Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  Eduardo took stock of his patience: he couldn’t stand the stench of burning flesh or the agonized shrieking of the pigs another minute.

  “I’ll leave the car at the turnoff and walk from there. Thanks.”

  The cop nodded, looking up at the sky.

  “You don’t get a move on, you’re going to get caught in a downpour.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  He parked at the turnoff to a very steep dirt road and started to climb up, his breath coming in quick panting rasps, stopping every few feet to catch his breath again. He hadn’t yet made it a third of the way when it started to rain. It began as intermittent drizzle, so Eduardo kept going, but within a few minutes, sheets of water were coming down so thick that it was hard—almost impossible—to see the road. Soaked clear through, with mud splattered all the way up to his teeth, he gave up on the idea that seeking refuge might do any good and simply kept walking, no longer in a hurry, both resigned and vexed. Filthy and drenched to the bone, he wasn’t exactly going to make a great impression on this Gloria A. Tagger woman.

  He almost didn’t make it to the complex entry’s high, red-ivy-covered fence. He looked around until he found a buzzer by the main gate, where a sign warned him how ferocious the guard dogs were. Hidden in the ivy was a tiny security camera—Eduardo saw its lens blink like a bionic eye, inspecting him.

  “What do you want?” a metallic voice barked through the intercom.

  “I’m here to see Mrs. Gloria A. Tagger—she lives on Calle Doctor Ochoa.”

  Eduardo was then subjected to harsh, relentless grilling as he stood there in the rain. He was ordered to give his first name, both surnames, national identification number, and a cursory explanation of how it was he’d managed to turn up in such a sorry state, with no vehicle of any sort. When the invisible guard seemed to feel he had enough details, he ordered Eduardo to wait. Didn’t say how long, didn’t say what for. And it didn’t stop raining.

  Fifteen minutes later a broad-hipped woman with strong arms appeared, under a huge black umbrella. Her sleeves were rolled up and she wore an apron that went almost down to her bootlegs.

  “Are you the painter from Madrid?” She shouted to be heard above the rain. Eduardo nodded and the woman used a remote control to open the gate and then motioned for him to follow.

  The entire complex was a huge, terraced golf course, complete with little bridges and artificial lakes, rolling green hills dotted with luxurious, modern mansions, each with their own stone wall. Atop one lone hill stood an old country manor. It wasn’t hard to imagine that in another time it had been a farmhouse, and that what was now a golf course had originally been its fields. Perhaps the old owners had struck it rich, selling their land during the years of wild speculation.

  The woman led Eduardo to a raked-gravel courtyard with a pool, its water overflowing, the rain beating down like a drum. Behind it he could see part of the facade and leaf-covered steps that led up to the front door, covered by a porch with several columns. In the pounding rain, the whole of it had a sort of ephemeral quality, like some sort of fantasy. The sound of drops falling was the only thing to pierce the silence, the only thing that made it seem real.

  They walked in through an annex that looked as if it had once been a stable or pantry of some sort. It was cozy inside: a slow fire burned in a huge fireplace with soot-blackened walls, whistling as the bark of the cork-oak firewood expanded and burned, providing a much-welcomed warmth. A huge mirror over the mantelpiece multiplied both the space and Eduardo’s pathetic reflection.

  “I look dreadful,” he muttered.

  The woman provided bold confirmation, nodding vigorously.

  “You need to get those wet clothes off or you’ll catch pneumonia. I’ll bring you something to put on.”

  Despite her instructions, Eduardo didn’t dare undress once he was left alone. He simply placed his jacket on a wrought-iron footstool and inspected the room carefully. Five minutes later the woman was back with a clean towel, a pair of wool socks and some thicksoled hiking boots. She also brought him a thick blue woolen turtleneck and a pair of worn corduroy pants.

  “What on earth are you waiting for? Do you want to freeze to death?” she scolded sharply. “This should do. These are Señor Ian’s clothes, but the Señora insists you put them on, he won’t mind. I think they’re going to be big, but there’s no other option. Clean yourself up a little and get warm. There’s a sink over on the right if you want to wash up, and don’t worry about your clothes—I’ll take care of those.”

