Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  “What do you expect me to say? The son of a bitch killed my son.”

  “We don’t have proof of that. We never did.”

  She found his words pathetic, obscene.

  Laura clenched her jaw and watched him for a few seconds, her expression inscrutable.

  “But we both know he did it.”

  “It makes little difference what anyone knows if there’s no evidence to prove it.”

  “You didn’t seem to care too much about evidence a couple decades ago.”

  Alcázar kept his cool despite the low blow. He calmly finished his coffee, staining the tip of his mustache.

  “Times have changed. We’re not living in the seventies.”

  Laura began to tremble, as though she’d suddenly come down with malaria.

  “Of course not. Scaring kids was your thing. Wasn’t hard to get a confession out of the little ones, was it?”

  Alcázar held her gaze. “In theory, democracy was invented so that guys like me couldn’t keep doing what we used to do. You, better than anyone, should know that.”

  There came a tense silence; Alcázar was visibly uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry,” Laura said, gazing absently out at the beach. She saw her six-year-old son running along the shore, Luis following. She saw another time, one that had existed until just eight months ago, and then disappeared as though it never was.

  “Did you come out here to arrest me?”

  Alcázar held his breath and then let it all out at once, like someone deciding to jump into a tub of freezing cold water. Determined.

  “I want you to tell me if it was you. I can help, but I need to know.”

  Laura gently evaded her boss’s gaze.

  “I understand why you’d suspect me. I understand perfectly,” she murmured.

  “I don’t think you do. Zinoviev’s wrists were cuffed to a beam. With police-issue handcuffs. Yours. He also had a photograph of your son, Roberto, staple-gunned to his heart.”

  Laura shivered and sank her nails into the paper tablecloth, as though imagining it was Zinoviev’s black eyes and she could rip them out and wrench them from her nightmares. She struggled to stand and had to hold on to the table.

  “If you think it was me, you know what you have to do.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Laura.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “I’m not, but by now there’s probably a patrol car at your front door.”

  She looked at Alcázar as though all the life had seeped out of her, as though the only thing holding up her empty body was air.

  “I’m not planning on going to jail.”

  Alcázar sucked on his mustache.

  “I think you’re going to have to start considering it. But I’m not going to stop you from walking out that door. I wasn’t here. Got it?”

  Yes. Laura got it perfectly.

  PART ONE

  THE LEAN WOLF

  1

  BARCELONA, JUNE 20, 2002

  “You don’t understand. This bitch is trying to take everything I have, she actually wants alimony for life.”

  Gonzalo had never wanted to be a lawyer, despite what the sign hanging on his office door said: GONZALO GIL. SPECIALIZING IN CIVIL, MATRIMONIAL, AND TRADE LAW. He would have been just as happy to be standing behind a butcher’s counter. He’d simply let fate decide for him, and given that he was now in his forties, there was no point in complaining.

  “The law is on your wife’s side. I think you should come to a settlement agreement. It would save you time and energy.”

  His client lifted his chin and gave Gonzalo a look that suggested he’d just had a finger rammed up his ass.

  “What kind of a lawyer are you?”

  Gonzalo understood the man’s perplexity; the guy was expecting to be lied to. Everyone was, when they walked in the door. It was as though rather than legal counsel, people came in search of some sort of wizard, someone to solve their problems through sorcery. The thing is, Gonzalo didn’t know how to lie. For a moment, he considered the possibility of handing his client one of the pretentious-looking business cards bearing the logo of his father-in-law’s firm. All the man would have to do is walk out of Gonzalo’s office and down the hall to the end. No need even to exit the building.

