‘I’ve tried to tell you this several times, Graciela. I’m not the man you think I am. You invented your own version of me, as some sort of partner for you, as a father for Sara. But that man has only ever existed inside your head.’
‘My name is not Graciela!!!’ she shouted above the volume of the transistor radio. And then for a second she fell silent, as though her words had betrayed her, but almost immediately she regained her composure. ‘Don’t you tell me what I’m thinking, what I feel, what I believe. You don’t know a thing. You’re so blind …’
They two of them stared at each other in silence. Her lips were quivering and the tears in her eyes turned into gleaming mirrors that reflected a blurred outline of Eduardo.
‘I don’t want to put you or Sara in danger. I’ll pack my things and pay you the rest of the month’s rent. I can be out of here tomorrow.’
Graciela shook her head, the anger dissipating, like the tail end of a storm heading off into the hills. And the gloomy halo of post-storm melancholy hung in the air, in a landscape still dripping with rain.
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ She held out the package she’d been holding in her hands. ‘The guy asked Sara to give you this, on behalf of Teodoro López Egea.’
Eduardo examined the package as though it were some strange foreign object he couldn’t figure out how to open. When he looked up, Graciela was gazing toward the half-open apartment door. Sara stood in the doorway, her face and one sock-clad foot — a pink sock with little blue elephants — sticking out into the hall. The other was hidden behind the doorframe. She had one eye trained on him. Half her cat was peeking out, too. Something about her looked different. Words overheard can alter the way you see things. Neither Graciela nor Eduardo knew how much Sara had heard.
‘Go back inside, sweetheart,’ Graciela said, with an urgent sweeping motion of her hands. As if that simple gesture might contain her daughter’s body and keep her from slipping out, like a wounded man trying to hold his guts in after stepping on a landmine.
Before she disappeared, following behind her daughter, Graciela turned to Eduardo.
‘Take care of this, whatever it is.’
Eduardo nodded. He wanted to tell her not to forget to put the flowers in the vase; they would lift Sara’s sadness a bit.
The package contained a couple of very old hundred-peseta banknotes, bearing the impenetrable face of Francisco de Goya; and one thousand-peseta note, with the face of humanist Luis Vives. There were also several twenty-five-peseta bills, showing the politician Flórez Estrada. In total, thirteen hundred pesetas issued between 1944 and 1947. On first glance, there was nothing special about them. They were just old banknotes no longer in circulation, which might have held some significance for collectors — nothing of interest to him. But when he held them up to the light, he could see tiny stains, marks that seemed to suggest they had been in an explosion. There was also a note, written on a post-it. A meeting place and time. He went straight to the refrigerator, but all he found was half a bottle of some very bad wine. Filling a glass, Eduardo drank it down without stopping for breath. And then he did it again, until his hands stopped shaking.
Being punished is pointless if you don’t know why you’re being punished. For thirteen long years — the whole time he’d been locked up — everything the psychiatrists and wardens had done was aimed at forcing him to accept that truth. That was what Martina wanted to do, too, when she claimed she was trying to help with his reinsertion. Strange word. It meant that, at some point, he’d been a part of the apparatus that rules us all. That before watching Elena and Tania die, he’d been a small cog in a machine — a machine that ran smoothly, without too much friction. When his family died, the cog had broken and set off a chain-reaction of horror — more deaths, more suffering, as useless as his own. He’d been unwilling to put his faith in the law, and that was unforgiveable. More unforgiveable even than the tragedy he’d caused Teo, Maribel and their son — who were, after all, just more unimportant cogs in the machine, when it came right down to it. We can’t let individuals take justice into their own hands. That would lead to chaos; the whole societal apparatus would lose its raison d’etre, Martina had warned him.
A lunatic kills for no reason, or for reasons totally incomprehensible to others. But he wasn’t one of those psychos he’d been incarcerated with in Huesca for thirteen years. Eduardo had acted in a fit of rage, a temporary outburst. That was another word his shrink loved scribbling in her notebook. He could be cured, she claimed. They could fix him, reinsert him like a shiny new object. All he had to do was keep his head down, forget the past, accept forgiveness.
