Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  “You’re lying.”

  “I swear I’m telling you the truth.”

  You couldn’t say he didn’t give the man a chance. He’d been fair, Guzmán thought. That was what Bosco had taught him: give those you interrogate the opportunity to behave like cowards, to betray themselves, their families, their friends, their flag, their hymns and countries, their ideals. You had to give them the opportunity to surrender privately, with no witnesses, and let them know that it was okay, that pain was a useless and unnecessary ordeal—since all is already lost before you’ve even begun.

  Once the opportunity was gone, though, you had to crush them, reduce them to dust.

  Guzmán stood slowly and walked over to a metal cabinet with a sliding door. It had half-a-dozen shelves lined with reels and rolls of film, in chronological and alphabetical order. He liked movies, especially American movies from the eighties and nineties. He wasn’t too demanding: Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas. People said Hollywood was commercial rubbish. But he enjoyed going to the movies, eating popcorn. He told Candela that once, in the cell, after he kissed her, when her lips were healing from the first beating she’d received on arrival at the makeshift prison. She’d never surrendered—he had.

  She laughed when he confessed that he loved Waterland and Top Gun. Candela’s laugh was as wide as her mouth, and she had a slight gap between her two front teeth. He’d always imagined that kind of laugh for the protagonist of Rayuela, though he didn’t know why. Candela laughed silently so the guards wouldn’t hear and come to steal her happiness, her few drops of happiness. Guzmán was a little hurt that she’d laughed at his taste in movies, but it didn’t keep him from smiling, or from thinking that she laughed like Julio Cortázar’s protagonist.

  “Are these the movies you’re talking about?” he asked Dámaso. He had his hands on a roll of film—the original J’accuse. Guzmán didn’t know it, but the film was priceless. It contained, in addition to the film footage itself, cuts that the French director Abel Gance had edited out. Guzmán had no idea the film was from 1919, but when he saw Dámaso’s expression of horror, saw him writhing in his chair, frantic, he knew he’d hit the mark.

  “Be careful with those reels, please. They’re very fragile.”

  Children are fragile, hopes are fragile, clouds are made of cotton. Life is a fragile balance, easily broken. Books are burned, words go up inflames, thought Guzmán. He opened the case and shredded the film. Next came La Roue and Napoléon, also by Gance. Without a trace of sorrow, in a single minute he destroyed the very films that had put France at the top of the silent film world.

  In a moment of daring, desperation and idiocy (the essence of bravery) Dámaso leaped from his chair and tried to stop him, begging and crying the tears of a man witnessing the end of his world. An incomprehensible tragedy for him, a man who felt nothing at the loss of a child’s innocence.

  “Please, please, stop. Those are irreplaceable,” Dámaso pleaded, trying to snatch a reel from his hand.

  Guzmán gave him a look of disdain, his eyes floating down over the old man like mist from the hills.

  Bosco’s grandfather had been Italian, a devout fascist, though more given to Hitler than to Mussolini, whom he always accused of being too Italian. He preferred the objective efficacy of the Germans. The venerable-looking old man once explained to his grandson that his commander in the Waffen-SS used to weep while listening to Wagner, as his men set their dogs on ragtag lines of Jews crammed into the station, waiting to be sent to extermination camps. Recalling this, the old man had cried.

  Guzmán pushed Dámaso away effortlessly with a kick to the stomach. The antiquarian’s mouth gasped open and closed like a dying fish.

  “You’re trying my patience. I can keep this up, and I will. I’ll burn this whole place down with you inside it if you insist on wasting my time.”

  Dámaso spat out a clot of blood. He was having trouble breathing.

  “What was the film you were demanding from Olsen? Don’t hold back—answer my question. I’m not going to judge you. It’s simple curiosity. Don’t try to justify it, we all have reasons for doing what we do or don’t do.”

  Guzmán thought of ripping the man’s tongue out with a pair of pliers and smiled. But he decided not to, and nor did he wipe the smile off his face. The bastard would be no good to him mute.

  “You’ve got a nice little collection here, old man. I bet it took you half your life to build it up. And now you see how easily all those years’ effort can vanish.”

  Dámaso closed his eyes. He was wheezing loudly, curled up on one side in the foetal position, blood and slobber puddling beneath his mouth. A brown stain appeared on his trousers: he’d shat in his pants. Holding out one arm, he pointed to the screen in front of the rows of theater seats.

  “There, behind the false wall,” he struggled to say.

  At first glance, there looked to be nothing behind the screen but a low wall. But when he touched it, Guzmán saw it was a hollow plasterboard panel. On the right, half a meter from the ground, was a small, barely visible crack. Guzmán pushed and it gave way, revealing a wall-safe, which was built-in and quite sophisticated—two locks and a digital keypad.

  “What do you keep in there, the original Ebola strain?”

  The old man removed a key from his pocket; the other one he indicated was beneath a light socket. Guzmán slipped them both in and twisted the two locks simultaneously, then punched in a code—three letters and four numbers. The safe opened.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing,” Dámaso murmured, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Guzmán went to the safe and casually shoved Dámaso aside. He was never afraid to walk through an open door, never worried about what he might find on the other side. Nothing could be worse than what he’d already left behind.

