The Hermit Read online

  He snaps on his sign and hopes to pick up a customer before driving home.

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  10

  A man is standing at the door. Before he opens it, Erhard spies him through the tiny peephole; he counts to thirty to see if he will leave. The man, whose name is Francisco Bernal, rubs his eyes behind his sunglasses, as if he’s tired or has dust in them. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three. But the man is still there, staring at the door as if it’ll be thrust open at any moment. A handsome young man in his late thirties, he has a couple of kids and a wife who works at one of the hotels. Erhard opens the door.

  The policeman looks at Erhard. – Hermit, he says.

  – Superintendent.

  – I’m not a superintendent.

  – And my name’s not Hermit.

  Bernal grins. – OK, Jørgensen. How are you?

  – Fine. You? The kids?

  – The youngest one just got over measles.

  Erhard nods. He’s known the vice police superintendent for a few years. – Your colleague called me yesterday, Erhard says.

  – We’d prefer you come to the station.

  – I couldn’t yesterday.

  – Then come with me now.

  – But you’re here now. I don’t understand what you guys need from me. I don’t know much. I only know what I’ve told you.

  The policeman removes his sunglasses. He looks tired. – I can drive you in and bring you back.

  – Sounds like fun, but no thanks.

  Bernal glances at Erhard’s car. – What happened to your side mirror?

  – That kind of thing happens when you drive a taxi.

  – Jørgensen, I was sent here to pick you up. Stop making it difficult for me.

  – Call me Señor Againsttherules.

  Bernal laughs. An honest laughter. That’s what Erhard likes about him. – Why didn’t you say who you were? On the telephone?

  – The connection was bad, Erhard says. – You know how it is out here.

  – As far as I can tell, it’s gotten much better with the new cables.

  Erhard hadn’t heard anything about new cables.

  – Why didn’t you call back? Bernal continues.

  – It was New Year’s Eve, and I was tired.

  – Were you tired when you discovered the body, too?

  – Yes. Erhard thinks about the words which escaped from Bill Haji’s eyes, but he can no longer recall them. It’s not the kind of information that adds to one’s credibility.

  – When was the last time you saw a doctor?

  – Give it a rest, Erhard says, getting out his driver’s licence. Taxi drivers have to carry it on their person at all times, but he’s never shown it to anyone but Bernal, who checks it every time.

  Bernal looks at the date. October 2011. – You have no trouble seeing at night?

  – Of course not.

  – It happens sometimes. At your age.

  – That’s called harassment. Two other drivers are older than I am.

  – Actually, that’s not the case. Alberto Ramirez is sixty-eight, Luís Hernaldo Esposito is sixty-six.

  – Impressive, young man. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a good driver.

  – I’m aware of that, but you’re also so obstinate that I could have you arrested. All at once his face takes on a strangely serious expression. – Hermit, I have to ask you something.

  He can’t escape that name. A few years ago it bothered him, and he tried getting people to call him Jørgensen. But it didn’t last. There’s nothing more durable than a misunderstood nickname. – Let’s hear it, he says.

  – There’s something about… about Bill Haji that we’d like to know. Bernal looks around.

  – Easy now. There’s no one here but us. And the goats.

  – I asked Pérez-Lúñigo to wait in the car.

  Erhard gazes at the police car, and only now does he notice the dark shadow sitting in the passenger’s seat and grasping the handle on the car’s ceiling. Lorenzo Pérez-Lúñigo is a doctor, a very average one at that, but he’s also the island’s only medical examiner. He’s not particularly good at his job, he’s just pompous and abnormally interested in corpses. An awful person. Erhard almost reported him to the police a few years back for abusing a corpse, but Bernal talked him out of it.

  – What happens in a taxi stays with the cabbie, as the saying goes.

  Bernal snorts. – Can we at least go inside?

  Erhard enters the living room, which is also the kitchen. He leans against the kitchen table and gestures for the vice police superintendent to do the same.

  – You still don’t have running water, Bernal says, looking at an empty bottle of cognac on the table.

  – Water is for turtles.

  – You live like a turtle, too. I’m getting a little concerned.

  – No need. I’ve done far worse.

  Bernal shrugs. – On the telephone you said that the dogs had bitten his face.

  – I said they’d eaten his face.

  – And they sat on top of the car? The dogs. And they were biting him?

  – Eating him. Yes, that’s what I saw.

  – And you’re sure of that? It was his face?

  – I saw his sideburns, I saw his hair. I saw his eyes.

  – Is it possible that you were tired?

  – I know what I saw.

  – Could it have been his back?

  – If he had eyes on his back.

  The superintendent smiles. – We can’t find his ring. It’s a very unique ring that’s worth nothing if one tried to sell it.

  – Who knows what those animals might have eaten?

  – We’ve shot everything that runs around on four legs out there. We’ve even shot a few dogs that weren’t feral. And Lorenzo has been wallowing in dog guts up to his elbows. No ring.

  – Then he’s in his element. But maybe they didn’t swallow it. Maybe it’s lying around somewhere. Who knows where dogs like that hide?

