The Hermit (11 page)

– Can you play ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’? he asks one of the slender boys at the bar. The boys turns. Erhard figures they know it.

– We don’t play jazz, the boy says.

– Isn’t this a jazz club? When did they start playing anything but jazz at a jazz club?

The boy says they call it new funk.

– Let me guess, Erhard says. – Three-four time, two bass guitars.

– The young crowd likes it.

– Looks that way, Erhard says, glancing around.

– This is just a practice jam. Our last YouTube video has more than 1.3 million views. We’re playing Madrid next month.

– It’s a long road, my young friend. Erhard inspects the boy’s holey jeans. – You can’t cheat with music.

– Whatever, Yoda, the lead singer says, laughing in a not-unfriendly way. – Let me guess: You’re another misunderstood island genius?

– Is it that obvious?

– You’re not exactly a business type.

Erhard smiles. – Neither are you.

– I’m young and irresponsible, you know?

– Yes, I remember how great that was.

– What happened to your hand?

Erhard looks down at his left hand. – Old injury.

– Don’t you have kids or grandkids you have to get home to?

– I’ve not quite reached that stage.

– So now you’re here grieving your fate?

– I’m listening to music, unless you’ve decided to drink your evening away in the back room instead?

– Yeah right.

Erhard turns away and takes a pull of his beer. Talking to young people can be uncomfortable. Halfway into a conversation he feels the bridge between the generations is too long, too winding, ruined. No one else shows up, it’s not your typical evening – perhaps there’s a football match on the telly. Normally it’s pretty crowded by 11.30 p.m. Erhard wonders whether he should just drive home while he’s able. Wonders whether he’s just wasting his time. Wonders whether she even comes here any more. Wonders whether she comes here on evenings like this one.

The red wine has announced its arrival, but not as he’d expected. He doesn’t feel the buzz. It’s been a long day, too long.

He stares at one of the musicians’ skinny legs, which look like curtain rods covered with black denim. They probably live in a small flat in Puerto, or maybe here in Corralejo. Probably smoke hash and pop pills and whatever else it’s called. They probably fuck each other and each other’s girlfriends and argue about the rent twice a month. The one wearing the flat cap may be different. He may be from the mainland, Madrid, Valencia. There’s something of the student about him, unlike the others. He’s unique. Natives call Fuerteventura
Isla Ingenua
, the island of the stupid. From here, you’ve got to sail for three days or fly for five hours to find a decent university. So when you meet a young man with the ability for self-reflection, you take note. Erhard does anyway. Truth be told, he’s got a few half-finished degrees himself, but life has taught him to recognize an intellectual when he sees one. In profile, the boy’s nose is enormous. It juts over his mouth and forms a broad arc up to his eyes. He resembles a Greek statue carved in stone.

The band get up and return to their equipment. Right as they pass him, one whispers something. It happens so fast, and so quietly, that Erhard doesn’t notice at first that anyone has spoken:
Are you into young guys
?

He wants to turn to see who said it. But before he can, he checks himself. He knows that not all voices are spoken out loud. There are just so many hate crimes committed on the island. Locals who pummel homosexual tourists. Muggings out on the sandbanks where German and English men copulate behind dunes – easy targets for a pair of youths with a knife.

More people arrive, many more. Young couples holding hands. Some large groups of men and women enter the bar laughing, dissolving all the tension that Erhard sensed during the past ten minutes. The band plays better and louder the longer they play, but he doesn’t glance in their direction.

He finishes his beer and goes outside. He’s heard people arriving on the patio, and he walks around the building, underneath the palm trees. He spots Alina along the wall, absorbed in a magazine crowded with images of famous actors. Her attention is surprisingly focused, as if she’s reading the articles. She has a pinkish face and the kind of funny little girl’s breasts that poke up like cupcakes, but which are mostly pads and wires.

