Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  “When Olga gave me your father’s license plate number and described him to me, I lost my mind. All I could feel was rage and uncontrollable fury. I’m not trying to justify myself or make you and your mother forgive me. I just want you to understand.”

  Eduardo’s words bounced off Who’s frozen exterior. It was as though he were speaking to a pillar of salt, the empty body of someone who’d gone and left behind the hollow reflection of clothes and flesh, devoid of a soul. You can’t expect someone to comprehend something incomprehensible. Can’t ask them to bear the weight of their incomprehension.

  “When did the accident take place?”

  “The sixteenth of August 1991, in the early morning, on the road to Toledo. We were on our way back from a vacation. Elena and Tania were asleep, and your father slammed into us and threw us off the road.”

  Who stared off into the distance, as though his mind were making its way through the veils of time, searching for the boy who had been seasick on a ferry that summer, the boy who’d spent his afternoons on that island exploring the walls of the country estate where they were staying, chasing the cicadas that sang in the withered meadow and watching the sea off in the distance, which looked bluer and farther away when he looked from the top of the hill, while Teo and Maribel were on their second honeymoon closed up inside the house with the blinds drawn, and a black dog barked at the butterflies.

  Maribel had saved endless sentimental mementos from that unexpected vacation. Their ferry tickets, the plane tickets from Madrid, stubs from the maritime history museum where they’d spent a nice afternoon. She’d kept photographs, and still had the garishly painted shell necklace Teo had given her, which he’d bought from a German hippy who’d set up a makeshift stall and looked like he’d stepped out of another time. He could still taste the two scoops of raspberry ice cream, feel the bump he got on his head when he fell out of a pine tree trying to act like a squirrel. But what he still felt the strongest was the overwhelming sense that the trip Teo had suddenly suggested had served to heal some wounds between his adoptive parents. He heard their moans from behind the closed bedroom door, and smelled pine trees and wildflowers in the air.

  “On August 16, 1991, we weren’t even in Madrid. We went to an island on the twelfth and stayed until the twenty-second, six days after that accident.”

  A flock of gray pigeons with white-tipped wings squabbled their way past them, chasing a sparrow with a crust of bread in its tiny beak. In the end, the sparrow relinquished its treasure and the pigeons left it hungry but in peace. That’s life, its little eyes seemed to say, watching from a honeysuckle bush as the pigeons bickered over its bread.

  The hand Who had in his pocket, gripping the cold revolver, slackened, and then emerged like a question mark.

  “That’s not possible. Olga said…she described him perfectly, gave me his license plate number.” Eduardo was babbling like a drunk whose ideas had all crowded his head at once, forcing their way to his mouth. He stared at Who, eyes wide, as though the boy were an impostor, a magician who’d caught him off-guard with a trick that he was trying to figure out, desperate to know what the secret was.

  Mr. Who’s hand became an exclamation point, his fist striking Eduardo’s cheek and causing him to fall to the ground, though more out of surprise than the force of the blow. Mr. Who didn’t let up. When Eduardo leaned on one elbow to raise himself, he kicked him in the ribs, hard.

  “Why are you making this up? Isn’t it bad enough that you fucked up my entire life? Now you want to mock me, too? Are you trying to tell me you killed my father and left my mother crippled because of something someone told you, something you didn’t even bother to find out if it was true?”

  His hand returned to the revolver’s grip, to the safety of the gun, which he no longer tried to hide. The barrel was aimed right between Eduardo’s eyes, forcing him to stare at it cross-eyed as though his eyeballs were magnets drawn irresistibly to the metal.

  Eduardo closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He heard the gun being cocked and felt the barrel in the center of his forehead like a finger trying to dig out his deepest thoughts. Why had Olga lied to him? Or was Who the one who was lying? Why did he believe her back then, but him now?

  All of his questions froze as he heard the muffled clack of the bolt, the hammer being cocked. One, two, three times in a row, the same bang, as the cylinder turned. There was no explosion, no instantaneous searing pain, no smell of gunpowder, none of the things you’re supposed to feel when a bullet hits your head.

