The Heart Tastes Bitter Read online

  THE HEART TASTES BITTER

  Víctor del Árbol was born in Barcelona in 1968 and was an officer of the Catalan police force (Mossos d’Esquadra) from 1992 to 2012. In 2006, he won the Tiflos Best Novel Award for his book, The Weight of the Dead, and his next novel, The Sadness of the Samurai, was awarded the 2011 Best European Crime Fiction Prize. His novels have been translated into a dozen languages, and in 2016 he was awarded the prestigious Premio Nadal literature award.

  For Aurelia

  From wherever you are, watch over us, the way you did here during the short miracle called Life

  Scribe Publications

  >18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

  2 John Street, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

  First published in English by Scribe 2016

  Originally published in Spanish as Respirar Por La Herida by Editorial Alrevés 2013

  Copyright © Víctor del Árbol 2013

  Translation copyright © Lisa Dillman 2016

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted.

  CiP records for this title are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library

  9781925321159 (Australian edition)

  9781925228441 (UK edition)

  9781925307306 (e-book)

  scribepublications.com.au

  scribepublications.co.uk

  The only possible radical experience you can count on is death.

  JOSEP FORMENT,

  Arthur Rimbaud, The Beauty of the Devil

  (Alrevés, 2009)

  PREFACE

  The landscape doesn’t lie. It’s our perspective that disguises it — as if what we see is merely a reflection of our frame of mind, the same place looks different every time.

  A faded sign on the side of the Toledo highway pointed the way into town. It wasn’t a pretty town — in fact, it couldn’t even boast the Romanesque church that all ugly towns seem to have. But it was there on the map and it existed. Its existence was hinted at from a distance, a brownish stain there amid the nothingness, flanked on all sides by vast expanses of golden fields. Eduardo turned up the volume on the radio and lost himself in the music of Miles Davis, as though ‘Blue in Green’ had been composed solely so that he could enjoy that carefree moment. The whistling of the melody and the crackle of tobacco burning close to his nose afforded him a sense of wellbeing — and that was more than he managed most of the time. The half-empty bottle of whisky rolling around under the seat had done the rest. But there’s no way to live inside a song, just as there’s no way to live inside a car that smells of tobacco and has a glove compartment full of expired parking tickets, which he kept forgetting to toss.

  He cracked the window a few inches and threw out his cigarette butt; then, downshifting, his heart began to pound. On the other side of the highway he took a road that seemed to lead nowhere. The asphalt gradually disappeared under thicker and thicker layers of dust, and after a few yards the road’s surface simply vanished — as though swallowed up by the earth — and turned into a cart path riven with deep potholes. And then that road vanished too. Beyond it was nothing, nothing but a swathe of uncultivated earth from which shrubs sprouted up like cathedrals. Judging by the desiccated furrows and the weeds growing at will, it had been quite some time since anyone had bothered to cultivate the land here. And rounding off this portrait of abandon was an old tractor with a discoloured slip-scoop, its thick flat tyres rutted in the earth. At the edge of the field stood a fence, and beyond that a rambling old house. House and barren field eyed each other indifferently from a distance, forming part of an indivisible unit, like painting and frame.

  Eduardo closed his eyes. It smelled of countryside. Oh, how smells deceive, how landscapes lie, he said to himself, swallowing spit. He took the bouquet of dahlias from the passenger seat, smoothing the onionskin paper that held them together. They had no smell, and even their colour seemed washed out, as if the closer they got to the destination the more fictitious it became. Eduardo struggled out of the car with difficulty and massaged his knee.

  Night was falling and birds flew close to the ground in search of insects hovering near the surface of the creek, which ran parallel to the access road. A few blackberry bushes were still dripping like sheets hung out to dry, swaying beneath the reddish sky, the peaks of the sierra visible in the distance. Eduardo made his way down a small incline separating the road from the creek. The place was uninhabited and silent, and after a few yards the creek curved sharply to bypass a reed bed and a large boulder from which the silhouette of Madrid’s suburbs could be seen, far off in the distance.

  This is where it had all happened.

  He took off his shoes and deposited them on the shore, then rolled his pants halfway up and stuck his bare feet into the stream’s gentle, freezing waters. The shocking cold made blood rush to his head. Wading a bit further in, until the water was up to his knees, he felt hundreds of miniscule shards of glass pricking his skin, but he managed to withstand it for a few minutes, staring vacantly at the reeds on the other side. He tried to find some vestige of the accident, but found nothing. Nothing, not a chunk of windshield, or a tyre track, or a stain — it was as if the earth and stream had simply swallowed up the evidence of what had happened and then kept right on flowing with the calm of centuries. Eduardo cupped some water into his hand and let it dribble out between his fingers. It no longer had the crimson tinge of fourteen years ago. ‘The only possible radical experience you can count on is death,’ he murmured, recalling the words of consolation spoken by a friend at the funeral. There are words of consolation that don’t console, friends who stop being friends. Landscapes that erase all traces of tragedy. Dahlias with no scent, no colour.