He has driven her here a few times. He has also driven her to some of the toniest addresses on this island. And he’s picked her up, early in the morning, after she’d sneaked out the gate of the villa carrying her stilettos. The last time he saw her, she was down on her knees and the President of the Canary Islands had his cock in her mouth. That was a year ago. Raúl had taken him to a party on a boat anchored behind Isla de Lobos; he knew the island’s elite, and Erhard had given all the prostitutes a ride at some point. When Erhard searched for the kitchen in the middle of the night, he found her and the president in a small storage room, while on the deck Raúl was beating the president’s bodyguard at poker.

She’s not pretty. She’s naughty in a kind of country-girl way. There’s something about her mouth or cheeks too: they sag as if she was once operated on for an overbite. But in relation to the other prostitutes that he’s spoken to, she’s different. More mature-looking. In better clothes than Erhard recalls. She reminds him of some celebrity from the eighties, but he can’t remember which one. She’s wearing a dress, a loose, gold-coloured blouse with slits, and cream-coloured sandals. Erhard doesn’t know much about fashion, especially ladies’ fashion, but he can tell she’s more expensive than other prostitutes. When he sits opposite her, she gives him a measured glance that tries to determine Erhard’s sexual predilections and his financial wherewithal.

– No thanks, she says.

He laughs then. – I’m not here for that.

– If you want something from me, then you can book me at my website. I’m busy tonight.

– I’m here to talk about the boy, Erhard says, lowering his voice.

– The boy? she says. She looks as though she’s on some sort of tranquilizer.

– Yes. You know, the boy you starved to death in a cardboard box.

She abruptly sits up and glares at him.

– My lawyer has advised me not to discuss my son.

Smart girl. She’s listened well. My son. Indignant. Maybe she’s not as high as she looks. – How much did they pay you? I heard the police gave you 1,000 euros.

She shushes him. – Of course not. That’s what I earn on a good Saturday night in December. I don’t want the police’s money.

– Why did you do it then? He closes her magazine so that she’ll look at him.

– It’s my son.

– Enough with that. I’m not a journalist or anything.

– You’re a cab driver. I remember you.

– For 1,000 euros I’d be the boy’s mother, too.

– No, because I am.

She manages to respond with so much conviction in her voice that Erhard’s suddenly in doubt. But she doesn’t look like a grieving mother. She looks like a happy widow enjoying her night off. She looks like the local angle, as Bernal had called it.

– If I can find you, then so can the press. When they find out that you lied, that the police… He lowers his voice… that the police are paying you to be the mother, it won’t be easy for you.

– It’s all about presentation, she says, sucking on her straw that’s planted in a green mojito-like drink with cucumbers along the rim.

Erhard doesn’t know what to say. He’d expected she would regret what she’d done, maybe break down. But she doesn’t appear troubled. – They’re giving you more than 1,000 euros, he says. – Much more.

She releases her straw. – Whatever the money man says. She grins. – A lady gets tired fucking old men like you.

He pretends not to hear. – Thanks to you, the police are shelving the case. It’s not right.

– The boy’s dead. The parents don’t give a shit about him, you got that? Or they’re dead too. That’s what the police say.

– They just want the case closed, even if it’s unsolved.

– It won’t be open very much longer, apparently. Listen, Señor cab driver, I’m not allowed to discuss it. There’s nothing to discuss. You’re ruining my night. She opens her magazine and returns to her reading.

– Your night? If you’re playing the mother role, then you damn well better put more heart into it.

He wants to slap her.

He goes back to the bar and orders a beer, then gulps it, causing foam and liquid to slosh down his neck and onto the opening in his shirt. The music is livelier, and some of the young people have begun to dance. The band seems to love it, but when it comes right down to it, the bar’s not a good place for dancing. It’s unbearable to watch; only the younger generations can stomach such affectation. They rub up against one other. A girl in a miniskirt thrusts her groin against the bulge in a boy’s colourful surfer shorts. An act that’s impossible to misunderstand. And it’s neither charming nor sexy, just fake and disgusting.

Such a dumb, irritating, gold-digging bitch. Honed and shaped by inbreeding and corruption. After almost thirty years, Erhard has seen his fair share of this kind of thing. Unscrupulous bureaucrats and selfish citizens.

It’s not too late.

