Eduardo had asked Olga to be the one to deliver the painting to Gloria. He didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to know anything else about the job, or about Arthur, or anyone. He nearly left Olga’s apartment without even picking up the cheque that belonged to him, and when she’d reminded him he’d looked at the piece of paper as if it were dirty. Olga thought for a second he was going to tear it up, but in the end he simply folded it slowly and slipped it into his pocket.
‘I’m never going to paint another portrait, Olga. I quit. Graciela and Sara are leaving Madrid. Graciela’s parents have a little house in a beach town on the Costa Brava and she’s asked me to go with them. I think I might just take her up on the invitation.’
That had been three days ago. The portrait was still in Olga’s studio. She hadn’t dared to dismantle the frame and wrap the canvas to send to Gloria. And though she had a number of excuses for not having done it yet, the truth was that she was scared. She felt a vague but mounting fear. Olga didn’t know how, but she was sure the painting was the key that was going to open those doors she’d managed to keep locked for fourteen years. She actually wondered if maybe it would be better to destroy it, and was on the verge of doing so, brandishing a pair of scissors. She got as far as touching them to Arthur’s well-defined, fleshy lips. But the portrait stopped her, as though invisible fingers had gripped her wrist. You wouldn’t dare, his angular pastel face seemed to say. And she hadn’t.
It was absurd, she said to herself when she got up that morning and went to sit before the easel, drinking coffee in her robe. It was a disturbing painting, not a living thing. Arthur had no idea who she was, even if his portrait did seem to follow her all over the apartment. And Gloria was just a weird client, a woman obviously scarred by her son’s death, her divorce, and the fact that the best years of her career were now behind her. Besides, Eduardo didn’t suspect a thing — she’d have been able to tell. She knew him well, far better than he suspected. Maybe his crazy idea of running off with his landlady and her ailing daughter was actually the best thing for everyone. Lately when she was with him, Olga got the ridiculous urge to tell him the truth. The truth — the absurdity of it made her shake her head. She touched her belly through the satin of her robe, as if she could find the meaning there, tattooed onto the tiny scar above her pubic bone. The truth was that she couldn’t have kids. That she was alone, that she felt dirty and guilty, and that no matter how much she worried about Eduardo and tried in vain to make it up to him, she could never undo what had been done.
She was only sixteen years old at the time. That in and of itself should have been enough of an excuse. Adolescence is a kind of hell that not everyone emerges from unscathed. Sometimes decisions made without thinking end up deciding a person’s fate. Heaven or hell, in whatever form they take. Olga had fallen in love with the wrong man and had never stopped wondering if she’d still be in love with him today, and the answer — that it was very unlikely — tormented her, because it meant that she’d destroyed her own life as well as Eduardo’s for something that wouldn’t even have been worth it. But it had changed her life forever.
When she got pregnant, the woman she could have become had died. The Olga who now sat staring at Arthur’s portrait, drinking bitter coffee and smoking with her knees curled under her on the sofa, was a mask that was dissolving, a façade that came closer to falling off with each passing moment. Some nights she’d get home drunk, having hooked up with some random stranger at a club. Then she’d look in the mirror and see her smeared lipstick, her dishevelled hair, her mascara running down her face. She’d try to find herself in that reflection — but all she saw was darkness. That was what the truth was. That was what she was. And telling Eduardo what she’d done wasn’t going to change it.
‘You should burn that portrait. In fact, I should have burned it myself.’
Olga whipped her head around, startled. Eduardo stood by the door, the keys to her apartment in one hand.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ she said, but her expression asked something quite different: What are you doing here?
Eduardo tinkled the keys like a little bell. Olga had forgotten she’d given him a set long ago. Until now he’d never used them. He circled the sofa without taking his eyes off the painting and walked over to face it, just a metre away.
‘I was sort of hoping you wouldn’t be here so I wouldn’t have to face up to this,’ he said calmly, as if he were speaking to the painting. But he was speaking to her, although he wasn’t looking at her. She could see only the nape of his neck, a thick crease above the collar of his shirt. That deep-set wrinkle had a severe look about it.
