Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  “I’d like to have a word with you about your deceased husband.”

  Mía, or Irena, whichever she was at that moment, glanced over at her kids and dropped the pole.

  “Not here. Let’s go inside.”

  Guzmán nodded and followed her into the house. He noticed a framed portrait of Olsen on the wall, posing with his kids, who looked a couple of years younger than they were now. Oddly, she was not represented in this family picture. Olsen looked like an orderly sort of person, a meticulous, legalistic guy in his straight-cut suit, impeccable tie, buttoned vest and pinstriped handkerchief poking out of the jacket pocket. His little eyes were hard, his eyelids so narrow they looked to be entirely lashless.

  The widow glanced at Guzmán—who stood there, hands in his pockets—out of the corner of her eye.

  “So, are you here on behalf of the police, the creditors, or are you a homeowner who feels swindled?” she asked, her weary expression charged with sarcasm. She was wearing jeans, cut off above the knee. Her calves were hard and toned, no doubt from the step machine in the corner by the large window overlooking the yard and pool and, beyond the unpruned hedgerow, the peaceful surface of the distant Med.

  “I could just be a friend,” Guzmán replied flatly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. My husband had no friends. No one who works in finance does. In the past few years, everyone who’s stopped by has come because they had some unresolved business with my dead husband.”

  Guzmán decided to forget about beating around the bush.

  “I work for Arthur Fernández, if you want the truth.” Guzmán pronounced the name intentionally, slowly, watching for any sort of reaction. But all she did was stare up at the ceiling looking bored.

  “I have no idea who that is. You’d be surprised, but all sorts of people come around claiming to have had business dealings with my husband. I know nothing about his business deals; they never interested me and he never wanted them to. So whatever this is about, don’t waste your time with me. There’s a law firm in Barcelona in charge of asset stripping, debts and bankruptcy. You’ll have to speak to them.”

  Guzmán glanced around. There was nothing of any great value. A few antiques, a couple of Chinese vases, a sculpture of questionable taste, furniture that looked old but not especially valuable. The place was either half-empty or half-full, but it was hard to say if they were settling in or getting ready to move out. He nosed around the living room with no particular aim in mind. Sometimes you had to stop searching in order to find what you wanted. He’d learned that over the course of his professional life. Most things are in plain sight, waiting to be discovered if you simply take your time observing them. He noted that the only books on the shelves of the small library were on film—Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film, Étienne-Jules Marey’s Camera Obscura, Emile Reynaud’s Théâtre Optique—and tomes that looked very old.

  Out in the yard, the little albinos were really letting each other have it. A dog, possibly a dachshund, leaped around between them, barking and wagging its tail excitedly, not realizing that it wasn’t a game. When humans fight, it never is.

  “I’m not here about money.”

  “Are you a cop, then? A detective? A journalist?”

  Guzmán shook his head and smiled.

  “I told you, I’m working for someone. I’m not here to stir up any trouble, I assure you.”

  The widow eyed him warily.

  “So what do you want?”

  “It’s my understanding that your husband helped track down a very valuable violin belonging to the Tagger family. I’m interested in Mr. Olsen’s relationship to that family.”

  She took down a volume of an encyclopedia on the evolution of cinematography in postwar Europe. From between the pages on Vittorio de Sica’s The Bicycle Thief she pulled a medium-sized photograph in which a posh-looking Olsen appeared with a very tall, well-built individual smiling uncomfortably, the Swede’s arm thrown over his shoulder. It was signed, at the bottom, in marker:

  To my friend Magnus. Ian Mackenzie, Berlin, 01/03/1999

  “He absolutely loved film,” she muttered with a smirk of irritation. “He spent a fortune on his toys—old movies, books, autographs, objects that had belonged to famous actors. He would pay outrageous sums to anyone who could get him originals. That’s how he met the director Ian Mackenzie.”

  Guzmán examined the photo carefully. Gloria Tagger’s husband was certainly a good-looking guy, as had been her son.

  “Magnus met him at the Berlin Festival, the year his most famous film came out.” She waited for Guzmán to realize what she was talking about, but the guy had no idea, so she finally spelled it out, exasperated. “Everyone Lies? It was a milestone in cinematography, despite receiving poor reviews at first. Magnus guarded that picture like one of his greatest treasures.”

  “So the connection between the Taggers and Magnus came not so much from music as from your husband’s interest in film?”

  “That’s right. I think at first Magnus didn’t even realize that Ian was married to the violinist. He found out later, after they became friends. I remember Gloria A. Tagger, we met at a dinner, at their home in the Madrid suburbs. That was where she told us the story of the violin that had been in her family for decades, and her unsuccessful attempts to get it back. At the time, Magnus had contacts in every arena that involved big money, and as you can imagine the world of antiques and auction houses moves quite a bit of money. I don’t think I’m revealing any big secret if I say that auction houses and galleries, on more than one occasion, have been used as giant money laundering machines, whitewashing black-market cash. My husband was so taken with Ian and his wife that he moved heaven and earth to win them over. A few months after that dinner he found the violin at a Vienna auction house and the Taggers got their instrument back at an exorbitantly high price. And with that, Magnus rose in his friend’s esteem, and his wife’s.”