  Eduardo opened his eyes, trembling. Mr. Who’s eyes were boring into him. His expression seared with pain and desperation, piercing him as he cried rivers of tears like lava, sliding down his cheeks, burning them like acid.

  He’d fired into the ground.

  EIGHTEEN

  Arthur’s eyes looked watery. Gazing at them against a backlight, they took on a greenish tone. Olga traced the outline of his pupils with one finger and felt their coldness through the paint like a riverbed full of moss-covered rocks. She jerked her hand away, startled, but the eyes in the portrait followed her. Eduardo had done a great job. In just four months he’d accomplished what Gloria had asked of him—an X-ray of the man who’d killed her son. His brushstrokes had achieved what no one else could have pulled off in such a short space of time. And yet, when he’d brought Olga the canvas three days ago, he didn’t seem happy or even satisfied with the result.

  “It’s done. But it’s incomplete, unfinished,” he’d said with resignation.

  And now, contemplating Arthur’s expression, seething with a fury that came from deep within, Olga thought she saw what Eduardo meant. At some point over the course of those weeks, Arthur’s pose had morphed, and the result was contradictory somehow—disjointed, dysfunctional. When Arthur had found out that the portrait was for Gloria, his disposition had altered, become a sort of unspoken accusation that oozed from his every feature. And Arthur wasn’t the only one who had changed. The Eduardo that Olga saw, too, was different—more despondent, emptier than usual, as though the last of his energies had gone into that painting. And still he felt no matter how many sketches he’d made, he’d failed to capture the image he had in his head.

  Eduardo had asked Olga to be the one to deliver the painting to Gloria. He didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to know anything else about the job, or about Arthur, or anyone. He nearly left Olga’s apartment without even picking up the check that belonged to him, and when she’d reminded him he’d looked at the piece of paper as if it were dirty. Olga thought for a second he was going to tear it up, but in the end he simply folded it slowly and slipped it into his pocket.

  “I’m never going to paint another portrait, Olga. I quit. Graciela and Sara are leaving Madrid. Graciela’s parents have a little house in a beach town on the Costa Brava and she’s asked me to go with them. I think I might just take her up on the invitation.”

  That had been three days ago. The portrait was still in Olga’s studio. She hadn’t dared to dismantle the frame and wrap the canvas to send to Gloria. And though she had a number of excuses for not having done it yet, the truth was that she was scared. She felt a vague but mounting fear. Olga didn’t know how, but she was sure the painting was the key that was going to open those doors she’d managed to keep locked for fourteen years. She actually wondered if maybe it would be better to destroy it, and was on the verge of doing so, brandishing a pair of scissors. She got as far as touching them to Arthur’s well-defined, fleshy lips. But the portrait stopped her, as though invisible fingers had gripped her wrist. You wouldn’t dare, his angular pastel face seemed to say. And she hadn’t.

  It was absurd, she said to herself when she got up that morning and went to sit before the easel, drinking coffee in her robe. It was a disturbing painting, not a living thing. Arthur had no idea who she was, even if his portrait did seem to follow her all over the apartment. And Gloria was just
a weird client, a woman obviously scarred by her son’s death, her divorce, and the fact that the best years of her career were now behind her. Besides, Eduardo didn’t suspect a thing—she’d have been able to tell. She knew him well, far better than he suspected. Maybe his crazy idea of running off with his landlady and her ailing daughter was actually the best thing for everyone. Lately when she was with him, Olga got the ridiculous urge to tell him the truth. The truth—the absurdity of it made her shake her head. She touched her belly through the satin of her robe, as if she could find the meaning there, tattooed onto the tiny scar above her pubic bone. The truth was that she couldn’t have kids. That she was alone, that she felt dirty and guilty, and that no matter how much she worried about Eduardo and tried in vain to make it up to him, she could never undo what had been done.

  She was only sixteen years old at the time. That in and of itself should have been enough of an excuse. Adolescence is a kind of hell that not everyone emerges from unscathed. Sometimes decisions made without thinking end up deciding a person’s fate. Heaven or hell, in whatever form they take. Olga had fallen in love with the wrong man and had never stopped wondering if she’d still be in love with him today, and the answer—that it was very unlikely—tormented her, because it meant that she’d destroyed her own life as well as Eduardo’s for something that wouldn’t even have been worth it. But it had changed her life forever.