‘What are you talking about?’ Olga asked. She felt uncomfortable and noticed a sudden chill on her bare feet. Pretty feet, nicely pedicured toenails.
Eduardo slumped his shoulders, as if the portrait had disappointed him. As he turned to face Olga, the crease on his neck twisted into what looked like a jeer. Up until that moment she hadn’t seen his black eye or swollen lower lip.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked, springing up from the sofa. She reached out to touch the fresh wounds on Eduardo’s face, but he jerked away with a quick sidestep.
The wounds weren’t what hurt.
‘There’s something I want to show you, so why don’t you get dressed. We’re not going far, just a little drive ...’
The sentence trailed off — Eduardo wasn’t willing to finish it.
‘Why all the mystery?’
Eduardo gave Olga a stony look, even colder than usual. His chapped lips were parted, gums and rough tongue showing.
‘Get dressed, Olga. It wasn’t a request.’
Eduardo drove toward the outskirts of Madrid and then took the Barcelona highway. Olga looked out the window every little while to mentally escape the suffocating, enclosed space of the car. She babbled nervously about trivial things, making obvious her discomfort at Eduardo’s silence.
‘Where are we going?’
Eduardo told her she’d see soon enough, and in order to quash any possible protest on Olga’s part, he turned up the radio. On the news, they were still talking about the fire on Calle León. Apparently, new evidence discovered by the police made them suspect that it had not in fact been an accidental fire but an act of arson intended to cover up the murder of the antiques dealer, who according to the coroner’s report showed signs of having been tortured before being so badly burned. The police were questioning several witnesses, among them the concierge of the building next door, and they claimed to have reliable information on the possible perpetrator. Hearing this, Eduardo thought of Ibrahim and the strange way he’d reacted on seeing him.
‘Mind if I change the station?’ It was just a rhetorical question; she was already turning the dial — Eighties classics: ‘La calle del olvido’ by Los Secretos.
Por la calle del Olvido vagan tu sombra y la mía
cada una en una acera, por las cosas de la vida
Drifting down Lonely Street, your shadow and mine
Opposite sides of the road, I guess that’s just life.
Eduardo clenched the wheel tightly.
‘Change the station.’
‘Why?’
It had been Elena’s favourite song; she used to hum it constantly.
‘Just change it.’
Olga snapped the radio off and studied Eduardo, clearly irritated.
‘What’s the matter with you, Eduardo? You’re acting very strange.’
He glanced into the rearview mirror, then straight ahead. They were leaving the metropolitan part of the city behind.
‘A little patience,’ he murmured, as though to himself.
Traffic had thinned notably. Without realising it, Eduardo had started driving too fast, as though he wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. Open fields now dotted the landscape, giving it a more serene aspect. The
four-lane road narrowed to two — with no shoulder — and wild scrub crowded the side of the road, threatening to grow over the embankment, making it clear that at the slightest chance it would recolonise the land that nature had intended for it. The sky was clean and steely, clear and cloudless. Eduardo lowered his sunshade. Olga donned a pair of oversized sunglasses. The only thing between them was the roar of wind rushing in the half-open windows and the sound of tyres on the asphalt — asphalt which was in increasingly poor repair. At some point, the intense smell of animal hides and dyes started to fill the air, and there appeared in the distance a small town, industrial warehouses dotting its outskirts.
Olga sat up straight, suddenly stiff.
Eduardo turned off and took a back road. After a few metres, they came to a shimmering stream that ran parallel to the road, and he stopped at a curve leading off to the right — the exact place where his car had plunged into the water fourteen years earlier. He turned off the engine and dropped his hands to his knees. Unconsciously, Eduardo began to stroke his right knee through his trousers, as if by going back to the scene of the crime his wounds had reopened and were throbbing anew.
