The Hermit (40 page)

The man studies Erhard as if trying to figure out why Erhard wants to know. – You mean dead people? Like that rich guy’s kid they was lookin’ for las’ week?

Erhard flinches when he realizes what the man means. – No, I wasn’t talking about him. But did you see him or find anything?

– Nope. I told the police that very thing when they ast’d. We’ve not seen a thing. Trust me, we don’t want dead people or whatnot in our nets. Bad for bus’ness, it is.

– What about other things? Like houses? Things from last year’s tsunami? Cars?

– We’ve seen the oddest things, haven’t we? The other men grumble at this. – But nothing we write down or remember. The sea has lotsa secrets and we learn lotsa stuff all the time, but when we’re out there, we’re fishermen, not shipwreck-hunters.

– But many things float, right? Not just boats, rafts, and pieces of wood?

Polo shrugs. – Sure.

– Take a car, for example, that somehow ended up in the water. Can’t it float a few miles or sea miles or whatever…?

Polo laughs. He seems to know that this was Erhard’s question the entire time.

– But it’s possible, right? Erhard says.

– Never seen it. Nope, never seen it.

Erhard glances around at the others, to see if one is itching to tell him something different.

Polo says, – My uncle, who fish’d down near Morro many years ’go, collided with a lorry that lay right below the surface of the water. Twas impossible to see, my uncle said. Wasn’t many who believed him, but he could get real ornery if you told him you didn’t. He said he could remember the Transo Viajes logo because it was vis’ble jus’ above the water. When he rammed the lorry, it sank and my uncle had to repair his boat. It was a ’spensive fix. The insurance wouldn’ cover it. They didn’t believe ’im. The other men on Polo’s boat laugh at the story, which they’ve probably heard many times. Polo eyes Erhard. – So maybe cars float. Who knows?

Erhard watches them work their tote boxes a little while longer, arranging them on a handcart so that they’re ready to roll towards the car park. He nods a thank you to Polo and starts back towards the harbour. On the opposite side of the basin, Polo calls after him.

– Let me know if you discover anything. My uncle’s dead, but it’ll give the fam’ly a little piece a mind to know he’d been telling the truth back when.

Polo makes a sign of the cross. Erhard understands what that means.

The fishermen’s scepticism causes Erhard to believe he’s right. Walking along the harbour, staring at his feet, he fears it may just be his old reckless rebelliousness, which doesn’t like to be corrected, and certainly not by authority figures. If they tell him the car can’t have washed ashore, then he’s all the more certain that the car washed ashore – and didn’t roll down the cliff. He walks all the way out to the Hotel Olympus, the foundering construction project that echoes with drunkards and dogs. When one stands on the plateau which was to hold a lavish swimming pool, one can see across the city and the white line of houses, interrupted only by the fishing museum’s green facade with its gigantic octopus spinning round in the sunlight.

On the way home he buys some bread and some thinly sliced ham at HiperDino. He sets the table. He brings out a bottle of red wine, Raúl’s, then puts it back again. It’s probably ridiculously expensive. He doesn’t even know if Mónica likes wine.

He changes Beatriz’s clothes. She has two jogging suits that he switches between. The first time it was bizarre, and kind of thrilling, but now it’s like changing an overgrown, sleeping baby. Difficult. There’s the hint of a wound where the respirator covers the mouth, so he removes the respirator when he’s in the bedroom and her breathing seems calm, normal. He turns off the device and wraps the mouthpiece and the cord in a knot and hangs it on the rack. Michel had suggested that she could survive a day or two without the respirator. He leaves one light on, but locks the door on his way out.

Then he showers and gets dressed, though he leaves his shirt off to shave. With his electric razor set on the closest shave, it hums and stutters, and soon his skin is blue-white and smooth – as smooth as it can get anyway with his wrinkled cheeks and strangely baggy jowls. He doesn’t like his face clean-shaven, actually, doesn’t like
himself
that way, but he’s certain that Mónica prefers him shaved. He resembles what he is: an old man with tired eyes.

He leaves to pick them up. At first, he feels like picking up Aaz before Mónica. Both for conversation’s sake and because he thinks the atmosphere might be a little awkward if it’s only him and Mónica in the car. She’s not just any old customer. But right before he makes the turn onto the road leading around the mountain and up to the Santa Marisa Home, he changes his mind and heads towards Tuineje.

At her house, he honks once. She comes running and hops in the car as if it’s raining. She shakes her hair and sets her purse between her legs, and he notices her dress and high heels. She’s wearing tights, too, which you don’t see very often on the island due to the heat and the sand. Mónica is different, he knows, but sometimes she seems stranger in her surroundings than he does.

She seems surprised that Aaz isn’t in the car.

– So he doesn’t have to drive all the way out here, he says, though they both know that Aaz loves the drive. The farther the better.

They drive through Antigua past the glass factory with its two characteristic chimneys. He’s given many people rides, but driving her in a car without a taximeter feels like something new entirely. There’s no static from dispatch, and the Mercedes is silent and precise. It would be a good time to tell her about the boy in the cardboard box. He owes her that much, really, after she helped him find the photos from the beach. And the cafe. Maybe she won’t want to know. Maybe she’ll think the police should handle it. He can’t decide whether to tell her about it.

