Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  He looked at her with the horror of a rotten old man. And in that look, in that tenth of a second, Olga realized her tremendous error. She realized that capital-L Love does not exist, that men are selfish and weak. She realized that she would deplore the man whose name was tattooed on her skin as passionately as she’d loved him a minute earlier.

  He left them, her and her mother, just like that, shooed them out of his life the way you do an annoying insect interrupting your siesta, with a wave of the hand. And that was the end of romantic weekends, of uncomfortable but exciting lovemaking in the back of a car, of promises, poems, gifts, and phone calls at midnight; that was the end of tattoos and complicit glances.

  And when her mother, drunk and lost, called out to him at night, sniffling, not understanding why he’d suddenly abandoned her, Olga glared at her and hated the world.

  * * *

  —

  No, there was no way Eduardo suspected anything like that. He always looked at her with the impatience of a man obliged to explain the obvious. And the obvious was that Olga was frightened.

  She half-closed her eyes and pictured a naked defenseless body, dead, there on the dirty floor of her room. Her adolescence, butchered.

  How absurd, how pathetic a dead, naked human can seem. How useless, how futile that sort of redemption turns out to be.

  NINE

  According to custom, salat—Muslim ritual prayers—must be performed five times a day, every day. The most important is that of the mid-afternoon, and that was the one Ibrahim performed most devotedly.

  There was a time when he led prayers among the congregation, an act Sunni Islam allowed members well-versed in the Koran, which he was—as was his father, a man beyond all reproach. Now, however, Ibrahim made do with finding a relatively clean surface on which to rest his forehead before an east-facing wall, an imaginary mihrab pointing to Mecca. In his cell there was no imam or religious officiate to motivate him to pray. Allah cannot allow any man to speak to Him directly, which is why prophets and angels exist. But in there, there was neither one nor the other. What he had to say was between him and God. Though God didn’t seem to want to listen.

  He couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t enough to wash his face, hands, armpits and feet to feel purified, nor to kneel on a mat to find paradise. It wasn’t enough to beg forgiveness in order to deserve it, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted it. From the time he was a child he’d been taught to spiritually distance himself from pleasures, taught that his only objective in this life was the annihilation of the self through Allah, that all human beings are born with two souls, the human and the divine, and that life is a struggle, a road to perfection whereby the human must be extinguished in favor of the divine. But Ibrahim knew, after a life of strife within himself, that his faith was shaky and his behavior inconsistent. No, God no longer had faith in him. And he no longer had faith in His kindness. Still, he solemnly adopted the position of qiyam, head bowed and hands folded before his chest, bowed, and then knelt, legs behind him and forehead on the ground.

  One of Ibrahim’s favorite suras was number eighteen, which discussed Iblis, the fallen angel, the only one to disobey Allah. As he whispered it, he couldn’t help but think of his own childhood. About what was expected of him. “And then we told the angels, ‘Bow down before Adam.’ And they prostrated, except Iblis. He became a jinn, for he disobeyed the order of His Lord.” How many lords had he himself disobeyed, how many precepts had he infringed? He had not honored the memory of his parents, had filled his mother’s life with nothing but tears, had not been able to follow the example of his older brother, martyr of martyrs in Algeria. He was a murderer, an arms trafficker, a mercenary. A fake.

  He poked his head down to the empty cot of his cellmate Arthur and reached a hand to the mark left on his headboard by the photo taken on his honeymoon. Ibrahim had no children, no wife, no family to cry for him when he died, no one to intercede on his behalf when Allah decided that his time had come and sent him the Angel of Death. He’d given everything up for a chimera. Suddenly, he’d found he was nearing old age and had no idea how it had happened. He had no inner peace, he never had, but nor was there war—not anymore. Just loss, blood spilled for no reason, regret, voices and faces lost inside him. The dreams he once had, as a boy, had turned into a nightmare.

  He turned to the cell door and saw Ordóñez, the warden, leaning against the bars.

  “I don’t know what you did or how you did it, but you’re getting out of here,” he said, brandishing the order for his release.