  “What kind of friendship did they have?”

  “Magnus belonged to a very select film club. So select, in fact, that sometimes I thought they were more like a secret Masonic society or a sect or something. As far as I know, they met at an antique dealer’s place close to our apartment in Madrid a couple of times a month to exchange rare films, books, findings, photographs. My husband showed off his signed pictures with Ian and even got the man to come give a talk once. He’d paraded him around like his own wild game animal.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what was your impression of Mrs. Tagger?”

  Judging by the face she made, it couldn’t have been very good.

  “I’d say that by that time she and her husband were going through something more than a marital crisis. They argued a lot at dinner, which was quite awkward for us as their guests. Later, I learned that these arguments were normal, and they didn’t care about attracting attention in public. She drank a lot, and it was clear she had a caustic tongue. Actually, I felt sorry for her husband. He spent the whole time trying to appease her, but she refused to cut him any slack.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “They talked a lot about their son, Ian junior—who, by the way, I only saw once or twice, but he seemed like a great kid. Quiet, a bit reserved, but very handsome, with the sort of elegance that can’t be taught, it was just something in his bearing; he was sensitive and cultured. I think his parents couldn’t agree about his upbringing. They referred vaguely to health problems, the boy had some sort of disease—though honestly he never seemed sick to me. His father was in favor of sending him to some kind of boarding school somewhere in the Austrian Alps, an elite private sanatorium. Gloria steadfastly refused to be away from her son and accused her husband of inventing the illness as a way to keep the boy away from her. She swore he was fine and that he could be treated in Madrid or Barcelona without being locked up at that institute. I read in the papers that he died a few years ago, in
a terrible accident, and that a few months later his parents divorced.”

  Guzmán nodded. By his calculations, that happened more or less a year after Mrs. Tagger got her violin back, thanks to the efforts of Magnus, and then the Olsens and the Taggers became friends. But none of that got him any closer to Arthur’s daughter, the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, or her possible whereabouts.

  “You’ve been very kind. I won’t take up any more of your time. All I ask is that you give me the address of the antique dealer’s where your husband and his film-buff friends met.”

  Mía—Irena—averted her eyes, looking out the window to where her kids were still beating the crap out of each other. She must have seen what was going on, and yet seemed to not notice, as if she weren’t even there. Then she looked Guzmán over, head to toe, as though she’d only just noticed his presence. She hesitated. For the first time in the conversation she seemed unsure of what to say or do.

  “I assume you know that Magnus committed suicide.”

  Guzmán did know, as did anyone even tangentially related to the world of finance.

  “Me and the boys found him, hanging, one day when we came back from shopping. It was horrific. The son of a bitch killed himself knowing the boys would see him hanging there, knowing I’d see him.”

  This time it was Guzmán who hesitated before making his next comment. The widow seemed sincere in her distress, as though her husband’s limbs were still there now, swaying before the children’s terrified faces.

  “That must have been awful. I’m sorry.”

  She did something strange with her mouth, a sort of clucking of her lips that seemed to sum up how tired she was of it all, of everything that had happened.

  “Magnus was always a coward, and he remained one until the end. When his house of cards began to crumble, he simply removed himself from the equation and left me with the kids, and all his debts and problems. You should hear the messages I get on the answering machine—insults, death threats, people harassing me and the children constantly. No one’s going to pity me and my situation…What I’m trying to say is, in the past few years all I’ve done is flee, run constantly from one place to another, always hiding from something I’m not responsible for. This is my last refuge, no more aces up my sleeve. If any of my husband’s enemies find out I’m here, my life will be impossible.”

  Guzmán told her not to worry, promised he wouldn’t say anything. For some reason, he liked this woman. Maybe it was because he liked survivors. But if he’d managed to find her without any trouble, then others would too. Hiding out in a deserted, half-built planned community that Magnus Olsen himself had developed was not the world’s cleverest decision. But still, that wasn’t his problem. He picked up the paper she’d written the address on and said a friendly goodbye, promising not to bother her again.

  EIGHT

  Eduardo and Olga’s on-again-off-again friendship meant that it had all the quirks to be expected from such an unlikely relationship. They might argue, go weeks without seeing each other, and suddenly one day, one of them—normally Olga—would pick up the phone and call the other as if nothing had happened. The strange thing about this time was the place she’d asked him to meet her: inside a church, the Iglesia de San Sebastián.

  Eduardo dropped onto a pew in the last row, from which he could see the altar lit by a candelabra full of votive candles all burning at different heights. An altar boy prepared the Book of the Gospels on the lectern, opened a silver tabernacle lying at the feet of a painted plaster Jesus, and placed the chalice and Eucharist on the altar. Mass would begin in a few minutes and Eduardo didn’t want to be there. His knee hurt like hell, but that was nothing compared to the pain of his anticlerical genes.

  It didn’t take long for Olga to appear, making her way down a dark side-passage, the sound of her heels ringing out on the sacred stone floor. When she sat down next to Eduardo, the candlelight illuminated her face.

