Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  He watched it dozens of times, and finally he realized something. At one point, when Aroha was being tortured, she looked into one of the masked man’s eyes and murmured something, begging. She knew him. She trusted him.

  Arthur watched her lips over and over, until finally he could decipher what she was saying: “I want my mother. Ian, please. I want to go back to my mother’s.”

  “It didn’t take long for me to find out that while Aroha was at the institute in Geneva, there was a kid named Ian there with her. His father was film director Ian Mackenzie and his mother was famous, too—a renowned violinist.”

  Arthur had found out where Ian lived and went to the house, in a leafy Madrid suburb, in a very high-end housing development. He hadn’t been able to get into the complex, though, with all the security. Instead, a mannish-looking woman had come to the guard booth. She said she was the housekeeper. She informed him that the woman he was looking for was on a European concert tour with the Budapest Orchestra. She’d be gone for months, maybe even a year.

  Arthur was frustrated, but undeterred. And he knew it would be stupid to ask directly about the boy. Over the next few days, he found out everything he could about the kid: where he was studying the cinematic arts, who he hung out with, where he went and when.

  One afternoon he followed Ian to a wooded area outside Madrid. A dirty, grubby place where families from the suburbs went for daytrips, laden down with picnic baskets, folding chairs and playing cards, blankets on which they took uncomfortable siestas on the pine needles after stuffing their faces with every pig part known to man. In the late afternoon, as it started to get dark over the brightly illuminated radio towers in the distance, the families took off and left the woods to the Senegalese prostitutes, North African and Romanian rentboys, small-time dealers, and a random and motley assortment of night owls who all looked like they’d seen better days. As soon as it was dark enough, a long line of headlights began parading slowly past that circus of misery, seeking out their vice of choice.

  Ian looked at home in that environment. Sometimes he’d roll down his car window to chat with an ageing prostitute, other times he’d buy drugs from some dealer, exchanging a friendly hug. One time Arthur saw him emerge from the bushes pulling up his pants. His face was scratched up and he wore an immensely satisfied expression. Whistling, he’d gotten into his car, lighting a cigarette, and had sat there for a minute leaning back against his seat, listening to the song playing on his stereo.

  After Ian drove off, Arthur walked down to see what was behind those bushes. What he found was a girl. Little more than a child, actually, thirteen or fourteen, slightly younger than Aroha. She sat there hugging her legs, arms covered in scratches. Her head hung between her knees and she was sobbing like the child she was. Clearly, her low-cut, bone-colored blouse and tight leather pants were designed to make her look older, as was the excessive make-up, which was now running down her face with her tears. The padded bra was no doubt for the same effect, although it now lay beside her on the ground along with a pair of stilettos, one of which had a broken heel.

  Arthur asked her what had happened. The girl glanced up at him. Her face was grotesque—fake eyelashes dangled crookedly off the corner of her right eye, while her left eye was purple and swollen nearly shut, getting bigger by the second.

  She wiped her nose on a forearm, sniffled, and told him she was fine. It didn’t look that way to Arthur, so he told her he was going to call the police and an ambulance. She flat-out refused, and then began explaining that Ian was her boyfriend. He made her do strange things, like come to the park and let strangers do all kinds of things to her while he hid in the bushes and secretly filmed it all. And she went along with it to please him, because she loved him.

  “Love? How can you say that? How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  Was that what Ian had done to his daughter, too? Had he stolen her childhood, her innocence, and made her believe he loved her?

  “At least let me take you home. Your parents must be worried sick.”

  The girl didn’t seem convinced. It was as if there were two sides of her—one that wanted to go back to being a little girl, comforted by her family; the other preferring to be sucked in by that violent monster, trapped in his tentacles. And the two sides were at war. Finally she made a face, like the one Aroha used to make at the Feria de San Isidro biting into her candy apple because she lacked the patience to lick the crunchy coating until it went soft.

  “I’ll suck you off if you want, and you can just forget you ever saw me.”

  Arthur would never forget the look of hatred she shot him when, despite her screaming and struggling, he handed her over to the cops at the nearest police station.

  And then he decided that enough was enough.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning it rained torrentially. From the window of the bar where Arthur sat, the street and clothing store on the corner were blurry in the downpour. In his head, he replayed the scene from the night before, endlessly—the girl with her eyelashes hanging off, her emaciated face, her look of hatred. The images jumbled together with those of Aroha in the video. He felt like his head was going to explode, and his chest was so tight he was having trouble breathing.

  As soon as he saw Ian leave the corner shop, Arthur dropped a bill onto the table and strode out to confront him. Ian was walking toward him, completely unaware, his head protected from the rain by the hood of a camouflage sweatshirt, and he wore a leather pack strapped across his chest. He looked like a good kid, like any other kid. But that carefree, innocent-looking bastard had his daughter.

  “I know who you are,” he said, stepping out into his path and pressing a hand into his chest.

  Ian gave him a perplexed look. Not one of surprise, or fear, or doubt. Perplexed, as if the hand on his chest were a bug, an insect that had just fallen from the roof and landed on his sweatshirt.

