The Heart Tastes Bitter

by Victor del Arbol

  That was a thousand lifetimes ago. But now flags no longer waved, anthems no longer moved him, he was no longer searching for God. He expected nothing of men, nothing of himself, and the memory of his father’s teachings was nothing but dust on his hands and sadness in the mirror. And a face that was still staring at him.

  The ney was the one thing that brought him peace.

  When he extracted it carefully from its leather case and showed it to Andrea, it looked like exactly what it was — a hollow reed with six holes on the top and one for the thumb. A humble shepherd’s instrument that dated as far back as early man. Ibrahim encouraged her to try it. He showed her how to place her fingers, explaining that each hole corresponded to a different note. The mouthpiece came out at an angle, and the tip of it went between your teeth so you could use your tongue to guide the air.

  Andrea gave it several tries but couldn’t manage to make a single sound. Stubborn as a mule with a new rider, the instrument refused to budge.

  Ibrahim smiled. It looked so easy, when in fact it took a lifetime to learn to play the instrument, to master the technique. He could reach three octaves and produce all sorts of different low, deep tones. When he took the ney in his hands, the notes seemed to flow out effortlessly, like magic.

  Andrea felt her heart lurch, surprised at the mournful tune that seemed to come not from the music but the musician. As the notes were played, one after the other, they seemed to form a cloak enshrouding Ibrahim, a wayward angel who’d gotten lost along the way. The sound calmed him, transporting him to an oasis of peace where sorrow and weariness disappeared. Even the jagged edges of his scar seemed to soften.

  Slowly, she realised that Ibrahim was speaking to her through the music. He was telling her things that couldn’t be said with words, and she understood. She understood him. He told her of a long journey in which heaven and hell were indistinguishable, a place where memories and desires were one and the same. Without looking at her or touching her, concentrating only on the sound and not his fingers, Ibrahim took her in his arms and carried her to a meadow from which they could see the Sahara’s sea of sand, its shifting dunes dancing in the wind, all the way from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea — a continent of desert, as dry as the scar on that deformed his face. And as beautiful.

  He spoke to her of a man’s love.

  ‘Stop — please,’ Andrea begged, hands clutching her belly as if pregnant with memories about to be born, memories that were now kicking to make their presence known.

  But Ibrahim didn’t stop. He couldn’t, because that music wasn’t his. It wasn’t coming from his lungs or being played on his ney. The music was sama, the language of time, of memory, the sound of understanding and acceptance. There was no way for him to stop it; he could only accept it, as a bridge between their two souls, which were lost in time immemorial. And all they could do was dance, whirl like dervishes, spinning together to infinity, turning back to what they really were, free of all that imprisoned them. His notes became cries, borne of his wounds. Andrea could hear him shout, beg, swear and pray; she could hear him being tortured, and no matter how she covered her ears, the pain was there, shouting out until finally it began to die down and grow distant like the song of a bird as it flies away.

  When Ibrahim stopped playing, when the air in his lungs had nothing more to say, he was exhausted. They’d lost track of time. It was getting dark and Andrea’s room seemed to shrink as a faint darkness filtered in through the window. In the distance was the outline of the mountains, the silhouette of a nearby forest. Slowly, stars began to twinkle. A long lock of hair fell across Ibrahim’s eyebrows and nose and droplets of sweat ran down his forehead along his wrinkles, while his lower lip trembled. He didn’t dare look at Andrea, sitting across from him on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap. He remained silent a few seconds, his mind blank. He needed to recharge, having emptied himself so utterly. Ibrahim was breathing deep, enjoying the fleeting sense of quietude, the purity of the silence, the sense of tranquillity, aware of the fact that when he opened his eyes he’d have to look at her, knowing the questions he’d see in her eyes.

  Andrea got up and walked, silent as a barefoot shadow, to the window. Her fingers moved with the soft swaying of the gauze curtain.

  ‘Who are you? Why have you come into my life?’ she asked the horizon. And in the horizon was Ibrahim.

