Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  The things around him—people he saw in the elevator, at the supermarket, on the street, conversations he overheard or tried to have—were pieces of a puzzle that didn’t fit, shades of colors, shapes that didn’t add up to a sufficiently credible reality. He spent weeks contemplating portraits by Lucien Freud he’d once so admired. The paintings had the same intense magnetic attraction as before, but now the spell they cast seemed evil. He tried to find himself in the canvases that had so inspired him to become a painter of souls, a man who depicted the shadows inhabited by his models, but their cold eyes and merciless expressions now hurled him into a world of profound desperation. The subjects’ eyes bore into him, piercing him, mocking him. He felt like the self-portrait of Freud, hanging in his studio, was no longer an inspiring brother but his executioner.

  It must have been then that he began contemplating the best way to put an end to the stinging that the blood circulating through his veins produced. Life, in his body, in his skin, disturbed him; he found it offensive.

  SIX

  Arthur strode through the office building’s sizeable vestibule, a visitor’s badge on his lapel. It seemed everyone was very busy; on seeing him, some gave a fake wave, others pretended not to realize he was there, but the majority simply ignored his presence without giving it a second thought. Though he was still the firm’s majority shareholder, almost nobody thought he’d have the gall to show his face there again after being released from prison. To the employees of his own company, Arthur was an outcast.

  Standing there among the cubicles, in the way, ill at ease, not knowing what to do, he finally saw the enormous silhouette of Nadia Rueda. His old director waved emphatically, one arm aloft. Was she happy to see him back there? It was hard to tell, but Arthur smiled, relieved as a shipwrecked sailor finding a buoy in the middle of the ocean.

  “Nice suit,” Nadia said, not really paying attention, shaking his hand vigorously and planting a noisy kiss on his cheek. Rueda was, in every sense, a most energetic woman.

  They rode the elevator to the top floor together. As if he were a guest, Rueda ushered him into his old office and kicked the door closed behind her. Arthur looked at what had once been his desk. She was now using it to stack dossiers.

  “Since you left, no one’s been as good as you; sounds like the lyrics to a fucking bolero, but it’s true. I thought you’d take a few months sabbatical—we all did, around here.”

  “Well, it is still eighty percent my company, after all, isn’t it?” Arthur replied. “I wanted to see how things have been going in my absence.”

  Rueda motioned for him to take a seat on a new Swedish-designed armchair, which as well as expensive looked to be exceedingly uncomfortable. Arthur would have preferred to sit in his creaky, old wood-backed, suede armchair, frail but accustomed to his weight. His chair, however, was gone, no doubt hidden in the back of some storage room.

  Rueda brought him up to speed.

  “I’ve arranged for a meeting with the minority shareholders this afternoon and have prepared a summary of the books so you can go over them with the financial advisor. You’ll see things have gone fairly well…” She pulled out a drawer, took out a piece of paper and laid it on the table, tapping emphatically with a fingernail. The sharp rap of polished nails on paper was, to Arthur, like a bee rubbing its feet together.

  “You’ve done a good job here, Nadia.”

  Rueda leaned against the edge of the table with her fingers interlaced over her thighs, like a priestess about to deliver bad news; she looked up at the clock behind them, then turned her eyes back to Arthur and stared at him pointedly.

  “Actually, I’ve done very little. When you got locked up, you granted full power to Diana. Now the US office runs your business, and my hands are tied. All I can do is swallow whatever she bites off for us.”

  “I did what I thought best, but that doesn’t mean I pushed you aside; you’re still very important to me,” Arthur said, exasperatingly well-mannered and unconvincing.

  Rueda let out a wounded laugh.

  “You don’t have to be polite. Fat old ladies just get in the way, in every sense. Ageing sucks, doesn’t it? You think it’s never going to happen to you and then—bam!—suddenly a gorgeous, siliconed panther appears, speaking Spanglish, and your name’s off the list. I’m not dead yet though, dammit…”

  “Nobody said you were,” Arthur responded.