  A day like any other day, a single second identical to the one before it, a second that in no way had presaged that it would be the last moment of happiness in his life. It was an absurd thought, but had he known — had he had even an inkling — although he couldn’t have avoided it, he could at least have hugged them tighter, said things that weren’t as pointless and ridiculous and trivial as arguing. There is always something left to be said when there’s no longer any time left to say it.

  Thunder rumbled, stirring the air, and fat raindrops began to fall, creating expanding ripples around him. Some drops bounced like rubber balls off the shoulders of his coat, others slid down his forehead and onto his cheeks. It was getting late and he’d gone too many miles out of his way. He had to go back. There was no place for him to go — that was certainly the truth — but he couldn’t stay here any longer. ‘I have to get back,’ he said to himself as he dried the tears forming in his red eyes.

  Sometimes people only weep their sorrows on the inside.

  He dropped the bouquet of dahlias, the flowers Elena had loved so much, and for a few minutes stood and gazed at the stream as it swallowed them up. Then he returned to the car and drove away without looking back.

  1

  Six months earlier, January 2005.

  Eduardo walked over to the window. The playground on the other side of the street was deserted: it was odd, to see swings swinging with no children, wet wooden benches with no grandparents, puddles in the sand with nobody splashing through them. Rainy days only accentuated his conviction that
an insurmountable distance separated him from the things that seemed to matter to others. And nothing could diminish that feeling.

  He turned his head back to the inside of the office: Formica shelves, overflowing filing cabinets, forensic medical texts. In one corner a ceramic pot with a moribund geranium.

  He closed his eyes. On opening them, Martina was still sitting there behind her desk with an inscrutable expression. Her face could be deceptive, looking sweet or fragile. You felt an immediate fondness for her smile — but Martina seldom smiled. The light cast from a desk lamp softened the severity of her pursed lips.

  ‘Are you planning to write down everything I say?’

  She nodded, crossing her arms.

  ‘That’s what the pen and pad are for.’

  ‘Why don’t you just sign the report, write me out a prescription, and we’ll part amicably? We both know these little chats are a waste of time, Doctor.’

  Martina pushed up the bridge of her glasses. The pen between her fingers trembled imperceptibly. What kind of perfume was she wearing? There was definitely something citrusy to it, very understated. Certainly not the type of fragrance that revealed anything about her.

  ‘I disagree entirely. Personally, I actually care — quite a bit, in fact — about what we do here.’

  Eduardo knew she was lying. In order to lie convincingly, the first thing you have to learn is how to control your facial expressions, and not everyone can do it: the doctor’s eyes betrayed a look of scepticism. She didn’t like him. A simple question of empathy. Their relationship had been tense from the start; they were like an ill-disposed couple forced to spend a few hours together each month without arguing, and during which time they both behaved fittingly.

  He stroked the table’s smooth surface, tracing the winding course of an imaginary river in the thin layer of dust.

  ‘Alright, then. What do you want me to tell you this time?’

  Martina zeroed in for a moment on the scars on his wrists. Noting this, Eduardo tugged at the cuffs of his shirt, hiding them.

  ‘How’re you adapting to everyday life?’ the doctor queried, not straying from the script.

  ‘Everyday life’ — now there’s an expression, Eduardo thought. For him, death was a matter of slowly breaking the habit of life.

  ‘I’m living in an apartment building on Calle San Bernardo, the rent’s cheap, and the landlady is a good woman. She doesn’t ask questions. I’m doing a few commissioned portraits I got through Olga, earning enough to get by. So, not bad, I guess.’

  ‘And what about your feelings?’

  ‘My feelings are where they need to be, don’t you fret.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘In a safe place.’

  Martina made a note and then laced her fingers on top of the notepad, staring at him in curiosity. Possibly feigned, possibly genuine.

  ‘And what about your nightmares?’

  Eduardo pressed his thumbs into his eyelids.

  ‘Listen, Doc, are you seriously planning on keeping this up?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what your dreams are about?’ Martina insisted.

  Eduardo gestured vaguely.

  ‘I don’t know, they’re all different.’

  ‘Tell me about the most recent one.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even know where to begin.’

  ‘At the beginning.’

  Dreams have no beginning and no end, Eduardo thought.

  In his, there was a boy in the rain. His face was blurry, like the sketch for a portrait that’s been smudged with a damp sponge that makes the colours and shapes run. Maybe seven or eight years old. He was on a muddy road, barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a frayed pair of trousers. You could see his ribcage sticking out beneath dirty skin and a network of veins running like the branches of a tree from his legs to his neck. They were all throbbing at once, an underground river of magma, and the boy was looking up at the top of a hill, anticipating something that was about to happen, from one moment to the next.

  From the fog emerged a man — running, stricken with panic. He was being chased by two huge, slobbering mastiffs with spiked collars and yellow in their eyes. The man ran, turning to look back, and even though he was taking great long strides, the dogs were gaining on him. They’d catch him at any moment.

