The Hermit (24 page)

Petra is friendliness itself, asking to write his name immediately in the appointment book. But no, he’s not here to reserve a time. Perhaps another day.

He doesn’t even say computer and Luisa before Petra begins to brag about her daughter, and how busy she is. It’s only temporary, Petra promises. She’s getting married soon.

– Oh, I see. Well, congratulations.

– Let me call for you, Petra says, punching the buttons on the salon’s cordless telephone.

They chat for five minutes before Petra tells her daughter about her good customer who needs help, that intelligent older man I’ve told you about, the one from Norway.

The conversation embarrasses him.

She turns to Erhard: – Where do you live? Out in Majanicho, right?

– No, Calle Muelle. Fifth floor. It says Palabras on the door.

Petra repeats the information for her daughter’s benefit. – And when can you do it? she asks him.

– Whenever. He thinks of Beatriz. – Tomorrow after siesta.

– Luisa says Wednesday around 8 p.m.

Erhard simply nods.

Petra hangs up. – Shouldn’t we schedule a haircut since you’re here?

There is an American couple staying at the hotel in Las Dunas.

She complains about the wind. – You could have told me when we booked the vacation, she says.

The man tries to explain how he didn’t know. – It looked great in the photographs!

– You can’t see the wind in a photograph, the wife protests. – You’ve got to do some research.

He drives home straight before siesta. He shops at Super HiperDino and buys some bread, cheap cheese, and a newspaper, which he reads from front to back after checking up on Beatriz, her pulse, her pupils; he shifts her position and massages her arms and thighs to get the blood flowing. He listens for her breathing, putting his ear next to her mouth. But she makes no sound. All that he hears is the huff of the respirator. He knows her body, it seems to him, as well as any woman he’s ever been with or loved.

There’s something extraordinary about being with an unconscious person. The normal rules of intimacy do not apply. He scrubs her with a wash cloth. Carefully. He watches her belly rise and fall, and he recalls sitting beside her on the beach or the rooftop terrace. When she exhales, her breath is gentle and billowing, alarmingly light. Her face seems paler, too. He finds the telephone and calls Michel Faliando, the doctor. A day has passed. There’s been no change or improvement. Michel asks Erhard various questions: Has she moved? Has she…? and so forth. Erhard repeats the same response for each question: no. Her pulse is stable, around sixty-one beats per minute, and the respirator’s working properly. For the first time, he hears uncertainty in the doctor’s voice. If there’s no improvement in the next forty-eight hours, Erhard will need to take her to the hospital. At most, she can survive three or four days without food or liquids.

Lying on the sofa, she’s visible to anyone who might open the front door. He’s tried to move the sofa, but it doesn’t help. It unnerves him. Besides, he needs something to do, so he starts building a bed in the pantry, the lowest-lying room and also the room with the highest ceiling. If he builds the bed on the shelf and encloses it, she can lie up there unnoticed even to someone standing in the pantry. At the same time, he can easily keep an eye on her condition by standing on a crate. There’s even an outlet at the very top, so the respirator can be positioned right next to the mattress.

It’s hard work, but he loses track of time. He saws old laths and screws them into place. He carries some old boards in from the shed, balances them first on top of the shelf and then the laths. One of the boards is too wide, and he’s forced to hack off the corners so that he can wedge it through the door and up under the ceiling. When the boards are in place, he finds an extension cord and arranges a small lamp along the wall. He hauls the mattress on which Alina had lain up to the bed and seals it with yet another broad lath, which he screws in place.

When the sun snips the hills in two, he drinks another glass of cognac from a wine glass and listens to Gillespie on Radio Mucha. During the news report, there’s no mention of the boy. Everyone on the island has happily forgotten about him.

– But not me, he tells Beatriz.

Now comes the hardest part. The worst part.

First he carries the respirator up to the bed and plugs it in; it hisses like a sick cat. Then he lifts her onto his shoulder while holding the catheter and drainage bag, and he bears her out of the room. One step at a time. He climbs onto a crate and then a chair, and he rolls her cautiously over the lath and onto the mattress, before nudging her carefully towards the wall, away from the edge and into the corner, illuminated only by the faint bulb in the small reading lamp. He affixes the drainage bag on a lower shelf. He attempts to figure out how to turn down the beeping respirator, but is afraid to mess with anything he doesn’t understand.

