Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  She wasn’t planning to let that happen. Mei had decided that, at the first opportunity that arose, she would kill herself. And she felt a mixture of fear and intense sadness at the prospect of dying when she was just twenty-one, now that she’d finally found the reason for her journey in this life. She’d fallen in love with the only man for her; he was her destiny. But it was all going to be over before it began, and that seemed too cruel. Why had she been given the gift of meeting him if she couldn’t enjoy the benefit of his company? Why did people like Chang exist in this world? What blows must life have dealt that man for him to end up such a callous monster?

  They dragged her to the sofa and pushed her down, trying to force her to undress. When she would not do it herself, they beat her and tore her dress off. Her hands tried frantically to cover her breasts and crotch from the eyes that bored into her as they laughed. She felt as if the outside world carried on unchanged, but she was trapped hopelessly in that one instant with no way out. She tried to find refuge in her memory, in the few moments she’d been truly happy, free. She thought of Who’s eyes, his smile, his promises. She thought of one day in the country, the sun on her face, the scent of fresh grass swept by a light mist that stuck her clothes to her skin and plastered her bangs onto her forehead. She remembered Who’s hands, holding her face between his fingers in awe. And she closed her eyes.

  * * *

  —

  The first thing Mr. Who noticed when he walked into the room was the noxious air. The guy posted at the door had greeted him with a giggle, as though envious. “They’re having a good old time in there, the bastards. You’re lucky Chang confers these favors on you.” Mr. Who could have ripped that trained-poodle smile right off his face, kicked it out of him. He really could have.

  It smelled of sour perspiration, and the sweaty backs of half-a-dozen men formed a semi-circle around the sofa. Through that wall of flesh he caught a glimpse of the pale skin of a woman, and one pink nipple. His stomach clenched.

  “Ah, finally, the perfect lover has arrived.” Chang was drugged up, as were the others. His face was red, his eyes dilated. He was naked from the waist up, and the tattoo of a dragon with a serpent in its talons covered the whole of his chest and part of his stomach. His fly was down.

  “Come, come, star pupil. This way,” he urged, laughing, patting his back and pushing him toward the sofa. “We want a live show. We want you to teach us to make love. Isn’t that what you tell your customers you’ll do? Gentlemen, you should know that my boy here never simply fucks! No, no—he makes art, with his privileged cock.”

  Who felt himself die a thousand times over, felt his body being dismembered, his brain exploding, seeing Mei’s body there. She was a desolate wilderness, a prairie whose beautiful flowers had been mercilessly trampled. She turned to hide her face in shame against the sofa’s leather back. It was like she was dead.

  “What have you done?” Who whispered, giving Chang a look of pure hatred, unable to stop his hand from trembling as he touched Mei’s shoulder, which was covered in scratches.

  The old man gave the faint smile of a sick old faun.

  “Nothing yet, just smacked her around a little, just warming up. We were waiting for you.” He looked maliciously at Who. “Did you really think you could fool me? I know everything, boy. I know you’ve been saving up to buy two passports, and that one of them was for this little whore. I also know you’ve been fucking her behind my back—and I could overlook that, but not you falling in love with her and trying to leave me. You can’t leave until I say so; you’re my best investment—my cock of gold! And so I’m going to teach you a lesson that you won’t forget the next time you get an idea like that in your head. You’re going to fuck this little whore for us, and then I’m going to leave her in a brothel where they’ll make her wish she was never born.”

  Who felt as though an earthquake were rocking the building, the roof caving in on the room, the floor opening under his feet. After hearing Chang’s words and seeing Mei hide her face in shame, he had only one idea in his head, pounding like a hammer: he was going to rip Chang’s head off.

  He felt the blows landing on him as they tried to stop him, but he didn’t feel any pain; it was as if they were hitting a wet sack of flour. He had his prey, had a good hold on Chang’s head, and wasn’t letting go, clenching his teeth with rage. He wanted to rip Chang’s eyes out of their sockets and see them explode. Wanted to stomp on them like they were venomous snake eggs. Then he felt a jab in his side and saw the bouncer from the door, no longer smiling but holding a long, thin knife that luckily he had not plunged into Who up to the hilt. Still, it was enough to make Who momentarily let go of Chang, who fell to his knees, red as a tomato and coughing, his windpipe collapsed.

  Without thinking, Who leapt on the man with the knife, unmindful of the danger. He didn’t care about anything or anyone. His only desire was to destroy everything in his path. Nobody can fight off suicidal determination, no matter how much they’re being paid. Nothing can defeat that sort of desperation. Who snatched the blade off the hired goon and rammed it into his shoulder, all of his weight thrusting into the handle. The man let out a yowl and his arm fell to his side, hanging lifeless. Mr. Who then yanked out the blade and turned to the others, daring them to attack. They held back. Victory would cost them too much, for now. If he wanted the little whore, he could have her. The two of them wouldn’t make it far, and the men could wait to settle their score. One after the other, they filed out of the room. The last two took the wounded bouncer with them. Mr. Who knew that within five minutes Chang’s men in the restaurant would come for him. He shot Chang—still on the floor—a savage look. He had leaned onto one elbow and was vomiting blood and alcohol. Without thinking, Who rammed the blade into Chang’s neck with the force of all the offenses he’d ever suffered, the lies and disappointments he’d been subjected to for years, when he’d actually thought of Chang as his true father, someone he admired. Mr. Who had no compassion for that man.