  Eduardo only had time to mutter a brief thanks. He inhaled the scent of clean clothes—worn but high quality, soft and pleasing to the touch—and washed his face in the stone sink before removing everything but his underwear. The clothes were too big, especially the pants, which were far too long—Ian must have been two full heads taller than him—but the sweater was comfortable, and when he pulled on the dry socks and boots he sighed in relief. Once he’d slowly dressed, he sat down to wait.

  After a few minutes the woman returned and scrutinized him carefully. Judging by her expression, Eduardo looked pretty funny in those borrowed clothes. What she said, however, was, “That’s better. The Señora is waiting for you upstairs. I’ll take you.”

  They traversed a large entrance hall with Toledan-style furniture; a few bronze sculptures stood waiting in corners, not having had places found for them yet. The walls were decorated with portraits, people with defiant faces, complicated, hard-to-decipher looks. They were done in faint, pale colors that gave them the impression of being spectres whose lives had been erased, with only their shadows remaining, imprisoned in those gold-leaf frames.

  The woman took quick little steps, opening a series of doors that led to equally ragtag spaces. The more doorways they crossed, the more meaningless time became, as though clocks would be an unbearable blasphemy in such a place. It smelled stale, and sad. And it looked like a lifeless museum.

  “Señora Tagger lives here?”

  “They bought the house and land from a bankrupt developer several years ago. But they’re gone most of the year so the house is closed up.”

  Eduardo didn’t ask any more questions—but he was thinking, buying a house doesn’t make you its owner. A house has to be lived in to become a home, and that place definitely wasn’t. What was the point of buying a house and filling it with art, if not to live in it? He assumed a woman like Gloria A. Tagger had to find a place that gave her meaning, a place that made things make sense.

  Finally they came to a huge room. The woman motioned for him to wait there and then walked out, leaving the door ajar.

  It was a comfortable room, nothing excessive about it. Atop a desk lay several scores of marked-up sheet music and a jar of colored pencils. On the other side of the room was an enclosed area, made by a screen that was sealed on all four sides, creating a soundproof booth. Inside it was a window, stool and a soundboard, several sound systems, speakers and a computer screen. An ashtray was still smouldering, as if someone had been working there until just a moment earlier.

  A large painting especially drew his attention. It wasn’t an ordinary portrait but an oil painting depicting a scene that seemed to hint vaguely at some ambiguous form of violence. A woman stood facing a large window overlooking a garden in which only a few orange and myrtle branches could be glimpsed; her narrow eyes looked red, watery, utterly exhausted—perhaps as a result of the pregnancy suggested by the hand on her belly. Her husband gazed at her, priest-like, as if the woman’s pregnancy was a sin to be purged, one that he was displeased by but had forgiven.

  “Do you know that painting?” asked a voice behind him.

  Eduardo turned.

  He blinked as though dazzled by the sun. It took him a few seconds to realize that the woman standing behind him was the same one he’d seen in El Retiro park. But—and this was the most surprising thing—th
ough she looked the same, she seemed totally different—a distorted version, a different dimension.

  She showed no signs of recognizing him.

  “I’m Gloria A. Tagger,” she said. “Is something the matter? You’ve gone pale.”

  “No, no. I’m fine.”

  “Do you like it?” Gloria asked, gesturing nonchalantly at the painting, slowly approaching Eduardo until her shoulder brushed against him. She wore a charcoal gray rollneck sweater that was tight across the chest, giving her a sculpted appearance. From beneath her clothes emanated the scent of a quite a bit of delicate perfume. Although he couldn’t put his finger on it, it aroused his senses. She was exceedingly thin and her fingers trembled, a cigarette dangling between them.

  “The Arnolfini Marriage. Jan van Eyck. Flemish painting is certainly beautiful, no doubt, but it’s never really moved me,” Eduardo confessed.

  “I especially detest this painting in particular,” Gloria agreed, and her eyes zeroed in on Eduardo’s somewhat perplexed face, as if X-raying his insides. That woman spoke through her eyes, her quick little blinks serving as punctuation.