  He looked away and his eyes fell upon a portrait of Aroha that Andrea had placed at the side of her bed. She was just a girl then who knew nothing of what was to befall her three, four, five years later. She had the arrogant naiveté of those who aren’t afraid, because they don’t know any better. I could have been your father, he thought. And that thought bled into others like an inkblot. For years after Andrea left Algiers, he kept going to a small plot of land not far from Annaba, where he’d sit on the rocks and hatch plans — the house he was going to build for them, the children they’d have, the sort of things that form the foundations of a perfect future. He was so confident that it never even occurred to him that things could turn out any other way. He was different from the rest and had been since he was a boy.

  The people of Annaba were taciturn, pessimistic, their souls bent double by toil and hardship. He was not like that. Where others saw only sweat and suffering, he saw the honest toil required to build a better life. He’d planned far in advance which crops he’d plant, how he’d till the soil, where he’d buy his cattle, where he’d build the barn. He even got hold of catalogues that pictured huge tractors from the United States that could help him be more productive on the farm. Over the course of those years, he pictured himself working sun-up to sundown, strong and sturdy, convinced that each imaginary whack of the hoe would bringing him closer to his dream. He swore he’d never resign himself to his destiny, never give in to the fate of losing her.

  But time passed, the plot of land was sold to some Egyptian businessmen who used it to build cheap apartments, and he forgot about his promises — or buried them under the brick and cement.

  ‘I know a man who can help us find out where your daughter is. Someone besides Guzmán.’

  Those words rekindled the flame in Andrea’s eyes. And as he spoke them she felt a chill run through her entire body.

  ‘What man?’

  Ibrahim spoke to her of the Armenian. Of his six-year-old daughter who had died in the accident, of the sort of man he was.

  ‘But he’s asking a very high price …’

  ‘I have no money, but if you speak to Arthur, he’ll pay any price.’

  Ibrahim corrected Andrea, eliminating her confusion. ‘It’s not money he’s asking. He wants me to hand Arthur over to him.’

  The chill Andrea had felt turned to ice.

  ‘Do it.’ Her voice had changed, as though it wasn’t her who was speaking. But it was.

  Ibrahim looked at her, perplexed, although the perplexity was only partly authentic. Why did he want a decision he’d already made to fall to her? What was he trying to do? Justify it? Share it with her to create a stronger bond? Sometimes love is twisted, sometimes it corrupts the one who loves, bringing untold misery to the beloved.

  Andrea looked the other way, as though listening through her eyes and refusing to hear. The wheels of her mind had stopped turning — what Ibrahim had said had broken the chain that kept her brain from functioning.

  Ibrahim pressed on. He needed to be sure that she understood what was at stake. He wasn’t doing it for himself, but for her.

  ‘Is this really what you want?’

  Andrea pressed her hands to her throat, as though it were riddled with holes through which her good judgement was leaking.

  ‘I want my daughter back.’

  21

  The gate was open and there was a moving van parked in the driveway, its back doors open. A couple of workers were loading up boxes they’d brought out from the house. Olsen’s widow stood
supervising the entire operation with her arms crossed, instructing them just where to place each thing. She was in a hurry to finish up as quickly as possible. Her children sat in the car, which was parked beside the moving van, and the Yorkie’s head poked up between them.

  ‘So you’re leaving.’

  Olsen’s widow looked toward the voice, startled. On seeing Guzmán leaning with one shoulder against a desiccated pine tree, she slumped in disappointment.

  ‘You again?’ she asked uneasily. ‘We had an agreement. You said you’d never bother me again.’

  Guzmán glanced around and his eyes rested for a moment on the car, loaded up with suitcases, kids and dog in the back seat.

  ‘Things have changed a little.’

  Olsen’s widow raised a hand to her throat, as though taking her pulse. She looked worse for wear — a lot worse, Guzmán thought. She’d lost weight since the last time he saw her and her clothes were dishevelled, as was her hair. She looked low-class, almost like she was doing it on purpose in an attempt to go unnoticed. If anyone had said that she was once the envy of all at high-society soirees and receptions — the most beautiful of the beautiful people — whoever was listening would have thought it was a joke.

