The Heart Tastes Bitter

by Victor del Arbol

  In the late afternoon the weather would change suddenly. It was always drizzling in Wales, a fine curtain of mist that blew in in gusts, dampening the washing hung out to dry behind dirty grey houses the same colour as the sky raining down on them. It was an ideal place for nostalgia. The perfect surroundings for a musician. But Ian junior didn’t want to be a musician. In fact, the only thing his son seemed to enjoy was walking along the bridge above the river and staring down at his feet, lost in thoughts that took him far from wherever he was. On occasion he’d glance up, surprised, as if not knowing how his steps had suddenly led him to his grandparents’ house, covered in spectacular vines, creepers full of uncertainties, full of tiny red berries and leaves that each seemed to hold a single raindrop.

  Ian junior enjoyed being with Sir Matthew, his grandfather, despite the fact that their characters could not have been more different. The old man didn’t mind that his grandson was Jewish on his mother’s side. He was an extravagant old giant who claimed baselessly that he had Norman blood, or Moorish — or any other type, depending on how inebriated he was. He was fun and foul-mouthed like his son, and although he loved his grandson and daughter-in-law, he found them overly taciturn. He used to say he didn’t want to understand life, he wanted to live it.

  As a young man he’d played harp and loved being in a band that travelled throughout the valleys, going village-to-village during festival season. In Pembroke he met Mery, who was to be his wife for over fifty years. She was a large woman, built like a Romanesque church, and in the home movie she was seen leaning calmly over the balcony railing, in slippers and bathrobe, smoking. Mery was modern and strong-willed for her day and her environs. Her eyes gazed blankly at the fields that extended to the other side of the river, where from time to time there appeared a peasant’s back, bent over the rows.

  Ian junior had inherited his grandmother’s melancholy nature, as well as her deep eyes and unsettling expression. Mery was always listening to music — a Chopin nocturne for violin and piano that Matthew hated. The old man complained that a melody that sad and dramatic made you think something terrible was about to happen. His grandson, on the other hand, felt his heart pound with joy whenever he approached the door knocker and held the wood in his hand, the moment before the doors opened and his grandmother appeared, smelling of flour and fresh vegetables, her mousey voice chastising him: What are you doing wandering around the river in this cold? Don’t you know the dead are out searching for a body to inhabit, silly boy? And then she’d sit him on her knees and hum to him — the same music over and over — and tell him dark tales by the waning fire, tales of mythical creatures of the forest, of witches and wizards, tales that the boy listened to with rapt attention.

  That old house had lost its former glory many years ago. Time had taken its toll, and buried Mery right along with it. One night she turned up dead, lying atop the frozen river. It was snowing out and she lay face-up in a nightgown, barefoot, arms extended, eyes gazing up at the sky. No one ever found out how she got there, or what she was doing at the river at that time of night. Or why her face had that look of horror, her pupils frozen, her mouth grimacing in agony. Matthew lost all sense of joy, drowning his sorrows in brandy, and wouldn’t let a single thing be done to the house. He insisted on leaving it exactly as it had been when she died — until he too died a few years later, from cirrhosis of the liver. The remaining ruins smelled of mold and sorrow. But the river was still there, awaiting Ian each morning. As it had been for years.

  It was around the time of his father’s death that their problems began. And Ian junior was always at the centre of them. The arguments had turned vehement by then, and the recurring topic was the boy’s character. Ian was a troubled boy, Gloria agreed with her husband about that much. But Ian senior was exaggerating, in her opinion; she could control Ian junior’s mood swings, she understood his introverted, labyrinthine, overly sensitive character. It made sense, with a violinist for a mother and a film director for a father — they spent more time on planes than on solid ground. In his own way, the boy was just punishing them for their constant absence. That was all. Of course she would have liked for him to keep up with his music lessons, but he wasn’t interested in music, at least not interested enough to spend all the time and effort required to be a serious pianist. But film didn’t interest him either, much to his father’s chagrin.

  Ian remembered the last time they were together at the river house. That afternoon, his son was running around the shore with a movie camera, filming anything and everything. He’d focus in on his father and ask him to say something, and Ian senior would glance sidelong at the camera, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

  ‘Turn that off, show a little respect. This is where your grandmother died, carried off by the dead.’

  That night they saw him from the bedroom window, walking toward the river under a star-filled sky, completely naked despite the sub-zero temperatures. It had been snowing until late and his footsteps left deep imprints along the path. Ian senior raced down the stairs and out of the house and found his son on the riverbed, lying from the waist up across the frozen surface. The ice made a sizzling sound, cracking like an old man’s face. In the blink of an eye, Ian senior leapt, fearful that it would give way, and fought to pull his son off its surface.

  ‘Have you lost your mind? What are you trying to do? Drown yourself?’

  His son had looked up at him as though he were a blind fool.

  ‘I just wanted to look, to look until I could see,’ he replied — he’d been gazing into the depths of the river, which had been reflected in his eyes. Or was it his eyes that were reflected in the ice? His face had the same cold look that his grandmother had had. The same frozen expression.

