The Hermit Read online

  – Dios mío, boy, you’re going to blow my house down.

  Raúl turns the doorknob, then holds up his hand as a shield against the rain to see Erhard. He laughs and embraces Erhard, wetting them both. – Come, he says, and tugs him to his car. – We’re going on a little excursion.

  Erhard has grown accustomed to this kind of thing from Raúl, so he just follows him. – Just a moment, he says. – I’m coming. He walks around the house and grabs the glass with the finger. He lays it on the top shelf between tins of food and cocoa. He studies the finger for a moment. Then, with a pair of tongs, he removes it from the glass and carefully places it inside a freezer bag before cinching the bag in a knot. It fits in the pocket of his Khaki shorts without sticking out. No one would be able to tell what it is.

  Beatriz crawls into the backseat, and Erhard’s nudged into the front seat. That’s how Raúl is. Beatriz hugs him from the backseat, and he can feel her curls against his neck. Either she always smells different or she never uses the same perfume. Tonight it’s vanilla and salt. Raúl backs the car all the way down to Alejandro’s Trail and spins around, spattering mud. The music is loud. It’s noise. Not really a song.

  – It was Bea’s idea, Raúl shouts.

  – I just said the lightning was beautiful.

  – And then you said Cotillo.

  – You can see them there.

  – That’s what I’m saying.

  – But why Cotillo? Erhard asks. The windscreen wipers whip back and forth at full speed. – Why not up here?

  – Nothing’s too good for my friends. We’re heading down to the breakers to feel the sizzle of the water. Raúl sounds as if he ordered the lightning himself.

  He doesn’t drive recklessly, but much faster than Erhard appreciates. All in all, Erhard has grown so used to driving that he doesn’t like being a passenger. He glances over his left shoulder each time they turn, and he reaches for the gear stick when they drive up a hill. The road glistens, and the landscape is utterly strange, as though slathered in black plastic. It’s the rain – it’s everywhere. It doesn’t go anywhere. The ground is too dry to absorb it.

  – You’d like to go down to the real beach, Raúl says to Beatriz. They splash through Cotillo, water spraying against the houses next to the road. It’s easy to sense Raúl’s joy. Beatriz likes it too, maybe she’s pissed, Erhard thinks. Maybe Raúl’s pissed, too. It’s possible.

  They leave the city behind, heading towards the car park and the flat terrain just before the slope down to the beach. The car park is filled with cars, not in orderly rows like in a drive-in theatre, but randomly chaotic. There are probably twenty or thirty of them, and even a couple of police vehicles. Behind the cars the sky is a grey canvas that lights up bright green every time the lightning strikes.

  – Here we are, Raúl shouts. He has opened his door and is standing in the rain, his jacket over his head.

  – Can’t we see it from in here? Beatriz asks.

  Raúl doesn’t hear her. He slams his door and runs around the car to open hers. She doesn’t repeat the question, but follows him when he offers his hand. Erhard climbs out too. He’s quickly soaked, but it doesn’t bother him.

  They run towards the slope. Almost as though they’re searching for the queue to that evening’s entertainment. It’s not there. Not on the slope in any case. They continue to the water, stumbling down the slope, Beatriz shrieking in excitement. Lightning cracks unremittingly across the sky. The sound is far away, almost buried by the rain. Each bolt forms a unique thread from the base to the top, or vice versa. And in the midst of everything, the sea foams and roars.

  Then they spot the throng standing near the beach. Dark silhouettes and a few people with torches or lamps draw attention to the scene. Messages are shouted, and some kind of machine whirls around and around.

  – What the hell? Raúl says. – What’s happened?

  – It’s probably some tourist group, Beatriz calls out.

  – Not in this rain, Raúl laughs.

  They start towards the crowd, which isn’t as dense as they’d first thought; it has formed a semi-circle around others. A blue light blinks and a man shouts, Get back, get back. But no one moves. The waves lash at their feet, and some of the people are standing up to their ankles in the foamy water.