  Ibrahim looked at the bare wall and, in his mind, evoked the photo from Arthur’s headboard: Algeria, Andrea…

  Perhaps Allah was not as harsh and silent a father as his own, after all. It seemed The Merciful had a sense of humor, a dark sense of humor.

  * * *

  —

  Arthur was seated at a table in the back, by a window with lace curtains that allowed him to see the trees out on Paseo del Prado. A warm glow bathed his surroundings, and it was as though blocking the light from the window somehow revealed two versions of him, of the same man: his brawny silhouette, and the luminous sparkle he emitted. He ordered breakfast from the waiter and immediately focused on a small notebook. Whatever it was he was reading required all of his attention; the waiter was forced to clear his throat a couple of times before Arthur noticed his presence and made space for him to place down the tray containing his breakfast: a cup of coffee, one hardboiled egg, a piece of fruit, and two slices of toast with jam.

  Skimpy breakfast for someone with such an impressive physique, Eduardo thought. From the chaise longue in the lobby he had a privileged view of the dining room in general, and Arthur in particular, which allowed him to observe the man, study his movements, analyze the symmetry of his features and overall appearance with no interference.

  The first thing he found incongruous was his name: Arthur. He’d come across few people whose looks seemed to go with their names—sometimes their appearances were too grandiose for their names, other times their names were too overbearing for their appearances. In a wild association of ideas, he condensed all the Arthurs of the world into one; he pictured men with friendly features, men who had some slightly ostentatious illness—a respiratory condition, say, or chronic headaches, or a heart murmur. It was easy to imagine a blond Arthur, one with wispy hair, with dainty hands. Particularly if that Arthur were a poet, or had tried to be, as Eduardo knew this one had. He’d been expecting a man with a shifty expression—not cowardly but sort of elusive, probing, hypersensitive to the most trivial of details, a man no doubt on the brink of insanity.

  But this man was nothing like that, at least not physically or in his demeanor. The expensive clothes he wore—a bespoke Italian suit in earth tones, matching silk tie, titanium wristwatch—did little to soften the brutish look of a body that seemed too strong, his muscles poised to fight and force, imprisoned beneath his shirt. He picked up his egg and peeled it in a way that seemed chiseled; his hand didn’t hesitate when raising the coffee cup to his lips. And yet what most divorced Arthur from his name was his expression, the way he had of reading that notebook and then turning his body to the light outside the window with a contemplative air. His reflection seemed not to be fruit of anything beautiful—a few verses or an idea jotted down in a moment of inspiration—but nor did his eyes shine with melancholy or nostalgia. No, what was behind that look, that tense expression, was more like cold calculation, a weighing up of pros and cons, possible alternatives to something he was turning over in his hard, inscrutable head.

  And then suddenly Arthur’s expression shifted; it was fascinating. An almost triangular smile lit up his face on seeing another man approach, a man who immediately captured the attention of all those present.

  The new arrival wore a djellaba like those used by Muslims during holidays, with gold trim and vegetal motifs on the V-neck and sleeves. The djellaba covered hi
s arms and legs, but visible beneath it were Western-style trousers and leather shoes. His face was horrifically mutilated by zigzagging scars, giving him a terrifying appearance. Nevertheless, the way he windmilled his hands to gather the wide sleeves—bending forward slightly and bringing his right hand to his heart—was so elegant, and almost ethereal, that he seemed more like a dancer than a Muslim terrorist about to blow the place to kingdom come—which was no doubt what the nearby customers feared. He radiated an undeniable magnetism, not solely because of the scars on his face but also the graceful constraint he showed when handling objects, and the sincere consideration he gave anything that caught his attention. There seemed to be a sort of tacit understanding between two opposing forces: repulsion for his disfigured face balanced out the admiration for his innate elegance.

  For a second, his glance met Eduardo’s. Eduardo felt himself openly examined and then, as though having dismissed a possible threat, the man turned back to chat animatedly with Arthur. The pair rose and exited the hotel together.