  They didn’t return to the house in Wales until two years after Ian’s death, in Madrid. Gloria and Ian were about to be divorced. The last image he had had of the place was that of his father, Sir Matthew, putting out a cigarette on the bridge’s railing, and then walking along the damp planks as though the sorrow enshrouding his soulless body were the best defence he had. Mist coiled around the reeds and oaks and swept along the smooth surface of the slimy river, concealing the bottom of the bridge’s columns. Above the scaffolding loomed the outline of the house, the second storey reflecting daylight.

  ‘Promise me you’ll always take care of her. That you’ll protect her from herself, and from the demons that haunt her.’

  At the time, Ian wasn’t yet thirty. And the man with bushy eyebrows and a perfectly trimmed white beard who was speaking to him was intimidating. Ian had just gotten married a few days earlier and was not yet used to the feel of his wedding band. He never thought he’d marry so suddenly, and here he was already expecting a child.

  He was drinking lukewarm coffee with his father-in-law, and this was the first time they’d spoken alone. In fact, it was the first time they’d spoken. And he felt the weight of the man’s deep, inquisitive expression.

  He promised. Despite not understanding what the old man was asking of him.

  Ian thought back to his father-in-law’s words now. And he understood. Now he understood.

  He had gotten married thinking he knew all he needed to know — that he loved his wife, that she was as independent a spirit as he was, that she was passionate in bed and affectionate outside of it, that she’d never get used to the Welsh climate and that his father would never like her (as for his mother, he had his doubts), but that she’d still be willing to spend time at the river house by the bridge, and put on a brave face when her drunken father-in-law started going on about his ancestry and telling stories about the family clan. He got married knowing that the child they were awaiting was going to bring them together, meld them into one, make them unbreakable, like steel. No matter what. He knew there would never be another woman in his life, knew his dalliances with aspiring actresses were over, as were his drunken nights out with friends from the set — underw
ear on top of the fridge, rubbish bin not being taken out, wrinkled shirts and soccer matches. He rejected everything his life before her had been; it all seemed ridiculous. And he was convinced. Happy.

  But that wasn’t enough. Not to keep them together forever. At the time he didn’t know about the Taggers’ past, about the photo of Great-grandfather Ulrico in his Prussian uniform, the inherited guilt of a pro-Nazi Jew that always hovered over the table at dinners and get-togethers with her family. Ian didn’t understand why she insisted on keeping the portrait in the bedroom of a man they all hated, or why he sometimes found her gazing at it with an almost mystical look, stroking it as though it were a much-missed lover. And then, conversely, she’d privately become incredibly cross whenever people said that her son, Ian, was the spitting image of his great-grandfather.

  But he was, despite how hard she tried to find signs of the Mackenzies in her son — as though that might save him. The truth was, that little boy was a Tagger, through and through. She didn’t want to see it, and he couldn’t prevent it. But he kept the promise he’d made to his father-in-law.

  He’d protect Gloria at all costs. Even from herself.

  23

  As if able to sense the dark presence that had just entered the room, Ian paused the video.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Gloria’s voice lashed out at him. She wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t happy to see him. He got up from the armchair and raised his glass of whisky by way of greeting.

  ‘I had a few things to take care of and thought I’d stop by and see how everything was going. It’s not that strange. This is still my house.’ And you are still my unfulfilled promise, he thought. ‘I was just reminiscing about old times, thinking about when we got El Español back. What a shame your father never got to see that.’ A bittersweet smile accompanied his comment, but he hid it by taking a swig of whisky. ‘I’m going back to Sydney in the morning,’ he added, as though to pacify her — as a warning not to waste the few hours they had together on arguments and reproaches. But the devil that all Welshmen have inside suddenly went off-script. ‘Though it would seem you’re managing not to miss me.’ He pointed with his glass to the portrait, now framed, leaning up against a column over by the window. ‘I met your little portrait artist today. It appears that his services include a few extras in addition to the paint. Watch it, the poor man is in love with you, and that’s like having a scorpion in your bed. You have to know how to handle it so it doesn’t poison you with its kiss.’

  Gloria stepped forward and stopped halfway between Ian and the portrait of Arthur. She looked back and forth between the two of them, as though contemplating a mirror and what it was reflecting.

  ‘I want to see it,’ she said, her voice quiet.

  ‘See what?’ Ian asked casually.

  Dolores the housekeeper had an obsession — a virtue, really — about order and meticulousness. Her parents had taught her that the rich are always suspicious of their servants, that they suspect they’re pilfering money and food, that they’re not hardworking, that they shirk the chores they’ve been given to do. In order to survive in a good house (which was like El Dorado — the maximum aspiration to which people like Dolores aspired), it was crucial to always have an alibi in order to refute all of your employer’s accusations.

  When Gloria asked her that morning about a package that had come four years ago, the reasonable response would have been to say she couldn’t remember; no one could have reproached her for that. Nevertheless, Dolores went up to her little room in the attic and rifled through the papers she kept in a shoebox until she came across the proof of delivery. She went back down to Gloria and handed it to her proudly. The signature on the bottom right of the slip was Ian’s. If you lost that package, it’s not my fault, her expression said.