  He pulled a blanket off the sofa and used it to cover Mei, who was paralyzed by fear, and stared at him as though she didn’t recognize him. He didn’t waste any time on explanations.

  “The fire escape,” he said, rushing to open the window.

  * * *

  —

  They’d gotten far enough away from Madrid to feel safe. His wound did not look good. He needed to get it stitched up, but couldn’t think about that now. He couldn’t think about anything. He had to pull the car over on the shoulder. His hands were trembling, he felt as if he’d just come out of a trance, and his nerves were shot. They were beside a field. Green shoots rose up, leaning toward the sun, and the poppies were elbowing their way in like spots of color, there to break up the monotony. Whizzing sprinklers cartwheeled, shooting spirals of water that sprayed the car. He could hear a dog barking in the distance and saw the silhouette of a man bent over a ditch. Beyond that was nothing but open sky. Life goes from one moment to the next without pause, with no way to stop.

  “Did they hurt you?” Who asked Mei.

  She gave a quick shake of her head to say “no” as she leaned over and lifted his shirt to inspect the wound. Relieved, she said it wasn’t grave, as though she were some sort of expert. In fact it was. Her eyes were sad, humiliated. What hurt her most was her inability to comprehend human evil.

  “We have to find a doctor to treat it.”

  Who told her there would be time for that, and opened the glove compartment. He showed her two brand new passports and pulled out a couple of plane tickets.

  “Beijing?”

  He looked at her as though not understanding her surprise. Where else would they go? She contemplated her own photo in the fake passport, with a false identity. Actually, she thought it looked like someone else, not her. And the girl who’d spent months locked in a clandestine sweatshop was another person too, the one who’d almost been sold like an anima
l, the one who had Chang’s scratch marks all over one breast. None of those women was Mei; that’s how she felt, those experiences were not hers—they hadn’t managed to pervade her and blot her out entirely. She reached out a hand and laced her fingers through Who’s. She’d go anywhere with him, because there was nothing else she could do. Because she wanted nothing more than to do it.

  Then he began to speak—slowly, allowing the words themselves to choose the form they took, not prohibiting them from being spoken. He told her everything, not holding anything back. Where he came from, who he was, what he’d been doing, what he wanted to do. He told her about Maribel and Teo, about Eduardo and Olga. He explained that he’d left her locked in an abandoned house because he didn’t know what to do with her, that he trusted fate or destiny to make the call. He spoke for so long that when he was done his mouth seemed to have consumed all the world’s desert, his tongue was thick and his lips cracked. And in all that time he didn’t look at Mei once. Not once did he take his eyes off the green shoots and poppies and the man who moved like his own shadow in the distance.

  There was a long silence. A necessary silence.

  Then, after a while, Mei took his chin and forced him to look at her. She searched Who’s eyes for what remained unsaid, things that did not need to be said but she needed to understand. And what she saw was enough.

  “We have to go back for her.”

  Mr. Who said it was too dangerous to go back. They’d be looking for them; they had to run, now. Someone would find her, they’d hear her cries. He hadn’t left her far from the road. They couldn’t risk it.

  Mei stroked his cheek.

  “We have to bring her back to life, so she can be the one to decide.”

  Mr. Who started the car. They made it two hundred meters.

  The first bullet shattered the back windshield into a thousand pieces. Then came others, exploding like fireworks. The car veered sharply and rammed into a lamppost.

  “Run!” Who screamed.

  He got out of the car, holding a knife, and took off in the opposite direction to Mei. He was leading them away from her. There was yelling, more gunfire. When Mei turned back to look, she saw Mr. Who fighting Chang’s men. One of them shot him in the back, point-blank, and Who’s body was propelled forward. As though he could fly.

  * * *

  —

  One night earlier, he still hadn’t decided what to do with Olga. He stared at the key to the abandoned house and could not come up with a solution. Contradictory thoughts and feelings swirled through his brain. He kept wondering why he hadn’t killed Eduardo, and the only answer he could come up with was that he didn’t honestly want him to die. And despite it all, he didn’t want to hurt Olga either. She’d told him all the details of her relationship with Teo—the child she’d lost, how she could never have children now. He understood the rage and hatred she’d stockpiled. And deep down he began to feel growing contempt for Teo himself. But another part of him said that Olga was lying, that the man he remembered—his father—couldn’t have done that. He had to find some inner peace.

  He told Maribel everything. He needed for her to be the one to tell him what to do, to tell him that Olga had made it all up. Or at least to show that she herself had had no idea. But far from what he expected, Maribel didn’t seem shocked in the slightest.

  Horrified, Mr. Who discovered that his mother knew everything. She’d known the whole time. And she didn’t care.

  “You don’t understand. Love conquers all.”

