The Heart Tastes Bitter

by Victor del Arbol

  He didn’t want to bother them, hadn’t emerged from the past to burst their piece-of-shit bubbles. All he wanted was a little information about a guy who didn’t add up. Why do you want to know? they asked suspiciously. Better not to ask; just keep up your charade, was his reply. Private matter. He worked alone now. Most of them knew he’d been expelled from the directorate over the music-teacher incident, maybe they could even guess that he hadn’t been allowed to leave Pinochet’s police force with a simple pat on the back. They didn’t want to know the details and looked away in horror when they saw his mangled hand. You should see what’s in my pants, Guzmán thought.

  One way or another, he’d managed to gather enough information about the respectable-looking old man now heading for the garden exit with the kid trailing close behind.

  If people were more observant, they’d have wondered why Dámaso bought a bag of bird food that he was now tossing into the bin, leaving the winged vermin to fight over the crumbs. Maybe someone would have picked up on the way the old man’s hand encircled the boy’s waist, fingers dropping dangerously close to his buttocks. Guzmán had no idea if he was married or widowed, if he had children or grandkids, if he planned to retire to a little house in the mountains when his antiques business dried up. But he did know that Dámaso Berenguer was many other things, in addition to antiquarian, or at least had been at some point in his life: black-marketeer, forger, launderer of huge sums of money, and pederast.

  That last one had gotten him into trouble with the law in the mid-nineties. In a bar one night, some customers had discovered him in the bathroom with a kid who, like the one now climbing into his car — a SEAT parked beside the fence — could have been his grandson. Except that his pants were down, and Dámaso was, quite literally, giving him an arse-licking. If the police hadn’t gotten him out of there, shoving and clubbing their way through, the customers would have flayed him alive. He served six months of a sentence, which was reduced to a fine.

  As he drove, following Dámaso’s car into an industrial area on the outskirts of Madrid, he thought of the stars in the Atacama desert, of Candela’s soft skin, slightly sour from sweat and lack of bathing, of the talks they’d had on a straw mattress on the floor of the cell where he was supposed to be interrogating her, not falling in love with her. Do you have kids? And her reply: No. What’s the point? I wouldn’t want them to suffer in this piece-of-shit world. She used the word shit a lot, and over the years Guzmán realised he’d picked it up and it had stuck — shit in his mouth and on his shoes.

  As Dámaso’s car turned, without signaling, at an exit for Las Cárdenas Industrial Park, he thought about Bosco and his men; how, despite the horror Guzmán had been subjected to, his boss hadn’t wanted to kill him. He should have done it. If he had, he’d still be alive today; instead he had a widow and three orphans in Santiago. He could have witnessed the arrival of democracy, and a Spanish judge attempting to punish Pinochet while the ex-dictator paraded around the world pathetically feigning illness and senility. Never leave things half-done, Bosco used to say. And he was right. He’d found that out the night Guzmán showed up at his house and blew his brains out with a shotgun.

  Dámaso parked the blue SEAT, with its bumper sticker on the back window (Visit Cuenca!), near an industrial unit. Behind the fence, a dog chained to a cement pylon barked, baring its sharp yellow teeth. Old man and boy got out and walked into the grounds. Dámaso had a key and unlocked a gate in the fence. The dog’s barking became more frenzied as it jerked violently against the chain, straining to get at them. Guzmán was terrified of dogs; he froze in panic around them. It took all the courage he could muster to conquer his fear and, after a few minutes, finally force himself to get out of the car and jump the fence, Dámaso having locked the gate behind him. Pressing himself to the wall farthest from the dog, he approached the entrance, and the animal, despite its best efforts, was unable to reach him.

  The unit looked empty. It must have been a warehouse, and there were still a few pallets with copper coils in one corner. Leaning against the wall was a large FOR SALE sign with the phone number of a real estate agent. An overhead crane spanned the entire ceiling, its hook hanging down in the middle from an enormous chain. There was dust and filth everywhere. On the right, a narrow staircase led up to a mezzanine with a prefab module that must have served as the firm’s offices when the place was in business. Through the frosted glass he could make out the silhouettes of Dámaso and his companion.