  ‘The video Magnus Olsen’s widow sent. We can call Dolores if you want; she tells me she gave it to you.’

  Ian Mackenzie didn’t need any proof. He remembered perfectly well the day and time the housekeeper handed him a package with no return address. He was at home alone, Gloria and Ian junior had gone into Madrid and he was working on a script he wasn’t quite happy with. After receiving the Medal of Arts from the Queen, his fame as a director had grown exponentially, as had the number of careerists in his life, including many desperate folks who mailed him all sorts of things in the hopes of a helping hand. Under normal circumstances the recording would have landed in the pile of CDs, résumés, and scripts he received regularly from people looking for an opportunity that would probably never arrive. But that morning Ian couldn’t concentrate on his work. Olsen’s death was hanging over him. The media reported the same version of events as the police: Magnus had committed suicide, unable to cope with the pressure of his bankruptcy and legal problems. The case, therefore, was not going to be investigated. But that didn’t quell his fears.

  He could have taken a few days off to enjoy himself — before he had to return to Australia to tackle the last part of a shoot that would require a great deal of mental effort — but he didn’t. He was hardly sleeping; his arguments with Gloria were becoming increasingly heated, and they were all about the same thing: Ian junior. He needed to get back to filming, get back behind the camera, hop on a bus and cross the Australian desert. At least there he could pretend his life hadn’t changed.

  He popped in the tape and turned on the TV, intending to grant himself a ten-minute distraction. And a whisky. Then he’d go back to work.

  Nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to see.

  He’d never really liked Magnus Olsen. Maybe one reason was because of the rude, almost feudalistic way he treated his beautiful wife. Like the nouveaux riches, he possessed her without actually appreciating her. And that woman was too exquisite a morsel for the Swiss shark. He treated her like an expensive whore, openly stroking her arse in the presence of others, grabbing her by the waist as if she were a stein of beer. He felt sorry for her, and he also wanted her, had fantasies he sometimes allowed himself to indulge in, alone in the bathroom.

  Regardless, Olsen was a door that men like Ian had to knock on in order to finance their films. The lie Magnus had invented for himself and was trying to live had not yet seriously begun to crack, and he seemed firmly established in his wealth; besides — and this was sheer luck — he was a real film buff who possessed truly vast stores of knowledge that surprised Ian. Olsen admired him not just because he was star-struck but also because the man sincerely appreciated his work, which inevitably predisposed Ian to get over his reticence about the man’s character. And the lengths Olsen went to in order to get the Taggers’ violin back finally ended up dispelling Ian’s initial doubts. He opened the doors of his house to the man, agreed to give a couple of talks to Dámaso’s film club and acted as intermediary so that Olsen could gain access to other directors, actors and people in the business. The club was very select — those people had enough money and power that he’d never have to put projects on the backburner over a lack of funding or over bureaucratic red tape.

  It was intoxicating.

  What’s more, his son enjoyed those evening sessions at the club too. He watched him from the projector as they showed a Harold Lloyd film and saw that his son’s eyes were taking in every detail. He asked questions that were surprisingly astute for a neophyte of his age, leaving the other attendees awestruck — and for the first time, Ian saw his son emerge from the permanent silence and cold, withdrawn air he’d had since birth. He seemed like a different child, happier, more centred.

  It had been obvious since he was a little boy that he’d never be like other kids. There was something odd about him, something that occasionally verged on cruelty. One time he’d used barbed wire to tie a puppy to a post and had then watched for hours as the poor animal struggled to get free, tearing its neck to shreds. But at the same time, he could analyse anything his twinkling eyes saw with the sort of candor that w
as disconcerting in someone so young — like the day he contemplated a desiccated tree and turned to look at his father, saying that things are born in order to one day die and that’s just the way it is. He was seven.

  Ian and Gloria were locked in a nasty and secret rivalry over the boy, each trying to be the one to govern the contradictory forces at play inside him. They sparred without realising it, pouring their hopes and fears into their son; he was the battlefield on which they waged their war. Ian senior was sure the boy would follow in his footsteps, that he’d find in film a means of expressing whatever it was that tormented him — the greatest minds often verged on the insane, and as long as his genius managed to prevail, his son had enormous potential. Gloria, in turn, put all her faith in music; she tried to force him to be disciplined with the violin and piano, claiming that music activated new parts of the brain, created neuronal associations that her son needed to fill with harmony and order.

  When Ian turned down a class with his mother in order to accompany his father to see a movie with Magnus at Dámaso’s film club, Ian smiled at having won a petty victory over his wife.

  ‘I didn’t realise what was going on until it was too late,’ he told Gloria. He rubbed his face as though washing it with a cloth. ‘When Olsen called me, I couldn’t process what he was saying. It was as if I’d taken a hallucinogen; my brain could not accept it. I sat there in the hotel room with the phone in one hand, thinking it was a joke. But it wasn’t. That son of a bitch told me what Ian was doing in the club, the terrible things he was taking part in.’