  Rueda swallowed hard.

  “I suppose you feel betrayed, and I can’t blame you. I so nearly went to visit you in jail, several times, but in the end I didn’t have the guts to do it. The pictures of that six-year-old girl, that boy crushed under the car, and you in cuffs, drunk. Fuck, Arthur, the whole thing, what you did…We all ended up thinking you’d become a real bastard.”

  Arthur listened without batting an eye. He betrayed no emotion whatsoever. He knew what Nadia thought, what they all thought. Even the best, most loyal and honest people, like her, wondered how he could have fallen so low. Maybe they’d done some thinking, made some calculations and realized—horrified—that it could have been them. A spell of bad luck, one desperate move, and everything was lost: job, friends, relationships, sanity.

  “…But it was an accident, and I shouldn’t have judged you—me of all people should not have stooped to that—after having known you since you first started this company.”

  “It’s all in the past now; I’m over it,” said Arthur, forcing a smile that he hoped looked friendly.

  Rueda nodded, unconvinced. He was in pain, he felt betrayed. She could see it in his cloudy expression.

  “Really? Around here, people are saying you’re going to pull out a scythe, that heads will roll. When they heard you were out of jail, a lot of folks started packing their bags. I’m half-packed myself.”

  Arthur looked away, gazed out the window. The quality of the light reminded him of being at university, those anodyne days when his eyes would drift out to watch the winter weather, unable to concentrate on the Greek professor shouting about the importance of Plato’s discourses in the development of modern-day dialectics. “So, you don’t find what I’m saying of any interest, Monsieur Fernández?” the professor’s voice railed, trembling at his impotence, his inability to pique the interest of an easily distracted young man, a young man who showed undeniable talent. His director’s voice, too, fell like rain, a voice that lulled him, dozing as he waited for the storm to pass.

  “I need to get back into the swing of things slowly. Then I’ll decide what to do. But for now I need you to do something for me, right away, and it doesn’t exactly fall under your job description.”

  “If you’re going to ask me for sex, I’m warning you now, I haven’t waxed in a while,” Nadia retorted without missing a beat.

  They both laughed, and their laughter seemed to put things in place.

  “In prison, my cellmate was a man named Ibrahim. He saved my life, and I promised him I was going to try to take care of his legal proceedings. I want to know what the options are as far as getting him out. I’d like to have him close by.”

  “What crime did your friend commit?”

  Arthur shrugged.

  “I don’t care what he’s done, Nadia.”

  “You don’t owe that man anything. You’re not a jailbird; you run a company that generates millions of euros in investments; send him a box of chocolates with a thank-you card, but don’t get mixed up with that kind of person.”

  Arthur recalled the words his mother used to say when he was a boy, a pied-noir son of a lieutenant jailed in France for being a terrorist, but a military man, nonetheless. The children of Europeans were not allowed to go down to the Kasbah, not allowed to run around by the walls of Djemaa el-Kebir mosque with the native-born Algerian kids. He, his mother and his siblings lived off of whatever they could sell at Triad market: spools of thread, batteries, household furniture, even clothes; they
barely had enough to eat and there was no electricity or telephone at home, but it didn’t matter.

  In the miserable little apartment where they had lived hung a painting by General Sagan himself: flowers, signed and bearing the inscription Semper fidelis. His mother kept his father’s best suits in the closet, along with his military uniforms, polished boots, leather belts as shiny as their buckles, and an endless array of medals he’d earned for service in the Algerian War…They had no food on the table, but France loves her children even if they’re led astray, his mother would say, every time a check arrived from the State, which still sent a few francs each month, although no one knew how long they’d keep coming. And that was why they had to remain faithful to Lieutenant Fernández’s ideology: they weren’t rabble, they were different—better—and they couldn’t mix with the low-lifes down at the port who hung off supply trucks trying to steal an apple or a bar of soap, while flying the FLN flag and singing the ridiculous hymn of the new Algeria.