But the psychiatrist was wrong.
It was seven a.m. and the park was deserted. The guard who opened the gate was stretching his limbs like a lion after a long nap. He regarded Mr Who curiously, and his brain, foggy after an uncomfortable night’s sleep in the night watchman’s booth, couldn’t make out whether the figure was a man or a woman. Mr Who walked slowly toward the Crystal Palace, passing the first early risers who’d come in their workout gear to jog around Parque de El Retiro. The dog walkers — poo bags in hand — would arrive later, as would the newspaper vendors, delivery trucks, and police on horseback.
The artificial lake looked like a Welsh lagoon, a light mist floating over its green-tinged surface.
Eduardo was waiting on one of the benches on the south side with a vacant expression. He rubbed his wrists mechanically — first one, then the other — as though he’d just had handcuffs removed. Mr Who watched for a long while, with a mixture of disappointment and resentment. He’d been awaiting the moment for so long, had prepared for it so thoroughly that now this downcast man in the bone-coloured raincoat didn’t measure up to his expectations. He was furious not to feel the hatred that he’d assumed he would. Mr Who had spent his whole life hating a shadow, and now he got the feeling that the shadow didn’t even belong to this man.
Eduardo heard footsteps to his right and turned. When he saw Who, his sagging cheeks turned red. He wasn’t sure whether to stand or remain seated, and ended up doing an awkward movement halfway between the two, his butt hovering over the edge of the seat and one arm over the back of the bench. So, it’s you. Eduardo’s lips didn’t move, it was his face that spoke. He wasn’t surprised, not really. When Graciela described Who — ‘… he doesn’t look like a man or a woman; it’s like he’s split in two, half of each …’ — Eduardo had thought almost instantly of the encounter he’d had months ago in the metro station with the young man who’d forgotten his Chinese cat. He’d remembered the unsettling feeling he’d gotten that he knew the kid, that their encounter had not been by chance.
‘You’ve grown,’ was all he could think of to say. It was an idiotic statement given the circumstances — as if they were distant relations, as if he were an uncle seeing his nephew for the first time in fourteen years and discovering that the little brat was now a man in the prime of life.
Who took a seat beside him. He was wearing a lightweight, knee-length trench coat with the collar turned up. He slipped his hands into his pockets and lowered his chin, shrugging. Who stared out at the rising mist over the lake. Through gently swirling wisps he could see the surface from time to time, the fish beneath it stirring up bubbles and gentle waves.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d actually come,’ Who said, looking at him out of the corner of his eye, ‘but something told me you would. You know, I feel like I’ve known you since I was nine years old. I’ve dreamed of you every night.’ He had a sad air about him, unthreatening. A sadness that detached him from the pain that had first caused it — a distant pain that had festered like a terminal disease you learn to live with.
Eduardo took from his pocket the bills Who had given to Sara. They were carefully folded into a wad, and he placed it on the bench between them.
‘There was no reason to threaten Graciela and Sara. I went to see your
mother, and I knew sooner or later you’d turn up. I’d have come regardless. Whatever this is, I accept it — I’m tired of carrying around this burden.’
Mr Who tried to judge Eduardo’s sincerity, but he couldn’t. Did the man know he was there to kill him? Did he know he was planning to use a little .22-calibre pistol hidden in one of his pockets? He must have guessed, surely. But he didn’t look like he was afraid, and it couldn’t be because he thought he’d be able to talk Who out of it. In fact, deep down, he seemed to long for it.
‘I wasn’t trying to hurt them. I’m not like that. I’m not like you.’ Who stood, looked out over the lake. He shook his head and then nodded toward Eduardo. ‘Have you ever felt like a tree with no roots? That’s what I’ve felt like for as long as I can remember.’
