Ibrahim traversed the plaza in a few long, determined strides and used his hefty presence to occupy a table that had just been vacated, causing a group of hovering Japanese tourists to withdraw, intimidated. He ordered an espresso. Eduardo asked for vodka—a double, neat. As the waiter was about to walk away, Ibrahim stopped him.
“Make it a sandwich, and forget the vodka.” The waiter glanced at Eduardo questioningly and he gave a resigned nod. Ibrahim didn’t ask, didn’t make requests. He simply forced whatever he said to be accepted, just like that.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Do you find me pitiful?” The way Ibrahim was examining him annoyed Eduardo. They weren’t friends, he had no right to feel sorry for him.
“I like you,” was all Ibrahim said after the waiter had served them. He ripped the sugar packet open with his horrible teeth and stirred it into his coffee. The way he said it, almost in passing, was simply offhand; it wasn’t intended to mean anything. He’d killed men he was a lot fonder of than Eduardo. As he stirred the sugar, spoon tinkling against his cup, he glanced over Eduardo’s shoulder, eyeing the plaza and its surroundings.
“Kill someone? You’re so tense you look like a cat about to pounce,” Eduardo spat, irritated. His chorizo sandwich sat untouched on its plate. Each time he looked at it, he felt a wave of nausea.
Ibrahim shot him a furtive glance and for the first time gave a little smile, flashing his gnarled teeth.
“Stupid question, don’t you think?”
Indeed, it was.
Eduardo examined Ibrahim’s pupils. The man’s expression, he now realized, was mournful, always; the emptiness was something Eduardo himself knew, too. He’d experienced it; it had taken root inside him. It was a look that bore no pity, nor condescension, nor even a hint of phony friendship. All it revealed was a truism that they both recognized: people sometimes betray one another. It’s part of being human, something to be accepted. But nothing hurts more than malice on the part of those we took to be on our side unconditionally.
“Have you killed many people?”
Ibrahim listened with his eyes, lips pursed and fingers gripping the table tightly.
“What kind of question is that?”
“I was just wondering if the dead weigh on you, that’s all.”
Ibrahim looked away and murmured something in Arabic. He was recalling the voice of an imam reverberating through his adolescent heart, standing before the deep dark grave that held his father’s enshrouded body. Recalling the words spoken by the man of God—the virulence and hatred of his fatwa against the French and their descendants—as other men nodded and whispered verses of mercy and piety, their heads lowered, weapons hidden in their clothes. They weren’t killers, they were patriots, holy men, the imam told them, spewing vitriol as he spoke, his saliva landing on Ibrahim’s not-yet disfigured face. Killing does not make us killer’s, the holy man repeated, his ire contained in a trembling hand. Not when it’s for Algeria, for the FLN, for God. Recalling those words, Ibrahim gazed at his own hands, now old, the blood of the men he’d killed still staining them like a tattoo, mixing with his own in an invisible flow that bound him to his victims forever. One death is no different from another; they all weigh upon you the same when night falls.
“I know killers who’ve never laid a hand on anyone, who live among us, who are fathers and mothers, siblings and children; people who seem kind, good people who go to work, are respected, loved, and even admired. But I can tell a jackal when I see one, hiding in their eyes; all it takes is the right time, place, and circumstance to unleash their instincts.”
“I’m a killer,” Eduardo said, his voice hoarse.
Ibrahim gave him a look of commiseration. A poor dog licking his pitiful wounds.
“You, friend, are nothing but a gravedigger. Killing a man doesn’t make you a killer.”
Just a week ago he’d used the same argument at his psychologist’s office in his own defense. But now he wasn’t so sure.
Without realizing it, he’d pushed the barely touched sandwich to one side and was gazing absently at the crumbs on the table.
“So what about Arthur, then? You know him better than I do; you’re his friend. Would you say he’s a killer?”
