The Hermit (37 page)

– What are we celebrating?

– Your first day of work.

– I would hardly call it a day’s work.

– Get used to it. You’re the director now. You’ve no need to tally up your hours any longer.

– So you thought you’d bring over some whores and homeless people in suits.

– Speak nicely about my ladies of the night. They hear you. Besides, it’s hardly your flat, but mine. Even if you’ve changed the lock.

– I thought you said the flat gave you the creeps.

– If I tell you to party with the best girls and boys on the island that money can buy, then that’s what you should do.

There’s something in the tone that sickens Erhard. It makes him feel bought and paid for. The man he’s visited and helped for many years, and whom he almost viewed as a friend, is in reality a calculating businessman. But he cannot muster the strength to tackle it now.

– If we’re going to party like this, we’ll do it on the rooftop terrace, not in the flat. I don’t want to see a single one of your little friends down here, or you, Señor Palabras, unless it’s to go home or to use the loo. Agreed?

– You’ve accustomed yourself to this fine station rather quickly, Palabras says. – But we’ll be good, of course, won’t we ladies and gentlemen?

Everyone nods their assent.

Erhard keys open the door and steps inside the flat, snapping on the light. He stands blocking the hallway to the bedroom and watches the group march into the living room, then out on the balcony, and finally up onto the rooftop terrace led by Palabras and the hobbling Charles. One of the girls kicks off her high heels, and one of the men opens another bottle of champagne.

He checks on Beatriz and locks the bedroom door before taking a glass of champagne and heading up to the terrace. One of the perfumed girls tries to sit on his lap and wrap an arm around him, but he pushes her gently away. Palabras talks about celebrating his victories and grieving his losses. It’s the lot of the mediocre man to let his days merge into one grey lump, he says. One should drink champagne any chance one gets. It’s the only civilized thing to do, Palabras roars across the terrace.

They rearrange the furniture and empty the bar. Erhard already feels as though these are his things, and it irritates him how they’re making themselves at home. They even brought a small transistor radio, and they are playing a little too much electronica, a little too much canned music.

– You owe me a key, Emanuel Palabras says behind two girls. He sounds almost like Raúl when he’s drunk.

Erhard grins. He doesn’t know what to say.

– It’s my property, Piano Tuner.

– Then move into the flat below me.

– I’d hoped you’d be inclined to be a little friendlier.

– I’m inclined to have a little peace and quiet. Thanks for the party, but I prefer my home being mine, not a nightclub.

– So you won’t give me a key? Charles, say something to him.

But Charles does nothing. One of the girls is sitting on his lap like a ventriloquist’s dummy, drinking red wine.

– It’s my flat.

– But I need to know that this is my home. I don’t like you coming and going. It’s not about you, it’s about…
Hmm, what is it about? It’s about feeling secure, safe, somewhere
.

Palabras continues: – I can request the locksmith make an extra key. He does what I tell him.

– I wish there were others besides me to keep you in check.

Emmanuel Palabras throws his hands up as if it’s all poppycock. Erhard wonders if he’ll ever feel at home in this flat, or whether it’ll always be in a kind of no-man’s land. Maybe a home is defined as a place where one can be alone, by oneself, in the singular. And the elder Palabras feels that he can come and go whenever it pleases him. He raises his glass to Palabras and chugs the expensive – no doubt several hundred euros – champagne in one gulp, which he knows irritates Palabras. The night is full of shooting stars, or at least he read that it would be in the newspaper. He hasn’t seen any himself, but maybe that’s because his eyes are mostly closed.

By two in the morning, Palabras resembles one of his wooden masks. His face appears softened from exhaustion. It occurs to Erhard that he himself must look just as tired. The Maasai girls have shuffled over to the bar and are drinking champagne, talking softly, incomprehensibly, in their own language, while the young men sit on the balcony stairs smoking. Charles helps Palabras out of his chair and brushes crisps from his jacket. Erhard almost feels tenderness for him. Charles thanks Erhard, then commands the Maasai girls and the men to clean up and carry the glasses down to the kitchen. As they leave, Palabras just raises his arm in farewell before he follows the others.