  – There’s a car, Beatriz shouts. – What’s it doing here?

  ‌

  18

  A policeman is trying to stretch barricade tape around the car. It’s a black Volkswagen Passat. A few tall lamps light the vehicle, but the generator can’t keep up and the lamps alternately flicker off and on, then fall over in the soft sand.

  They pause amid the throng and try to find out what happened. It looks like a terrible parking job or a stolen, abandoned vehicle. Erhard has seen both kinds many times.

  – Let’s get away from here and watch the lightning, Beatriz suggests.

  – We can’t do that, Raúl says. – Something awful has happened.

  – That’s what I mean. We can’t stand here watching. Someone was hurt.

  A person in front of them says, – Someone drove over the edge and rolled into the sea.

  – How do you roll all the way down here? You’d have to want to, another says. – Is it a suicide?

  – Who was here first? a policeman tries. A few people raise their hands, but lower them when they see the others.

  – Who called us? I can’t recall who I spoke to earlier.

  A man steps forward. Their conversation is silenced by the rain. The man points up the slope. The policeman tries to write something down in a notebook, but there’s so much rain that he’s forced to give up. His pen doesn’t work, either.

  – It must’ve been stolen. There are no licence plates, someone says. An amateur surfer in a colourful wetsuit.

  – They keep looking at something in the backseat, says the other.

  – Step back, damn it, step back.

  Erhard recognizes the policeman. It’s Bernal. He’s soaked, his clothes practically glistening underneath an umbrella, and he’s shining a torch into the backseat and snapping photographs with a big camera.

  – Hassib, Bernal shouts. – I need some help here.

  No one comes to his aid. His voice, enveloped in noise, disappears. The other officers can’t hear him. One is busy trying to get the lamps to stand upright, another is talking to a paramedic with a bag tucked under his arm. A crane is backing into place on the clifftop, ready to hoist the vehicle up. In the meantime, rain continues to fall.

  – Can’t we go? I don’t feel too well, Beatriz whispers.

  – Come here. Raúl pulls her close to him.

  – Anyone from the media here? an officer asks.

  No one says a word.

  – Not yet, boss, the officer shouts at Bernal.

  Bernal photographs something on the backseat. They look like papers, newspaper cuttings. A colleague arrives and helps him spread the papers on the seat. They discuss them and shuffle them around as he snaps pictures. Lightning winks across the black sky, as if responding to the camera’s flash.

  An acrid stench emerges from the car in gusts. At first Erhard thinks it’s coming from the bag. From the finger. He feels for it in his pocket, wondering whether the knot’s come undone. Maybe running down the slope punctured the plastic. The Lumumba has been flushed out of him. But the bag is right where he put it. At the same time, the smell from the car is more hostile and insistent. Like something that should have been stored away long ago.

  – It must be an accident. Did it just happen? Raúl asks the amateur surfer.

  – I think the car’s been here for a day. Then someone realized that it wasn’t locked, he says.

  The man who’d just spoken to the officer interjects. – I could tell there was something inside the box on the backseat. Something was sticking up.

  – What was sticking up? says the amateur surfer’s friend, who is the only one wearing a rain jacket.

  – It lo
oked like… He doesn’t say anything more.

  The vice police superintendent walks past them, an irritated expression on his face. For a moment Bernal and Erhard look at each other. Bernal stops abruptly and returns. Raúl takes a step back. Clearly he’s not interested in speaking to a policeman.

  – Hermit, Bernal says. – Do you have a nose for drama, or what?

  Erhard doesn’t know what to say. He wants to tell him that he wasn’t seeking out another accident.

  – What’s happened here? the surfer asks.

  Bernal doesn’t respond. – I want names of everyone who saw anything. If you’re just here for the show and curious, then you need to leave this place, he says, staring at Erhard.

  – We came to watch the lightning, Beatriz says.

  Bernal just looks at her. – Then watch the lightning, Señorita. He walks up the slope, vanishing within the rain, which has become a kind of dense, black cloud.

