Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  A ninety-six percent chance. That was a very high chance but it wasn’t a hundred percent. It was as though science wanted to leave a tiny possibility to illusion. If you want to believe, then believe. Up to you, said the report.

  * * *

  —

  Too many dead bodies, Guzmán thought. He was thinking about his life when the plane landed in Buenos Aires. He heard people applauding from behind the curtain. Here we are, safe and sound. Widespread relief. The new-age type sitting next to him applauded too, like a little kid, though his fellow passenger had said he would have liked to stay up in the air and live there in the clouds. People talk just to talk, in moments of euphoria. But really, they always opt to return to mediocrity. It’s safer to have your feet on the ground. To be another face in the crowd.

  It was raining and the ground crew was on the move, in fluorescent ponchos. Blue and yellow landing lights twinkled, distorted by the water. It must have been cold.

  The pretty flight attendant with a tilted peaked cap had fixed her hair and makeup, adjusted her silk scarf. She was ready for inspection, fresh as a daisy. She approached him with a reassuring smile. But the corners of her mouth were trembling. She wasn’t a good actress.

  “I’m sorry, sir. It seems there’s a small problem with your documentation. You’ll have to wait for the other passengers to disembark. There are some government officials who just want to verify a few things. Nothing serious, a tedious but essential routine.”

  Guzmán smiled, more than anything to calm the poor girl’s nerves. They shouldn’t make them do that sort of thing, as far as he was concerned. Give bad news, keep everyone calm when the plane is about to crash, demand that, in addition to leg and teeth, they show storybook courage that went against all logic.

  “I understand.”

  The “government officials” were in fact federal police agents. They had a warrant for his arrest, issued by Interpol. He didn’t need to see their credentials, though he made them show them to him anyway. Democracy, what an invention, Guzmán thought scornfully. Even guys like him had rights and could demand that the police identify themselves, and it wouldn’t lead to them breaking his jaw, as it surely would have during the days of the military junta.

  “Thank you for flying with us, sir. We hope to see you on board with us again soon,” she said as he walked past her, handcuffed and escorted by the two agents.

  Life was a joke, and it was best to take it that way.

  As they waited outside the terminal for the cruiser to arrive, one of the agents lit a cigarette. Guzmán’s favorite brand.

  “Sorry, could you possibly spare me a smoke?”

  EPILOGUE

  On one corner of the table lay the June 12, 2005, morning paper, neatly folded. Martina had set a half-drunk cup of herbal tea—it smelled like chamomile—on top of it. In the end, a judge had decided to go in with both fists swinging: it was all over the press. Entrepreneurs, bankers, a couple of police chiefs and at least one elite athlete had fallen like dominoes. Even more famous people were expected to be arrested. The Cine Club Case—the sensationalist name the press had given it—was going to be the soap opera of the summer.

  Martina had bags under her eyes and had lost weight, but her eyes were clear. She didn’t take out her notebook and instead sat with it in her lap, hands folded on top as if forcing herself not to open it.

  “I suppose I owe you an apology.”

  Eduardo looked at her without responding. Perhaps she expected him to cut in, but his silence forced her to continue.

  “Mr. Who stole the file with all your personal information. It took me a little while to realize it, and when I did, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I was so mortified that I couldn’t get over my shame. They’re charging me with negligence, but that’s not the worst of it. The worst thing is that now everybody knows I pay for sex.”

  “I don’t think that’s anyone’s business but your own,” Eduardo said. He really meant it. No one had the right to judge other people’s means of combatting loneliness.

  “What are you going to do now?” the psychiatrist asked.

  Eduardo didn’t know. He felt empty—emptier than he ever had. Like the most insignificant part of a story in which all the other players had used his pain to staunch their wounds. When it all died down, when the storm passed, he’d still be sitting at the foot of his bed, listening to his father’s records, staring out his apartment window at the playground across the street, with nothing to fill his empty hours.

  “Maybe I’ll go back to painting things that interest me—faces of anonymous people, feelings floating on a landscape. Or maybe I’ll just hole up at home. Honestly, I don’t really know.”

  “What about your landlady’s offer? If I recall correctly, she invited you to leave Madrid with her and her daughter. Maybe it would be easier to start afresh someplace new.”

  Eduardo saw her fingers attempting to reach out and touch his hand. To console him. He pulled his hand away and tucked it under his crossed arms, negating that possibility.

  “That’s no longer an option.” Truthfully, it never had been.

