The Hermit (44 page)

Since there are still two hours until he needs to pick up Aaz, he drives south through the smaller villages, past the villa with its angry piano owner. In the strange, boxy village of Gual he fills his tank and riffles through some books in his briefcase without finding anything of interest. He stares at the note with Palalo’s Internet address.

At the bottom of the briefcase, he finds a business card from one of his customers. He remembers having it handed to him along with the usual farewell:
If you’re ever in Düsseldorf or Liverpool or Gothenburg…
He remembers him – the man who was in love. He didn’t have the money for the taxi and promised to send it, but he never did. Second Officer Geert Kloewen. The ship’s mate. Another man of the sea. Underneath the name and titles, the card only lists a telephone number and an email address; apparently that’s how it’s done nowadays. Geert was no more than thirty years old. Erhard remembers how he’d waved at him on his way towards the boat, genuinely thankful for the free ride. Maybe he just managed to hop on board before they set sail. They’d probably kept a list of all crewmembers on board and would check each one off, just like in school, when everyone was present and accounted for. Could someone like Geert Kloewen help him find lists from other ships? Like the
Seascape Hestia
?

He doesn’t like exploiting such things. Geert may owe him a favour, but they don’t know each other, and he might be anywhere in the world. If only he knew someone else with knowledge of ships or who has connections to a shipping line. Normally he would ask Raúl or maybe even Emanuel Palabras. But he’ll have to find another network.

He thinks of the Aritzas, whose piano he tunes on New Year’s Day. André is the gentle engineer-type, who came into too much money and spends it on all-too-expensive purple shirts and fine things for the house, including the Steinway – the piano for people who don’t know anything about pianos. His wife, Reina, has tried a few times to explain to Erhard where their money comes from. Something to do with shipping, computers, satellites. They’ve been unbearably arrogant to Erhard, and yet at the same time kind and loyal customers year after year for nearly a decade, since the first time the piano-playing niece came to visit. It would be hard to ask them for help. But it’d be better to call them than to call Geert, a complete stranger. If he offers to tune the Aritzas’ piano for free from now on, perhaps André will drop that sourpuss he’s had the past few years and help Erhard.

He starts the engine and drives to Mónica’s place.

57

He hopes for a friendly reception, maybe even a warm one – Mónica giving him a clumsy embrace – but he doesn’t dare expect anything. She isn’t the type. He calls out to her and Aaz, then enters through the front door. They’re out in the garden, where he’s never seen them. He watches them from behind the netting. Mónica’s absorbed in her plants, Aaz is sitting in a chair gazing at the twittering birds. She’s heard him, he thinks, but she doesn’t say anything.

– I can pick up food at Xenia’s place, he says.

– I don’t want to make a habit of it, she says, plucking a large white flower with bright yellow petals.

Erhard can’t determine whether she’s being serious or teasing him. He decides to believe she’s teasing him, then walks down to the restaurant with its confusing name, Taberna del Puerto, where Xenia is the manager, cook, and waitress, while her son assists in the kitchen. It’s tourist food, but it’s tolerable. He buys grilled fish for Aaz, steak for himself, and, for Mónica, a salad with shrimp and one mussel – which he decides must be a mistake.

Spending time together is easy when food is involved; they sit staring at their plates. Erhard can handle the silence, but Mónica sighs loudly and wishes, perhaps, that he would say something. She drinks red wine. After she’s done eating, she carries her wine glass outside and shows Erhard her succulents. He listens at first, but he prefers to study her long fingers as she strokes a cactus without pricking herself on the needles. Some of the plants have been used as love potions, she explains, still without looking at him. When they reach the far end of the garden, he interrupts her to go to the loo.

– Oh, by the way, may I use your phone to make a quick call?

– Use the one in the hallway, it’s quieter there.

Aaz is watching television.

It seems as though his favourite television show is always on.

Erhard pulls out his notebook and punches in the Aritzas’ number. The line clicks.

– Hello, he says, though no one has answered. He hears a hollow, metallic sound, as if thousands of miles separate the two phones.

– Hello, this is Reina.

She sounds tired. It hadn’t occurred to Erhard that someone might be sleeping at this time of day. – This is Erhard Jørgensen, the Piano Tuner.

There’s a long pause. – Oh yes, she says, before evidently pulling the phone away and muttering something else.

– Is Señor Aritza home?

– One moment.