He still has time to spoil the police’s account of events. He can expose Alina and the police’s incompetence. He doesn’t give a crap about Bernal and their almost-friendship. If the vice police superintendent is unwilling to find the boy’s parents or uncover who was behind his death, then he’ll have to pay for his laziness.

He keeps an eye on her. Through the window, he watches her order champagne and read her magazine, behaving like a Señora, the entire time with this self-satisfied smile on her lips, as if she’s just about to laugh. A few men approach, but she waves them away. It amazes Erhard. He thought she was here to find work, but maybe she’s just here to enjoy a night out that doesn’t conclude with some sweaty pig pressed against her little girl’s breasts. Now that she’s got an unexpected source of income she can allow herself a break. But he can’t quite allow her that.

When the concert is over, something unexpected happens.

While two young guys with strange pigtails pack up the equipment, the band falls into a cluster of sofas and light fags probably laced with marijuana. Some young girls approach and get pulled onto their laps. Erhard doesn’t quite see who they are before he spots Alina leaning over the lead singer, who’s in the process of lifting up her dress to catch a glimpse of her knickers. What strikes Erhard is not so much what’s happening as the speed at which it is happening. There’s no refinement, none of the usual introductions; it’s just full speed ahead. And even though music is blaring through the loudspeakers, their voices travel and it’s so intimate in the room that it feels as if Erhard can hear everything. Including Alina’s perverted urban snarl right next to the lead singer’s ear:
I want to suck your cock, muchacho
. Erhard practically falls off his chair, but turns instead towards the bar before draining his beer.
Not now, not here, in a little bit
, the lead singer whispers. The little shit. Alina hasn’t noticed Erhard, even though he’s sitting less than four metres away. Either that or she’s already forgotten about him. So that he doesn’t attract any more attention, he slowly exits the room and goes out onto the street. Although it’s a weekday, there’s still a little life: a Vespa carrying three young men buzzes past, and two girls in bright dresses are heading to the beach while chatting on their mobiles.

It doesn’t seem as though her new income has given her the incentive to change careers. The greedy bitch. She’s not worthy of being the boy’s mother even in a concocted story. She’s the worst kind of whore, the kind who can choose another life but uses her body to take revenge on men – men’s stupidity and single-mindedness. See what you do to me? See what I’m subjected to?

Under the streetlight, the guys with the pigtails are almost done packing the equipment in the van, and they arrange with the bassist to drive it all home.
We’re going to stay
, he hears the bassist say. Erhard scoots underneath the long leaves of a slender palm tree and waits for a few minutes. Then the band exits the bar. They look different. Their sophisticated attitude has been spent by the concert. Now all that remains is a group of giggly teenage rock stars. And they walk right across the street without noticing the cars forced to brake so as not to hit them, or the van that’s still parked under the streetlight because the two men are smoking inside it, or Erhard under the palm leaves, his gaze levelled directly at Alina clutching the lead singer’s skinny chest. A young girl clings to another band member’s arm. She looks like a young, much-too young, edition of Birte Tove, the Danish soft-porn actress from the 1970s. The group heads up a short driveway and into the Hotel Phenix.

After a few minutes, Erhard follows them inside.

There are only a few people at the hotel bar. A husband and wife drinking white wine, and a man who looks like a salesman staring at a laptop. The bartender waves at Erhard, but Erhard returns to the front desk.

He knows the clerk. An older man by the name of Miguel who has been behind the counter for as long as Erhard can remember. As a taxi driver, one gets to know the hotel employees – if one cares to. A good connection at a hotel might mean more work, more customers, but also better tips. Miguel is the kind of man one remembers. Friendly, always well-coiffed, with soft hands that welcome every man who stops in. Rumour has it that he still lives at home with his 80-year-old mother.

At first Erhard pretends he just happened by. – Busy night, Miguel?

– We’re never busy, Señor Jørgensen. Always plenty of time for our guests.

– Have you seen Jean Boulard recently?

This is an internal joke about one of the island’s celebrities, who found himself in the gossip column because he danced with Penelope Cruz on the hotel’s penthouse terrace.

– I don’t discuss the hotel’s guests, Miguel says with a thin smile.