  Eduardo followed at a distance.

  * * *

  —

  For a good part of the morning they walked the streets of Madrid, wandering into bookstores, buying clothes, and stopping at a sidewalk café in the late morning for a drink in Madrid’s Barrio de las Letras, the literary quarter. Plaza Santa Ana was bustling with cafés, men selling cans of beer and soda from coolers, and people wandering around with no apparent destination. A group of South American musicians was playing by the marquee of the Teatro Español, and nearby Russian tourists stood listening to a young tour guide who was pointing out the names inscribed on the theater’s facade. A police car cruised by at a prudent distance, slow as a bolero; an African kid passed out fliers for a tapas joint; and a couple of gypsy women in mourning made their way through café tables, proffering the ever-present branches of rosemary, touting the luck it would bring. All of this with apparent harmony. A simple backdrop, and one that allowed Eduardo to stick fairly close to Arthur and his friend without being seen. Luckily, they didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and Eduardo was thankful for that—his knee was killing him after walking all morning.

  Arthur stopped at the base of a sculpture of Lorca and suddenly looked up, his eyes happening to meet Eduardo’s. Eduardo barely had time to avert his gaze. It was unlikely that he’d recognized him or suspected he was being followed. But when Eduardo turned back, Arthur was heading out of the plaza striding toward the eastern side as though he were suddenly in a hurry. His friend was nowhere to be seen.

  Eduardo sped up in an effort to not lose sight of him in the crowded square, momentarily forgetting the searing pain in his knee.

  After attempting a short jog, he reached a side street that Arthur had turned down. It was a narrow alley full of popular tapas bars, too crowded to make his way down quickly.

  “Dammit. Fucking cripple,” he cursed himself, slapping his damaged leg, when he realized he’d lost his target.

  * * *

  —

  Nadia Rueda had told Arthur that Ibrahim was now free. And indeed, there he was before him.

  He liked having his former cellmate near: he felt safer, and he felt they shared something real and tangible in the world—a world he’d suddenly returned to, and one that disconcerted him. But Ibrahim, too, seemed to have changed, outside the gray environs of prison. He seemed more radiant, and his embroidered cotton robe lent him an air both extravagant and captivating. His innate wariness, however, was still very much intact.

  “Don’t look, but there’s a pasty looking guy at the back of the room who can’t take his eyes off you.”

  Arthur didn’t look.

  “One of the Armenian’s men?”

  Ibrahim made a show of examining the man, and discarded the notion. He was just a weirdo, not a likely threat. Suspicion was a survival instinct in him, that was all. He expected the worst of people, and that way he was always prepared. There was a delicate balance to remaining permanently alert without becoming cynical. In his opinion, there was no such thing as good or bad people, good or bad things; that kind of black-and-white thinking was the stuff of novels. He, on the other hand, saw only gray—a dance of shadows—and tried to keep one foot on either side.

  Arthur admired his composure, and in a way he also feared it. Even when he was being friendly, Ibrahim’s eyes could bore straight through you, and others felt defenseless against his gaze. Nothing is more dangerous than a man who knows who he is and what he wants. And Ibrahim knew. He spoke little, but when he did he seemed to weigh the value of each word; each syllable had a precise purpose.

  The two of them talked about their time in jail and about how difficult it was trying to reinsert themselves into the world, but it was Arthur who started and finished all of the sentences. Ibrahim revealed very little of what he really thought. He was present, listening attentively, sometimes even smiling and showing his horrible teeth, but he never stopped being the one on the other side of the conversation, a patient observer.

  Later, they walked around Madrid, evoking the streets of Algeria: the Hai el Badr neighborhood, the questionable areas surrounding the port at Agha, places around Rue Didouche Mourad, the botanical garden of Hamma, the cable cars that ran from Palais de Culture and Notre Dame d”Afrique. And when they’d finished their stroll down memory lane, Ibrahim pushed the topic of conversation back to Arthur, to his present.

  “How is your wife? Have you gone to visit her?”