He puts everything back in the pantry: tins, old loops of twine, bottles of cooking oil and vinegar. He throws nothing out, even the stuff that’s past date. Finally the room resembles a pantry again. An unappealing pantry, but the illusion remains intact.

Next he checks the generator and fills it with diesel, hoping it’ll be one of the last times he’ll have to do so. He makes himself a plate of cheese and eats, gazing out the window at the road. The daylight is fading, and the dusty ground is getting darker and darker.

The police arrive at nine o’clock.

He’d figured they would come earlier.

A single officer, his silhouette in the black car, headlights bouncing over potholes. It’s Bernal. He can almost recognize the sound of his cowboy boots. Erhard lets him knock a few times before he opens the door.

– Hermit.

– Bernal.

Erhard doesn’t invite him in. Not right away.

– What is it with you?

– What do you mean?

– Bill Haji. The boy on the beach. Keeping company with Beatriz Colini, who’s now dead, and Raúl Palabras, who’s now vanished without a trace.

– It’s a small island.

– A small world if you ask me.

– You know me. I had nothing to do with her death.

Which is true, Erhard thinks.

– I know, but we’ve toyed with the idea. For now you’re not a suspect.

– They are my two best friends. I would never dream of…

– Were.

– What?

–
Were
your two best friends. Past tense.

– Raúl Palabras might still be alive.

– Do you know where he is?

– No. I told the other officer the same thing.

– Why would he hurt his girlfriend?

– He didn’t hurt her. She must’ve fallen. Raúl would never hurt her.

– Are we talking about the same Raúl Palabras who was twice charged with assault?

– He would never touch Beatriz. Not like that.

– Hassib wrote in his report that you spent an hour with her before she died. What were you doing?

– Trying to save her.

– How?

– By helping her, arranging her comfortably and talking to her.

– For an hour?

– A doctor came.

– Who?

– Does it even matter? He came and said there was nothing to be done. He left right after she died.

– He’s a witness. He’s a doctor. We need to speak with him.

– He was there as a friend of Beatriz’s. I don’t care to tell you who.

– I can arrest you and find the doctor myself.

– I know.

– When did you find her?

Erhard repeats the story he told Hassib.

– Eleven o’clock? You’re sure? Bernal asks.

– Yes. After I found her and made her comfortable, I went up to the rooftop terrace to look for Raúl. A woman on one of the other roofs saw me. She can confirm the time.

– Did Beatriz say anything?

– She mumbled something. She said Raúl’s name.

– Did she tell you what happened?

– She said she’d fallen.

– On the stairs?

– Yes, that’s what it looked like.

– Lorenzo says that both her ankles were broken, and that her face was a complete mess. That’s quite an atypical fall, if you ask me.

– How should I know? That’s how I found her.

Bernal gazes down the path as the goats trot towards the house.

– What’s with the horn?

– That’s how it looked when I got him.

– Let me in for a beer, Hermit. We need to talk about this.

Erhard had feared this would happen. But he doesn’t see how he can refuse. – I’m on my way to bed, he says.

– No you’re not. You’re staying up all night, the policeman says, stepping past Erhard and into the house.

Erhard fetches two lukewarm beers from the pantry. He glances briefly up at the bed, but he can’t see or hear Beatriz. He switches off the light and hands one of the beers to Bernal.

– You’ve rearranged, Bernal says.

Erhard looks around the room. What is it that he sees? – You mean the sofa?

The sofa he’d moved for Beatriz.

– Possibly. The room is different. He turns and looks at Erhard. – I have something important to tell you.

Pause. Silence. Too much silence.

– Raúl Palabras has fled the country.

– Have you found him?

Erhard feels a strange form of relief that Raúl is still alive, followed by anger that he’s fled from his crime. From his girlfriend.

– We have a photo of him at the airport. According to the passenger list, it was taken just before he boarded a plane.

– To where?

– I can’t tell you that.

– Spain?

– No.

– If it was taken before ten o’clock, there are only three possibilities: Casablanca, London, and Madrid.

– We’ll get our hands on him. As soon as he sets foot on one of the islands.