  “You should have consulted with an expert before you put your wife’s name on the deed to your house and property. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  He could just imagine what his father-in-law would have said in response to such an admission, rolling his eyes: “When are you going to learn that in our profession a lie does not presuppose the absence of truth but a resource to disguise it with legal subterfuge to the point of being unrecognizable.” Besides being one of the best lawyers in the city, his father-in-law, Agustín González, was a die-hard cynic. Gonzalo had seen him virtually hypnotize clients with a tangled web of words that left them spellbound, ready to sign whatever he placed before them even if only to avoid admitting that they didn’t understand a word of his mumbo jumbo and were trying to escape the old man’s look of reproach. He always bade them farewell with his best smile—the one that said, ever so politely, You’re fucked.

  Ten minutes later, Gonzalo’s assistant, Luisa, walked through the door. She always came in without knocking, and after this many years, Gonzalo had given up trying to convince her otherwise. Luisa was a whiz at office software, cell phones, and every other device and program he had no idea how to operate, which in this day and age made him a functional illiterate. Besides, he liked the geraniums she’d planted on the balcony. “This place is so sad. It needs a little color, and I’m going to provide that,” she’d said the first time she walked into the office, sure of the fact that this reasoning would lead Gonzalo to see he had no choice but to hire her. She was right, of course. Before this young woman walked into his life, his flowers always died, turning into desiccated clusters that disintegrated on touch. Naturally, he hired her, and he hadn’t regretted it. He just hoped she’d be able to keep her position after his firm was folded into his father-in-law’s.

  “I see we’ve earned another devoted client for life.” In addition to being efficient and dressing colorfully, Luisa possessed a sarcastic wit.

  Gonzalo shrugged. “At least I didn’t bleed him dry in exchange for empty promises.”

  “Honesty only honors the honorable, Solicitor. And we’ve got bills to pay, the rent on this gorgeous office is due to your father-in-law, and—oh, yes, small detail!—there’s my paycheck.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Too young for you. I could report you for child abuse.”

  “When you have your own firm, I’m going to be terrified.”

  Luisa flashed him a roguish smile. “As well you should. I’m not going to let clients slip away like fish through a net full of holes. By the way, your wife just called. She said not to forget to arrive home at six o’clock. On the dot.”

  Gonzalo leaned back against his faux-leather armchair. Ah, yes, the annual “surprise” party in honor of his birthday. He’d nearly forgotten about the ritual.

  “Is Lola still on the line?”

  “I told her you were exceedingly busy.”

  “Good girl. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Luisa’s sharp look quickly replaced the tinge of sadness and disappointment in her expression.

  “I hope you remember that when you have your meeting with the old man.”

  He started to say something, but she saved him the embarrassment by speeding out of the office. Gonzalo inhaled deeply and took off his tortoiseshell glasses, which were as heavy and as outdated as his suits and ties. He rubbed his eyes, and his gaze alighted on the portrait of Lola and the kids hanging on the wall. An oil painting, his wife had given it to him when he first opened the office and his dreams were still
big. Things had really changed, and not in the ways he’d hoped.

  He walked out onto the balcony to get some fresh air. The geraniums shared what little free space there was with an air-conditioning unit and a bicycle he’d never ridden. The firm’s first advertising sign still hung on the railing. In all these years it had never occurred to him to change it. The sun and exposure to the elements had faded the letters, though if truth be told it had barely been visible from the street even when it was brand-new. The sign was symbolic, the absurd flag of a tiny island uselessly proclaiming its independence from the adjacent offices, all of which were property of AGUSTÍN GONZÁLEZ AND ASSOCIATES, SINCE 1895. Sometimes Gonzalo was convinced that the only clients who walked into his office actually did so by mistake, opening the wrong door. He also suspected that from time to time his father-in-law sent him a few losers—the crumbs, the lost causes he felt weren’t worth his time. After all, Gonzalo was his daughter’s husband, and that had to count for something, even if don Agustín considered him a complete idiot. A milquetoast, to be precise.