  “I’m Aroha’s father. I’ve seen the tape. And you’re going to tell me where my daughter is right now.”

  From up close the kid’s expression was glassy. Vague and unreadable.

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

  He didn’t move a muscle—not even a twitch—his features betrayed nothing. Nothing but a quick blink from the raindrops in his eyebrows and lashes.

  Arthur took a deep breath. Breathe. Breathe, he told himself. Stay in control, or you’ll lose everything. If Ian had ever had a heart, it was now dead and buried. That’s what he saw in the boy’s eyes, after he turned to the street and then looked back at Arthur.

  “I don’t know anyone named Aroha.”

  Arthur clenched his knuckles, full of rage. He wrapped his hands around the kid’s neck and slammed him into the store’s shutters. The impact sent the water that had been pooling on the awning crashing down on them.

  “I’ll kill you here and now if you don’t tell me where she is, you little fucker.”

  Ian looked totally undaunted. He gazed into Arthur’s eyes. And then Arthur felt the cold metal of a small .22-calibre pistol against his neck. He heard Ian cock it right beside his ear.

  “Let. Me. Go. Now,” the kid said, still unruffled.

  Arthur released the pressure on Ian’s neck but still kept hold of him. Ian himself stepped back, turning his head side to side like a boxer, before slipping the weapon back into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

  “Did you think you were going to catch me off guard? You’ve been following me for days. Asking about me, my mother, my father. You even took one of my girls to the cops. No skin off my back, though; she’s already run away again—came running back to me like they all do. Like your daughter did.”

  “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch. I will.”

  Ian began to laugh. It was an innocent laugh, clean and pure as a baby being baptized.

  “Maybe she’s already dead and
buried. And you’d never find her body. You’d have no place to mourn her death. Or maybe she’s still alive and wondering which is better, life with you or what I offer her. You’d have to live with that.”

  “I’ll rip that smile off your face. I know how to make it last, and make it hurt.”

  “Maybe,” Ian acknowledged. His gaze was cold and distant, like the reflection of a frozen river. And then he sauntered off as if nothing had happened, as if he and a random passerby had just accidentally bumped into one another.

  Arthur stood there on the sidewalk watching Ian’s back, his camouflage sweatshirt, the leather bag strapped diagonally across it. He watched him blend into the crowd like everybody else, anonymous, as though his backstory was of no interest to anyone. When Arthur finally reacted, Ian had already disappeared and he was drenched. Rain was falling on his red hair, now a muddy brown, bouncing off his head into a thousand tiny droplets. People regarded him as though he were insane.

  He began to walk very slowly, as if he’d been given some sort of paralysis-inducing drug that had numbed his legs. As if he were walking in a thick, foggy dream. He got into his car and for several minutes watched the rain beat down on his misty front windshield. Under his seat was a flask, a gift from his employees for his fortieth birthday. He hadn’t touched a drop of liquor in fourteen years. He thought he’d never want it. But now there it was, loaded like a pistol, under his seat, waiting for him.

  He took a long swig, drinking until he had to stop for a breath and his throat began to burn. He coughed, accidentally spitting a little alcohol onto his clothes.

  He wished he were dead. Or maybe that wasn’t it exactly. At that minute, leaning back against the seat, being alive seemed like a lot of work. He wondered what to do, what to tell Andrea, what to tell the police. He wondered why his whole life had turned to shit, just like that. He was a coward, that much was clear. A coward who didn’t accept responsibility for his actions. That’s the way it had always been. He’d always decided what to do, who to love, how to live, and with whom. He’d ruined his chance to be a poet, screwed up his marriage, and now he’d lost his daughter. Aroha hated him for everything he’d done to her mother, and to her.

  She was too smart and sensitive not to realize what kind of guy her father was. A coward. And she couldn’t stand it. That’s why she ran away, that’s why she got into trouble, flunked school—to punish him, to make him feel some of the pain he inflicted on others. He’d learned his lesson, he truly had. That’s what he now told himself, letting out a nervous sob. He wanted to tell her. Sit her down and ask her forgiveness. Forgive me, daughter. Please come home.

  The sky exploded with a deafening thunderclap. Arthur started his engine and the windshield wipers began sweeping back and forth. And then, right then, he saw Ian on the other side of the street, standing beside a bridal boutique, waiting for the light to change. He saw him through a small clear spot in the steamy windshield, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up. Had his defroster taken a little longer to start working, had he not turned on his wipers at exactly the right time, he’d have missed him. But there he was, dead ahead. And destiny was calling.

  His thinking was clouded, he was drunk. That’s what Diana had told him to say when he called her a few hours later from the local police station where he’d been detained. “Don’t make a statement until the lawyers get there; I’ll take care of everything.”

  Diana always took care of everything, she did it fourteen years ago and she’d done it countless times since, whenever alcohol got him into trouble. She cleaned up the shit he left in his wake.

  * * *

  —

  Guzmán walked around the desk and stood before a bookshelf full of commercial law tomes. Hands on his back, he glanced along the shelves. He was buying time, gathering information, formulating questions.