  Guzmán imagined what he’d find as he climbed the metallic stairs, not caring about the noise he made. Imagining is a way of predicting the future, both distant and immediate. He was unconcerned about the scene he was about to come upon. Or what would happen after that. Guzmán knew perfectly well. The future was his to invent.

  The flimsy door was buckled and in disrepair. It was broken in a few places and had a hole that looked to have been caused by a blow, maybe a fist. As if someone had taken out their rage with a gesture that probably did nothing but bruise their knuckles. Maybe whoever did it had been a worker at the old factory, unceremoniously fired from one day to the next. Or maybe it was somebody Dámaso had taken there before.

  The old man and the boy were pressed close together. Whatever it was they were doing seemed very private, just between the two of them, even though before Guzmán burst into the room they were alone and had nothing to hide or be ashamed of. Except maybe themselves. They both looked up at him in shock, and he found their expressions both tragic and comical. The kid didn’t move. He simply pulled back from the old man a few centimetres, enough to reveal his right hand clutching Dámaso’s pathetically erect penis. For a split second he held onto it, as though afraid it might fall into a void. For his part, the old man made a vague attempt to do up his zipper. A handkerchief stuck out of his back pocket; perhaps he’d been planning to wipe himself off when he finished.

  ‘Get out of here, kid,’ Guzmán ordered, and the boy hesitated for a moment, looking to Dámaso for some sort of direction, a reason to refuse. But the old man was pale as wax and staring at the floor. Finally the hired-hand left, carefully edging around Guzmán, who stood blocking almost the entire doorway with his body. They heard him race down the stairs as fast as he could.

  Dámaso put up no resistance, didn’t even try to justify himself. Didn’t ask a single question, say a single word.

  And yet still, Guzmán pulled an expandable baton from his pocket, whipped it through the air to assemble it, and whacked the old man on his right carotid, just between his jaw and clavicle. The blow was so violent that Dámaso collapsed like a sack of potatoes, unconscious. Guzmán could easily have managed without hitting him, at least at first, but he felt no regret. On his scale of values — a spiral staircase he climbed up and down as he saw fit — what he’d seen merited no compassion.

  He opened his eyes for a second but then closed them right away. The light bothered him. He could smell wet clothes, and the leather jacket hung over the back of a chair; he could sense an umbrella dripping and a muffled drumming sound far above his head. It must be raining outside. He heard Guzmán’s voice, very close to his face. His breath was sweet, like fruit-flavoured gum. Strawberry, maybe.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  Dámaso tried to sit up, but the pain in his neck stopped him.

  ‘Easy, don’t try to move or you’ll hurt yourself,’ Guzmán whispered, placing a hand on his chest.

  Dámaso touched his head. He had a small cut on his brow and some bruises. But the worst thing was the buzzing in his brain, the intense pain in his neck. His heart was beating too quickly, wildly.

  ‘You’re dazed from the blow,’ Guzmán said, guessing the old man’s thoughts, approaching from behind, and placing an amicable hand on Dámaso’s shoulder. The old man saw his singed hand and amputated little finger. Guzmán appeared truly relieved that nothing worse had happened. His eyes were direct, straightforward, honest; he smiled
with his mouth open wide, like a child watching a Christmas parade. And yet, there was something sinister about the way he puffed out his chest as he breathed.

  They were in the basement of Dámaso’s storeroom, in his private theatre. Dámaso’s heart skipped a beat when he realised that Guzmán had been carelessly rifling through tapes, handling rolls of film. The idiot didn’t realise how valuable the items he was mishandling were. It seemed pointless to ask him what they were both doing there and how he’d found the place. And yet he did it anyway.

  ‘You have no right to do this. What I do in my private life is my business. If you want to report me, go ahead. But you can’t do this,’ he protested.