It’s as if they were never even there. It wouldn’t surprise him if he went down to the kitchen and found everything in its right place. But the atmosphere has shifted. It’s a Monday night, and all is quiet. Not good in Corralejo. It’s the sound of unemployment. Of a dearth of tourists. He gets to his feet to trundle off to bed. There’s a large wet stain on his trousers. Right on his crotch. As if someone poured a drink on him.

The next day he decides to go to work. On the street, he pauses at Silón’s shop to admire a black briefcase. It’s one of those with a simple code-lock mechanism, which opens with a click. He lays his book, pillbox, and a long baguette into the case and snaps it shut. Silón asks for thirty euros, but Erhard gets it for twelve. Leaving his things inside the case, he walks to the Mercedes. He beeps the car open, climbs in, and drops the briefcase on the passenger seat. If Annette could see him now. She wouldn’t believe it. She would think he was heading to a costume party. She would think he was someone else.

Taxinaria’s offices are modern and colourful and resemble those built in the new part of Puerto. He has to punch in a code to enter, but luckily one of the girls from the service – which is what they call their dispatch – is on her way into the office at the same time. He walks down a long corridor next to a travelator, past a few quiet offices and the break-room, which is dark. He tries to buy a cup of coffee from the vending machine in the hall, but can’t get it to work. He pulls a bottled water from the refrigerator and sits down to read the previous day’s newspaper, which lies on his desk.

Shortly after eight o’clock, someone begins to putter in reception. He stares through the slit in the door, watching Ana organize her things on the table and touch the soil on the plant in the windowsill. A somewhat sad-looking girl – probably Lene’s age, mid thirties – dressed in oversized trainers. Erhard doesn’t like to see women in trainers, and he can’t imagine Lene wearing them. Last time he saw her, she was wearing huge winter boots from Bilka, the Danish big-box chain where Annette bought most of the things for the children. She is a girl who’s used to being abandoned, used to cleaning up after others, used to people around her exploding, breaking down, talking to her meanly, talking badly about her, groping her – without ever complaining. She’s a girl who can survive anything, but will never be happy. He hopes he’s wrong.

–
Buenas
, he says softly.

–
Buenas
, she says, her back to him as if she already knew he was there.

– Do you know anything about cars?

She turns to face him. – Should I?

She thinks it’s a trick question.

– I don’t know anything about them, he says. – I just drive them.

She smiles apprehensively. – I don’t know much, either.

– The papers you printed for me yesterday. Marcelis says I should evaluate some cars for us to purchase. But I’d like to see some old contracts and do a comparison.

– They’re on the drive. On the computer, she adds when he stares at her dumbly. – Would you like me to print them out for you?

– That would be very helpful.

In that moment he sees all the years of irritation and frustration, not pronounced in her eyes but more in a wrinkle forming between them, a wrinkle that has registered all the inept, idiotic, incompetent, and irresponsible men who have made her life miserable. Then the wrinkle smoothes out, and she bends over her desk and looks at her computer. – I’ll bring it in, she says. Her helpfulness is practised, and apparently not just reserved for the boss she’s shagging.

While he waits, he pulls his book from his briefcase. It’s one of the books he brought with him when he moved into the new flat. He chose it because the cover showed an image of a black telephone on a wooden floor. The story’s about a female otologist who is recruited to join a team of experts who are tasked with capturing an international terrorist. The culprit, described as a computer genius, has made a machine that rings up people and kills them with an ultrasonic sound. Ultratone. Hence the title. Erhard knows the plot only because he’s read the back of the book. He’s still reading the first chapter, where we meet the doctor at a conference as she’s reviving an old fling with an investment expert from New York City. He reads a passage several times. In it the doctor waits, hot and horny, at her lover’s hotel room, until she calls the front-desk clerk and discovers that he has checked out. He’s gone. It’s a ridiculous novel. Erhard knows that. But he thinks about the doctor, the emptiness she feels in a strange place, and it almost makes him weep.