  All of that had been a long time ago, very long. But not long enough, it seemed.

  Arthur eyed Rueda with hostility, blaming her for something she was not to blame for, simply because she was there. He was no longer a boy, willing to take well-intended, worthless advice. The old lady didn’t know a thing, she was just like the people who’d stared at him contemptuously when he’d walked in. They had no idea of the bonds that were formed in prison.

  “Take care of it, and do it now if you want to keep your job. Oh, and cancel this afternoon’s meeting with the shareholders. Send all of the information to me at my hotel. We’ll meet after I’ve gone over the books. I don’t like walking into a game without knowing everyone’s hand…And one more thing: when I return, I want to see my old chair here; get rid of this Nordic piece of shit.”

  Rueda stood and anxiously removed her glasses, which hung around her neck on a little fuchsia-colored cord. She started to say something, but Arthur held up a hand, cutting her off.

  “I’d like to be alone now, if you don’t mind.”

  * * *

  —

  He picked up the phone and dialed.

  It was very late in Chicago, but Diana would still be in the office, getting the most out of her poor interns, bleeding them dry with her unyielding insistence, as she bent over ever-changing charts and graphs on a screen, watching as the international markets closed in Tokyo, Sydney, Hong Kong and London. It was less than two minutes before he heard her soft voice, the American accent she’d never been able to get rid of, despite having lived in Madrid for several years.

  “Arthur, you’re free.”

  Arthur felt a tickle in his throat, an old familiar warmth like the memory of a fire burning in a fireplace that’s no longer alight. He thought briefly of one of the many nights he’d spent with Diana, the beautiful summer moons they shared on the Côte d’Azur. He pictured her, face to the shore, smoking, gazing absently out at the water, her long-lashed almond eyes; and behind her, he, encircling her waist, stroking her glimmering black skin, soft and smooth, caressing her with his eyes, thinking how lucky he was to be wanted (loved was too much to ask) by a woman like Diana. Their affair, for years, had been just that: glances, smiles, few words, much touching. Furtive encounters when she came to Madrid to take care of some business or other, or when he traveled to the US for some equally nebulous reason.

  “Yes, I’m out. Thank you for taking care of everything.”

  “Any problem with the paperwork?”

  Diana’s voice, more than her manner, came off as a bit critical—she was a pragmatic American after all; she sounded busy. Perhaps she had a client in the office, one not so important that she’d ignore Arthur’s call but not so insignificant that she could keep him waiting as she chatted on the phone. It wasn’t the same—her voice no longer trembled like that of a nervous schoolgirl.

  “The lawyer you put on the case was very efficient. I congratulate you on that.”

  “Don’t: you’re the one paying his fees. And I warn you, they won’t be cheap.”

  It was strange, disheartening, for him to be wasting his first conversation with his one-time lover on an exchange of painful trivialities.

  “Not one visit in three years is a pretty harsh punishment, don’t you think?”

  Silence. Deep silence. On the end of the line he could hear Diana’s heavy breathing, flustered—she breathed that way after an orgasm and during heated arguments.

  “I wasn’t prepared for what happened, Arthur. I’m still not.”

  He heard a click. Diana was lighting a cigarette. So she’d gone back to smoking. It upset him, knowing that his ex-lover had been able to re-establish the course of her everyday life in his absence. For him, things were not so easy. Starting over, relearning his old routines, was not going to be a simple task.

  He looked at himself in the mirrored glass of the door. He looked like shit—up until that moment he hadn’t realized just how far downhill he’d gone.

  “I’ve changed, Diana. We all have.”

  “I’ve got work to do here; I can’t talk right now,” she replied. Her voice sounded distant, hollow.

  Arthur was wounded. He paused, and then spoke again, his voice loud and confident now—the commanding tone of a boss who expects efficiency.

  “That’s fine. So how’s that job I gave you? Where do things stand?”

  “I’m on it. But remember I warned you when we last spoke: Guzmán is not a door that can be easily closed if you decide to open it.”