  She stepped away from the van so the workers couldn’t hear.

  ‘I already told you everything I know. Why don’t you leave me in peace?’

  Guzmán lit a cigarette with a match. Nobody used matches anymore, but he liked the sound of the phosphorous as the tip scratched against the striker, liked the little orange and blue flame it made. He was convinced that cigarettes tasted better if you lit them that way. Fanning his hand to extinguish the flame, he tossed the match to the ground.

  ‘Actually, you didn’t tell me everything you know; that’s why I’m here. It seems we still haven’t finished our conversation.’

  Olsen’s widow’s eyes darted back and forth. She looked like a cornered animal. Perhaps the realisation that she had no way out was what led her to give in. Finally, she suggested they go into the house. She didn’t want to upset the children. Guzmán followed her, under the watchful eyes of one of the workers, who looked as though he was puzzling over where he’d seen that face before.

  The living room was almost stripped bare. There were belongings piled up against one wall, and blankets and a dolly. There were light marks on the floor, unfaded spots where chair legs and table legs and pieces of furniture had recently sat. When houses are abandoned quickly, the furniture leaves telltale signs in its wake — like the trail of a storm, or a disaster.

  Olsen’s widow slipped her hands into the pockets of her tight jeans and turned to face Guzmán with her jaw clenched.

  ‘I’ve read the paper and seen the news. If anyone recognises you and sees you talking to me, it’s going to bring me a lot of trouble — and I’ve already got enough of that as it is.’

  Guzmán had read the paper and seen the news too. He knew he was being accused of the fire at Dámaso’s antique shop. He’d been forced to leave Madrid quickly, and hadn’t spent more than one or two nights in the same place since. Still, he didn’t feel nervous or concerned. In a way, he’d almost been expecting something like that to happen. Someone had laid a trap for him. It could have been Arthur, or any of the cops he’d contacted to ask for help who saw him as a threat from the past, or even someone associated with the film club Dámaso was running. The old man had warned him. If he kicked the wasps’ nest he was going to piss off a few wasps — and it seemed some of them were very important wasps.

  It had happened before. He himself, in fact, had orchestrated smear campaigns in the past, against people they needed to get out of the way, opponents of the regime, businessmen whose interests collided with the ambitions of a member of the military junta. It wasn’t hard to get someone charged — fabricated evidence, planted clues, false information leaked to the press. It was easy to create a breeding ground for public opinion that led from a witch-hunt to a false conviction. Prisons and cemeteries were full of innocent people who’d been made to look guilty. It was such an old trick, so unsophisticated it was almost tedious.

  ‘I didn’t kill Dámaso. I would have done it if I had to, but I didn’t. He told me what I needed to know as soon as I tightened the screws a little.’ He didn’t care if she believed him or not. He knew how to handle those situations. But he couldn’t stand leaving loose ends once he’d started something. ‘Somebody is trying to frame me for his death, and that’s going to force me to leave a little sooner than I’d planned. But first I’m going to finish what I came to do.’

  ‘I have nothing to do with it. All I want is to get out of here, take my kids and go, forget about all this shit.’

  Guzmán smiled and gazed at her in genuine curiosity. There really are people like that, he thought. People who think they can just come and go as they please, do things and then walk away without facing up to the consequences, their souls intact.

  ‘A few days after your husband died, Arthur Fernández received a video tape in the mail. On that tape were Olsen, Ian and Dámaso — torturing his daughter. It came with an exculpatory note, as if the person who sent it were refusing to accept any responsibility for what was on the recording.’ He watched her reaction — the unconscious tightening of her stomach, the rapid rise and fall of her chest beneath her V-neck T-shirt. ‘You said you didn’t know anything about a tape, that you had no idea what your husband was doing. But you were lying. You found that tape and sent it to Arthur anonymously.’

