“Did you split his lip?”
Ian was exasperated. He had walked toward her, with something on the tip of his tongue. But at the last minute the words receded and sank back inside him.
“I did what I had to do.” His nostrils flared and he was panting. He didn’t know whether to scream or cry. Instead he shook his head in resignation. “You don’t understand. We have to take Ian somewhere. We have to get him out of here.”
Out of his life, he should have said. Of his sick brain and festering heart.
“I want you out of this house,” was Gloria’s reply.
* * *
—
Blind. She was blind. If he’d told her back then, if he’d just opened up, she could have found a way to fix things, she’d have known what to do. Ian would be alive and that sickening portrait wouldn’t be sitting there.
She didn’t care what it was her son might have done.
“I want to see it.” Her physical body was still there but she herself was gone—someplace where she didn’t have to think, so she wouldn’t go insane. “I need to see it so that I know it’s true.”
“You don’t need to see the truth to admit it,” Ian replied. “I destroyed it.”
He was lying, of course; he’d never let his wife see what the fruit of her loins was capable of. Never. “There’s another copy. Maybe more than one.”
Ian turned to this new voice coming from the direction of the door. Gloria flinched but didn’t look surprised. She’d known he was there.
Guzmán had been listening from behind the door. He’d granted Gloria that much, allowed her to speak to her husband first—the same way that, before interrogating a detainee, they first let family members speak to them alone in the hope that they might confess without having to be tortured first. It almost never worked, but he felt better at least trying.
“I’m guessing you know who I am…”
Ian recognized him immediately, though they’d never spoken before, or even seen each other up close. Over four months, Ian had shadowed that mercenary, always on his heels, erasing all trace of what he discovered. Guzmán walked over to Arthur’s portrait. In it, Arthur looked as though he were full of inner turmoil, like one of those portraits of Medieval mystics where it’s impossible to distinguish ecstasy from insanity, or vice versa.
“…and you know why I’m here.”
Ian nodded. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be happening. After he’d killed Olsen, Ian had thought the whole business was dead and buried. Then, one morning, he had received a ph one call from someone who spoke eloquently, requesting to speak to him, in person. The man arranged to meet him on the patio of an elegant hotel in the center of Madrid, in broad daylight.
The man was middle-aged, handsome and distinguished. He wore an Italian suit and had gold cufflinks that matched his tiepin. His intense brown eyes twinkled wittily and his brows were subtly waxed into a perfect arch above his eyes. He never said what his name was, but from the start he made it very clear that he was acting as an intermediary for a group of people who, for obvious reasons, could not be named publically. For obvious reasons, he repeated several times. The two of them looked like decent, civilised people just having a coffee, discussing the terms of a business deal. The man—who wore too much cologne and asked Ian not to smoke when he went to light a cigarette—claimed to be abreast of the situation Ian had gotten involved in, and added, ripping open a packet of sugar and stirring less than half of it into his coffee, that Olsen had not committed suicide. We know you killed him. But don’t let that worry you. That man would have turned into a real headache for some of those I represent. It was simply a matter of time until someone solved the problem—so in a way we should be grateful to you.
They would make sure that Ian had no trouble with the police. And that his son didn’t either. Needless to say, the club’s activities had been suspended—he didn’t say “terminated.” In exchange, they asked him to forget what he knew. Quid pro quo, he’d said with an academic smile. You just go back to Australia and carry on with your work—which, from what I hear, is marvelous. You’ve got influential admirers and they’ll provide all the funding you need in the future. It was best to not even contemplate the alternative. For obvious reasons, he said again. He didn’t need to spell them out: what today was being viewed as a suicide could turn into murder tomorrow. Evidence could be found proving his son guilty of rape, and Ian junior would never survive prison. Kids today aren’t like our generation. Not to mention what it would do to Gloria, not just professionally but spiritually, to have the whole thing come to light. Between you and me, the rich can’t stand having to account for their actions. It makes them too like other mortals, accountability does. And they’re not willing to stoop that low, for obvious reasons.