  “Leave that to me. And send this Guzmán to Madrid as soon as possible.”

  There was still one more thing that Diana needed to know.

  “Are you going to see Andrea?”

  Arthur considered his reply. It was a question he expected, an obvious one, but he didn’t know how to face it.

  “I don’t know yet,” he lied. Of course he knew.

  When he hung up he felt absolutely exhausted. Had anyone walked into the office at that moment, they’d have found a man who, though not old, was certainly no longer young, splayed awkwardly in an uncomfortably designed armchair—a king on a throne of mud. And if that unwitting witness had seen the expression on his face, he would probably have tiptoed back out, stricken, closing the door very softly behind him. Arthur’s sadness was not resigned, not melancholy, or nostalgic. It was a fist swinging through the air, not knowing who or what to pummel.

  He ordered a taxi and showed the driver the address, written on a shiny folded pamphlet that he pulled from his inside jacket pocket.

  “That’s more than seventy kilometers from here,” the driver protested.

  Arthur loosened his tie and gazed at the building’s glass front. Behind the windows, he pictured his employees, observing him furtively. The firm’s corporate name was emblazoned across the entire first-floor facade: “Incsa”—it was one of the biggest investment-fund management firms in the eurozone. It belonged to him, he was majority shareholder, but he’d never felt like it was his.

  “I don’t care if it’s seven hundred. Drive—and turn up the volume. I like this song.”

  Nobody listened to Charles Aznavour anymore. “Mourir d’aimer.” He remembered his mother sitting at the record player, curtains drawn, clutching a wrinkled handkerchief.

  Les parois de ma vie sont lisses.

  How bizarre, Aznavour, an Armenian.

  Je m’y accroche mais je glisse

  Lentement vers ma destinée. Mourir d’aimer

  His mother missed Lieutenant Fernández, cried for him like a schoolgirl, and it didn’t matter to her at all that he’d been overly fond of the strap, using it on her and the children alike, didn’t matter that the eldest had lost an eye to a poorly aimed lash that ruptured his eyeball when it was struck by the buckle. He was that record, spinning in the dark, that music, that voice.

  Tandis que le monde me juge


  Je ne vois pour moi qu’un refuge

  Toute issue m’ étant condamnée

  Mourir d’aimer

  It didn’t matter that at dinnertime, when he sat down, he did so with a loaded pistol within reach, just to the right of his silverware, the barrel pointed at his children, looking out the window like a dog trapped in a corner.

  Mourir d’aimer

  De plein gré s’enfoncer dans la nuit

  Payer l’amour au prix de sa vie

  Pécher contre le corps mais non contre l’esprit

  His mother crying as the record spun, warped, beneath the needle. She knew one day they’d let him out, and she’d be waiting for him, in the red-checked dress with straps, her hair pulled back the way he liked. She’d be waiting for him with his uniform freshly ironed, the braids on his cuffs, his medals and awards all laid out.

  Laissons le monde à ses problèmes

  Les gens haineux face à eux-mêmes

  avec leurs petites idées

  But instead what arrived was a telegram. Two short sentences. Terse. Definitive. In 1969. Aznavour was playing, and from the gangways on the port arose the fetid stench of a cargo ship flying the Egyptian flag. Kids were acting like kids, down on the street—playing ball games, rolling hoops, hitting each other, pretending to be FLN patriots and skydivers. Not Arthur. He was sitting across from his mother, noting the way she used the door handle to support herself, in order not to faint. Arthur picked the telegram up off the floor. The lieutenant was not in jail, they’d freed him months ago, but rather than return to his children, he’d opted to run to his putative father, going into exile with General Salan, to Málaga, where the dregs of the OAS—the Secret Army Organization—were hiding out. There he’d been found by some Armenian mercenaries, hired by the secret service. They didn’t even waste a bullet on him. They took him to the beach, in shackles, and bashed his skull in with a shovel. Then they had tossed him into the sea. Maybe the tides would bring him back to Algeria.