  Guzmán nodded. It was true, he had no right to do this. But that didn’t change things. If anything, it clarified them. Having or lacking the right to do something, what was just or unjust, legal or illegal … All just words, abstract concepts that weren’t much good at a time like this. He got a chair and dragged it over, sat backwards on it, arms resting on the back, facing Dámaso. For a full minute he said nothing. Just stared. He wanted to make the man feel the full fear of the wait. Make him wonder: What now? What’s going to happen?

  ‘Nice little set-up you got down here. This place is better-hidden than a nuclear fallout shelter. All this just to watch Charlie Chaplin videos with your little friends? Hard to believe, I got to say. Even more so knowing your record.’

  ‘It’s none of your business. Nothing illegal goes on here.’

  ‘Seriously? Then why did you lie to me?’

  Dámaso swallowed. If this man had been a police officer maybe he could have hoped for things to turn out for the better. But he wasn’t, and that terrified him.

  ‘This is for people who want to keep their privacy. I don’t know who you are or what you’re looking for, but you’re making a very big mistake. You’re going to find yourself in some serious trouble.’

  Dámaso tried to sound confident, but his voice trembled. And his defiance collapsed entirely when Guzmán reached out a hand — that atrophied hunk of flesh and wrinkled skin — and removed Dámaso’s glasses. Without the magnified lenses, his tiny little mouse eyes looked petrified.

  ‘Don’t get defensive, old man. I just want to talk. We can try to be civilised.’

  ‘What do you want? Money? Are you trying to blackmail me? You’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t have a single euro.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. I’m not here to talk about your sick little perversions. I couldn’t care less who you’re fucking up the arse. I’ve got questions, and I want answers. End of story. Very easy if you cooperate, so there’s no need to resist. I don’t like to see others suffer needlessly — I’m going soft in my old age, you know?’

  ‘What questions?’

  ‘First: the day Magnus Olsen killed himself, he got a phone call. There was a message on his answering machine. Were you the one who called him?’

  ‘I told you, I hardly new Olsen. I didn’t call him.’

  Guzmán flexed his shoulders and, before Dámaso had time to react, punched him in the mouth, splitting his lip and throwing him back in his chair, though Guzmán reached out an arm to steady him just in time. Strangely, he was quite gentle, as though Dámaso were a frail old man who’d stumbled in the street and he a kind soul who’d come to his aid. The effect was disconcerting.

  ‘You’re not taking the easy route, Dámaso. You’re heading down a dead-end street. Don’t worry about what you think I know. Don’t try to gauge what you should or shouldn’t say, what you think I want to hear. That’s a very common mistake. Believe me, my friend. I’ve got a lot of experience. Focus on what you know and own up, give it up voluntarily or I’ll have to wrench it from you. Was the voice on the answering machine yours?’

  Dámaso nodded slowly.

  ‘Much better. Now, tell me about the recording you demanded to have back in that message. Thinking about the boy who was greasing your rod a little while ago, it occurs to me that it’s probably not a Harold Lloyd flick, am I right?’

  Dámaso didn’t take his eyes off Guzmán’s fist. He could taste the blood oozing through his gums, feel it filling the gaps between his teeth, making him gag.

  ‘I’m a collector of special movies. Unique films that can’t be found anywhere else. I repeat, nothing illegal. But what you’re doing is a serious crime. Magnus Olsen was part of the film club; I lent him a very old movie and he was taking too long to return it, so I called to demand that he give it back.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I swear I’m telling you the truth.’

  You couldn’t say he didn’t give the man a chance. He’d been fair, Guzmán thought. That was what Bosco had taught him: give those you interrogate the opportunity to behave like cowards, to betray themselves, their families, their friends, their flag, their hymns and countries, their ideals. You had to give them the opportunity to surrender privately, with no witnesses, and let them know that it was okay, that pain was a useless and unnecessary ordeal — since all is already lost before you’ve even begun.

  Once the opportunity was gone, though, you had to crush them, reduce them to dust.