  Finally, after racing desperately down the hill, the man stopped and spread his arms, as though he could do nothing else — or perhaps he was tired of fleeing. That was his way of saying he had given up, he wasn’t going anywhere. The dogs, surprised maybe, slowed their pace and advanced like prowlers. They growled at him, baring their teeth. The man and the beasts took measure of each other from just a few yards’ distance, and then the dogs’ instincts sprang into action — all at once they leapt upon him, and he simply held his hands up like a useless shield that might somehow fend off their attack. The force of impact knocked him to the ground and the dogs launched into a frenzy of carnage — jaws, snapping bones, flailing legs, screaming.

  Within a few seconds he’d been torn to shreds, but was still breathing. A stream of blood spurted from his mouth, glistening in the rain. The man looked up at the sky and, although he was dying, he smiled benevolently; he reached out a hand and spread his fingers, before clenching them into a fist. Not a threatening fist, but more an attempt to grasp at the air, to use it to keep breathing.

  ‘Satisfied? Can I have my prescription now?’

  ‘How do you interpret that, Eduardo?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You’re the expert, that’s what it says there on your diploma. I’m just the guinea pig.’

  Martina glanced discreetly at the clock. Five more minutes till the end of the session, and thankfully her next patient was already in the waiting room. She was grateful to be getting rid of the guy. Eduardo made her exceedingly uncomfortable.

  Scribbling out the prescriptions with administrative efficiency, Martina adopted a neutral tone, warning him not to drink too much on Risperdal. Eduardo made no comment, but the doctor caught a glimpse of something troubling in his eyes. Sometimes Eduardo’s expressions were like a fist punching her right in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘That’s it for today. See you next month.’

  ‘Maybe. Good afternoon, Doctor.’

  Through the window, Martina watched him cross the street, limping on his right leg.

  ‘I should have chosen another goddamned line of work,’ she said under her breath.

  Returning to her desk, she glanced over the notes she’d taken, gently biting her lower lip, struggling for the necessary calm to order her thoughts. With a firm hand, she wrote:

  Eduardo Quintana, seventh follow-up. After eight months the patient continues to exhibit the same symptoms: anxiety, denial, self-destructive thoughts. Conclusion: unstable.

  ‘Gooooood morning, Madrid. It’s seven o’clock on this cold, foggy Sunday morning. Rain’s falling hard and you’re listening to Onda Ciudad. So of course I’m going to play — you guessed it — Peter White’s “Another Rainy Day”.’

  Eduardo flicked on the nightstand light and gazed at the psychedelic shapes the lampshade cast on the ceiling. He sat on the bed, elbows on his thighs, and let his sleepy gaze drift around the room.

  It was a modest apartment, but it had all the basics: a TV, a reasonably comfortable bed, a few characterless paintings on the wall, a double-armoire with full-length mirror, a mini-refrigerator with a single gas burner next to it, and a shower and leaky sink. The thing was, despite the fact that the place lacked none of the essentials, it still wasn’t comfortable. The problem was that there was a sadness in the air, one that all impersonal places seemed to exude, with the lack of detail they reveal about those who inhabit them. Eduardo could die right there and the following day all they’d have to do is change the sheets — and that would be enough to completely erase all tr
ace of his presence.

  Most of his stuff was still packed up in the same cardboard boxes that Olga had helped him truck over from the storage unit where they’d spent the past fourteen years. In one corner lay a heap of no-longer-consulted books on painting and his prized record collection, alphabetically organised beside his record player. Those records were the only things he still felt somewhat attached to. Jazz, blues, and soul formed the soundtrack of his childhood, although it wasn’t until his father died and bequeathed him the collection that he truly learned to appreciate it. Childhood was no longer Eduardo’s home, and never again would be, but at the very least that music was still his music.

  He groped for a cigarette, lit it. The first puff burned his lungs. Then he reached out a little further and his fingers touched the rutted shape of a near-empty vodka bottle. There was a finger of booze left in it, and he downed it in one, feeling as though his head was about to explode. It stopped its spinning for a few seconds, and Eduardo closed his eyes and focused on the Peter White solo on the radio. It wasn’t peace, but something akin to it — although his father would have said that nothing compared to Dexter Gordon’s sax in ‘It’s You or No One’. But his father wasn’t there.

  The hangover made his stomach lurch and he felt the urge to vomit. His liver was killing him, though not fast enough. All he wanted to do was lie in bed and listen to old records, let that day fade away like all the others, without a trace. But that couldn’t be. He had to get up, drag himself to the toilet, struggle with his constipation, clean himself up, make some breakfast — at least eat the apple that was starting to shrivel in the wicker fruit basket — and maybe spend a little time straightening up the apartment, airing it out, emptying ashtrays, cleaning the garbage out of the sink. With a little luck, he might even find it in himself to work on one of his commissions for Olga.

  He took off his pyjamas and carefully folded them before placing them into the hamper and turning on the shower. The plumbing groaned and grumbled, but after a few seconds there emerged a stream of relatively warm water, which wouldn’t last. The building was old and in dire need of repairs that no one seemed willing to take on — water was heated by a communal boiler, so you could easily find yourself out of luck mid-lather; if anyone in a neighbouring apartment happened to turn on their shower at the same time, that was it.