You could hear the gentle gurgling of the stream and the wind swaying the reeds close to the shore. Wildflowers lined the water’s edge. A few black birds darted around, just specks in the sky — swifts maybe, or swallows, it was impossible to tell from that distance. Above their heads, high up in the sky, was the metallic glint of a plane ploughing through space, leaving a white contrail like a meteorite.
‘Why are we here?’ Olga asked. She was clearly feeling on edge.
Eduardo, on the other hand, felt quite calm.
‘Where was it? Where’d you see that guy’s car? Where did he get out?’
‘I don’t remember exactly. It was fourteen years ago.’
Eduardo gave her an icy stare. He himself remembered every detail of the accident precisely. He hadn’t been able to forget. In fact, the details became more and more fixed in his mind with each passing day.
‘When you asked me to paint that portrait, you asked me something I didn’t know how to answer. You asked why I hadn’t gone to the police the day you came to my house, why I didn’t tell them what you told me about the driver who killed Elena and Tania. I know the answer now. But you knew it even back then, fourteen years ago.’
Olga shivered. He knew. Eduardo knew.
‘You lied to me. You’ve never even been here, have you? You didn’t see the accident — there was no car, no man, no licence plate. You made it all up. You knew I’d kill that man and you used me, to get me to do it. I was your instrument, your enforcer. And the one thing I keep wondering — the thing I’ve been asking myself nonstop since yesterday — is why? Why would you do something like that?’
Olga took off her sunglasses and folded the arms carefully. She was trembling. She thought now of the silver cross her mother used to wear around her neck, the way it swung when her mother bent down to pick her up when she helped her cross the stream.
‘I know this place better than anyone. That much, at least, wasn’t a lie. On the other side of the stream, behind those reeds, is a narrow path that leads to a farmhouse. When I was a girl we called it “the house of sorrow” because the man who lived there was a lonely, bitter man whose wife had run off with a vacuum-cleaner salesman from Zamora. Kids are cruel — we’d go out there and throw stones at his windows until he came to look out. Then we’d start shouting, call him a cuckold and say all sorts of mean things. We did it from a safe distance, of course, ready to take off running if he came out to chase us off. But he never did. We never got him to come out. And then one day, the Guardia Civil showed up to take him down. He’d hung himself from a fig tree.’ She pointed east with her glasses. ‘There used to be a granary over there, and a stable for mules and barnyard animals. When I got home from school, my mother would carry me out to feed the goats and chickens. There was this one brown duck that I really loved, I watched it hatch, and I’d come feed it by hand. One day, some kids from school were playing Cowboys and Indians out by the corral. The Indians had these arrows — they were really good, made with reeds — and the arrowheads were Coke-bottle caps filed down with a sharp stone. One of them got my duck. I buried it myself, not far from those rocks. So, this is the geography of my childhood. I thought I’d always be happy here. But this was where I learned I’d never be happy at all.’
A ray of sunlight streamed through the car window, splitting Olga’s face in two — one half shiny, like polished wax, the other faded, concealed in a dark shadow.
‘I knew it was a mistake to ask you to paint that portrait. I knew it, and yet I did nothing to stop it,’ she said, waving her sunglasses in front of her mouth.
The night before the accident, she’d thought she was going to die. The heat was so sticky and suffocating she couldn’t sleep, even with the windows open. And she’d started haemorrhaging again, the third time in the two weeks following the abortion. Haemorrhaging was too big a word for the blood leaking through her panties on to the mattress. But that blood meant that something was wrong, terribly wrong inside her body. Her abdomen hurt and she was running a fever. She’d lost her appetite and didn’t want to stay for dinner so her mother wouldn’t suspect anything. But it was too late for that; she already did.
They’d had a ridiculous fight that night over something silly — the television. They each wanted to watch different programs and her mother had put a dramatic end to the issue, seriously overreacting. She switched the television off so violently it nearly toppled from its stand. Her mother had called her wilful, spoiled, and ungrateful. She shouted from the depths of her being, clenching her fists, eyes wild. And then suddenly, unable to contain her wrath, she slapped Olga in the face.