  After fighting it for years, he’d finally had to succumb to the evidence: He was going to accept his father-in-law’s proposal to associate, as soon as it came through. It hadn’t yet been formalized, but in practical terms it meant that Gonzalo would be working for don Agustín. His sign would disappear, maybe his geraniums, too. The mortgage, his daughter’s English school fees, and the upcoming year’s tuition for Javier at a private Jesuit university for blue bloods were to blame. That, and his lack of courage or ability to stand up to his father-in-law, had turned his life into a farce in which he was a bit player.

  He lit a cigarette and gazed out over the city as he smoked. Soon the weather would change and the real heat would arrive, but on afternoons like this you could still go out onto the balcony without the AC blasting you in the face. Everyone assumed that he loved being right in the heart of the city, but the truth was he’d never liked Barcelona. He missed the mountain skies of his childhood, the way the sun tinged the lake red when his father took him fishing. Actually, he didn’t have any real memories of that time, if in fact memories could ever be real; his father had disappeared when he was only five years old. But his mother had told him the stories of going fishing with him so many times that it was as if he remembered it exactly the way she described. It seemed strange to miss something invented—as strange as leaving flowers every June 23 on a grave where the only thing buried are the worms and ants that leave little cones of earth piled up in summer.

  For years he tried to convince Lola that they should fix up the old lake house and move out there with the kids. They’d be only an hour from the city by car, and nowadays it was easy to live in the country with all of the comforts they might want. Patricia, their young daughter, could be raised in a healthy environment, and he could take her fishing so that when she grew up her father wouldn’t be just a hazy ghostlike presence. Maybe if they were in a more peaceful atmosphere, his relationship with Javier would improve, too. But Lola had always flatly refused.

  Taking his wife away from the wide avenues, boutiques, in-town neighborhoods, and hustle and bustle of the city would be tantamount to amputating her legs. In the end he’d let himself be talked into buying a place in the city’s posh zona alta, a house with private swimming pool and views of the coast, four bathrooms, a large garden, and wealthy, discreet neighbors. He’d bought an SUV that guzzled more gas than a tank and had determined, despite the fact that he couldn’t afford any of it, that this was the life he wanted.

  People in love do things they don’t want to, and then pretend they did them of their own free will, when in fact it was simple resignation.

  Lost in pointless conjecture, Gonzalo turned toward the adjoining balcony, where a woman was smoking, absorbed in a book. She looked up absently, perhaps thinking about what she’d just read. She was tall, probably about thirty-five, and had red hair that looked like it had been cut by Edward Scissorhands—jagged shocks on both sides, long bangs that brushed her nose and that she kept pulling off her face. Two large butterfly wings were tattooed on her neck. Her eyes, brown-flecked gray, were friendly and challenging at the same time.

  “What a coincidence, you’re reading my favorite poet,” Gonzalo said.

  Judging by the woman’s expression, he must have looked like a convalescent, someone you couldn’t expect to muster much strength.

  “Why is that a coincidence? Do you think we’re the only two people in the world to have read Mayakovsky?”

  Gonzalo set the wheels of his memory in motion, searching for long-forgotten words. His Russian was very rusty.

  “You must be kidding. You could count on one hand the number of people in this city who can read Mayakovsky in Russian.”

  She gave him a surprised smile. “And I suppose you’re one of them? Where did you learn my language?”

  “My father learned Russian in the thirties. When I was a little boy he used to make my sister and me recite the epic poem, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.”

  She nodded, out of politeness perhaps, and closed her book. “Good for your father.” She gave another half smile before retreating indoors.

  Gonzalo felt stupid. He was just trying to be polite. Well…just polite? Perhaps his glance down at her cleavage had been too obvious. He was out of practice when it came to gallantry. Gonzalo stubbed out his cigarette and went into the bathroom next to his office. He washed his hands thoroughly and sniffed his fingers to make sure no tobacco smell lingered. Then he adjusted the knot of his tie and smoothed his jacket.

  “You’re in there somewhere, you little bastard, aren’t you?” he said under his breath, staring into the mirror.