– I hope so, Erhard says, and nearly means it.

– OK, listen up, Bernal says. – If there’s anything, anything at all, that you’re not telling us, you need to fess up now. My colleague Hassib thinks you’re lying, that you’re hiding something. He wanted to bring you in, but I vouched for you. Bernal eyes Erhard as if it’s a question. – You need to tell me if there’s something we should know.

– I can repeat what I’ve already said, if you wish. I haven’t killed anyone, if that’s what you think.

Bernal grins as if he can’t imagine Erhard killing anyone and yet that’s exactly what he was thinking. – The girl falls down and dies, and Raúl flees the country. It can hardly be a coincidence.

– All I can tell you is that I found Beatriz. And that Raúl was gone.

– That’s what I’m saying. You’re clean. Hassib says you’re fucking with us. Those are his words, not mine. But you’re all right. He rises from his chair. – Beatriz Colini had a cousin and an aunt in Madrid. They can’t come to her service, or maybe they didn’t have the money to pay for tickets. If you wish to come, you’ll be one of the few. It’s tomorrow at five o’clock. Out near Alto Blanco.

– Why there?

– On the request of Emanuel Palabras. He’s paying for the service.

– Will he be there?

– I don’t think so. Thanks for the beer, Bernal says, setting it on the table. He hasn’t touched it. When he reaches the door, he turns: – One last thing. If you’re still wondering about that case with the boy, then, well, we didn’t get any further. The case is still open, but no one’s working on it.

– I thought you were going to close it with a false confession.

– She’s vanished. That’s what her kind does. She probably got cold feet. And we haven’t heard from our local sponsor, so you can rest easy again.

– You still haven’t found the mother.

– The earth keeps spinning, Hermit. New crimes are committed that need to be solved, and you’re sure keeping us busy.

Bernal walks out the door. Into the brown darkness of night.

37

On Tuesday he drives from early morning to late, much too late. When he gets home, he’s absolutely whipped. Tired and out of sorts. He’s only had two breaks all day, each time to fill diesel in the generator, check on Beatriz, and grab a bite to eat. During the course of the day, he’s come to realize that earning 1,200 euros quickly is next to impossible so long as he’s obligated to share half of his earnings with TaxiVentura. When the day is over, he can only put 128 euros aside. It’ll take him several weeks to earn the money for the generator. Goddamned generator.

Standing on a crate in the pantry and listening to Beatriz, he sees the small, transparent mouthpiece covering her mouth steam up. She says nothing. She’s begun to smell a little, but he doesn’t dare shift her around or roll her over. Too exhausted to remove his clothes, he falls asleep on the sofa, stiff, inhuman.

He’s driving along a tall dike between reality and a little village bathed in sunlight, where people are walking in and out of restaurants. He hears footfalls outside the house and knows that he’s dreaming when he sees the body of a young woman slicked from head to toe with cooking grease from a pan, and he can’t quite make himself believe it’s all in his imagination. Someone jolts him with electricity.

But they’re just leg cramps followed by a stinging pain, as if someone has warmed his veins up to ninety degrees Celsius. Before he can question what the dream meant, he clambers to his feet and hurries out. The wind is strong today, and it rips at the car. The downtown streets are quiet. For several hours, he’s parked in the queue on High Street.

It hardly matters. It doesn’t do any good. And, in truth, he can’t stomach talking to anyone. Around ten o’clock, a man tries to barter a trip to Puerto for his family. Erhard accepts the man’s offer, but it’s all for naught. The man and his wife argue, then drag their daughter with them into a cafe. He tries to read Doyle, but he can’t.

At noon he snaps on his turn signal and exits the queue, heading to Café Miza.

There’s no one there. The place tends to be filled with students, young tourists who’ve found the place in their Lonely Planet guidebooks where it is named one of the top-five cafes with a scenic view. When he enters, Miza has the music turned up and is busy cleaning the coffee machine. She’s surprised to see him at this time of day. Even with young people there’s a certain unwillingness to change routines, Erhard notices, so he chooses to drink his coffee in the cafe instead of the car, as he usually does. As she scours the large machine, humming along with the music, Miza glances at him from time to time. She asks Erhard how his work is going.