Ibrahim was unperturbed by Eduardo’s sarcastic dig. It didn’t even ruffle his feathers. But he saw that the little man with his tatty old shirt had his own kind of dignity, one that he himself lacked. He stood and dropped a twenty on the table.
“Ask him yourself. You’ve still got a portrait to paint. Make good on your promise, and then you can go back to your hole and lick your wounds. You might even cure them.”
Eduardo observed Ibrahim carefully. There was something there that didn’t quite fit, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.
“It seems strange to me that a man like you is so loyal to someone like Arthur.”
Ibrahim shot him a murderous look.
“The only loyalty I have is to myself.”
“But you protect him.”
Ibrahim let out a chilling little laugh.
“You’re pretty blind for an artist, friend. What is it you think you know? Appearances are but obstacles, there to fool the fools…Now, run back to your hole, little mouse.”
Eduardo watched him amble off, leaving the plaza at the far end, until his shirt and cheap trousers could no longer be seen among the throng of people wandering up and down.
“Want me to cast a spell on you, handsome?” A gypsy in mourning, a branch of rosemary in one hand and fake gold teeth, addressed him. There were three of them, combing the tables like a military squadron on combat orders. Eduardo didn’t even bother to be polite. The woman’s sweet talk made him sick. He got up angrily.
“There’s no magic spell that can save me,” he murmured, pushing her brusquely out of his way.
“I’ll put the evil eye on you, you wretch! You’ll be a wretched man for the rest of your life, I swear upon my dead!”
Eduardo couldn’t suppress an irate cackle that made passersby turn and stare, as if he were insane.
* * *
—
The café where Arthur had arranged to meet him was at the bottom of Calle Fuencarral. Just on the other side of Gran Vía, two prostitutes stood by a photo booth smoking, offering themselves. One winked a lifeless eye at him, her heavy fake lashes like the rise and fall of a tragic theater curtain. Eduardo picked up the pace. Sometimes something as simple as a crosswalk acts as an invisible border. You get to the other side and think you’re safe, in a world somehow more tolerable.
He saw Arthur sitting in a corner, talking to someone. Eduardo recognized the guy. It was the journalist from Allegro he’d seen in Gloria’s dressing room a few weeks earlier. What was he doing talking to Arthur? Eduardo got a bad feeling.
Arthur was listening to Guzmán, engrossed, deep in silence. He was staring at the wall as though something only he could see were behind it, something horrible judging by the way he was involuntarily tensing every muscle in his face.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Positive. It was him. The painter. He was with her in Barcelona; they had dinner in a restaurant. I waited for them to leave before going in. On top of the table was a sheet of paper, ripped in half. Guess whose face was on it when I put them together? That’s right; yours. Then they went up to Gloria’s room. I can’t say for certain what they were doing for an hour and a half, but I can guess.” He said it with a mix of interest and disgust, as though he’d witnessed something that went against nature, something that should never have happened. It was clear that even for someone like Guzmán, Eduardo didn’t deserve the attentions of a woman like Gloria.
Arthur dug his fingers into his hair and clasped his forehead, trying to make sense of this unexpected turn of events. Eduardo and Gloria? It made no sense. Suddenly, he shot Guzmán a look of mistrust.
“What were you doing in Barcelona?”
Guzmán stroked the rough ridges of his singed hand and smiled. He pulled out an envelope and laid it on the table.
“What’s this?”
“From what I understand, in the winter of 1990 you had Aroha enrolled in a special boarding school in Geneva, isn’t that so?”
Arthur nodded.
“This is the clinical file on Gloria Tagger’s son. Curiously, when your daughter was admitted, this kid was there too. So it’s more than likely they knew each other.” Guzmán scrutinized Arthur’s face. “Were you unaware of that?”
Arthur skimmed through the file quickly. It was just a page but more than enough to make him go pale. When he finished, he raised his head and saw the mockery in Guzmán’s eyes, as he sat blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. Arthur remembered Diana’s warning: Guzmán is not a door that can be easily closed once you decide to open it. Arthur could no longer stop what he himself had set in motion; he realized that when he saw the man’s hard little brown eyes glinting like a predator.