  Eduardo looked up. Yesterday was now today. It was ten thirty-five. His last chance had left an hour and thirty-five minutes ago. Time crossed his mind and leaked out through the pores in his skin. He’d heard them walk out of the apartment, put down their suitcases, lock the door. Sara had been chattering breathlessly, excited at the idea of their trip. Graciela wasn’t saying a word. She was probably looking at Eduardo’s door hoping to see him appear with a backpack and a confident smile on his lips. But he didn’t even have the courage to go out and say goodbye. He stood there behind the closed door, watching them walk down the stairs through the peephole. Until there was nothing there but silence.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  Martina didn’t show any opposition. In fact, she opened the top drawer of her desk and took two cigarettes out of a case. She held one out to him and lit her own, eyes fixed on the hot ash.

  “I’m going to discharge you. It doesn’t make sense for you to keep coming every month.”

  Suddenly Eduardo felt the pressing need to keep sitting there beside her. Martina was the only real thing he had left—her and his father’s records. He realized with dismay that, outside of that room, there was no longer a single person who needed him.

  “I’m still having nightmares. Though they’re less frequent.”

  Martina smoothed her hair and tapped her cigarette into an ashtray full of paper clips.

  “That’s good,” she said, her expression distracted by something outside the window.

  You’re no longer my problem, is what she meant.

  “What do you think that means?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The fact that I don’t have as many nightmares anymore. Maybe your theory of forgiveness works. Maybe Mr. Who freed me from that subconscious burden. Don’t you think?”

  No. Of course she didn’t.

  “It’s possible. Either way, at least it’s all over.” Martina slowly turned her head to check the time on the clock behind her. Then she looked around, uncomfortable, as though searching for someone else. Something was distracting her.

  “Do you have another patient?”

  Martina exhaled, relieved.

  “Yes, that’s it. Exactly. I’m sorry, I’m on a tight schedule.”

  “I understand.”

  They said goodbye with a revolting, limp handshake. After all this time together, Eduardo thought, this is how it ends.

  * * *

  —

  You’ve been drinking too much lately. He heard Elena’s voice as he pointed, to indicate to the waiter how high to fill it with Glencadam.

  “That’s enough.”

  “That’s more than enough,” the waiter replied with a malicious smile.

 
Eduardo took the first sip, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face as it rose over the tops of the buildings. As he set the glass down on the patio table, he listened to the sounds of children running, watched hawkers selling balloons and candy, saw mimes gesticulating silently before a group of tourists gathered in the center of the plaza. It was a beautiful June day. His gaze caught on the two empty chairs at his table. He could imagine Tania grumpily poking at a dish of patatas bravas with a plastic fork, blowing bubbles in her Coke. She was probably thinking a million things, her mind filled with pre-teen ideas he couldn’t relate to. In the other chair, he saw Elena leaning back, eyes closed beneath her sunglasses. She loved the feel of the sun on her skin; it relaxed her, made her happy. Maybe they’d make love when they got home, after having a vermouth. Summer always made her horny—the colors, the excitement, the heat.

  That was what happiness was. Small moments in which great things were determined. Drinking a beer, sitting in a plaza.

  The phone in his pocket rang. Olga. She’d left a voicemail message.

  “Aren’t you going to forgive me?”

  He erased it and was about to put his phone away, but then had a thought. He deleted her number. Permanently. Forgetting was the best kind of forgiveness, the only kind that could be granted.

  He needed to go for a walk. Eduardo stood, and for a moment thought that his knee was going to buckle under the weight of his body, and he nearly fell. The waiter who’d served him watched from the doorway with a smile. Drunks always make you smile until they became real headaches. But Eduardo wasn’t drunk. Just hurt. And he wanted to forget. He walked across the plaza ignoring the stabbing pain in his knee. A drop of sweat slid down his back all the way to his coccyx. He was starting to feel self-conscious. It was time to find a pharmacy and fill the prescriptions in his pocket.

  A street painter was exhibiting his work, the paintings all lined up in a row. They weren’t bad, but nor were they good, Eduardo thought, giving them a passing glance.

  “Want a portrait, friend?”

  He didn’t want a portrait. But he pressed the last dirty wrinkled bill he had into the man’s hand. He was lucky, that painter.

  “Be careful at crossroads; it’s easy to get lost.”

  The painter pushed back his beret and scratched his forehead with the tip of a brush.

  “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  Eduardo shrugged.

  “It means that life takes strange paths and…”

  He couldn’t find the words to finish the sentence. They were there, ready to be spoken, and yet suddenly they evaporated and his mind was filled with a strange vibration that drowned out everything but the sharp intense pain shooting down his back. It lasted just a fraction of a second, but it was like opening a door and having everything rush in at once: the painter’s incredulous expression, his mediocre paintings, the sounds of the city, people’s footsteps, the noise of the traffic, pigeons flapping around.

  And then just as quickly, the door closed and he stopped feeling anything at all, except for an intense cold.