Eduardo avoided making eye contact, glanced away from the sun that was reflected in Who’s eyes. The spite gleaming in those eyes was like a firefly trapped under a dark glass. He focused instead on the algae floating on the water’s surface, swishing gently back and forth like little snakes, over by the cypress tree where his and Elena’s names were carved into the bark. He wanted to tell the kid that he understood — if you have no ground in which to plant your roots, you’re nothing. His ground had been his family, and without them Eduardo was nothing but a hollow trunk, rotting from the inside out, waiting for a storm to split him in two.
He knew what Who was planning to do. He’d guessed it the moment he saw the kid’s hand reach into his coat pocket. He’d glimpsed the wooden butt of the gun that Who’s hand now gripped. Do it, he thought. Let’s get this over with. But instinctively he recoiled. No one wants to die — not even those who think they do.
‘Let’s take a walk,’ Who said. It wasn’t an order but the acceptance of something both of them seemed to find inevitable.
Eduardo nodded. He got up and glanced at the bulge in Who’s pocket. There was nobody around. In the distance, a few people were jogging, way down the gravel path behind them. No one who could come to help.
‘Are you going to shoot me in the back?’
Mr Who didn’t reply. He gave a lukewarm smile that seemed at odds with his frame of mind, as though his lips had grown accustomed to the movement no matter what the circumstances. Then a gust of wind ruffled his black hair, and the smile vanished like a cloud. He jutted his chin out, indicating that Eduardo should walk.
Eduardo took one step, then another, and curiously his knee didn’t hurt. In fact, nothing hurt. He looked at the ground, at his shoes — slightly worn on the toe — at the ants already tunneling and forming the little cones that led to their nest; at a dry leaf fluttering erratically; at a desiccated pile of dog shit.
‘I’ve been watching you for months. You don’t act like a psychopath or a lunatic. So why did you do it?’
‘Your father caused the accident that killed my family. He let my daughter die. She’d have been one year older than you now, if she were alive. He left her to bleed to death by the side of a creek.’
He no longer heard Who’s footsteps on the gravel behind him and turned his head to look back. Who had stopped dead. He looked disconcerted, helpless, and for a moment, amid the haze of memories both lived and reinvented, Eduardo caught a glimpse of the same little terrified boy wearing a cap and scarf that he’d almost killed. Suddenly it dawned on him that the kid hadn’t known. No one had ever explained to him why it had all happened.
‘You’re lying. Teo would never have done anything like that.’
Eduardo turned to face him. He felt sorry for the boy, a lone reed as out of place as he himself was, equally lonely and as wounded by something that never should have happened, but did.
‘You’re lying,’ Who repeated, and his voice sounded like a howl in the midst of a tempest.
But Eduardo wasn’t lying.
‘When Olga gave me your father’s licence plate number and described him to me, I lost my mind. All I could feel was rage and uncontrollable fury. I’m not trying to justify myself or make you and your mother forgive me. I just want you to understand.’
Eduardo’s words bounced off Who’s frozen exterior. It was as though he were speaking to a pillar of salt, the empty body of someone who’d gone and left behind the hollow reflection of clothes and flesh, devoid of a soul. You can’t expect someone to comprehend something incomprehensible. Can’t ask them to bear the weight of their incomprehension.
‘When did the accident take place?’
‘The sixteenth of August 1991, in the early morning, on the road to Toledo. We were on our way back from a vacation. Elena and Tania were asleep, and your father slammed into us and threw us off the road.’
Who stared off into the distance, as though his mind were making its way through the veils of time, searching for the boy who had been seasick on a ferry that summer, the boy who’d spent his afternoons on that island exploring the walls of the country estate where they were staying, chasing the cicadas that sang in the withered meadow and watching the sea off in the distance, which looked bluer and farther away when he looked from the top of the hill, while Teo and Maribel were on their second honeymoon closed up inside the house with the blinds drawn, and a black dog barked at the butterflies.
Maribel had saved endless sentimental mementos from that unexpected vacation. Their ferry tickets, the plane tickets from Madrid, stubs from the maritime history museum where they’d spent a nice afternoon. She’d kept photographs, and still had the garishly painted shell necklace Teo had given her, which he’d bought from a German hippy who’d set up a makeshift stall and looked like he’d stepped out of another time. He could still taste the two scoops of raspberry ice cream, feel the bump he got on his head when he fell out of a pine tree trying to act like a squirrel. But what he still felt the strongest was the overwhelming sense that the trip Teo had suddenly suggested had served to heal some wounds between his adoptive parents. He heard their moans from behind the closed bedroom door, and smelled pine trees and wildflowers in the air.