  Mr. Who fell silent, looking around in search of a place from which to escape his mother’s scorn, escape the feeling of absolute vulnerability that was gnawing at his guts.

  “Olga was just a girl. She fell in love with her mother’s lover! Teo was sleeping with both of them, he seduced her—a man thirty years older than her—and got her pregnant and then abandoned both her and the child. And meanwhile he was playing happy family with us. I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head and feeling like it was going to explode. “I don’t understand how you can forgive something like that. He went to China to get me because you couldn’t have children, but to him I was never anything but a pet to keep you happy—and then he goes and has a child of his own and abandons it like it was scum. And you ask me to sacrifice my life to avenge him? Don’t you care at all about what could happen to me, Maribel?”

  Maribel was furious. She banged her wheelchair arm violently and held up her urine bag, attached to a catheter.

  “This is what they did to me. Do you understand that? Them, Eduardo and that thieving whore, they chained me to this fucking bag for the rest of my life. They killed the man I loved. And the bullet that broke my back would have killed you if I hadn’t gotten in its way.” She gazed at him, her incomprehension bordering on insanity, and then proclaimed with utter contempt, “I wish I’d never done it. I wish it had killed you instead.”

  Mr. Who was silent quite some time before responding.

  “I’m leaving, Maribel. I can’t stay here. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to kill Eduardo, or Olga. Deep down they’re as much victims as me, or you.”

  Maribel shouted and cursed him, but he wasn’t listening. Her voice became inaudible to him as he walked out of the apartment.

  The last thing he heard come out of her mouth was the word coward.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Guzmán rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. It had been a long night and he hadn’t slept. He dropped the newspaper onto the seat next to him and glanced down at his fingernails, which still had mud under them. The soap hadn’t gotten it all out. He looked up at the runways through the terminal’s enormous windows. The passenger walkway was being hooked up to his plane. An illuminated sign announced the departure of his flight, but he was in no rush. He could sit there and wait while families with children boarded first, then passengers with preferential seating. There weren’t many people, perhaps two dozen.

  For Spain, America was still a far-off continent, despite Columbus’s best efforts. He told himself that in a few minutes it would all be over. This was not the time to get nervous and ruin it all at the last minute. The biggest jobs are brought down by the most trivial details—getting nervous while showing your documentation at check-in, reacting to a seemingly challenging look from the guard at the security checkpoint. Do not smile at flight attendants or offer too many explanations about your luggage. Just a businessman, tired after a long night, overwhelmed by responsibilities. That’s what he looked like. Except for the dirt under his nails.

  He slipped his hands into his pockets and closed his eyes, wondering what the Algerian with the scarred face was doing right now. Wondering if he’d kept his word or gone back on it as soon as Guzmán was gone. Something told him that the guy was trustworthy. One of those rare kinds of men with principles that you come across every once in a while in the gutter—the principles in the gutter, that is, not the man.

  * * *

  —

  After shooting Ian in the head, he had spent quite some time contemplating the dark stain beginning to pool around him. With his head turned to the side and his eyes wide open, Ian looked like a herbivore drinking his own blood, on the lookout for predators. Guzmán didn’t know why he stood there staring at the man. He’d already seen what he needed to see and heard what he needed to hear. But there he was, absorbed, watching the slow sticky spreading of that stain. He wondered why he’d killed him without actually needing to. He felt no guilt, just perplexity. You’re losing it. Over a woman you don’t even know, someone who wouldn’t give a rat’s arse about you if she weren’t in here, Bosco had told him one night, shortly before Atacama, when Guzmán confessed that he was falling for Candela’s eyes. Maybe his mentor was right; maybe he’d be right now, too: Candela didn’t love him, she was afraid of him and simply clung to the hope of anything that might get her out of the DINA cells. Olsen’s widow would have d
espised him under any other circumstances, but she’d had no choice but to trust him. Nothing’s going to happen to you, Guzmán had promised her, and she’d believed him because it was the only thing she could do. And now she was dead. They were both dead.

  * * *

  —

  He made a mental note of Ian Mackenzie’s last words and walked out of the room, locking it from the outside and leaving the key in the door. Gloria was sitting on a step halfway up the stairs. She was leaning her head against the wall and rocking back and forth, her fists buried in a knit cardigan. Judging by her face, she’d lost her senses; she looked completely out of it.

  “I want to see Arthur dead. I’ll pay you double, triple what he paid you,” she said almost inaudibly.

  “That’s no longer possible, Gloria. My job here is done.”

  She lifted her head and looked up at him. Her eyes and nose were red. She’d been behind the door the whole time and had done nothing to stop him, aside from claw at herself until she bled.

  “I’ll give you whatever you want. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child. I don’t care what he did or what he was. He was mine.”

  Guzmán shook his head. He sat down beside her and looked at her with something that bordered, if not on admiration then at least on understanding.

  “You should have hired me, not that namby-pamby painter. Now you’ve got two dead bodies—one that you can’t get out of your head and the other in that room—and a ruined painting. In my opinion, you’re going to have a fuck of a time getting over all this.”