“That wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. They said they’d take care of everything.”
“But then Arthur came on the scene,” said Guzmán, “and he introduced a variable that neither of you had taken into account. Although, wasn’t it obvious that a father like him would never stand there with his arms crossed while his daughter was missing?”
Gloria was rocking softly in her chair, a death grip on the wrinkled handkerchief in her hands. She wore the expression of someone who’s just vomited. Contorted. Her eyes had turned dull black, reflecting no light.
“Arthur received a copy of that tape and saw what Ian had done to his daughter. It wasn’t an accident. He ran Ian over on purpose…And you knew,” Gloria said, staring straight at her husband. She understood now, and yet she did not want to understand, did not want the clarity of knowing that when she gave her husband the news over the phone, his devastation was far more heartbreaking than even her own. Because he was filled with silence, guilt and regret. “It was your fault.”
Ian didn’t try to defend himself. Unknowingly, he’d put his own son in the firing line, not seeing that he was flinging the gates of doom wide open. There was no point telling himself that his son had a sick nature and that sooner or later the depraved Tagger side would have found another way to take hold.
“You killed Dámaso, and then Olsen’s widow. You thought they’d blame me for it, the way they did with Dámaso. But you let the children live. That speaks well of your honor, but it was a mistake. Kids talk—they have good memories and they like police uniforms. I’d say it won’t be long until some officers pay you a visit.”
Ian said nothing in reply. He went to Gloria and knelt before her, trying to get her to look at him.
“I didn’t tell you I’d come back because I didn’t want to drag you into it. I wanted to keep you safe. But when I called and you told me you’d hired the artist that that crazy police officer had told you about to paint a portrait of Arthur, I felt powerless. It was like I was stuck in quicksand, sinking deeper and deeper, and this is where I ended up. I tried to convince you to leave, but you’re so stubborn. You always do things your way. And that was when I realized I had to put an end to this once and for all. Getting Olsen out of the way wasn’t enough. There were other people who knew what Ian had done, people who could keep coming back again and again, threatening us, blackmailing us with other tapes. And I wasn’t prepared to let them do that to you. That much, at least, I wanted you to have. Yes, I killed those people. But they were already dead, condemned even if they didn’t know it. There was no way they’d have let them live, not after Arthur started stirring shit up.”
Gloria turned away in disgust. She couldn’t stand the sight of him, couldn’t stand his touch, his smell. He didn’t understand. She didn’t care what her son had done. He was the flesh of her flesh, and she’d have done the same thing—lie, betray, kill—but not to protect a memory, an idea. She’d have done it to save his life. Her eyes focused on Arthur’s portrait and she suddenly leaped up and rushed to the pencil holder on the desk. She snatched a pair of scissors and, before Ian or Guzmán had
a chance to react, she lunged at the canvas and stabbed it one, two, three, four times, howling like an animal.
The two men stood staring, not daring to intervene, and waited until Gloria dropped the scissors, exhausted, and left the room.
“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she said to Ian as she left.
Guzmán picked the scissors up off the floor. They were sharp. He gazed impassively at the painting, now in shreds, from which half of one eye stared out.
“I pity you, Ian. I really do. Your determination to preserve everything at any cost is what made you lose it all.”
Ian glared at him, livid. He could fight Guzmán, maybe get the scissors off him, but there was no way he’d emerge victorious. Anticipating his thoughts, Guzmán opened his mouth in reproach and pointed to the Glock tucked into his waistband.
“You shouldn’t have killed Magnus’ widow. She had no part in this, she only wanted to help you and forget about it all, move on with her life.”
“Nobody could move on with their life after being implicated in something like this.”
Guzmán’s face hardened. He walked to the office door and turned the key that was in the lock.
