The Hermit (29 page)

Characteristically melodramatic, but Erhard has the sense something’s coming.

– What about Charles and the girl?

– I need you, Piano Tuner. For Raúl’s sake. Emanuel sits opposite the sofa. On the coffee table. – I need a man in my business. Now that Raúl’s gone, there’s no one to steer the ship. No eyes to navigate.

Erhard doesn’t understand what Palabras is driving at. – What do you mean?

– You know the profession inside and out. You even have a nose for business, I’m aware. Rumour has it you’re the best taxi driver on the island.

That rumour had escaped Erhard’s attention. – Do you mean Taxinaria?

– You won’t need to drive any more. All you’ll have to do is tell me what’s happening on the ground. Maybe keep people in line.

– So Raúl wasn’t just on the board of directors? You own Taxinaria?

Emanuel Palabras glowers at him as if he’s an idiot. – What else but his father’s money qualifies my dumb boy to join the board of directors? But now I’m looking for a man who knows the business, someone who can think for himself.

Charles is now right beside the pantry, leaning against a section of bare wall. Erhard doesn’t like him standing there, but doesn’t know how to get him to move elsewhere.

– I can’t work for Taxinaria, Erhard says. – That would be disloyal.

– Rubbish. No more communist camaraderie chatter. Of course you can. We are the future, you should join us.

– I can’t just take over Raúl’s job like that. It’s undignified. What would you need me for over there? I’m an old man, closer to retirement than a promotion. Why should I work for you?

– To help me. That’s what I’m telling you. You and I, we understand each other, and I’ll pay you handsomely. There, that’s the short answer.

Erhard doesn’t take the bait. – You can’t just buy people, he says, staring directly at Palabras.

– I’m not buying anyone, I’m rewarding those who see opportunity. C’mon, Piano Tuner. Are you planning to spend the rest of your days here?
Here?

He repeats the word ‘here’ to underscore just how absurd the thought is.

The idea of ending his days here doesn’t frighten Erhard. Probably because he’s accepted it. But when Palabras puts it that way, it doesn’t sound attractive. – I’ll manage, he says.

Palabras goes on without listening. – You can even move into his flat until it’s sold. Get away from this place for a few months.

Erhard rises to his feet and gets dressed, his back to his guests. He pulls on his jeans and no underwear, which he can’t find now and doesn’t care to search for.

Emanuel Palabras starts from the beginning. – I hear you’re looking for a new diesel generator.

Erhard stands stock-still. Sees the MitchFever photographs stuck to the fridge. – Yes, he says and nonchalantly flips the photographs over. – Who told you that?

– Small villages talk, as they say.

– Do you own the electronics shop?

Palabras owns so many things, one can never be certain.

– No. Thank god. Too trifling for me. But one hears things. They also said you were looking for a girl down near Morro Jable.

Erhard’s a little alarmed that people have been talking about him. He’s usually too uninteresting for that kind of thing. Why now?

– Isn’t that right, Piano Tuner? Is she some whore you just had to have?

Palabras’s typical reasoning. – No, she was a sensible young woman, who… Just as he’s about to say,
Who takes good photographs
, something causes him to change his story. – Owed me some money for a taxi ride. I got my money, and that’s that.

Palabras scrutinizes him. Then he nods. – You’re not just some old dog, you’re also a stingy old dog. He laughs. – Just don’t run around wasting your time, and keep everyone happy. Drive your taxi, tune my piano, take care of yourself.

It sounds like a threat of some kind, though Erhard can’t say why.

– What is that beeping noise? Charles suddenly says, nudging the pantry door open with his crutch. He stares into the darkness at the shelves of coffee and tinned soup. The cords with the IV and the catheter are concealed behind the shelves and run above the door, invisible unless one enters the room and closes the door. Since there’s no light in the pantry, Charles won’t do that. – It’s coming from in here, he adds.

Erhard knows what it is. It’s the sound the respirator makes when she hyperventilates. It could mean that she just peed. But he can’t go out there now.

– It’s just a temperature gauge signalling that it’s too warm in there. It’s better if we close the door.