  Inside the safe he found several dozen protective black cases, resembling book covers. Each had a sticker on the spine with a date and two letters with a dot between them. Guzmán bet that it was Dámaso’s writing, and that the letters were people’s initials. He opened a few of the cases; each contained a compact disc bearing the same dates and initials as those on the case.

  “What are these?”

  “Pornographic movies—very graphic.”

  Guzmán understood.

  “And I bet they belong to the members of your film club. And I’ll wager my one good hand that they appear in some compromising positions. So what is it, child pornography? Bestiality? S & M?”

  The old man gave him a grief-stricken look and said nothing. Guzmán nodded with feigned satisfaction. Nothing new about this, he thought to himself. It’s all been done before. Perversion becomes tedious with repetition. The rich can’t be original even when they’re acting like total degenerates. I can just picture them all gathered here, sitting in their theater seats, staring at the screen, smoking cigars and jacking off, laughing, making crude comments. Or was that not how it was? Did they maybe bring some intellectual slant? Did they discuss angles, focus, lighting, performance?

  “I imagine they paid a real fortune to see your films. Must be very rich people.”

  Dámaso glowered.

  “They didn’t just watch the movies. Some of them paid a lot of money to take part in them. People you can’t even begin to imagine. People who’d do anything necessary to keep this from coming to light.”

  Guzmán gazed at the old man carefully. He knew some people might have felt alarmed by Dámaso’s enraged expression, which was all bluster. But Guzmán felt nothing. He thrived on violence, saw it as his only possible path. There was nothing Dámaso or his powerful friends could do to him or take from him that hadn’t been done or taken already.

  “Is that what happened to Magnus Olsen? You and your little gang killed him?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Guzm�
�n sighed deeply. His patience was wearing thin.

  Slowly, he removed his leather belt. It had a large buckle. He yanked it hard at both ends, then wound it several times around his knuckles and cracked it like a whip. Before the old man had time to realize what he was going to do, Guzmán leaped and wrapped the belt around his neck, jerking it hard.

  “It’s terrible, when you can’t breathe,” he whispered into his ear, pulling the old man’s neck toward his shoulder, suffocating him. Dámaso grunted and struggled to free himself. “Your lungs struggle to expand, searching desperately for relief, any tiny air bubble, anything to keep pumping oxygen. You could die at any moment, but your brain keeps working. You’re able to respond to questions. All I have to do is very slightly reduce the pressure and let a tiny bit of air in, just enough for you to articulate an answer. That’s what I think happened to Olsen, except whoever did it miscalculated and suffocated him. Then they tried to cover it up, did a poor job trying to make it look like suicide. But the police bought it. The police will believe anything, as long as it’s remotely conceivable.”

  Guzmán let up on the pressure, loosening the belt around the old man’s neck. He let him cough and hungrily open his mouth, sucking in air, filling his lungs. Dámaso’s eyes were watering and he spat repeatedly.

  “The thugs you sent were so incompetent they didn’t even delete the message.”

  Dámaso massaged his neck. His wrinkled, flaccid skin had turned red and would soon be bruised. His eyes were popping out like a toad that’s been run over by a truck. But still he refused to speak. Or perhaps his larynx was damaged. Guzmán wagged his head, looking resigned. He pulled out a switchblade and flicked it open. The blade, long and thin as a stylus, pointed at the old man’s face like an accusatory finger.

  “You won’t be able to take it, old man. You won’t last two minutes, not with what I’m about to do to you. Besides, what’s the point? You’re going to end up telling me what I want to know anyway and then you’ll die here, alone, like a dog in your own shit.”

  Dámaso pawed at the air, trying to protect his face.

  “Olsen made a lot of money for us, it’s true, and he earned a lot of money, too, but he also made important contacts who helped his business. He had access to the safe, to the books where the clients’ personal details were kept—their real ones. The names on the tapes are pseudonyms, for obvious reasons. We didn’t realize he was stealing from us until it was too late. He’d copy the tapes and then blackmail the people. Some paid him off, others placed him in positions that were useful for his shady dealings. But he misjudged the last man he blackmailed. I tried to make him see reason when I realized what he was doing—that’s why I called that day. But it was too late. I don’t know the details of what happened, and I don’t want to. But there’s one thing I’m sure of: I didn’t kill him and no one in the club had him killed. Most of them didn’t even know what was going on. If they’d even suspected it, that would have put my safety at great risk, don’t you see?”

  Guzmán examined the safe carefully.

  “Which tapes did he copy?”

  “Dozens, maybe. I never found out exactly. After his death, the club was dissolved and all the material was destroyed.”

  Guzmán raised one eyebrow, pointing to the tapes in the safe.

  “Those were the most important ones, the most compromising. I’ve never used them, but I need the people implicated to believe I could. If they didn’t, I’d have been killed a long time ago. Those recordings are my guarantee of a peaceful retirement.”

  “The last tape Olsen stole, was it from your top collection?”

  Dámaso grew even paler, if that were possible. Tiny blue veins appeared below his eyes, like roots with no place to take hold. The faltering affirmation that came from his lips was barely audible.