“That’s right. And that brings me to the part of this whole conversation that interests me. I’m in a hurry to get this over with. I’ve got a plane to catch. So we’re just going to skip the usual protocol.”
With no warning he pulled out the pistol and fired a shot point-blank into Ian’s knee.
“Where is Arthur’s daughter? What did you do with her? I’ve got twelve bullets in this clip. And I’ll fire them one by one until you tell me. Hand, elbow, foot, shoulder…You get the picture.”
* * *
—
Dolores arrived in the early evening that day, as she did every Tuesday, her day off. The bus to her employers’ suburb was nearly empty. “They’ll shut down this route any day now,” the driver said. “Public transportation gives rich people the willies. It’s too democratic. Smells like humanity.” What would she do if they cut the only bus route that went anywhere close to their house? “Strike it rich, Dolores,” was the driver’s sardonic suggestion.
The first thing she found odd, which she later told the police, was that Señor Ian’s office door was locked from the outside. He always left the key on the inside of that door. She knocked but didn’t dare enter.
The second surprise made her faint, giving her a nasty bump on the head where she hit the porcelain toilet bowl. That, she later claimed, was why it took her so long to call the police. I was unconscious for at least fifteen minutes, and the only reason I came to was because the bathtub water wet my face and woke me up. She’d walked in to find water pooling on Señora Tagger’s bedroom floor; it was coming from beneath the bathroom door. When she opened it, she found the señora naked, in the tub, arms hanging over the tiled sides.
Gloria had devised a tremendous, dramatic end to her life. She’d drowned herself in the tub, filling it with warm water and bath salts. Prior to that she’d put on Chopin’s nocturne, in memory of her son’s paternal grandmother. Beside the tub lay an uncorked bottle of very good wine and the remains of a joint. She’d taken the time to fold her clothes carefully. And in case she regretted her decision at the last minute, she’d also swallowed an entire bottle of strong sleeping pills. But in the end she hadn’t even struggled.
TWENTY-FOUR
Situated on a steep narrow street, with its awning rolled up and no sign aside from a small nameplate on the door, Chez Farida was a little slice of Algeria in Madrid’s Tirso de Molina neighborhood. The place was decorated in traditional Algerian style, and customers sat at low tables, on benches covered with colorful cushions. From time to time, the owner let Algerian artists display their work on the rust-colored walls. Ibrahim frequented the place regularly to sate his cravings for good Machwi home-cooking, cheap platters of grilled meat, potato croquettes, and honey-drenched desserts. That day, there were very few customers. The girl waiting tables gave him an informal greeting and pointed to a table near the kitchen, where the cook could be heard bustling around with saucepans to the joyous sound of Chaabi music on the stereo, turned low.
Arthur arrived ten minutes later. He too liked the restaurant’s traditional cuisine and cozy atmosphere. They met there every once in a while, and always sat chatting awhile after their meal. But that day Arthur was in a hurry and not in the mood to talk. He refused the menu and ordered a draft beer, dropping heavily down onto the bench.
“So, what was so important?” he asked.
Ibrahim was drumming his fingers on the tablecloth to the beat of the music and staring at the black and white photos on the wall. They were all portraits of Algerians, people who life had not been kind to and whose suffering was reflected in their expressions—some unsociable, others staring into the camera with what seemed a direct accusation. Portraits of old farmers with wild manes of hair, women with the hint of a mustache visible above their wrinkled smiles, gleeful gap-toothed children in their underwear, leaping from a rock into the sea. The timeless snapshots—taken by an unknown artist hoping to sell one or two under the mistaken assumption that people find the suffering of others interesting—contrasted strikingly with the actual faces of the few customers there: young Algerians in baggy jeans and Real Madrid shirts smoking cigarettes, married couples sharing a few lamb kebabs with their ill-behaved children, who sat drinking Coke. There are always two sides to reality, Ibrahim thought. And nostalgia was the more ambiguous side.
“Where is your father buried?” Ibrahim asked suddenly. Arthur gave him a sidelong glance, one eyebrow cocked.
