The Hermit (12 page)

– Not even if they break the law?

– We don’t have those kind of guests.

– What about the five or six who passed through a few minutes ago?

– Is there a problem, Señor Jørgensen? Did they forget to pay their fare?

Erhard looks at Miguel. – Yes, you could say that.

– How much do they owe you? Shall I put it on their bill?

– I’ll take care of it. I’m sure it’s just a mistake. What room are they in?

Miguel gives Erhard an uptight look. – Only because it’s you.

– You know who I mean? Three young men and two, what can I call them? Women.

– I saw only two young men. They booked the rooms earlier today. Were they accompanied by females?

Miguel doesn’t gesture or bat an eye or anything that might suggest he understands that female accompaniment means prostitutes. Erhard doesn’t need to embarrass him.

– It’ll only take a moment, Erhard says.

– Rooms 221 and 223. Right below the room you had last time you stayed with us.

– Thank you, Miguel. I’ll be right back.

Erhard walks around the corner and takes the lift. He’s too tired for the stairs.

He hears them already in the corridor. The boy sounds like a hoover, Alina like bagpipes being kicked, but there’s no doubt about it: it’s her. The sound increases in volume until he’s standing at the door of room 221. Erhard doesn’t want to run into the other band members, but he knows that at least one of them is busy with the little girl who looks like Birte Tove. It’s possible they’re both with her. No sounds emerge from 223. Maybe they’re all asleep, wasted and high, in a heap.

He raps on the door three times. A not-too-insistent number.

– Go away, he hears the lead singer say.

– Champagne, señor.

– Go away.

– From the record producer who was sat at the bar, señor, Erhard says, hoping the message is interesting enough.

He hears Alina make a noise, then footsteps.

At the moment the lead singer opens the door, Erhard leans all his weight against it, so the skinny lad is plunked in the face at full force and stumbles backwards while reaching for something to hold onto. He doesn’t find anything, and so he falls against a chair and a small table, knocking over a picture frame that smashes against the floor. Erhard follows him quickly into the room.

Alina’s lying in the centre of the bed, her legs spread, and her arms outstretched towards the headboard, so Erhard has a clear line of sight to her shaven, almost light-brown crotch, a narrow strip of belly, and her beak-shaped breasts. When she recognizes Erhard, she doesn’t ball herself up as he expects she would, but puts her arms calmly behind her head and crosses her legs.

The singer tries getting to his feet, but Erhard pushes him against the wall, then the bed. His nose spills blood into his mouth. He’s unable to speak. There’s an open bottle of whisky on the nightstand. Erhard looks at the label; it’s Jack Daniels, but it’s not the usual square bottle. Maybe it’s a knock-off. The boy sits with his hand pressed to his nose. Erhard takes a swig before pouring some on the boy’s face; he writhes in pain but doesn’t make a peep. Erhard can’t decide whether he’s a man or an idiot.

– What the hell are you doing here, Fourfingers?

Erhard stands quietly, waiting for the boy to glance up at him with his bloodshot eyes. – Get your things and leave. Stay away from her. You and your friends, stay far away from her.

– What did I do? I thought… we talked at the bar, the boy says.

– She’s the biggest fraud on the island. Once again Alina doesn’t react. Erhard expected her to say something, but she’s silent, waiting, which makes him nervous.

– What are you talking about? the boy asks.

– Get out of here, now. Now. Erhard considers lifting the bottle to show that he means it, but the boy quickly gathers his things off the floor and leaves the room. A sad sight with his hairy, scrawny buttocks. His back is spotted with acne.

– What are you up to? Alina has an obnoxious smile on her lips, as if she’s enjoying all this, as if she’s the popular harlot in some John Wayne film. – Is it because you want me all to yourself, you old pig?

– I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last woman on the island, you fraud. He wishes he’d said something harsher, something harder-hitting to knock the smile from her lips. But she’s unaffected.

– Sure you would. She grins.

He wants to smash the bottle against her forehead and slam the broken bottle into her childless belly. He wants to destroy her. He suddenly hates her face, her tiny curls, her upward-pointing nipples that she doesn’t try to conceal, and her self-assured smile with its twist of grief – a smile Erhard all at once understands cannot be wiped off with violence, humiliation, or hatred. Powerless, he stares at her. He sees the Alina from the village, when she was a teenager, seated in the bus or in the back row at school. A cross-eyed girl in a flowery dress. He envisions her as a little girl kicking stones down the road and chasing some big dog’s tail.