  “Who was on the tape? I’m willing to wager you’ve got a backup copy somewhere.”

  For the first time, Dámaso regained control of himself. He let out a very weak laugh that slowly grew in intensity, becoming a horrific, evil cackle.

  “You have no idea what you’re looking for, do you? You got this far on intuition, but now you’re like a blind man who’s lost his cane.”

  Guzmán pounced, grabbed the old man by the throat with one hand, and with the other pummeled Dámaso’s face one, two, three times until he heard his septum shatter.

  When he let go, the old man was no longer laughing.

  “You’re going to tell this blind man everything. You’re going to be my guiding light, and then maybe, when I’m done with you, I’ll decide to let your heart keep beating in that sick little chest of yours.”

  * * *

  —

  On his way out of the building, Guzmán was sweating. He used his handkerchief to wipe the blood splatters from his shirt, panting. Every instinct he had told him to get in a taxi and head straight to the airport, without even stopping at his hotel—to forget about the money Diana had promised, the money Arthur owed him. He could fly to Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lima, or any other place, and hide out for the next few months.

  But Guzmán only listened to his instincts when they served his purposes. Ever since he was a kid, he couldn’t stand leaving crossword puzzles unfinished, riddles unsolved. But what pissed him off the most—back at school, and now on the street—was the idea that somebody was taking him for a fool, that anybody thought they could pull one over on him with no consequences.

  He hailed a taxi, but he didn’t go to the airport.

  FIFTEEN

  The bank manager welcomed Arthur, fawning like a servant. As though three long years hadn’t passed since Arthur had last shown his face at the bank; as if the manager were unaware of the reason for his absence. Arthur asked for access to his safe deposit box and to be left alone.

  That was where he stored the things he couldn’t risk having people associate with him: fake passports of various nationalities, so well done they were impossible to detect without exhaustive checks; cash—in dollars, euros and yuan—that was unaccounted for in any financial ledger; documents for savings accounts held in places that were lenient on fraud and tax evasion; records of industrial espionage and shell companies; tax avoidance schemes that Diana had been setting up for him for years, schemes whose plans were so intricate and complex that no tax inspector could ever unravel them without help. There was also an HK semiautomatic—and two loaded clips—for which he held no license.

  But what he picked up now was the envelope at the bottom of the box. In it was a CD. He felt its weight in his hand and his fingers trembled, as though it were heavy as an anvil and he could hardly hold it up.

  When he got back to his office, Arthur sat down in front of his computer. On the screen, images flickered in the dark, their silhouettes reflecting on Arthur’s intent face.

  At first there was nothing but a brick wall. Toward the bottom of it, at ground level, was a ring of soot and the remains of something that had recently been burned—it looked to be a couple of broken chairs, a bookshelf and two blackened smoking doors. It was hard to make out any details—the recording was poor quality and the camera was jiggling too much, never stopping long enough to focus on anything. The cameraman’s shadow was cast on the wall and you could hear his breathing, as well as a dull white noise coming from above, as though maybe it were raining. The smell must have been nauseating because the cameraman kept raising a handkerchief to his face to cover his mouth. The ground was littered with needles and a blackened spoon.

  Next, a shirtless man came into view from the right, haggard, his chest hair gray, his face covered, dragging his feet. He made his way to a cassette player and turned it on.

  “Is this the music you want?” His voice was guttural, his accent hard to place.

  Who can say where the road goes

  Where the day flows?

  Only time…

  and who
can say if your love grows,

  as your heart chose?

  Only time…

  Then the camera panned one hundred and eighty degrees. Whoever was choreographing the sinister scene remained off-camera, smoking in the shadows, the tip of a cigarette glowing in the dark. He pointed, indicating where the camera should focus. Nobody spoke. The only sounds were the music, the rain, and the scratchy sound of the cameraman’s hand bumping against the mike.

  Then the camera shifted its focus toward a corner.

  Arthur paused there, freezing the image.

  It was her. His daughter. Aroha. She smiled at the camera and waved, as if this were a home movie.

  Arthur leaned forward, pressing his feet into the floor even though the whole room seemed to have vaporized around him. He examined his daughter’s face in the grainy image, her imperfect, unfocused profile in the dim and murky light. Just a few months before then, she’d come back from Geneva and things seemed to have been going better. School was going well again, she seemed to be getting her life together—classes at the Lycée Français, horseback riding, friends in their neighborhood subdivision. The typical, placid rich-girl existence. He recognized each of the freckles under her eyes and on her nostrils, which would flare when she laughed.

  He hit play again.

  She wasn’t laughing now.

  Now, the camera had zoomed in on Aroha’s face. She looked emaciated, her hair was dirty. She didn’t like having the lens that close and was trying to cover herself with a hand; that didn’t work, so she crawled away like a baby, disconcerted, her movements plodding, awkward, lethargic. Her pants were unzipped and the triangle of her panties poked out. Black bra straps were showing, too, sticking out from her sleeveless T-shirt. She’d lost a tennis shoe, or maybe she’d taken it off and now couldn’t find it to put back on.