Así empieza lo malo

"The story didn't happen that long ago, yet today it would be impossible. I'm talking about what happened to them, to Eduardo Muriel and his wife, Beatriz Noguera, when they were young, and not about what happened to me with them, when I was the youth and their marriage a long and unbreakable misfortune." This is the beginning of Thus Bad Begins, "a story of intimate life, like those that aren't usually told or are only told in whispers," recalled by one who witnessed it in his youth, Juan de Vere, while working for a former successful movie director. That job allowed him to see the strange, unbalanced state of Muriel's marriage, as well as its mysterious past. In the excited Madrid of 1980, Muriel asks young De Vere to investigate an old friend of his, Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, whose indecent behavior in the past has caused rumors. But Juan doesn't stop there, and takes questionable initiatives. Thus he discovers that there is no selfless justice; it is always contaminated by personal resentment, and that all forgiveness or punishment is abritrary. A novel about desire, resentment, and the arbitrary nature of forgiveness.