  Outside of their cell, the question sounded odd.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Ibrahim quickly realized his mistake, and tried to explain.

  “Well, when we were locked up you were always saying the first thing you’d do when you got out was go to your wife, get her out of Madrid.”

  “Andrea doesn’t want to see me, she blames me for Aroha’s disappearance—and in a way, she’s right.”

  Ibrahim knew the story; Arthur had told it ad nauseam. He also knew the devastating effect that his daughter’s disappearance had had on both of them.

  “I haven’t exactly proven to be an exceptional father. You think you know your kids and that it’s your responsibility to keep them safe, make sure all their needs are met…but clearly I failed at that.”

  “Some people get a second chance in life. Perhaps you are one of the fortunate ones. You can get your daughter and your wife back, and you’ll do things better this time.”

  Arthur gave him a curious look.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Ibrahim looked away.

  “It is not I who should be sure, but you.”

  “If I could only convince Andrea, ask her for another chance.”

  “Do it.”

  Arthur shook his head.

  “I told you, she doesn’t want to see me. You don’t know my wife. I’m afraid she’s sinking deeper and deeper into a void, and when the time comes and I find our daughter, it’ll be too late to get her back…If you’d met her when she was young—she was so happy and strong!”

  Ibrahim smiled and nodded. Something inside him glowed with a radiance that reached all the way to his dark eyes, like a bonfire burning inside a mountain cave in the dead of night. He, too, had memories.

  “Why are you smiling so strangely?” Arthur asked.

  Life has a curious way of experimenting on human beings, Ibrahim thought, wiping the smile from his face. Allah played games with a man’s destiny, scattering the pieces of a puzzle that somehow always managed to fit back together, one way or another. Some people called it causality, maybe it was predestination, who could say? Perhaps the desire to be free, to control our own lives, was nothing more than an unattainable fancy, human folly in the face of the evidence.

  From time to time, though, impassable doors were opened, inviting you to walk through.

  “I could speak to her, if you like.” He said it with
out thinking, urged on by his own instincts.

  Arthur was surprised by the offer. He contemplated his friend doubtfully. Why not? Ibrahim was special. In prison his loyalty had been unerring, even though Arthur always got the feeling that the man’s intentions were not completely transparent. On one or two occasions he’d found him gazing at the photo of him and Andrea in Algeria, thinking God knows what; and one night he’d actually caught his cellmate staring at him as he slept in his cot. For some reason Arthur had been afraid—that was the only time he had been truly scared of Ibrahim, and he pretended to sleep, feeling Ibrahim’s breath on his face and sensing his deep, heartless eyes. Still, it was thanks to him that Arthur was alive, and he considered the man a friend. Besides, Ibrahim was thankful to Arthur for having gotten him out of jail. He was Algerian like Andrea, they’d been raised in the same neighborhood. Unlike Arthur, Andrea had never felt French; she loved Algeria as much as Ibrahim, so if anyone could act as the bond that rekindled his connection to his wife, it was him.

  “Sure, why not? Go see her, speak to her.”

  Ibrahim nodded, rock-like, displaying no emotion whatsoever. He looked away, to avoid Arthur’s gaze, and then something more urgent caught his attention.

  “The guy from the hotel is over on the other side of the plaza. It can’t be a coincidence that he’s here again.”

  * * *

  —

  Eduardo felt tired. After traipsing through half of Madrid playing spy, he was sweating profusely and his knee was on fire. He limped down the street, wondering what idiotic impulse had led him to follow a stranger all over town for no apparent reason.

  Suddenly the door to a building opened just as he passed by. From the corner of his eye, he only just had time to catch sight of the fist that flew at his face. Instinct made him turn his head, but he only partially managed to dodge the blow. Most of it landed between his jaw and neck, leaving him dazed. His glasses went flying and before he could recover, a second fist slammed into the pit of his stomach, winding him. It was a confident blow, like that of a pro who knew exactly where to aim. Two powerful hands grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him inside the doorway like a sack of potatoes. It all happened in less than five seconds, and no one saw a thing.