– This is André.

He sees Mónica through the window. He turns to face one corner of the room, then lowers his voice. – Good afternoon, Señor Aritza. I’d like to make an arrangement with you. He’s decided to sound professional. But he doesn’t want to be falsely polite any more.

– What kind of arrangement?

– I understand that you have tight connections to several shipping companies.

– We service the largest shipping lines in Spain, so yes.

– And you probably know a lot of people in the industry.

– I meet with politicians and many of the biggest players in the arena. Tell me why you want to know?

– I need to find the crew list from a particular vessel.

– I can hardly hear you, Jornson. Speak up.

– I need to find the crew list from a particular vessel.

Aritza clatters with the phone, perhaps because he sat down once he realized the conversation would take longer than anticipated. He’s a large man who has difficulty breathing. – May I ask why?

– That’s not your concern.

Silence. – What do you need my help for?

– I believe you may know someone I can call, someone who knows someone who knows someone.

– Señor Jornson, I don’t believe we’ll need, how may I put it?… help with the piano any longer.

It wasn’t what he’d expected Aritza to say. It must be because of the strange thing he’d witnessed the last time Erhard visited them: André Aritza’s arm around his niece. – Have you spoken with your wife about the last time I saw you?

Aritza laughs. Deliberating on just what to say, Erhard thinks.

– I have a friend in something called IMO. If anyone knows anything, it’s him.

Erhard ratchets up the pressure. – I expect you to do everything you can to help me.

– I don’t know whether one is allowed to share such information with a third party.

– Just find a person I can talk to, Erhard says, and prepares to hang up. Mónica has sauntered up the black-gravel path and is now standing in front of the main door. She’s able to hear his conversation.

– How about you stop by my office tomorrow? We’ll get this all sorted out.

– I’d rather have a telephone number now, Erhard says, trying to be firm. But it’s hard. André Aritza is more practised at this kind of thing.

– Meet me Friday morning, then I’ll help you.

He gives Erhard the address.

– I’ll be there at ten o’clock, Erhard says, before hanging up. He’s nearly wiped out.

When he returns to the garden, she tells him about the plants, as if he’s ordered a lecture she’s determined to deliver. Some of them hardly need water at all, she says. Being a gardener and having plants that are so dismissive is a real challenge. She insists on taking care of them. Following her, he notices her buttocks behind the thick fabric of her dress. She pauses at a table lined with pots of various colours. Every kind of plant: bristly, climbing, round, sharp. There are some with spikes, others with soft stems and long petals, even some with hair. He runs his hand across a plant that resembles a pale-green rock. She tells him its Latin name, which Erhard quickly forgets.

– We shall not be needing you any more, she says, not to the plant but to Erhard.

– If it has anything to do with my…

– It has nothing to do with you. The nuns suggest that I visit him every other Saturday instead. Now that he’s so grown, his social life at Santa Marisa is the most important thing for him. It will calm him, they say.

– He needs to see his mother. You two need to spend time together.

– And we will. I’ll visit him on Saturday afternoons.

– I can drive you. I don’t do anything on Saturdays.

– It’s easier for me to take the bus. I’m used to it.

He needs to stop suggesting other ways to assist her now. Needs to give her space. – I can drive you home. The bus doesn’t go to Tuineje Saturday after siesta.

She ignores him. Which feels worse than a categorical rejection. – They play bingo every other Saturday, and I can play with them. They say he’s lucky, that he wins every time. They don’t know how he does it; no matter what board he has, or whether he has one board or three, he wins. She tears the leaves from a dry little tree stump, whose long leaves stick up like antennae. – Liana thinks it’s best for him. She thinks he needs all the stability he can get. These past few months, he’s begun wetting the bed. Again. He needs to be comforted now, always needing to be around the sisters, not the other children as he used to. He’s more and more isolated in his own world. Except when he plays bingo.

– That’s not my experience.

– That’s how he is here at home. He’ll only sit watching that television. It irritates me. He looks at that turtle more than he looks at me.

– I don’t see him that way. He seems lively, open.

– He likes you, he likes to drive.

– And he’s tired of the sisters. All they talk about is the Will of God. And morning prayers.

– How do you know that?

– He told me.

– I’m not in the mood for jokes.

– They’re his words, not mine.