  When she got pregnant, the woman she could have become had died. The Olga who now sat staring at Arthur’s portrait, drinking bitter coffee and smoking with her knees curled under her on the sofa, was a mask that was dissolving, a facade that came closer to falling off with each passing moment. Some nights she’d get home drunk, having hooked up with some random stranger at a club. Then she’d look in the mirror and see her smeared lipstick, her disheveled hair, her mascara running down her face. She’d try to find herself in that reflection—but all she saw was darkness. That was what the truth was. That was what she was. And telling Eduardo what she’d done wasn’t going to change it.

  “You should burn that portrait. In fact, I should have burned it myself.”

  Olga whipped her head around, startled. Eduardo stood by the door, the keys to her apartment in one hand.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, but her expression asked something quite different: What are you doing here?

  Eduardo tinkled the keys like a little bell. Olga had forgotten she’d given him a set long ago. Until now he’d never used them. He circled the sofa without taking his eyes off the painting and walked over to face it, just a meter away.

  “I was sort of hoping you wouldn’t be here so I wouldn’t have to face up to this,” he said calmly, as if he were speaking to the painting. But he was speaking to her, although he wasn’t looking at her. She could see only the nape of his neck, a thick crease above the collar of his shirt. That deep-set wrinkle had a severe look about it.

  “What are you talking about?” Olga asked. She felt uncomfortable and noticed a sudden chill on her bare feet. Pretty feet, nicely pedicured toenails.

  Eduardo slumped his shoulders, as if the portrait had disappointed him. As he turned to face Olga, the crease on his neck twisted into what looked like a jeer. Up until that moment she hadn’t seen his black eye or swollen lower lip.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, springing up from the sofa. She reached out to touch the fresh wounds on Eduardo’s face, but he jerked away with a quick sidestep.

  The wounds weren’t what hurt.

  “There’s something I want to show you, so why don’t you get dressed. We’re not going far, just a little drive…”

  The sentence trailed off—Eduardo wasn’t willing to finish it.

  “Why all the mystery?”

  Eduardo gave Olga a stony look, even colder than usual. His chapped lips were parted, gums and rough tongue showing.

  “Get dressed, Olga. It wasn’t a request.”

  * * *

  —

  Eduardo drove toward the outskirts of Madrid and then took the Barcelona highway. Olga looked out the window every little while to mentally escape the suffocating, enclosed space of the car. She babbled nervously about trivial things, making obvious her discomfort at Eduardo’s silence.

  “Where are we going?”

  Eduardo told her she’d see soon enough, and in order to quash any possible protest on Olga’s part, he turned up the radio. On the news, they were still talking about the fire on Calle León. Apparently, new evidence discovered by the police made them suspect that it had not in fact been an accidental fire but an act of arson intended to cover up the murder of the antiques dealer, who according to the coroner’s report showed signs of having been tortured before being so badly burned. The police were questioning several witnesses, among them the concierge of the building next door, and they claimed to have reliable information on the possible perpetrator. Hearing this, Eduardo thought of Ibrahim and the strange way he’d reacted on seeing him.

  “Mind if I change the station?” It was just a rhetorical question; she was already turning the dial—eighties classics: “La calle del olvido” by Los Secretos.

  Por la calle del Olvido vagan tu sombra y la mía

  cada una en una acera, por las cosas de la vida

  Drifting down Lonely Street, your shadow and mine

  Opposite sides of the road, I guess that’s just life.

  Eduardo clenched the wheel tightly.

  “Change the station.”

  “Why?”

  It had been Elena’s favorite song; she used to hum it constantly.

  “Just change it.”

  Olga snapped the radio off and studied Eduardo, clearly irritated.

  “What’s the matter with you, Eduardo? You’re acting very strange.”

  He glanced into the rearview mirror, then straight ahead. They were leaving the metropolitan part of the city behind.