  “What are we doing here?” Eduardo asked her.

  Olga’s head was covered with a lovely, natural silk headscarf. No one covered their heads when they entered church anymore, but Eduardo found that it gave her face a beautiful symmetry.

  “I come from time to time. It helps me think and be at peace with myself. Some people get that feeling on top of a mountain, or by the sea, or in cemeteries. To me, this is the place to clear my thoughts,” she replied, settling beside him on the pew. It was odd to see the way she pressed her knees modestly together, tugging down the hem of her skirt. Eduardo looked at her, perplexed.

  “I’d never have pictured you in a place like this.”

  Olga gave him an understanding smile.

  “Madrid is full of people lost at sea, don’t you think? The waves of its invisible ocean hurl hundreds of desperate souls to its shores every day; they’re everywhere. This is like Noah’s ark to me. Besides, we all have something we need to be forgiven for, and here, that’s possible.”

  Eduardo glanced at the pews. They were nearly empty, just a few people scattered here and there, almost all well over sixty. Maybe there really were thousands of souls out there lost at sea, but most of them were finding other rafts to cling to. Meanwhile, up at the altar a little drama was unfolding: the altar boy was shuffling from one side to the other with the as-yet unconsecrated wine in a sort of carafe, trying to make room so he wouldn’t collide with the priest, who was smoothing the white linen atop the altar, but instead he stumbled. Eduardo saw the whole thing happen in slow motion—the boy’s look of horror, the carafe falling to the floor, shattering, the wine splattering all over the altar. It lasted only a few seconds and almost no one even realized that it had happened, but Eduardo could read the priest’s lips and it looked to him as though the man had cursed the boy in Aramaic. Eduardo felt sorry for the boy, awkwardly endeavoring to clean up the shards of glass as quickly as he could.

  He glanced at Olga with a look somewhere between alarm and resignation.

  “I suppose I owe you an apology.”

  “What for?”

  “My stupid, cantankerous comment the other day—about you not being able to have kids. I was being a jerk. I know it’s a touchy subject for you.”

  Olga nodded openly. She inhaled and gave him a wide grin.

  “How’s the portrait going?”

  This change of subject implied forgiveness, and Eduardo accepted it.

  “I found the hotel where Arthur is staying, and I’ve jotted down a few things from a distance. Today, I’m going to try to get closer, make a sketch. I’ll keep you up to date.”

  Olga kept quiet for a few seconds, trying to confirm the vague feeling she had that everything was changing between them because of that damned portrait.

  “Honestly, I regret having gotten you involved in this. I suppose if I asked you to forget about it, you wouldn’t listen, would you?”

  Eduardo regarded her with open curiosity. What was the matter with her? She was the one acting like a different person. In a way, he liked the change, it laid bare something clean, something authentic, but at the same time he wasn’t sure that that particular kind of purity was a good thing. He’d seen the same sort of poise and apparent serenity in people whose insides were being eaten away by worms.

  “Why do you keep going back to that?”

  Olga opened her handbag and placed a padded envelope on the bench between them.

  “I have a friend in the police who told me a few things about Arthur.”

  “Since when do you have friends on the police force? I thought you hated cops.”

  “I hate cauliflower, too, but I eat it from time to time. The guy you’re planning to paint is not your average man. In fact, Arthur Fernández is a rather shady figure. He’s amassed one of the greatest fortunes in Europe, and everybody knows he’s a speculator, a man involved in high finance and the stock market. But how he managed to create that em
pire is still rather murky. They say he started out in drug trafficking, human trafficking, anything that sounds illegal. He was involved in several court cases but they’ve never been able to prove his involvement in the crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  Eduardo had opened the envelope. In it, he found photocopied dossiers, documents about the man’s companies, photos of Arthur in the company of some unsavory-looking characters apparently involved in high crime. He didn’t even recognize their names.

  “If they couldn’t find any proof against him, that means he’s innocent in the eyes of the law.”

  “Innocence often depends too much on the lawyer’s fees, and he’s got the best. Did you know he was forced to flee from France when he was young? It seems he had a promising future as a poet and even published a well-received collection of poems. But one day, out of the blue, he beat up his mentor at the university—almost killed him, in fact—and then he disappeared, only to re-emerge as the successful impresario he is today. It’s an incredibly strange trajectory, don’t you think? Still, that’s not what worries me most.”

  Olga told him to look at the last page of the report.

  “I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

  “She disappeared a few months before the accident Arthur caused near Oriente that killed our client’s son. Arthur tested positive for drugs and alcohol in the police report. Although it wasn’t the first time he’d been in that kind of trouble—he’d had his license revoked several times for speeding, reckless driving and traffic safety violations—I bet his lawyers used the extenuating circumstances in his favor, the anguish and depression Arthur has been suffering since his daughter vanished into thin air.”

  Olga’s opinion of Arthur did not seem exactly compassionate. Her voice was full of exasperation, almost contempt.

  “I don’t like you getting mixed up with that kind of person, Eduardo. You should let him and Gloria deal with their misery on their own.”