‘On August 16 1991 we weren’t even in Madrid. We went to an island on the twelfth and stayed until the twenty-second, six days after that accident.’
A flock of grey pigeons with white-tipped wings squabbled their way past them, chasing a sparrow with a crust of bread in its tiny beak. In the end, the sparrow relinquished its treasure and the pigeons left it hungry but in peace. That’s life, its little eyes seemed to say, watching from a honeysuckle bush as the pigeons bickered over its bread.
The hand Who had in his pocket, gripping the cold revolver, slackened, and then emerged like a question mark.
‘That’s not possible. Olga said … she described him perfectly, gave me his licence plate number.’ Eduardo was babbling like a drunk whose ideas had all crowded his head at once, forcing their way to his mouth. He stared at Who, eyes wide, as though the boy were an impostor, a magician who’d caught him off-guard with a trick that he was trying to figure out, desperate to know what the secret was.
Mr Who’s hand became an exclamation point, his fist striking Eduardo’s cheek and causing him to fall to the ground, though more out of surprise than the force of the blow. Mr Who didn’t let up. When Eduardo leaned on one elbow to raise himself, he kicked him in the ribs, hard.
‘Why are you making this up? Isn’t it bad enough that you fucked up my entire life? Now you want to mock me, too? Are you trying to tell me you killed my father and left my mother crippled because of something someone told you, something you didn’t even bother to find out if it was true?’
His hand returned to the revolver’s grip, to the safety of the gun, which he no longer tried to hide. The barrel was aimed right between Eduardo’s eyes, forcing him to stare at it cross-eyed as though his eyeballs were magnets drawn irresistibly to the metal.
Eduardo closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He heard the gun being cocked and felt the barrel in the centre of his forehead like a finger try
ing to dig out his deepest thoughts. Why had Olga lied to him? Or was Who the one who was lying? Why did he believe her back then, but him now?
All of his questions froze as he heard the muffled clack of the bolt, the hammer being cocked. One, two, three times in a row, the same bang, as the cylinder turned. There was no explosion, no instantaneous searing pain, no smell of gunpowder, none of the things you’re supposed to feel when a bullet hits your head.
Eduardo opened his eyes, trembling. Mr Who’s eyes were boring into him. His expression seared with pain and desperation, piercing him as he cried rivers of tears like lava, sliding down his cheeks, burning them like acid.
He’d fired into the ground.
18
Arthur’s eyes looked watery. Gazing at them against a backlight, they took on a greenish tone. Olga traced the outline of his pupils with one finger and felt their coldness through the paint like a riverbed full of moss-covered rocks. She jerked her hand away, startled, but the eyes in the portrait followed her. Eduardo had done a great job. In just four months he’d accomplished what Gloria had asked of him — an X-ray of the man who’d killed her son. His brushstrokes had achieved what no one else could have pulled off in such a short space of time. And yet, when he’d brought Olga the canvas three days ago, he didn’t seem happy or even satisfied with the result.
‘It’s done. But it’s incomplete, unfinished,’ he’d said with resignation.
And now, contemplating Arthur’s expression, seething with a fury that came from deep within, Olga thought she saw what Eduardo meant. At some point over the course of those weeks, Arthur’s pose had morphed, and the result was contradictory somehow — disjointed, dysfunctional. When Arthur had found out that the portrait was for Gloria, his disposition had altered, become a sort of unspoken accusation that oozed from his every feature. And Arthur wasn’t the only one who had changed. The Eduardo that Olga saw, too, was different — more despondent, emptier than usual, as though the last of his energies had gone into that painting. And still he felt no matter how many sketches he’d made, he’d failed to capture the image he had in his head.
The Heart Tastes Bitter Page 36