Just before Charles steps into the pantry, Erhard manages to shut the door. He tries to make it seem natural by continuing on to the refrigerator and taking a quick, desultory peek inside. It has been days since he last went shopping. He hasn’t had any desire to spend money on food. He sees January’s envelope on top of the fridge and pushes it further in, so that it doesn’t stick out so much.

– Thanks for the offer, Palabras, he says, trying to redirect conversation. – But Raúl’s not dead. He might return tomorrow from his little drinking binge in Dubai. So I don’t want his job or his flat.
But I will take care of his girlfriend
, he thinks. Then he continues: – I’m not going to stop driving a taxi just because you’ve had some great idea.
You’re not going to tell me what I will and will not do
. – And anyway, I don’t know what I would do at Taxinaria if I’m not driving a taxi.

A moment passes, then Emanuel Palabras begins to laugh. – Fine. If you think my impossible son will return. One can always hope, and may the gods have mercy on him, but until then, his business, which is my business, needs to be kept afloat. It’s not a company run by robots, a factory that just spits out product. It’s people-based, you understand; it requires one’s presence.

Emanuel follows Erhard around the house and then outside, while Erhard brushes his teeth and finds a t-shirt and feeds the goats. For a moment, the two men stand side by side watching the grey goats leap around the rocks. Charles has followed the two men out, and now he laughs at Laurel, the one with only a single horn. The Maasai girl brushes her hand through the pelt of the smaller of the two goats, Hardy, who usually isn’t very cuddly when he eats.

Emanuel explains how important it is to land the right person in Raúl’s position. – I was the one who gave him the company when he turned twenty-four. Back then it was a simple business without any competition. That was precisely thirteen years and four months ago. He needed to have something to do. But he’s never really been interested in it. He came to the office mostly when it rained.

– I’ll consider it, Erhard says, without meaning it, when they’re once again seated at the little kitchen table with a cup of instant coffee each.

– Raúl probably told you about his work? Palabras asks.

– We didn’t talk about it, but I’m sure he had his reasons for that.

– Wasn’t he the one who got you your job way back when?

– In a way.

Raúl had found a poster somewhere in the city: Good Drivers Wanted. When they went downtown one evening, he’d pulled the poster from his pocket and tossed it at Erhard. That was at the beginning of their friendship, before Beatriz entered the picture, and they would get pissed together. Erhard had applied for the job, and was hired immediately. This was in 1998, and they needed full-time drivers. Erhard drove for a man called Roberto. A few years later Roberto joined up with three other cabbies and formed TaxiVentura. Erhard continued to drive for Roberto until Roberto’s death a few years ago. After that he kept driving for TaxiVentura.

Emanuel Palabras discusses Taxinaria’s finances, which worsened after TaxiVentura signed a contract with the airport three years earlier. But Erhard’s not listening. He knows all about the conflict because of the many arguments the drivers had down in the queue, but he doesn’t want to hear any more about it. – You haven’t made it easy for us, Palabras concludes, as if it is Erhard’s singlehanded efforts that have saved TaxiVentura. – But now it’s time for you to join the good guys.

– I’ll think about it, Erhard says, wondering how he might say no.

– Think good and hard, Papa Palabras says.

His three visitors ride off in Emanuel’s boxy white 1972 Mercedes 60, the girl driving. She can barely see over the steering wheel.

41

He hurries to the pantry to check on Beatriz and the equipment. The drainage bag, which is small and difficult to remove from the container, is filled with urine, even though he’d emptied it the night before. Maybe the glucose has begun to take effect. He rolls her onto her side and fills the generator with diesel.

Afterward he turns on Radio Mucha and studies January’s photos, jotting questions on the back of the envelope. In one column he writes questions that he can answer himself; in the other he writes questions only the police can answer. He tries to shift questions from one column to the other. His hand trembles, and his penmanship is uneven.

How high was the water at Cotillo Beach at night during the period between Wednesday, 4 January and Saturday, 7 January? When the car had stood on the beach for at least one day?

Who saw the car arrive? In parentheses: No one. He recalls Bernal telling him that. No one saw the car arrive.

Was there an onshore wind?