“In the common grave of a municipal cemetery in a small town in the province of Málaga, where he was killed. My mother didn’t have the money to have him exhumed. And later, I chose not to. Why would I?”
“Do you ever visit him?”
“No. Why are you asking me all this?”
Ibrahim pointed to a picture hanging on the wall to the right of their table. It was a strange photo, full of gray tones that lent a certain tension to the low-lying clouds, from which emerged a hill where a Berber shepherd stood wrapped in a threadbare blanket. The shepherd and his dog had their backs to the camera and looked out at the desert horizon before them.
“Those are the hills of Djebel Adjdir. That’s where my father is buried. Though you can’t see it, behind that desert, out past where the shepherd is looking, is the sea. I like to imagine that my father is looking this way, that his eyes are following me wherever I go.”
Arthur glanced at the photo disinterestedly. Ibrahim wasn’t often nostalgic.
“Did you know my father was a militant in the FLN? He was very active during the war of independence. For years, we had to keep secret the place where he was buried. The authorities didn’t like martyrs and didn’t want his grave to turn into a site of pilgrimage. If it were up to them, they’d have exhumed the body and thrown it into a common grave, but in the end, the passage of time accomplished what they couldn’t do. Nobody really thinks about those days, or those heroes, anymore. There are no more pilgrims, no more flowers; nobody writes prayers or pledges on scraps of paper to leave under rocks. The heroes of yesterday make all the more obvious how mediocre the heroes of today are.”
He looked at Arthur and felt as though time had come to a standstill, as though he were no longer sitting at that table.
“I’m leaving Madrid. I want to live out the rest of my days in Algeria.”
Arthur stared at him in shock.
“You can’t—when you were released, that was one of the conditions of your probation. If you leave Spain and stop going to court every two weeks, you’ll be declared a fugitive of the law.”
“I have no intention of coming back.”
“You don’t have a passport; you’d be stopped at the border.”
Ibrahim smiled. Papers, walls. Man-made creations
can’t stop the wind. People were wandering in and out of the restaurant, coming and going, burdened by the weight of their lives. They didn’t realize they were free.
“I’ll manage.”
Arthur was disconcerted by Ibrahim’s enigmatic air.
“What are you going to do? Go back to arms trafficking? To drugs? To fighting? You’re not a young man anymore, and Algeria is no country for the weak.”
Ibrahim nodded as he fingered the scar on his cheek. He wasn’t the same man. Wounds can be healed. With time, with patience, with determination.
“There’s something else I wanted to tell you. I’ve asked Andrea to come with me.”
Arthur let out a nervous laugh.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Ibrahim took a deep breath and told him everything.
“I’ve been in love with her since we were children, since long before you even met her. That’s the only reason you managed to stay alive in prison all these years.”
* * *
—
He was just a kid from the slums—dirty, sickly, shirtless, spending his days torn between fear and the need to be what he was: a twelve-year-old boy with sleep in his eyes who found the desperate urge to live intoxicating. He had already started playing the ney back then and claimed he knew the secrets of sema, the sacred whirling of the dervishes. He would talk to, look at, laugh with, and kiss any girl who’d let him. And he especially liked that shy little wisp of a girl who lived in Bab el Oued. They went swimming naked together on the beach, and it was in the surf that they first began to touch. At first pretending to dunk each other, their touching quickly became much more tender, and awkward, and direct. And there, hiding behind a barge, he kissed her with what he thought was expertise, but all she did was spit on the ground, the way a man would, and tell him she didn’t like that tongue-in-the-mouth business. Later came train trips to Hydra, and afternoons spent in the reservoir to cool off and rinse away the salty seawater. And nights on the balcony gazing out over the sea, returning to Algiers with their wet underwear in a little plastic bag, her shamefaced expression and his triumph at having stolen a real tongue kiss.
Breathing Through the Wound Page 47