  “Maybe the reason you dislike it is because it doesn’t transmit anything positive. Look at the woman: her life is a tragedy, a mediocre existence she fixates on; she’s full of a desire to be free the way she once was, before she got pregnant perhaps. See the way she’s gazing toward the garden just barely visible behind her husband? She lives trapped between those walls, hearing everyday sounds, the sounds of the world, but without taking part in them, cloistered like a nun, subjected to dreary routines—breakfast, toilette, bed; it must be unbearable. Now look at the husband: his expression is demented, perhaps he suspects the child is not his, that she cheated on him. He might almost be hatching plans, conceiving ways to make her pay for that affront. The rendering of each detail is so concise it’s disturbing: the double-edged lace of the wife’s headdress, the rings worn above her knuckles on the ring and index finger, the folds of the husband’s black shirt, the clearly uncomfortable fur-lined frocks they both wear, the earthy opaque colors of the mystics, that cadaver-like stoicism on their faces that seems also to be suggestive.”

  Gloria stared at Eduardo with ill-concealed admiration.

  “Do you paint portraits or write them?”

  Eduardo smiled.

  “Maybe the brush and the pen are not so different as people think.”

  Two plush armchairs sat by the window, between them a small table with a coffee pot, two cups and a small steaming pitcher of milk. Gloria invited him to take a seat.

  Outside it was still raining, and the room itself was quite chilly although there must have been a radiator on somewhere. Gloria poured coffee and they both sat and drank it in silence. She smiled and was friendly enough—her manner cordial—but deep down she seemed not even to be present; it was as though her smile and expression were the hollow remains of a soulless presence, like the first time Eduardo had seen her sitting by the Crystal Palace.

  “I hope you won’t think me indiscreet, but—what happened to your leg?”

  “Car accident.”

  Gloria gave him a look that displayed no emotion whatsoever. For a moment her face remained alert, as though waiting for Eduardo to add something to those two words—words that were not untrue, but were certainly incomplete. And yet he said nothing more, and Gloria’s face relaxed with a hint of disappointment.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “Actually, yes it does, even though the doctors assure me it’s just somatic pain.” He himself wasn’t so sure. In theory the nerve endings were dead and he shouldn’t be able to feel anything, but that wasn’t the case. When he touched his scar he could almost reconnect to the same horrific pain he felt when it happened.

  Gloria glanced briefly, wordlessly at Eduardo’s hands resting on his knees. Then she carefully placed her coffee cup down on the side table, turned her beautiful head toward a small French bureau with a record player on it, and looked back to him once more.

  “Do you mind if I put on some music? It helps me to think and relax.” She removed a record from its dusk jacket with great care, holding it by the edges so as not to touch the grooves. Lowering needle onto vinyl, she stood for a few seconds and watched it spin, her back to Eduardo until the first notes rang out and she confirmed with a nod that indeed the contraption was working. She turned down the volume and the melody was reduced to a low, pleasant background noise.

  “Do you like this? It’s Bruch’s Concerto for Violin in G minor, Opus 26.”

  Eduardo listened to a few bars, his eyes half-closed. It struck him as a deeply romantic yet happy melody.

  Gloria passed him the dust jacket. A young girl was pictured on the cover, seated cross-legged on a bench, one hand resting on her thigh and holding a violin, the other absently fingering a fine gold necklace with a pendant.

  “That’s you.”

  “Hm. Actually we’re different people but we happen to share the same life, you know? The girl on the cover isn’t me—it’s just my body at a time when it belonged to a different Gloria, one twenty years younger. That was a special recording for the Budapest Orchestra. The truth is, I was twenty years old and had no business accepting the challenge—I wasn’t prepared. But of course, nor was I prepared to admit I wasn’t ready and act accordingly.”

  “Classical music is not my strong suit, but I’d say this piece is superbly performed.”

  Gloria smiled indulgently.

  “Listen closer. In every creation, the artist leaves a piece of his or her soul. And if you search for mine here, you simply won’t find it.”