  Olsen’s widow looked up at the ceiling, crisscrossed with cracks that she’d no longer have to worry about plastering over. She was taking deep breaths trying to calm herself, to no avail. When she looked back down at Guzmán, she was like another person. Tiny, guilt-ridden, overwhelmed by something she’d never fully understood: human evil.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she murmured, sounding like she had a fly trapped in her mouth, trying to buzz its way free. And she rubbed her hands over her shoulders, searching for comfort in her own embrace.

  She’d found the tape by chance, while searching desperately through cupboards and drawers, trying to guess where Olsen had hidden the money, jewellery and important documents that she felt belonged to her — she’d earned them over the years, carrying the weight of that man who, while hanging from a ceiling beam, ironically enough seemed to weigh almost nothing. The tape was hidden behind some tiles in the kitchen. She discovered it when she accidentally knocked against the baseboard and saw that it moved. At the time she didn’t know what it was, but she guessed it must have been pretty important for Olsen to hide it there, so she slipped it into her bag.

  She didn’t watch the tape until two days later. Afterwards, she vomited several times, incredulous, unable to believe Olsen could have taken part in anything so horrific. He had children, children only a few years younger than that little girl. She’d known he was a pig, known he went to prostitutes far younger than her, and she herself bore marks on her flesh from having suffered through his perversions. But that was sickening, monstrous even for a monster like him.

  Her first impulse had been to get rid of the tape, and she threw it in the bin and left it there for days. But she never dared to take the rubbish out. Obviously, she didn’t want to go to the police either. She knew exactly what that would lead to and knew it would implicate her. Suddenly she saw Olsen’s death in a new light. The images on that tape were so compromising to so many people that she had no trouble believing maybe her husband hadn’t committed suicide after all. And if whoever killed him found out she had the tape, she could only imagine the danger she and her kids would be in.

  She convinced herself of that, telling herself she had to look out for her children and their future, that it was her responsibility to protect them, and protect herself. After all, her only crime had been to sleep with the bastard. She wasn’t responsible for that monstrosity. Besides, she couldn’t do anything to stop i
t. But she was fooling herself and she knew it. Every night the images replayed in her head, each detail, over and over, until the bile rose to her throat. She’d go into the kitchen, pick up the tape and stare at it, and then throw it away again. Until finally she decided to do the only thing her dignity would allow, her one valiant gesture: send Arthur the tape.

  Guzmán was sitting on a pile of boxed-up books that were waiting to be loaded into the truck. As Olsen’s widow paced up and down the room, he followed her with his eyes, watching her stop to speak through her tears and then resume her monologue, which was riddled with defensive half-truths, grievances, lamentations, and gestures of exasperation. The catalogue of reasons she had for not doing what she should have done was as vast as human cynicism. If she was hoping he’d understand or forgive her, she had the wrong guy. Guzmán didn’t judge her; nor could he grant her the pardon her eyes begged for. He was no priest, and he certainly didn’t talk to God.

  What he was interested in was something far different. The tape showed four people: Arthur’s daughter Aroha, who’d been missing since the time of its recording; Dámaso, who was dead, and whose death he himself was being blamed for; Magnus Olsen, who may have committed suicide, but had likely been murdered by someone who’d made it look like suicide — and the list of suspects was as long as that of the victims of Olsen’s extortion attempts; and Ian. With the possible exception of Aroha, they were all dead, and none of natural causes: feigned accidents, staged suicide. Guzmán had a hunch that the person responsible for all of their deaths would be the common thread that would lead him to Aroha, and that’s why he was discounting Arthur. Arthur wouldn’t have tried to frame him for the fire, because Guzmán was the last hope he had for finding his daughter alive.

  Toward the end of his life, Bosco had contracted severe glaucoma, which left him unable to distinguish anything but dark shadows and bright light. He had to wear thick coke-bottle glasses to read. But when he really wanted to see something, he pushed the glasses up above his bushy eyebrows and let his sleepy little eyes focus on the object in question like a zoom lens. He said he could see more clearly that way, without the distraction of magnification.