  – We would’ve found it then. We’ve searched the entire area. The problem is that everything that’s been inside the dogs for more than three or four hours is so dissolved we can’t tell what it is. Not the ring – we ought to be able to find that. And if the face was the last thing the dogs, um, ate, then we ought to have found it.

  – When did you get there?

  – We got there as fast as we could. The policeman glances down at the laminate floor, which is torn and fixed with duct tape. – They’re calling it a single-vehicle accident. He says it several times, as if it suddenly amazes him.

  Erhard is relieved, but afraid to show this relief to Bernal. He turns and arranges some random object on the kitchen table. – How long did it take? he says.

  – The man was already dead, of course. Like you said, it was New Year’s Eve.

  – So what’s the problem?

  – His family’s breathing down our necks. Love makes people unreasonable. They want something to put in the coffin. Not just rocks from Alejandro’s Trail. And the ring, the sister’s very focused on that.

  – Don’t try to mess with them. Especially Eleanor. Nothing good will come of that. He remembers the sister as she appears in a rearview mirror. She’s twice the man Bill Haji was.

  – That’s why we’re busting our asses here. A ring like that is pretty much, you know, his personality. I’d like to give the ring to his sister and tell her that he’s in the coffin. Not just what’s left of his shoes or his liver, which for some reason those devils never touched.

  Erhard doesn’t dare glance over at the shelf where the finger is lying inside a tin of Mokarabia 100 per cent Arabica coffee. – I can’t help you.

  Bernal peers around as if he wants to say more. His eyes rest for some time on the section of wall where the wallpaper is missing. The bare wood is visible there. Pale plywood marked by the carpenter’s scribbled notes. Erhard follows him to his car. Pérez-Lúñigo seems impatient.

  – If you hear that some
one has found the ring, I’d like to know.

  – OK, Erhard says. If he hears that someone has found the ring, he’ll call immediately.

  – Did I tell you that I knew a girl from Denmark once? Back when I lived in Lanzarote. She was a wild little one, impossible to tame. He climbs into the car but keeps the door open. – She went home suddenly. That’s the problem with these islands. All the sensible people go home at some point.

  – Don’t know her, Erhard says.

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  11

  He talks to the Boy-Man.

  Aaz is probably the only one he’s unable to read. Aaz may be the first person he’s known who is no one and everyone at the same time. Erhard likes that about him. They drive through Tindaya.

  Aaz says he should give it a chance. He says: You deserve it, it’ll happen someday.

  But Erhard isn’t sure. – It’s been eighteen years since the last time, Aaz. Fewer tourists are coming here. And many of them are passionate Arsenal fans who’re lookin’ for cheap beer and even cheaper pussy, to put it bluntly, Aaz. And the families, the families with their lazy kids who scream for McDonald’s as soon as they’re off the plane. It’s getting longer and longer between good customers, even for me. And even longer between agreeable women.

  May I recommend Liana or a couple other sisters?

  – That’s very kind of you, Aaz. Those girls aren’t really my type, or I’m not theirs. If I’m lucky, I’ll find an old, used-up, angry widow from Gornjal. The town with all the widows.

  They laugh.

  – Nah, who wants a rundown cab driver, Erhard says. – A labourer with a handicap and bad teeth and all that.

  You also tune pianos.

  – It’s just a matter of time before only idiots pay for that kind of service. Pardon me, but it can all be done with modern methods, easier, better, and cheaper. For all I know the same might apply to taxis in a few years. You’ll have robots driving you around.

  What about you? What will you do? Who will drive me home?

  – By that point I’ll be dead, Aaz. By that point you’ll be a grown man and will have forgotten all about me. By that point there will be a tunnel to Africa and you’ll be able to drive to the Sahara and ride on electric camels.

  Aaz doesn’t reply, just stares at the glove compartment’s latch, which can be opened with a press of the thumb.

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  12

  Grown men with kites.

  He turns his sign off and parks out by the Dunes and watches the kite surfers. He decides how much work he wants to do and when he wants to do it. If he wants to work all day, he can. Or if he feels like taking tomorrow off. He just goes to where he’ll find customers, then drives them. That’s how it feels anyway. It’s not difficult; it doesn’t require much from him. He just knows where the customers are. It’s the same with the piano. Once he hears a few notes, he knows what he needs to work on, whether something is stuck, or whether it’s the result of moisture or simply some dust or lint. In the same way, he can see the traffic or kind of feel in the air or hear the sounds from the airport or sense the busyness on the main road. And he knows where a woman is waiting with her teenage daughter on her way back to the hotel after a shopping trip, or where a group of businessmen will soon march a few feet into the road and whistle at him so they can head to the nearest strip bar, or when a surfer with sand between his toes wants to use his dollars to get to the city, his board strapped to the roof. Many of his colleagues hate him for this ability, while some are awed by him. A couple of the Catholics make the sign of the cross when he comes to the auto workshop. Dispatch rarely gives him jobs, because they know he already has plenty of customers. Once in a while there’s a young driver who wants to know how he does it. Maybe he sees Erhard sitting at the Hotel Phenix bar, and the young man approaches him wanting to know everything, while his comrades stand there calling out in the background. C’mon now, this guy’s a legend, he shouts back at them, he’s going to tell me all his secrets. But Erhard doesn’t tell him his secrets, it’s not something he can explain. All he can say is, Keep your eye on the traffic, think about the people. Where would you want to go if the weather was so and so? Is it a heavy-travel day? And so on. Good advice, but no doubt unusable. The truth, of course, is that he doesn’t even know himself how he does it. It’s like music, he tries to tell the young drivers, who usually don’t know anything about music.