  Eduardo had a hard time getting into the depths of the piece, which at some points seemed solid as a rock and then turned almost liquid, like the drops of rain hitting the window. It began with an allegro vivace, then moved into a long interlude, and slowly, delicately faded out. But maybe he could, in fact, sense a slight irritation in the violinist—almost as though she didn’t feel comfortable, or as though each bar, each measure were on the verge of exceeding her abilities, putting her to the test again and again. Still, the longer it went on, the less obvious the performer’s hand became, seeming to grow more relaxed and to be swept away, the violinist losing awareness of herself until the piece ended.

  Gloria took the record off with such care that she could have been handling a newborn. She gently wiped a cloth across the record’s surface and slipped it back into its sleeve.

  “Well?”

  “I think I understand,” Eduardo said, watching Gloria roll a cigarette between her index and middle fingers. Each of her gestures seemed to contain something different to any other woman he’d ever met. It was like she was performing a dance that commanded the will of others.

  “You do?” Gloria held out her exquisite fingers and contemplated them against the light, like appendages that had just appeared out of nowhere and might reach through the air to touch the melody. “I earn my living through music, but I’ve never stopped feeling like an impostor; I appropriate that which does not belong to me and distort others’ creations by infusing them with my own desires. I’ve never composed a single score in my life.”

  “My art dealer told me you were interested in commissioning me for something special.”

  “Something special. That’s certainly one way to put it.”

  “I saw the advance you left. That’s a lot of money—and I have a feeling you knew when you left that check that I’m no longer a professional painter.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So, if you know I’m no longer sought after, what do you want from me?”

  Gloria didn’t reply, at least not with words. Instead she simply gave Eduardo a calm, piercing, silent look. Then she got up, opened a dresser drawer and took out a recent photo. She gazed at it for a moment and her eyes shone.

  “This is my son. What do you think?�
�

  Eduardo examined the photograph, which she held out to him.

  Most people are inhibited in front of the camera, their faces turning mummy-like, hard as a shell reflecting the light; or they ham it up, flashing ridiculous, infantile smiles. Either way, they look fake, forced. But the boy in this photo was different. Though not as beautiful as his mother, he gave off an air of certainty that made the camera fall in love with him. There was a clearly visible tension in the photo, a battle being waged between lens and subject, a struggle to see who would overpower whom. And from that tension emerged the image of a young man with brown hair, far thinner than looked healthy with something ungainly about him—gangly, as if his body had grown disproportionately, with long arms and bony legs. He was wearing a khaki-colored duffel coat with a frayed collar and a Dire Straits Walk of Life patch on the right shoulder, worn jeans, with cheek bones as prominent as mountain peaks, and so little facial hair that it could never be considered an actual beard, no matter how long he went without shaving.

  “He’s certainly a good-looking kid.”

  Gloria took the picture back and her pupils flickered, like a flame reflected on glass.

  “He was seventeen, and brilliant. He had a promising future. My son died four years ago.”

  * * *

  —

  Four years ago, the news on the radio warned drivers near Plaza de Oriente that several streets had been closed to traffic due to a horrific accident; a Mercedes had plowed straight into the window of a boutique specializing in wedding attire. City police prevented traffic from circulating so that ambulances and fire trucks could get through. The driver, who’d caused the accident, reeked of alcohol. He seemed dazed and was bleeding profusely from a gash on his forehead, but his condition was stable. A fireman used heavy-duty hydraulic rescue cutters to saw through the car roof and a SAMUR emergency services doctor carefully placed a neck brace around him, cradling his head as though it were a priceless porcelain vase from the Ming dynasty, or a vial of nitroglycerine. The top half of a mannequin dressed in groom’s attire was jutting out of the window display, its head broken, contorted awkwardly down on his shoulder, wig on the ground. From a distance it all looked very real. There were clothes everywhere: on the hood of the car, in puddles on the sidewalk. Wedding dresses, shiny vests with upholstered buttons, delicately pleated trousers, jackets with backstitching yet to be sewn.