Arthur and Gloria, Gloria and Arthur. They thought they could do anything they wanted, toy with anyone at will, maybe keep hurting the other, poison their miserable lives as though their venom were the blood that no longer coursed through their veins.
‘You lost a daughter and y
ou’re looking for her. Gloria lost a son and, in some sense, she’s still looking for him, too. And I feel trapped in a downward spiral, tossed from side to side with no will of my own. Enough — I’ve had it.’
Arthur contemplated Eduardo coldly, without a hint of sorrow, or understanding, or affection.
‘You feel like the victim in all this. But you’re not innocent, that’s for sure. Your hands are as dirty as ours. What about the man you killed? And his wife, who you left crippled in a wheelchair … Do you think she’s been able to just let it go? You think she doesn’t hate you with all her might?’
The arabesque was perfect, displayed in a sequence of four positions on the wall, one after the other, just above the mannequin draped with tulle and gauze from her old outfits and a pair of slippers whose reinforced toes were completely worn out. From her wheelchair, Maribel extended her right arm gracefully, until its shadow projected on the wall as a perfectly straight line, fingers together, index finger raised slightly, pinky slightly down, like a soft waterfall. In a flawlessly choreographed move, she next bent her torso sideways and did exactly the same with her left arm. Gazing at the shadows, you could easily picture a pair of wings flapping gently. With her eyes resting shut, concentrating on her breathing, on getting just the right intake of air, she pretended her wheelchair didn’t exist. Executing the move properly required the body’s weight to rest on one leg, demi-plié over and over, again and again, until the thigh no longer felt the body’s pressure, the other leg fully extended from the hip like an elegant tail. Arm and leg created one long stylised line. It was the closest thing to flying that a human could aspire to without wings, and Maribel had felt that freedom, that impossible combination of gravity-defying lines and contours, hundreds if not thousands of times.
She opened her eyes slowly and once more felt the heavy sombreness of the room, her catheter and urine bag, the rough feel of the plastic, the atrophy of her leg muscles, useless now after having supported her for so many years. She gazed at the sequence of exercises immortalised in the four framed photos. They were taken during a demonstration by the dance school, on tour in Barcelona. Standing before her three best students, Maribel executed the moves, wearing a very tight, very black outfit that left only her shoulders, arms, and the tips of her pointe shoes exposed. The real challenge, however, had been that she was executing the moves on a beach, a damp irregular surface, the shore seen in the distance. It must have been very painful in those circumstances, must have required incredible balance, poise, strength and obstinacy. Yet Maribel’s face, like that of her students, betrayed not the slightest doubt. Tall, with straight black hair down to her chest, she gazed confidently into space as though somewhere there were an invisible barre holding her up. She radiated determination.
As she nearly always did when looking at those photos, hung in a place that made it impossible not to see them when she went into her old bedroom, Maribel stroked her skin. The images forced her to remember what she’d never again be: young, light, ethereal, beautiful and free.
At sixty, she shouldn’t feel old; women her age still took care of themselves, used all sorts of creams, often had no compunction about getting a little plastic surgery if that meant they could keep living a virtual youth that even they themselves knew, deep in their hearts, no longer went with their bodies. But Maribel felt ancient. Her skin had become scaly for lack of fresh air, her bones frail from lack of exercise, and her muscles were so wasted they had practically turned to mush, held together by a sack of skin. She wondered what Teo, her husband, would think if he could see her in such a sorry state of neglect. He’d worked long and hard to conquer her and she hadn’t made it easy, teasing him over and over before finally giving herself to him, feigning indifference to his love and complete dedication to her one true passion — dance.
Teo had been a patient man, not much of a talker, and could even appear cold and distant, but he had had the perseverance befitting his stubborn meticulous character; it made him a great coin collector and dealer. Those two qualities — patience and perseverance — finally created a chink in Maribel’s armour, and once he’d achieved that, he eventually made it all the way, through sheer determination. She’d always assumed that they would grow old together, that their mutual decline would be gradual — he with his coins and she with her books on dance technique, using theory to keep teaching what exhaustion and the laws of gravity meant she could no longer demonstrate herself.
Sometimes, when she entered her bedroom, she still thought it might be possible. She was afraid that she’d lose his smells if she let in any contaminated outside air. Not even her son was allowed to enter. It was her sanctuary, the one place she could still be the woman she’d been before that degenerate took away the two things that meant the most to her — her ability to fly, and the only man she’d ever loved.