– How did you get this way? he asks. The question surprises her. Still smiling, her eyes dart uncertainly. Erhard goes on: – How did you become so indifferent to others? To everything?

– I’m not going to let you ruin my business, she says, and begins to crawl out of bed.

– Stay right there, Erhard says sharply.

She pauses and, for the first time, covers herself with her hands and the bed sheets. – What do you want from me?

– I want you to sit there like the dumb girl you are. Like the sad sack who wishes to make money off a little boy’s death.

– What does it matter to you? It has nothing to do with you.

– You can’t abandon a child and get away scot-free.

– Listen to me, I didn’t abandon anything. I’ve just…

– I know what you’ve done.

– Oh yeah, and what are you going to do to me? Report me to the police?

Again this irritating resolve. As though playing the role of child killer amuses her.

But she’s right. He doesn’t know what he’ll do. He thought he could somehow bring her to her senses, but now that he’s failed, he doesn’t know what to do.

– Whatever the police gave you, I’ll double it. It’s a shot in the dark, and he hadn’t anticipated suggesting it. He hopes that the prostitute out in Guisguey had heard wrong, and that it’s less than a thousand euros, so he can afford to pay her around two thousand.

– The police didn’t give me anything, she says tiredly.

– You continue to lie.

It amazes him. Why does lying come as easily as drawing breath for some people, while others have such a difficult time of it that they’d rather travel far away? That they’d rather sacrifice everything than lie?

– I’m not lying. I’m not getting one cent from the police.

– But…

– It’s not the police.

– What are you talking about?

He recalls Bernal telling him that it was all about having the right enticements. He’d meant money. Erhard was sure of that.

– It’s someone else. I don’t know who. The police told me a million times that it wasn’t them, it was this
majorero
. Someone who wanted the problem dealt with as fast as possible. Stop looking at me like that. I’m telling the truth. That’s what they said.

– So how much? Erhard knows the sum is probably ten times greater than 1,000 euros.

– Five thousand a week for every week I spend in jail. And a plane ticket to Madrid if it gets too difficult for me here on the island.

He looks at her. While she was talking, she forgot to cover her breasts, and now she’s eating some multi-coloured marshmallows that she’d found in her purse, talking to Erhard as if they were a couple of friends at a bar. He thinks of who she reminds him of. At first he thought it was Beatriz; she has the same kind of hair, just shorter, and the same colour skin and body shape, though Alina is a little chubbier. But it’s not Beatriz – it’s the singer Kim Wilde. An uglier, shabbier version of Kim Wilde after ten years as a whore. Kim Wilde as the plump girl with a taste for disgusting sweets, drugs, and mojitos.

He takes a long pull from the bottle. – I’ll buy you a plane ticket. Maybe give you 1,000 euros.

She scrutinizes Erhard. – Are you stupid?

– That’s all I have.

Honesty. He’s not sure it impresses her.

– Listen, even if I wanted…

– Tell them you don’t want to lie in court. Tell them you’ve changed your mind.

– What good would that do? It wouldn’t help one iota. They’ll just find someone else. Someone who’ll take my money and a drink at Plaza Mayor.

– Maybe. But they can’t keep it up.

– So you’ll go to the next girl and the girl after that? You don’t have enough money for that.

Erhard is annoyed that it has suddenly become a question of money. But she’s right. He doesn’t have the money. He barely has enough to give her a thousand. If she actually agrees, and he has to throw a plane ticket in to boot, he doesn’t know where he’s going to find the money. Not right away, in any case.

– If you really want to bring all this to light, why don’t you go to
La Provincia
?

That’s the largest newspaper on the island, and Erhard has considered it.

– Because it’s a case for the police, not the newspapers. Something terrible happened to that boy. It was a crime. I know it was.

– Did they choke him?

Alina becomes alert. She snatches the bottle from Erhard, drinks.

He can tell by her expression that she hasn’t seen the images or heard very much about the boy and how he died. More’s the pity that she’s willing to accept the blame. – No, they starved him to death. The assholes.

– I can’t back out of it, she says.

– What did they tell you?

– It’s a
majorero
. He’s someone important.