  * * *

  —

  On the other side of the horizon, Sara was watching the setting sun. Waves rushed in—making her bare feet sink into the sand—and then pulled back out. A few meters away, her mother was strolling along the shore, a man’s arm around her waist. Sara liked the man—he didn’t ask stupid questions, he was nice to her mother, and he smelled good.

  “What do you think?” she asked her toy cat.

  The cat took her hand with its stiff little arm. Its toy eyes reflected the small island, a giant rock where seagulls nested in the crags.

  “I think the same as you,” the cat replied without moving its mustache.

  “He’s not Eduardo.”

  “Exactly,” the cat collaborated.

  Sara found a twig in the detritus carried in by the sea. Using it like a pen she wrote on the shore, in big letters, as though someone might read the message from the sky: E-D-U-A-R-D-O.

  “Do you think he can see it?”

  The cat did not shrug. It was just a toy and had no joints.

  “Who knows?”

  Suddenly an impetuous wave, bigger than the rest, stuck out its foamy tongue and lapped up the letters, erasing them.

  Sara became sad.

  “It’s just a name,” the cat said, comforting her.

  Sara dropped her toy on the sand and took three steps back and wrote it again, in bigger, deeper letters.

  “You don’t understand. You’re just a cat that talks.”

  And the cat smiled without moving its mustache. Sara was right; it couldn’t understand human beings.

  VÍCTOR DEL ÁRBOL was born in Barcelona in 1968 and was an officer of the Catalan police force from 1992 to 2012. As the recipient of the Nadal Prize, the Tiflos Prize, and as the first Spanish author to win the Prix du Polar Européen, he has distinguished himself as a notable voice in Spanish literature. His novel A Million Drops (Other Press, 2018) was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post and Seattle Times.

  LISA DILLMAN teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Some of her recent translations include A Million Drops by Víctor del Árbol, Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba, and Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera, which won the 2016 Best Translated Book Award.

  PROLOGUE

  EARLY OCTOBER 2001

  The landscape took on a certain density after the rain, the colors of the forest seeming deeper. The windshield wipers were still beating back and forth, though less desperately than an hour earlier, as they were leaving Barcelona. Ahead lay the mountains, which now, as night began to fall, were nothing but a dark mass off in the distance. The young man drove carefully, paying attention to the road, which narrowed as it wound higher, curve after curve. The cement mile markers along the edge of the road didn’t seem like particularly good protection against the cliff that dropped off steeply to their right. From time to time he glanced in the rearview mirror and asked the boy if he was queasy. The kid, half asleep, shook his head, but his face was pale and he kept his forehead pressed to the window.

  “Not long now,” the young man said to make him feel better.

  “I hope he doesn’t puke; this upholstery is new.”

  Zinoviev’s hoarse voice brought the driver’s attention back to the road.

  “He’s only six years old.”

  Zinoviev shrugged, extended his enormous hand, tattooed with a spider much like the one covering half his face, and lit a cigarette with the dashboard lighter.

  “Well, the upholstery’s only three years old, and I’m still paying it off.”

  The young man’s eyes darted quickly to the cell phone on the tray. He’d taken the precaution of silencing it, but it was too close to Zinoviev. If the screen lit up, he’d see.

  The main road led to a dirt one, overlooking a valley surrounded by trees. People called it “the lake” although in fact it was a small dam, which supplied power to an electric plant built in the forties. In the summertime, the area filled with tourists eager to spend a day in nature. Over the years, they’d made it easier to get to, built a little slate-roofed hotel with stone façade, a playground with swings, and a café. But in October the forest ranger’s cabin closed for the season, there were no day-trippers to serve at the prefab unit with the Coca-Cola ad, and the plastic chairs stacked at the cafeteria’s barred doors were a snapshot of sadness.

  The young man stopped the car so close to the shore that the front tires almost kissed the water. He turned off the engine. On the north side of the lake was a fenced-off area filled with heavy machinery and a few billboards put up by the Ministry of Public Works. They were going to drain the reservoir in order to build a luxury development. The drawings advertised semidetached homes with private swimming pools flanking a hug
e golf course. They’d already begun to clear the area and cone off the surrounding forest; tree trunks were piled chaotically around stacks of rebar, concrete, and mounds of sand. Nothing could be heard but the howling wind rocking the firs along the shore and the intermittent banging of one of the hotel’s shutters, which hadn’t been battened down properly. Rain fell on the lake, dissolving in gentle waves. It all seemed surreal.

  Zinoviev opened the door. When the young man tried to do the same, he stopped him.

  “You wait here.”

  “It’s better if I go with you. The boy only trusts me.”

  “I said wait here.”

  Zinoviev opened the back door and asked the boy to get out. He tried to be nice, but this sort of thing didn’t come naturally to the Russian, whose voice and tattooed face were already frightening enough. The boy began to cry.

  “You’ll be just fine. Go on,” the young man said encouragingly, forcing a smile.