“I had no idea. Must be a coincidence.”
Guzmán stood and straightened his jacket. He was looking at the door, and on seeing Eduardo, he smiled.
“Let’s just say that there’s something about this whole story of your daughter’s disappearance that doesn’t add up: a rebellious girl who runs away a lot, a violinist with a backstory out of a novel and a son you accidentally ran over, an antique dealer, a financial shark…Well, maybe coincidences do exist, but when they’re this close together they stop being coincidences and become patterns, don’t you think? One door leads to another. And my job is to walk through them all.”
Guzmán passed Eduardo at the door and gave the painter a military salute.
Seeing Eduardo, Arthur leaped up from the sofa, grabbed his jacket and gave him a cloudy, absent look.
“I need to go for a walk. I’m suffocating in here. Let’s go.”
“I know that man,” Eduardo said as they stepped out onto the street.
Arthur gazed up at the heavens, as though aware of how far they were from the ground.
“There are some people it’s better not to know,” was all he said in reply.
Arthur was taking quick anxious steps, heading for the Malasaña quarter, and Eduardo was having a hard time keeping up.
“Where have you been all this time? I thought we had a portrait to do, you and me.”
Eduardo felt a stabbing pain in his bad knee. He couldn’t keep Arthur’s pace, and what’s more, he sensed that something terrible had happened. He leaned against the corner of a building and massaged his knee.
“I’m calling it quits, Arthur. Actually, I think it was a bad idea from the start.”
Arthur stopped short and gave him a sinister look. That was the word. The man’s face became sinister whenever something seemed to make him uncomfortable. It was his way of drawing an invisible line that was not to be crossed.
“Señora Tagger no longer requires your services?”
So that was it. He knew.
“So, she’s your lover. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Eduardo faltered, averting his gaze, eyes darting from one side of the street to the other like a cornered animal. Ibrahim had called him a little mouse, and that’s exactly what he was.
“I’m not her lover; just a tool.”
In an alleyway off Calle Espíritu Santo, one beggar was cursing another, squawking like a crow and shuffling around the other, gesticulating anxiously. They were fighting over the rotten fruit in a dumpster. Their argument grew louder as they became more riled.
Arthur couldn’t take his eyes off them.
“Poor Gloria, the devastated mother…I’m sure it wasn’t hard for her to seduce a poor fool like you. I bet you’re in love with her. All men fall in love with Gloria A. Tagger.”
The skirmish between the two beggars was escalating. They were now embroiled in a slow-motion, clumsy, vicious brawl, reminiscent of Goya’s Duel with Cudgels. Two tattered men bludgeoning one another in some godforsaken place, up to their knees in muck. No honor at all, just brute strength, biting, scratching, vicious kicks aimed at testicles. They were literally killing each other over a rotten apple and a carton of sour milk. And neither of them would stop until they had achieved their objective. But the object itself—food—was lost in the fray. The scraps on the ground no longer mattered. What drove them to beat one another so savagely was welled-up rage, a hatred so intense and so profound there was no way to shout it out. They wanted to kill each other, kill themselves, their life stories, their past, their demons, wanted to murder their present and seal their future. Perhaps they were secretly hoping someone would come and intercede, call off the fight, declare it a tie. But no one did.
Eduardo looked on absently.
Arthur and Gloria, Gloria and Arthur. They thought they could do anything they wanted, toy with anyone at will, maybe keep hurting the other, poison their miserable lives as though their venom were the blood that no longer coursed through their veins.
“You lost a daughter and you’re looking for her. Gloria lost a son and, in some sense, she’s still looking for him, too. And I feel trapped in a downward spiral, tossed from side to side with no will of my own. Enough—I’ve had it.”
Arthur contemplated Eduardo coldly, without a hint of sorrow, or understanding, or affection.