‘She glared at me, and she was so full of rage. At the time, I couldn’t see straight — I was just as livid. I hated her, too. I hated her for having brought Teo home the first time, for not having seen the seduction unfolding before her eyes, the way he was making me fall in love with him. I hated my mother for allowing it to happen, for not stopping me — a spoiled child — from playing a grown-up game and getting caught in the trap.
‘I was jealous of her, crazy jealous, and secretly I blamed her for Teo having left me, having walked out on our lives and leaving that empty hole. But more than anything, I hated her for the fact that my womb was now a barren wasteland where nothing would ever grow again. How could it have happened right in front of her eyes? How could she not have done anything? In order not to lose Teo, she’d pretended to be blind and deaf, she’d humiliated herself and opted to share him with me, and share me with him. And in the end, she’d lost us both. When she slapped me, all the hatred she felt for me became just like the hatred I felt for her. And I slapped her right back, and called her a slut, and a bad mother, and a bitch. I wanted her to die, wanted a bolt of lightning to strike her down on the spot.’
‘So the man who seduced you and got you pregnant is the man I killed.’
Olga nodded. Thick, fat tears welled in her eyes and then fell, dribbling streaks of mascara onto her nose and mouth. She made no effort to wipe them away, and dug frantically in her bag for her cigarette and lighter. She got The filter became soggy as she struggled to light it.
‘You have no idea how much I hated her. Every time I felt that searing pain inside, every time I thought about that basement where I got the abortion, every time I heard my mother crying over him or saw her looking at a picture of the two of them, it made my guts churn.’
She’d imagine what his naked torso looked like that first weekend when he’d taken her virginity; imagine what he looked like after making love, with his pants on but his belt undone and zipper down, his curly chest hair going all the way down to his belly button; see his expression, so full of joy an hour before, but evasive and confused after going to the bathroom and showering. And Olga couldn’t understand. She remem
bered that she’d feel like an idiot, trying to read his noncommittal expression, wondering if she’d done something wrong, if she’d acted in some way that made it clear she was not yet an adult, not a real woman, an expert lover like her mother.
She still cringed at the humiliation she’d felt when she’d knelt down in front of him, wanting to pleasure him, and he’d rebuffed her with a bored-looking expression. At that precise moment, she realised she’d never be happy. It dawned on her with utter clarity, and she’d wanted to cry, to get dressed and run away. But he held her back, said he was sorry, that he was nervous — came up with a thousand excuses when just one would have been more than enough, because Olga wanted to believe him, wanted to quiet the voice inside her that was telling her to be careful.
There actually were times when the lie had a hint of truth — that night when they danced naked on the beach with the whisper of the waves, the moon, the bottle of wine half-buried in the sand, giggling over the candles because they couldn’t keep them lit. Romance was a cheap dress, easy to sew, and she liked to wear it, even though Teo hardly spoke and never once mentioned having a future together. She accepted it all impatiently.
Until Maribel, his wife, turned up. That was when she stopped believing.
‘I’ll never be able to erase that scene from my mind: the happy house, our own bliss; the two of us naked, play-fighting in bed; and I was so unbelievably happy that day, waiting for the right moment to tell him I was pregnant. And then she showed up, right in the bedroom, in a white gauzy dress with straps, which I thought was beautiful. You could see the silhouette of her legs and hips in the light streaming in from the window. She was wearing these earrings with unopened flowers on them — gold, like the necklace quivering around her neck — and holding a brown overnight bag with both hands. The zipper was open and there was a book sticking out, I don’t remember what book it was. She stood there all silent, unemotional, resolute, in her high heels. She didn’t say a word until we realised she was standing there. It was Teo who saw her first. I was on top of him, tickling him, thinking, I’m going to tell him now and he’s going to wrap his arms around me.
The Heart Tastes Bitter Page 37