– Did they threaten you?

– No.

– Is he from Los Tres Papas?

– I don’t really know. Maybe.

– You haven’t accepted the money yet, have you?

She glances around the room. Maybe she’s looking for her clothes. Erhard doesn’t see her clothes – the black dress or the gold blouse – anywhere.

– You haven’t spent any of the money yet?

– I’ve spent everything that I got so far, she says, gathering up some fabric from the floor, a pair of skimpy knickers.

– How much? How much have you spent?

– Two thousand, maybe more.

He doesn’t understand. How does a girl like that spend so much money? – What the hell did you buy, a car?

– Chill out, you’re not my grandfather.

– If you’ve already spent the money… He can’t finish the sentence. It makes everything that much more complicated. If she has already accepted the money, the whole thing is at a different level now. She snaps her bra across her chest and spins it around, then lifts the straps over her shoulders. The bra makes her small breasts appear large and inviting. It’s an expensive bra. Even Erhard knows that. At least 100, maybe 200 euros. Her golden blouse would run a few hundred euros at the fancy shops in Corralejo, the same with her dress.

– Stop staring at me. I’m not as dumb as you think, she says, before heading to the loo. She switches on the vent fan and it begins to whir.

– You have to pay the money back. You have to…

– What are you thinking? I’m not paying the money back. It’s my money, it was given to me.

The sensitivity Erhard noticed a moment ago is once again gone. The businesswoman has awakened. The police picked the right whore. Naive, but not without intelligence. Someone to be dominated, but not manipulated. Ambitious, but not desperate. Though it’s not exactly a mystery how the daughter of olive farmers wound up as a prostitute, there’s surely more to it than bad grades in school and a rejected job application at the local supermarket. Only a parent can destroy a person this badly. Only an evil parent can make a person so cold, so indifferent, that one will sell oneself in bite-sized chunks garnished with one’s soul.

– If I… If I pay you the money that you then pay back, he says. – I can get a few thousand tomorrow morning. When do you go to court? Friday?

– Don’t bother. It won’t happen. You don’t have the money.

– I’m telling you that I’ll pay back what you’ve spent. Then we just need to figure out…

– It’s a lot more, she says. Dressed now, she looks different, adult. – Closer to four thousand.

Erhard feels the energy draining from him. All the whisky and other alcohol he’d consumed that evening suddenly rises to his head, making him completely drowsy and sulky. You stupid little girl, he wants to say, but he can’t do it. Since it’s about money, Erhard can’t compete. – Forget it, he says, starting towards the door.

– What are you going to do? she calls after him.

– Find the boy’s real mother, he says. He walks out the door and into the hallway, passing the lead singer and one of the other band members, who’ve stood there listening. Erhard appears so belligerent that the two boys step back when they see him.

He’s too drunk to drive, but he does anyway. He ignores everything around him and drives irritated, dirt and stones plinking against the undercarriage, until he gets home. He doesn’t make it inside, just sinks into his seat and falls asleep before the engine stops ticking.

25

Sleep. All too uncomplicated. An area untouched by worry.

What’s the opposite of sleep? Wakefulness?

Wakefulness – all too complicated. Completely tangled up in irritation and bitter thoughts. He can think of nothing else. Other than the whore and her expensive bra and the boy in the box and the police’s wall of files.

He waddles about, unable to sit in one place; his breakfast tastes like cardboard, the air is dusty, and his coffee is lukewarm. Looking at his books, he thinks about Solilla and her secondhand shop where he buys them.

Solilla’s around sixty years old, a frail woman who seems too confused and too busy to eat. Her laughter is fake and she organizes everything in her shop according to a system only she understands. Clothes are sorted by the length of the zipper, books according to size – and dog leashes, insect curtains, and pillows by their nickel content. Regardless where one is in the shop, even down in the basement, one hears her muttering to herself, complaining about the weight of a box, the appearance of a plant, the busyness of the shop, or a customer who tries on too many clothes without making a purchase. She doesn’t like those customers, but as long as one makes a purchase, as Erhard does, she’s both kind and knowledgeable; and as long as one makes a purchase, one is welcome to sit on the sofa outside the shop and talk to her. When it comes to literature, politics, and the history of the islands, she’s engaged and chatty. Once a journalist, she worked for many years at C2, the Canary Islands’ TV station.