  – Can we go now? Beatriz whispers.

  Raúl stares at the vehicle for a long time. – Of course, my angel.

  The water has already retreated a few yards, the waves lashing like savage animals.

  – You owe me a Lumumba, Erhard says to Raúl while watching Beatriz, whose dress is so drenched that it clings to her.

  ‌

  19

  Once upon a time, the Boy-Man took the bus each Wednesday. It took him most of the morning to get to Tuineje, and most of the afternoon to get back to the Santa Marisa Home. A few times, he’d gotten off too early, in some tiny village, and had to be picked up by the police after he started running up and down the street hitting himself in the head. He’s at least 6’7, maybe 6’9, but his face resembles that of a 7-year-old boy, so do his gangly limbs and clothes. His eyes dart around restlessly. As though he’s trying to understand the world by reading it as a code or musical notes. In the taxi, he loves to lay his forehead against the window and watch the landscape. To follow the uninterrupted line.

  Every Wednesday at 10.15 a.m., including today, he stands on the pavement in front of the broad gate, waiting, his backpack all the way up to his shoulders. Aaz hasn’t uttered a word in fourteen years. One day he simply stopped speaking. He can speak, but as Mónica has explained, he doesn’t. During the first few Wednesdays, Erhard hoped that he would say something. Each time they spent more than two hours together – one hour out and one hour back. Erhard had hoped such proximity would open up the Boy-Man. That he would show Erhard trust. It became a game, a challenge, to get the boy to say something. Erhard could make him smile, he could make him turn his head. Nevertheless, Erhard was defeated every Wednesday. Finally, Erhard grew so irritated that he asked Mónica to find a new driver. He could no longer take it. The problem was that none of the other drivers wished to drive the Boy-Man. Aaz would have to take the bus again.

  Mónica offered to pay Erhard double to continue. You don’t need to like him. Just pretend, she’d said. Erhard gave it half a year. He didn’t want her money.

  And then something happened.

  Erhard heard Aaz speak.

  They arrive at their destination. He follows Aaz inside. Mónica clutches the boy’s large hand. They sit at the piano. It’s one of the things they have in common. Aaz loves music. Erhard watches them cuddle like birds. Every other month, though not today, he tunes the piano. Today he just glances around.

  It’s not an unhappy home like his own, even though Mónica is the same age and, like him, alone. There are fresh flowers, a fish tank, and ladies’ magazines in a rack beside the sofa, a small chest of drawers with madonnas, and an entire wall of framed portraits showing a little girl in black-and-white ballerina skirts, men in military uniforms out near Calderon Hondo, and two young women on a Vespa in front of an office building. Probably twenty photographs in all. All of them black and white, beautiful, sad. A life passed by. There’s not a single image of her son. Erhard looks around. Not even on the shelf above the TV, or on the chest of drawers beside the madonnas. She conceals the most important parts of her life, just as he does, so she doesn’t have to move forward. Mónica is cool and regal, but not snooty; she’s simply elegant with what she has. The little spoon in the sugar bowl and the flowers that match the curtains.

  ‌

  20

  – What do you want? he says, without lifting his eyes from his book on the table or laying his cup down on the saucer. It’s Friday morning, and the three men in shirts are watching Erhard drink his coffee. One is vice police superintendent Bernal.

  Bernal slips a sheet of paper on top of Erhard’s book. It’s a newspaper cutting and impossible to tell its origins; not many of the words are legible, the ink is smudged and the paper worn. Still, Erhard spots the words ‘pengepungen’ and ‘bankpakke’. Strange words that he doesn’t instantly recognize.

  – What does it say? Bernal asks. – Is that Danish?

  – I think so. He would need the rest of the article, which is missing, to understand it, but it appears to be Danish. – Where’s it from? he asks, fearing for some reason that it has something to do with Raúl.

  – That’s not something you need to concern yourself with, says Bernal’s colleague, a small man with narrow eyes and an unkempt moustache. He glances around the cafe, where there is only one other person, a dishevelled young man with combed-back hair and screwed-up eyes who seems to have partied all night.