She glares at him. – You’re a strange man, you know that? I don’t know whether you are the world’s dumbest man or the sweetest or the smartest, or whether you’re just out of touch with reality. You’re a source of light and a light extinguisher. You are this and you are that. You’re a taxi driver, and you’re a director. But what are you, actually? Who are you, and what do you want with him? You’re a disruptive figure in his life, you know. He’s not sure what to make of you. But he needs to know what you want, and whether he can count on you, and whether you’re sincere or just helping out to make yourself feel better. You are easy to like, but impossible to love.

Erhard is struck dumb. No one has spoken to him like that in nearly twenty years. In all those years, no one has cared for him enough to do so. All at once, he feels both quite misunderstood and quite understood. Her accusations allow him to be full of mistakes, untidy and rough, but also the opposite: with room for greatness, generosity, and freedom.

Something causes him to step forward and press himself against her chest. Though he hardly recalls what he’s supposed to do next, he stops worrying about getting it right, and simply lets himself be driven by a completely surprising urge to kiss her. He’s certain it’s the wrong thing to do. If things will ever be good between them, this is not how it’ll happen. Turning to align his lips to her rather expressionless face, he leans close to her bosom and gets a whiff of her scent, not her perfume, but a mix of the warm aroma of her work with the plants and a strong odour of sweat and fear. He’s surprised that she doesn’t pull away; he expects her to slap him at any moment. He presses even closer, so that she’s forced to arch backwards across the table with the pots of cactuses, silently regarding him without resisting. He’s crossed the boundary now. No matter how she reacts, he’s altered their relationship. If she slaps him or rejects him, he’ll be embarrassed. If she gives in or returns his kiss, he’ll be embarrassed later. There’s no future, no plan, no meaning in anything besides the kiss he’s trying to plant on her lips. He can’t remember when he last put so much of his own integrity into such a tiny space. Not since he slammed the door that final time back home in Denmark has he known so keenly what he wanted out of life. And just like back then, it’s with a feeling of triumph and panicked anxiety, mixed and shifting like the light through the wine glass – which now topples over, splashing red wine onto the pale wooden table. He doesn’t care. Even better, neither does she. She acquiesces. He almost can’t believe his luck at how far things have gone. For a moment he feels a child’s giddiness, Scrooge McDuck swimming in his mountain of gold coins, giddy over his unbelievable good fortune, then swiftly put in his place by his inner auditor, who tells him that it’s OK, that it’s his turn to collect some of the randomly distributed rewards in life’s lottery, followed by perfect silence, astonishment, almost gratefulness. And then he feels her full lips against his, salty and parted, softer and warmer than goat’s milk. Beneath him she shoves pots and plants to the floor, accidentally kneeing his crotch, and he’s about to give up. But then her hand glides through his hair, forcing his face to balance on the edge of hers and returning him to the breathless space where all he hears is the smacking of her lips and, in the background, the turtle on the television. He’s floating now. Suddenly there’s so much he wishes to do that he runs out of breath at the mere thought. He keeps reminding himself to kiss her gently, not to chew on her lips. Even though he has an urge to bite into them like tender chicken. Even though he feels the urge to suck them into his mouth and stick his tongue through her worn, crooked teeth. Already she’s moaning, as if he has licked her down there for hours, though all he’s done so far is to get his hands underneath her snug-fitting, uncooperative dress. They’re both probably thinking the same thing – that the Boy-Man will stay put until they turn off the television; they can continue what they’re doing so long as they hear the television. Erhard’s back aches. It’s not accustomed to this position. He props his elbows on the table to lean over her, to get more of her. She tastes of smoke, maybe she smokes on the sly, maybe she stood behind the white hedge and had a fag while he talked on the telephone. Or it’s the shrimp from the salad, smoked or grilled with barbecue seasoning. Her cheeks are so paper thin that he thinks they’ll split from the corner of her mouth up to her ear, but she just seems to open wider, gobbling him up with a desperate hunger he knows all too well. Passion is like a dazed experience of skin. He stares into the triangular area encompassing her cheeks, ear, and eye, and tries to breathe its scent, but it’s gone, and he knows that it won’t return. Such is his sense of smell; it tunes in and out, preferring to smell something once and never again. Unexpectedly, her fingers begin working the buttons of his trousers, which he sometimes struggles with himself. She twists and turns to see. The setting sun is no help. She jerks away from the kiss and lowers her head to get a better look, but it apparently doesn’t help. Just frustrates her more.