She opened the armoire where Teo’s shirts and suits hung. Every so often she would take them to the same drycleaners she had always used, and they’d return them freshly pressed. When his smell started to fade, she would bring out the aftershave Teo had used and lightly sprinkle the collars, cuffs, and sleeves so that when she opened the armoire it was as if her husband were coming out to greet her. She’d inhale the smell of his shirts and then exhale slowly, and her heart was thankful for that dance of the senses. Though never an elegant man, Teo was always meticulous and austere, almost English in his dress and footwear. He kept each pair of Italian loafers with its corresponding brush and polish.
She still had a watch case with a few of his watches — none of them valuable or aesthetically striking — that matched his plain ties, scarves and handkerchiefs. It was all kept in perfect order — folded, unfolded and refolded. Maribel could while away many hours each morning absorbed in the task, but she didn’t mind. She had nothing to do but remember, fold and unfold, and pine.
In the back of the armoire was a dark plastic bag that Maribel rarely dared to pull out, despite being unable to make herself get rid of its contents. It held the clothes her husband had been wearing the day his soulless killer had blown his brains out. The police had handed it over after the autopsy, and she’d refused to burn it or throw it away, unlike the coat she herself had been wearing that morning, which ended up with a hole shot through it and a black trail of gunpowder, but almost no blood. In the bag, she kept the pale blue shirt that he’d liked to wear on Sundays, when he went to the numismatic association. The collar was a bit thin, worn with use, and they’d often argued because it drove her to distraction to see him put it on. But Teo never wanted to get rid of it because ever since he acquired an aureus of Emperor Alejandro Severo coined in 223AD, it had become his lucky shirt. Embedded in it, like scars in the weave, were blood spatters, shards of his skull, particles of scalp and brain matter that had exploded with devastating violence when the shot was fired into his head.
She’d also kept his corduroy jacket, its elbows worn thin, and his dark chinos. His clothes hadn’t even matched, the day that lunatic killed him. And that absurd thought had festered in Maribel’s brain, all those years. Like a stuck cog, her brain obsessed over it every time she decided, for whatever reason, to get out the bag and spread its contents on the bed.
You didn’t even match, but you refused to listen to me. You’d become so irritable and distracted by your coins and things that you wouldn’t even let me pick out your clothes.
Nearly fourteen years later, she still didn’t understand why some so-called happy people are punished in such unexpected, horrific ways. Who decided their destiny? God? Fate? And why her? Why her and not some other woman? She’d struggled all her life; she understood that life was a question of sacrifice, dedication, effort and tenacity, that it was rife with failures. Classical dance had made her suitably disciplined, but it had also taught her to expect some reward for all that discipline. And she’d hardly had time to enjoy it, just a few short years — ‘the most beautiful years’, said her romantic, optimist fri
ends; ‘the most unrealistic years’, said those not carried away by facile emotion. They couldn’t even have the child that she had so yearned for, and Teo also dreamed of. In the end, they’d adopted their son, and although Maribel had thrown herself body and soul into loving him, deep down it hurt her to know that her husband had never felt the boy was fully his.
‘I wish you could see him. He’s become a handsome young man, hardworking, smart, and so sensitive, but now he needs a father to help him through this confusing time.’
Maribel didn’t feel she had the strength to battle the inevitable. Children grow up, they learn things about themselves, some of them erroneous, and then they leave — whether physically or not, they stop belonging to their parents. Children are temporary, they’re given only on loan, and sooner or later they have to be returned, given back to life itself. Lately, when Mr Who looked at her, she felt a strange trepidation, as though her son were hoping for something from her, a sign, as though he wanted to tell her something but didn’t know how. And when she asked him, he’d put on a mask, act like the angel he’d always been, kiss her on the forehead and then leave, burdened by his sadness and his demons.
It took her a moment to hear the doorbell. When she finally did, she looked at the time, surprised. It was too early for her son to be coming home, and besides, he had his own keys and never rang the bell. Maybe it was those two old ladies again, the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to see her every afternoon, with their pamphlets and their proselytising spirit, commendable but hopeless in her case. She pushed her wheelchair down the hall to the door, trying to think up an excuse that wouldn’t be offensive, so as to get them out of her hair as soon as possible.
But when she opened the door she saw not the old ladies with their pious faces, not her son. The sorrowful man who stood looking at her from the hall was a ghost from the past. The face that had filled her nightmares for the past fourteen years.
‘Good morning, Señora. I’m Eduardo Quintana.’
The Heart Tastes Bitter Page 27