  – We need someone who understands Danish.

  – So find a tourist guide. There are plenty of those.

  – Not as many as there once were. Come on, Jørgensen.

  – Tell me what this is all about, then I might help out.

  – You owe me a favour after the last time. I could’ve hauled you off to the station.

  – Tell me what this is about, Erhard says, noticing that Bernal suddenly seems more tired-looking. Maybe he’s not sleeping enough, maybe he drinks, maybe his kid still has measles.

  – Forget him, Bernal, the little man says. He’s the resolute type who’d rather arm-wrestle than offer a hand. – The foreigner can’t help us. He has too many bad memories, he adds, swiftly downing his espresso, eager to go.

  Apparently Bernal had told him about Erhard before they arrived at the cafe. About the case with Federico Molino, whose suitcase was found out near Lajares. With his passport and socks and hair wax and tube of lubricant, which the police so smoothly managed to include in court. They ought to have been happy for Erhard’s testimony. But they always seemed to think he knew more than he was telling them. A few officers were bitter. Bernal was the only one who understood that Erhard cultivated his relations to others on the island. He told the truth, but he didn’t tell everything. He didn’t name Raúl Palabras or the former regional president, Emeraldo or Suárez. It’s been more than eight years now. – No thanks, unless you want to arrest me, Erhard says.

  Bernal looks at him as if he hopes he’ll change his mind. – Say hello to young Palabras, he says.

  The two men leave.

  The cafe owner is standing stiffly behind the bar, observing them in the wall mirror. He probably doesn’t have a licence to sell beer. Many of the city’s cafes don’t. Then he glances up and calls out to the young man at the back of the cafe. – Goddamn it, Pesce, don’t put your greasy hair on my table. Go home and get to bed.

  When Erhard walks to his car – parked at the end of the queue on High Street – he sees the officers standing on the corner near Paseo Atlántico. He climbs in his car and continues reading Stendahl’s The Red and the Black. It’s an unwieldy book, strangely incoherent.

  He checks the mirrors. No one’s around. He pulls the bag from his pocket, removes the finger, and tries prying off the ring. But it doesn’t budge. The finger is like a stick marinated in oil; he puts it in the empty slot next to his own ring finger. It’s too big, and it’s the wrong hand, but it resembles a little finger. The hand looks like a hand again. With a finger where it’s supposed to be. He packs it away again. Deep down in his pocket.

  H
e spots the officers saying their goodbyes to one another. Then Bernal saunters over to his taxi. He climbs in.

  – Puerto, he says.

  Erhard looks at him. – And since we’re heading that way anyway, you’ll ask me to come to the station?

  – Maybe, Bernal says.

  – It’s not my turn. You see the queue ahead of me?

  – Just drive.

  Erhard exits the queue, and one of the drivers from Taxinaria shouts at him. Luís. He’s always shouting. Big mouth with no teeth. They drive up the high street, across the city, and out onto FV-1. Neither says a word.

  – Does this have anything to do with Bill Haji? Erhard asks. – I’ve told you everything I know.

  The policeman grins. – That case is closed. It’s history. His sister wasn’t happy, to put it mildly.

  – And it doesn’t have anything to do with the Palabras family?

  – Not at all. One of Bernal’s boots, crossed over his knee, bounces to the music emerging from an old John Coltrane tape that Erhard’s had for more than twenty years. – You were out at Cotillo yourself recently. Haven’t you heard the news?

  Erhard hasn’t read the newspaper for several days. He shakes his head.

  – Don’t you do anything besides read? Haven’t you listened to the news on the radio?

  – Not really.

  – The short, and true, story is that the car was abandoned out near Cotillo. We don’t know why. It ought to have been in Lisbon, but oops, it’s here now. Someone stole it, then shipped it here. We don’t know who drove it. Since it was standing in water above the bonnet, the motor is dead now of course. The only interesting lead is a newspaper ripped into tatters.