  Guzmán stood slowly and walked over to a metal cabinet with a sliding door. It had half-a-dozen shelves lined with reels and rolls of film, in chronological and alphabetical order. He liked movies, especially American movies from the eighties and nineties. He wasn’t too demanding: Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas. People said Hollywood was commercial rubbish. But he enjoyed going to the movies, eating popcorn. He told Candela that once, in the cell, after he kissed her, when her lips were healing from the first beating she’d received on arrival at the makeshift prison. She’d never surrendered — he had.

  She laughed when he confessed that he loved Waterland and Top Gun. Candela’s laugh was as wide as her mouth, and she had a slight gap between her two front teeth. He’d always imagined that kind of laugh for the protagonist of Rayuela, though he didn’t know why. Candela laughed silently so the guards wouldn’t hear and come to steal her happiness, her few drops of happiness. Guzmán was a little hurt that she’d laughed at his taste in movies, but it didn’t keep him from smiling, or from thinking that she laughed like Julio Cortázar’s protagonist.

  ‘Are these the movies you’re talking about?’ he asked Dámaso. He had his hands on a roll of film — the original J’accuse. Guzmán didn’t know it, but the film was priceless. It contained, in addition to the film footage itself, cuts that the French director Abel Gance had edited out. Guzmán had no idea the film was from 1919, but when he saw Dámaso’s expression of horror, saw him writhing in his chair, frantic, he knew he’d hit the mark.

  ‘Be careful with those reels, please. They’re very fragile.’

  Children are fragile, hopes are fragile, clouds are made of cotton. Life is a fragile balance, easily broken. Books are burned, words go up in flames, thought Guzmán. He opened the case and shredded the film. Next came La Roue and Napoléon, also by Gance. Without a trace of sorrow, in a single minute he destroyed the very films that had put France at the top of the silent film world.

  In a moment of daring, desperation and idiocy (the essence of bravery) Dámaso leapt from his chair and tried to stop him, begging and crying the tears of a man witnessing the end of his world. An incomprehensible tragedy for him, a man who felt nothing at the loss of a child’s innocence.

  ‘Please, please, stop. Those are irreplaceable,’ Dámaso pleaded, trying to snatch a reel from his hand.

  Guzmán gave him a look of disdain, his eyes floating down over the old man like mist from the hills.

  Bosco’s grandfather had been Italian, a devout fascist, though more given to Hitler than to Mussolini, whom he always accused of being too Italian. He preferred the objective efficacy of the Germans. The venerable-looking old man once explained to his grandson that his commander in the Waffen-SS used to
weep while listening to Wagner, as his men set their dogs on ragtag lines of Jews crammed into the station, waiting to be sent to extermination camps. Recalling this, the old man had cried.

  Guzmán pushed Dámaso away effortlessly with a kick to the stomach. The antiquarian’s mouth gasped open and closed like a dying fish.

  ‘You’re trying my patience. I can keep this up, and I will. I’ll burn this whole place down with you inside it if you insist on wasting my time.’

  Dámaso spat out a clot of blood. He was having trouble breathing.

  ‘What was the film you were demanding from Olsen? Don’t hold back — answer my question. I’m not going to judge you. It’s simple curiosity. Don’t try to justify it, we all have reasons for doing what we do or don’t do.’

  Guzmán thought of ripping the man’s tongue out with a pair of pliers and smiled. But he decided not to, and nor did he wipe the smile off his face. The bastard would be no good to him mute.

  ‘You’ve got a nice little collection here, old man. I bet it took you half your life to build it up. And now you see how easily all those years’ effort can vanish.’

  Dámaso closed his eyes. He was wheezing loudly, curled up on one side in the foetal position, blood and slobber puddling beneath his mouth. A brown stain appeared on his trousers: he’d shat in his pants. Holding out one arm, he pointed to the screen in front of the rows of theatre seats.

  ‘There, behind the false wall,’ he struggled to say.

  At first glance, there looked to be nothing behind the screen but a low wall. But when he touched it, Guzmán saw it was a hollow plasterboard panel. On the right, half a metre from the ground, was a small, barely visible crack. Guzmán pushed and it gave way, revealing a wall-safe, which was built-in and quite sophisticated — two locks and a digital keypad.