  The younger drivers want to learn, but the middle-aged drivers are bitter. They’ll never do anything but drive taxis, and they’ll never live well doing so. They see Erhard as a parasite, an extranjero, who not only takes their customers, but also acts as if he’s better than them. He lives alone out in Majanicho, he doesn’t talk to the other drivers, and he just sits in his old Mercedes reading books if he’s not out stealing the only customers of the day. That’s what they think, and some of them even tell him that. And they’re right too. Also about the books. In the beginning, reading was something he did to relax and to show the other drivers that he wasn’t busy finding new customers. He started driving past potential rides and parking at the back of the queue, doing everything he could to remain there all day with a good book.

  In the boot he keeps a box stuffed with paperbacks, which he rummages through and selects from. He likes looking at the covers and touching the raised letters the titles are printed with. Or he riffles through a book and inspects it to see how many dog-ears it has. If there are many, it’s good. He buys books, sometimes by the boxful, from a friend in Puerto. She owns a secondhand shop. A few times each month, if he’s been out to the airport, he drives past Solilla’s and purchases books and maybe some clothes. There’s nothing wrong with the books. The clothes smell a little; he washes them before he wears them. Hangs them on the line behind the house and leaves them for a week. Then the smell goes away, and is replaced by the scent of the island’s piquant soil. He can stay there all day reading. There should be something left for the others. They all have children and wives, they have to provide for others, and they don’t have the luxury of sitting around reading. He doesn’t have the same issue. The more he earns, the more he sends to Annette. Every month he transfers most of his salary to her account. Not with a friendly message, but electronically and soullessly. He doesn’t deserve anything else, and he doesn’t need anything special. He can live on coffee and tinned food that he bought many years ago and which he warms up and eats directly from the tin. It doesn’t bother him. Sometimes he goes to the island’s finest restaurants and takes a long time choosing expensive wine and cutting a good cigar. That doesn’t bother him, either. During the summer he sits in his car and reads with the window open, and during the winter he keeps a reclining chair that he arranges on the sidewalk beside the car. The other drivers, sweating inside their vehicles, hate this.

  When one drives through the Dunes and slowly past the quiet hotels with their gardeners and their eager water hoses, one can see the kites out over the water. Back and forth like birds hunting. He parks the car on the road and crosses the sandbanks to the water. Out here the sun is fierce. It feels that way, anyway. The beach stretches endlessly, the sea like a giant air balloon that’s suddenly lying at the end of the beige dune. There are no families walking on the beach today. The wind is too strong; the sand is drifting and stinging.

  Next to a container filled with surfing equipment, there’s a little shop on a couple of pallets. It offers ice cream, music, and shelter from the wind and sun. Erhard drinks a San Miguel while watching the figures being dragged around by ropes. Grown men with kites. Sometimes they’re perfectly exposed to the wind, other times it’s exactly the opposite. Frustratingly, he hears every sound emerging from the little shop. Every cough or scrape of the coffee machine. The sound of possibility. The woman in the shop is probably around twenty years younger than him, but worn down. She’s The Monk, the diligent, silent, labouring, and all-too-affectionate type. The divorced mother of four who had to get a job after her husband bolted. As a potent
ial lover, on the one hand, she’s experienced and highly service-minded; but on the other hand, she’s scary. She stoops forward to watch the kites through the small window.

  – Is that one of your sons out there? he guesses.

  She looks at him, surprised. – Do you know my Robbi?

  – I know most everyone a little, he says.

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  13

  At 4 p.m. he drives out to the Oleana Cemetery and parks on the opposite side of the road. He watches them walking up the street, a small procession with many flowers. Typically, the wealthiest families like to bear their dead as far as possible, while the poor spend great sums of money on expensive hearses. The Haji family balances the coffin through the cemetery gate and down one of the paths. It doesn’t look easy. Maybe they put a few rocks in the coffin after all. Eleanor’s at the back of the throng, flanked on one side by a tall young woman whose hair is falling in her eyes and, on the other, by an elderly woman – probably an aunt. The policeman is across the street; he’s wearing a nice set of clothes but seems even more tired than the last time Erhard saw him. He nods at Erhard and merges into the procession.

  – It’s God’s punishment, he hears a woman say. She’s sitting on a balcony a few storeys above him. – The island’s too small for a poof like that.

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  14

  At night he lies in bed with one eye open, staring at the boxlike telephone and its knotted-up cord. In that stage right before sleep, he imagines himself standing and lifting the receiver. In the morning he eyes the telephone while eating his breakfast, and again he imagines it ringing. He considers placing the call himself. It’s now been eighteen years. But he can’t do it and he hustles to his car.