  “It worked out well for you. Manslaughter charge, blood alcohol level as an attenuating circumstance. Diana’s a smart lady. Four to five years instead of fifteen—not bad. But you made a stupid move. You let your self-interest and ego get the best of you, let an unflappable snot-nosed kid get the best of you, and when you did, you closed the only open door you had—the only way to find your daughter.”

  “That wasn’t the only door. There was still the third man, the shirtless one.”

  “Dámaso, of course. He told me about the film club he and Olsen belonged to. Thanks to Olsen, he got Sir Ian Mackenzie, the famous director, to give a few esteemed talks, which his promising young son often attended. A few months before Aroha disappeared, Ian Mackenzie stopped attending the club’s meetings. His commitments were going to take him to Australia to direct a new film. By then, Olsen was a regular at his house. Before he went abroad, the boy’s father went to see Dámaso, in secret. He explained that, as a child, his son had been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness. He didn’t go into details, didn’t tell him what kind of disorder it was. But he mentioned, with concern, that he’d been on neuroleptic meds since he was thirteen, had spent time in several clinics—always very hush-hush—in Switzerland and England. Though he was lazy by nature, for some reason he showed great enthusiasm for anything relating to the world of cinema. Obsessed over it, in fact—and that was a good thing, as far as his father was concerned. It kept him busy and away from all his father’s business concerns. So his father had asked the old man to introduce his son to the club’s more private group, and to keep an eye on him. And Dámaso did. Just as he’d been asked.”

  Guzmán remained pensive, tapping his lips with an index finger.

  “Funny, isn’t it? His father wanted to protect his son and ended up tossing him straight into the lion’s den without realizing. Whoever’s up there writing the screenplay of our lives has a very twisted sense of humor.

  “After a few months, Ian junior discovered what Olsen and the old man were doing. It didn’t take long for him to find out that the film club was actually just a cover-up for something much darker. But he didn’t threaten to go to the police, or to shut him down. No. Instead, he actually demanded that they let him participate! He wanted to “experiment”—that was the word he used. Shortly after that, he turned up with Aroha.

  “They seemed pretty tight, if you get my meaning. At first, Olsen and the old man didn’t think much of it. The girl seemed just like the rest of them. Ian was a good-looking kid and had the ability to get young hookers—drug addicts, girls living rough—to do whatever he wanted to keep him happy. But Aroha was special. She was educated, sophisticated but irreverent. It was obvious she was in love with Ian. And it was also becoming clear to everyone that she’d been experimenting with drugs and was starting to take things too far. Dámaso didn’t give it much thought until he saw her picture in the paper and realized whose daughter she was, and that she had disappeared. He freaked out and immediately called Olsen. They had a big problem on their hands.”

  Guzmán stopped talking and gave Arthur a marble stare. Arthur returned it with a questioning look.

  “What did they do to my daughter?”

  “Dámaso doesn’t know. Believe me, if he did he’d have spilled the beans. But I’m starting to have a hunch as to who sent you that tape. Maybe you should start pulling a few more strings.”

  “Enough bullshit. I want to know where Aroha is! What did they do to her?”

  Guzmán turned his hand over and examined it like a pet, an ugly little dog you end up becoming quite fond of. He didn’t seem to hear Arthur.

  “Take a look at this. A good look. This used to be a hand, a good hand. Now it’s just a tangle of flesh, useless chunks of dermis, epidermis, atrophied nerve endings, and damaged joints.” Arthur glanced at the shapeless mass without interest. “They can make incredibly advanced implants and prosthetics nowadays, using a new material that fits perfectly into the space left by the missing digits. It’s a very effective surgical procedure, but also very expensive, and guess what that means?
If I want to get a fake dick and a hand to touch it with, I will have to get something cheaper, something lower quality, and that upsets me. It upsets me not to have a hand as perfect as yours, a penis that’s even minimally functional, you know? You’re the lucky ones, all you guys who smile at the world with your perfect teeth. But here’s the thing. All your trappings—the paintings, the extravagances, the perfect teeth—they’re all just disguises you use to hide behind. It all comes in the blink of an eye, but it can be taken away in the blink of an eye too. And that cycle can be repeated ad infinitum, as often as the gods so choose.”

  “Why don’t you just fucking come out and say whatever it is you have to say?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, but you’re not listening. What I’m saying is, this tape changes everything. If the cops were to find it, it would prove you murdered Ian.” Guzmán spoke calmly, watching through the veil of his half-closed eyes as Arthur trembled pathetically, betraying his fear. “If you tell me the truth, we might be able to reach an agreement, you and me, and no one else would have to know.”

  “What do you want? More money? Bring Aroha back to me and I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.”

  Guzmán smiled.

  “Of course you will, Arthur. Of course.”

  SIXTEEN

  They shouldn’t have been there. It was dangerous and they both knew it. But their desire to be alone together was such that it made them reckless. The murky light from a bare bulb underscored the squalor of their alleyway refuge, like a pencil underlining the dripping pipes and greasy puddles, the grime and squalor to be found behind Chang’s restaurant.

  Mei was staring vacantly into space. No one could be unmoved by those eyes; indeed, they had been his undoing.