He manages to sit up in his chair just before Ana enters with the papers and walks him through them, pointing with a pen that’s wet with spit because she’d had it in her mouth. Cute. After she has left, he studies the papers disinterestedly. He has nothing to add. It occurs to him that the Volkswagen Passat is a more popular vehicle than he’d previously thought. Through the years, Taxinaria has owned more than fifteen Passats, which had their heyday shortly after 2000.

He walks with Ana to the lunch room. Though everyone apparently eats in the same room, the drivers have their own area behind a row of potted plants, while the others – management, Ana, the sales staff, and the telephone girls – sit closest to the kitchen. At TaxiVentura he’d often heard the drivers go on about the girls and the bosses who were too hoity-toity to sit with the likes of them, but now it occurs to Erhard that it might create problems bringing the two together in an ostensibly equal space, since there is a deep cleft between those who labour in an office for thirty-five hours a week and those who drive a taxi seventy hours a week. With an inverse salary distribution.

He eats pan-seared potatoes and lamb skewers. One of the advantages of working here is that he doesn’t need to bring his own lunch. Meals are prepared in the restaurant, Muñoz, next door and carried over on large trays. It’s nothing special, but it’s much better than what he could ever make. He doesn’t talk to anyone. Ana’s absorbed in conversation with some of the women whose names and voices he’d heard on those occasions when, out of curiosity, he’d switched over to Taxinaria’s frequency. They’re discussing the drivers who suddenly turn up in the office bearing flowers or chocolate and making wild gestures, because they’ve sat far too long in their taxis listening to the bickering and the commentary, and they’ve fallen in love with the soft voices on the radio.

So did Erhard once. It was many years ago. Michela was her name. The way she talked, every driver thought she was speaking directly to him. For weeks he considered how to go about it, how he would approach her. The problem was, there were few valid reasons for a driver to enter the office. In the end he decided he would wait for her to get off work, then drive her home. That was convenient and offered the least amount of risk. But the day before he was to carry out his plan, he’d learned that all the other drivers – even Luís – had the same thought in mind. Suddenly the idea seemed silly and uninspired, and he felt a kind of disgust at his own desperation. Since then, he’s seen the pattern emerge time and again. The drivers are bored, lonely souls, and the girls have refined their voices for years, developing a poisonous instrument as compensation for the immoderate bodies they conceal behind garish dresses. At Taxinaria too, the two girls with the most passionate voices are decidedly plump, while the other three – including the Tunisian, Alissa – have coarse, horse-like features that make them appear big-boned. They talk over one another about their husbands and boyfriends, their dogs, and a new film that was screened on the wall of a house down near the harbour. Ana listens and laughs guardedly as if she’s never heard of anything like it.

He heads back to the office. He has no interest in reading the novel about the telephone terrorist. He picks up the car paperwork again. It’s a print-out from a dealer’s website. At the bottom of the last page he sees a name and telephone number. He lifts the telephone and dials the number. If he’s lucky, he can reach him before siesta.

– Autovenga, good afternoon.

– Hello. I’m calling from Taxinaria. My name is Erhard Jørgensen. May I speak to Gilberto Peyón?

– Speaking. New or used?

– Hardly ever used.

– I’m not sure I follow.

Erhard can tell that Gilberto needs to warm up a little before he begins asking him for favours. – The best you have, he says. – I’m the new director here and I’m looking to purchase a few new cars.

Erhard hopes the office door is closed.

– Where did you say you were calling from?

The line crackles.

Erhard starts from the beginning, and this time the man is livelier.

– It would be a pleasure to supply you again. I don’t mean to offend, but I thought our partnership was over?

– Why? Erhard asks.

– Palabras said he could get others to supply him with cheaper vehicles.

– Emanuel?

– Raúl. But I’ve heard that he’s dead.

– Don’t believe everything you hear.

The car dealer laughs. Confused. – That’s true.

– I’m looking for the best of the best, Erhard says. He guesses that the dealer is the ambitious type: the eager salesman who in four years hopes to run his own dealership.

– Let’s cut a deal.

– But first, Erhard says. The line clicks as if the salesman received a shock through the phone. – I need some information about a particular vehicle. A vehicle that was ordered… for a colleague.