“You feel like the victim in all this. But you’re not innocent, that’s for sure. Your hands are as dirty as ours. What about the man you killed? And his wife, who you left crippled in a wheelchair…Do you think she’s been able to just let it go? You think she doesn’t hate you with all her might?”
* * *
—
The arabesque was perfect, displayed in a sequence of four positions on the wall, one after the other, just above the mannequin draped with tulle and gauze from her old outfits and a pair of slippers whose reinforced toes were completely worn out. From her wheelchair, Maribel extended her right arm gracefully, until its shadow projected on the wall as a perfectly straight line, fingers together, index finger raised slightly, pinky slightly down, like a soft waterfall. In a flawlessly choreographed move, she next bent her torso sideways and did exactly the same with her left arm. Gazing at the shadows, you could easily picture a pair of wings flapping gently. With her eyes resting shut, concentrating on her breathing, on getting just the right intake of air, she pretended her wheelchair didn’t exist. Executing the move properly required the body’s weight to rest on one leg, demi-plié over and over, again and again, until the thigh no longer felt the body’s pressure, the other leg fully extended from the hip like an elegant tail. Arm and leg created one long stylized line. It was the closest thing to flying that a human could aspire to without wings, and Maribel had felt that freedom, that impossible combination of gravity-defying lines and contours, hundreds if not thousands of times.
She opened her eyes slowly and once more felt the heavy somberness of the room, her catheter and urine bag, the rough feel of the plastic, the atrophy of her leg muscles, useless now after having supported her for so many years. She gazed at the sequence of exercises immortalized in the four framed photos. They were taken during a demonstration by the dance school, on tour in Barcelona. Standing before her three best students, Maribel executed the moves, wearing a very tight, very black outfit that left only her shoulders, arms, and the tips of her pointe shoes exposed. The real challenge, however, had been that she was executing the moves on a beach, a damp irregular surface, the shore seen in the distance. It must have been very painful in those circumstances, must have required incredible balance, poise, strength and obstinacy. Yet Maribel’s face, like that of her students, betrayed not the slightest doubt. Tall, with straight black hair down to her chest, she gazed confidently into space as though somewhere there were an invisible barre holding her up. She radiated determinati
on.
As she nearly always did when looking at those photos, hung in a place that made it impossible not to see them when she went into her old bedroom, Maribel stroked her skin. The images forced her to remember what she’d never again be: young, light, ethereal, beautiful and free.
At sixty, she shouldn’t feel old; women her age still took care of themselves, used all sorts of creams, often had no compunction about getting a little plastic surgery if that meant they could keep living a virtual youth that even they themselves knew, deep in their hearts, no longer went with their bodies. But Maribel felt ancient. Her skin had become scaly for lack of fresh air, her bones frail from lack of exercise, and her muscles were so wasted they had practically turned to mush, held together by a sack of skin. She wondered what Teo, her husband, would think if he could see her in such a sorry state of neglect. He’d worked long and hard to conquer her and she hadn’t made it easy, teasing him over and over before finally giving herself to him, feigning indifference to his love and complete dedication to her one true passion—dance.
Teo had been a patient man, not much of a talker, and could even appear cold and distant, but he had had the perseverance befitting his stubborn meticulous character; it made him a great coin collector and dealer. Those two qualities—patience and perseverance—finally created a chink in Maribel’s armor, and once he’d achieved that, he eventually made it all the way, through sheer determination. She’d always assumed that they would grow old together, that their mutual decline would be gradual—he with his coins and she with her books on dance technique, using theory to keep teaching what exhaustion and the laws of gravity meant she could no longer demonstrate herself.
Sometimes, when she entered her bedroom, she still thought it might be possible. She was afraid that she’d lose his smells if she let in any contaminated outside air. Not even her son was allowed to enter. It was her sanctuary, the one place she could still be the woman she’d been before that degenerate took away the two things that meant the most to her—her ability to fly, and the only man she’d ever loved.
Breathing Through the Wound Page 27