Who sails along the coast, and how close do they sail? Could they have seen something?

How do new vehicles arrive on the island?

Why Danish newspapers?

He has the feeling that the newspapers are a dead end, not worth wasting his time on. The newspapers were what the boy happened to be wrapped in, that’s all. Nothing more. Who reads Danish newspapers here anyway? Many of the tourists – including the Danes – arrive on the island with English newspapers tucked beneath their arms or, at most,
Jyllands-Posten
or
Politiken
. There was a time when Danish newspapers were delivered to some of the hotels, but no longer; people use computers to read their news now. At the end of the nineties he subscribed to
BT
. It was sent to him once a week, arriving seven days late, stiff and crumpled from the night dew and the harsh morning sun. He subscribed to follow the football scores. That was back when you could still be a B1903 fan. He read every article and imagined the matches while pretending to hear Svend Gehr’s voice, even though he probably never announced those kinds of matches or was on TV any more. He still remembered the players: John Beck Steensen, Martin Løvbjerg, Kim, ‘Gold Paw’ Petersen. But when they merged all the Copenhagen clubs into one super club, all the magic disappeared. He maintained his subscription for another six months, then cancelled it, and never held another Danish newspaper in his hand until he went to the police station with Bernal and rummaged in the box with the newspaper fragments.

As a subscriber, he’d had his name and address stamped on the back of the newspaper. Even though his house number wasn’t included, it always reached him. He underlines the question about the newspaper and writes:
Where did it come from?

To answer that question, he needs to get hold of the newspaper fragments. It’s illegal, but wouldn’t necessarily be all that difficult. He knows where the box is.

His shirt with TaxiVentura’s logo on the breast pocket is still in a laundry sack at the bottom of a wardrobe. He smoothes it a little and pulls it over his head without buttoning it. It smells strange, worn, although he hasn’t put it on for seven or eight years, since that time Barouki wanted to make everyone look more professional and take up the fight with Taxinaria in earnest. He gets a cardboard box and packs it with tins and other items to give it weight. Then he closes the box, wraps it in heavy-duty tape, and writes the address on a yellow Post-it note. He then scribbles a second note with the address of the local police in Morro Jable. He shoves the second note in his pocket along with the role of tape.

He takes the back roads down to Puerto. No one follows him. No Mercedes, no Palabras and company. Still, he makes a wide pass around the Palace and waits to turn into the car park until he’s the only car on the roundabout. He parks just around the corner from the entrance.

The atmosphere is that of coffee klatsch for the island’s grumpy residents. In the reception area, there’s a woman with a small dog, a married couple and their son, two women who appear to be together, and a man with a large suitcase. The floor is littered with papers and forms that blow off one of the shelves every time the door opens; in the centre of the room is a large, dry potted plant. Erhard walks over to the metal detector, hands his box to the guard, and points at the logo on his shirt. The guard glances at the address and lays the box on the other side of the detector. Erhard passes through the detector, picks up his box, and heads down the corridor as if he’s done this many times. The guard doesn’t even watch him go. An older man in overalls who’s drinking water from a tap in the hallway gives him a disinterested glance.

He passes the open office space where all the officers sit. But no one’s there at the moment. The room is empty. Perhaps they’re in a meeting, or they’ve gone down to the harbour, a three-minute walk from here, where Antonio the deaf man serves the best Spanish omelettes one can find for breakfast.

Erhard continues to the storage room, where Bernal brought him last time. It’s dark in there, and he snaps on a large wall switch. The fluorescent tubes click and hum. He starts at the big shelf where he saw the cardboard box; he’d expected to find it where he had seen it before, but it’s not there. There are other boxes, small bags filled with clothes, stacks of paper wrapped in elastic bands. The shelf is four metres high and five or six metres wide. He walks around it and finds three other shelves. They are organized following some method that’s incomprehensible to Erhard, probably by case number, but all Erhard is looking for is the box. He could use more light or a torch; he has to poke his head across every shelf. He inspects shelf number two and is halfway through number three when he hears voices and footfalls out in the office. Then laughter as if from a funny film or a strip show. The policemen have returned to their desks.