  “A little patience,” he murmured, as though to himself.

  Traffic had thinned notably. Without realizing it, Eduardo had started driving too fast, as though he wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. Open fields now dotted the landscape, giving it a more serene aspect. The four-lane road narrowed to two—with no shoulder—and wild scrub crowded the side of the road, threatening to grow over the embankment, making it clear that at the slightest chance it would recolonize the land that nature had intended for it. The sky was clean and steely, clear and cloudless. Eduardo lowered his sunshade. Olga donned a pair of oversized sunglasses. The only thing between them was the roar of wind rushing in the half-open windows and the sound of tires on the asphalt—asphalt which was in increasingly poor repair. At some point, the intense smell of animal hides and dyes started to fill the air, and there appeared in the distance a small town, industrial warehouses dotting its outskirts.

  Olga sat up straight, suddenly stiff.

  Eduardo turned off and took a back road. After a few meters, they came to a shimmering stream that ran parallel to the road, and he stopped at a curve leading off to the right—the exact place where his car had plunged into the water fourteen years earlier. He turned off the engine and dropped his hands to his knees. Unconsciously, Eduardo began to stroke his right knee through his trousers, as if by going back to the scene of the crime his wounds had reopened and were throbbing anew.

  You could hear the gentle gurgling of the stream and the wind swaying the reeds close to the shore. Wildflowers lined the water’s edge. A few black birds darted around, just specks in the sky—swifts maybe, or swallows, it was impossible to tell from that distance. Above their heads, high up in the sky, was the metallic glint of a plane plowing through space, leaving a white contrail like a meteorite.

  “Why are we here?” Olga asked. She was clearly feeling on edge.

  Eduardo, on the other hand, felt quite calm.

  “Wher
e was it? Where’d you see that guy’s car? Where did he get out?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. It was fourteen years ago.”

  Eduardo gave her an icy stare. He himself remembered every detail of the accident precisely. He hadn’t been able to forget. In fact, the details became more and more fixed in his mind with each passing day.

  “When you asked me to paint that portrait, you asked me something I didn’t know how to answer. You asked why I hadn’t gone to the police the day you came to my house, why I didn’t tell them what you told me about the driver who killed Elena and Tania. I know the answer now. But you knew it even back then, fourteen years ago.”

  Olga shivered. He knew. Eduardo knew.

  “You lied to me. You’ve never even been here, have you? You didn’t see the accident—there was no car, no man, no license plate. You made it all up. You knew I’d kill that man and you used me, to get me to do it. I was your instrument, your enforcer. And the one thing I keep wondering—the thing I’ve been asking myself nonstop since yesterday—is why? Why would you do something like that?”

  Olga took off her sunglasses and folded the arms carefully. She was trembling. She thought now of the silver cross her mother used to wear around her neck, the way it swung when her mother bent down to pick her up when she helped her cross the stream.

  “I know this place better than anyone. That much, at least, wasn’t a lie. On the other side of the stream, behind those reeds, is a narrow path that leads to a farmhouse. When I was a girl we called it ‘the house of sorrow’ because the man who lived there was a lonely, bitter man whose wife had run off with a vacuum-cleaner salesman from Zamora. Kids are cruel—we’d go out there and throw stones at his windows until he came to look out. Then we’d start shouting, call him a cuckold and say all sorts of mean things. We did it from a safe distance, of course, ready to take off running if he came out to chase us off. But he never did. We never got him to come out. And then one day, the Guardia Civil showed up to take him down. He’d hung himself from a fig tree.” She pointed east with her glasses. “There used to be a granary over there, and a stable for mules and barnyard animals. When I got home from school, my mother would carry me out to feed the goats and chickens. There was this one brown duck that I really loved, I watched it hatch, and I’d come feed it by hand. One day, some kids from school were playing Cowboys and Indians out by the corral. The Indians had these arrows—they were really good, made with reeds—and the arrowheads were Coke-bottle caps filed down with a sharp stone. One of them got my duck. I buried it myself, not far from those rocks. So, this is the geography of my childhood. I thought I’d always be happy here. But this was where I learned I’d never be happy at all.”