  Each Sunday, when he went to visit, his mother reminded him what a handsome boy he’d once been. “You used to be just like your father,” she’d say. Same inquisitive green eyes, broad forehead, defined brow, prominent cheekbones, and that classic Gil gap between the two front teeth, which he’d managed to correct with years of orthodontics. Dark bushy hair, a wide neck, and a way of sticking out his chin that, if you didn’t know him, made him seem arrogant. Nobody mentioned the fact that his ears stuck out and he had a flat boxer’s nose, nor did they comment on his mouth, which had a bitter expression. When you added it all up, he wasn’t especially attractive. At any rate, even if young Gonzalo had promised to be a chip off the old block, a drop in his father’s ocean, time had scuppered that possibility. In the pictures Gonzalo had saved, his father at forty was still irresistible, even with only one eye. Tall and strong, he gave off an air of unquestionable authority, of being ever surefooted. Gonzalo, by contrast, had become a pushover, a weakling, shorter and fleshier, with a soft belly that he never found the time or discipline to do anything about. His receding hairline was a sure sign of encroaching premature baldness, and his eyes were no longer inquisitive; in fact, they no longer even glimmered. Now they showed only a fragile-seeming kindness, the lack of confidence of a timid man who, at best, inspired indifferent condescension. The children of heroes never measure up. This wasn’t a hurtful affirmation but an unquestionable statement of fact.

  Before leaving, he stopped to speak to Luisa. “Do you know who rented the apartment next door?”

  Luisa tapped her lips with the tip of her pencil.

  “No, but I did notice when they were moving. Don’t worry, I’ll find out by Monday.”

  Gonzalo nodded and said goodbye with a fake smile. The woman on the balcony had intrigued him.

  “By the way, happy birthday. One more year,” his secretary said when he was already on his way out the door.

  Gonzalo raised a hand without turning.

  Twenty minutes later, he parked his SUV in front of the house. Someone had spray-painted the wall: a bull’s-eye, with his name in the target. A few workers Lola had hired were trying to get rid of it with a pressure washer. This had become like a game of cat-and-mouse: Night fell, and the gra
ffiti would reappear in the same place yet again. Gonzalo didn’t have to be a handwriting expert to know who was doing it. From the other side of the wall, in his backyard, came murmuring and the sound of someone laughing stridently over the other voices. The guests had arrived and he could hear the background music: Chilean bolero singer Lucho Gatica. He and Lola had vastly different tastes in music. Generally, that meant that whatever his wife wanted to hear, won. Unlike him, Lola didn’t mind arguing one bit.

  He held his keys in his hand and wished all those people were anywhere but here. Although actually, it was he who wanted to disappear. He wasn’t going to, of course. Something that shocking was unthinkable to someone as boring, predictable, and old as he was, in those people’s view. So Gonzalo took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and slid the key into the lock, forcing himself to wear the most genuine expression of surprise he could, even though no one really cared. All they asked was that it look convincing, and it did.

  He made his way through the living room, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, greeting. Several partners from his father-in-law’s firm stood clustered in a circle, a few last-minute friends had been rounded up, and Lola had recruited some neighbors to bulk things up; everyone congratulated him effusively, phonily. He could see Patricia by the pool, playing with other children amid the flowerbeds. She turned and waved her muddy hands at him. Gonzalo waved back, feeling bittersweet. Patricia was growing up too fast. She hardly had to stand on tiptoe anymore to kiss him on the cheek. She was slipping though his fingers. Like all the good things in his life, his kids’ childhood was vanishing before he’d had time to enjoy it.

  Of all those present, Lola shone the brightest, in a beautiful off-the-shoulder mauve dress. His wife had taken entering her forties—an age often so troubling—far better than most women. She looked confident and happy, and others sought her out, touched her, hugged her, hoping that her vitality was somehow contagious. She was beautiful, more beautiful than he could ever have hoped. But beauty didn’t mean much anymore, he thought, when she came over to wish him happy birthday with a quick kiss on the lips.