– Do you always talk this much when you drive a taxi? she says after a few moments of silence.

Erhard laughs.

– I like the silent types, she says. – I used to think that Aaz couldn’t talk at all, but he can. Did you know that? He’s talked in his sleep quite a bit or he’s suddenly shouted at the TV if the turtle doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. His voice is deep, you might call it bassy. He used to talk all the time. To me and the birds and to people who stopped by. But then one day, he just stopped.

Erhard glances in her direction.

– Maybe it was something he saw or heard. One morning, I simply woke with him crying at my side. This was before he went to live at Santa Marisa. He was five years old. He cried and cried, but without tears. Without a sound. I consoled him as usual. I ruffled his hair and hummed to him. And after that, no more. After that he hasn’t said a word. I’ve tried to get him to… But he won’t. Maybe he can’t. Maybe it’s become too difficult for him.

Erhard considers whether he should tell Mónica that he talks to Aaz. That he’s somehow talked to Aaz every week for months.

They reach the base of the steep street that leads up past Santa Marisa. Erhard can feel Mónica’s eyes on him. Aaz stands at the front gate with his duffel, gazing blankly ahead. When the car drives in front of him, Aaz stares at Mónica in the passenger seat, and she quickly moves to the backseat.

Mónica is impressed by the flat. As he’d hoped. She claps her hands, walking around the living room touching everything as if they’re art objects. She glides a finger across the collection of books – it’s Raúl’s, but Erhard has added a number of his own titles. He explains that Raúl’s things are in storage in the bedroom, and that’s why the door is locked. She accepts this without question, then goes out to the terrace to gaze down at the street. She shouts to Erhard in the kitchen, saying that she’s never been this high up before. Erhard doesn’t quite understand what she means, but guesses that she’s never been in a tall building before. Aaz spends half an hour in the bathroom. While Erhard prepares their sandwiches, Aaz plops in front of the widescreen TV and switches between four or five children’s channels. Erhard didn’t know there were so many channels. But the turtle’s not on. It only airs at 12.30 p.m. on weekdays and only on TV Canaria.

When the food is arranged on the terrace table, Aaz won’t shut off the TV, so Mónica moves the food, drinks, and cutlery to the coffee table, where she and Erhard can sit on the sofa while Aaz lies on the floor with a bowl of calamari. His giant body makes the entire room seem smaller. She tries to speak, but her words are drowned out by the puppet voices on the telly, and Erhard zones out of the conversation – about the personnel at Santa Marisa, which doesn’t permit Sunday visits, and about the rooms there. The residents sleep in bunk beds, often four in one room, and only the noisiest among them get their own room, and none of the rooms have a window that opens. At night there is a great deal of whispering, and one would think the place had ghosts, just as people have been saying for years. Aaz ought to sleep with an adult who’ll hold his hand. Instead, some sort of night watchman sits in the room keeping an eye on them, following them to the toilet if they make it in time. Although Erhard only half-listens, he feels queasy at what he does hear. He leaves his ham in the bread and eats his tomato.

They clear the table together. Just like at Mónica’s place, but this time in the big kitchen, where neither one of them knows where things should go.

– I’ve heard you’re playing detective.

– What? he says, glancing at Aaz in the other room.

– They’re talking about you. Since there’s only
one
Hermit on the island, you know, and they say the Hermit’s doing police work.

– Who are ‘they’?

– People. The mothers of the island. They’re all married to someone who knows someone who has heard about the boy they found on the beach.

– I’ve asked a few questions. I’m not playing detective.

– Everyone hopes you find the mother, but…

– I’m not searching for any mother. It’s more like a mystery I’m hoping to solve, like a crossword puzzle or one of those Chinese number puzzles you see in the newspapers.

– Why don’t you just buy a newspaper?

– No one abandons a child without a reason. Something must have happened to the mother.

– Some do. Some people just run away from their problems when they become too difficult.

– What’s your point?

– Maybe the mother’s not worth finding. Maybe she deserved to drown or be killed.

– Is that what people are saying?

– I’m just saying that if the police have closed the case, perhaps you shouldn’t think you can solve it on your own.

– You’re afraid something’s going to happen to Aaz, aren’t you?

– Certain people might come after you. Aaz is very fond of you, you know that, right?

– What are you telling me?

– I’m not telling you anything. I’m just concerned for Aaz’s safety.

– It doesn’t have anything to do with Los Tres Papas, if that’s what you’re worried about. This is about a child, not some shipment of pot.

– You know what things are like here on the island.

There’s a knock on the door. Erhard looks at Mónica as if she knows who it is. Whoever it is, they’ve gotten past the buzzer. As long as it’s not Emmanuel Palabras. That would be dreadful timing. In the entryway he listens through the door. He hears something in the corridor, a faint rustling. He opens the door.

– Hiiiii, a short-haired brunette says as if they know each other. She’s one of those Spanish beauties, semi-blonde, who wishes to be a Marilyn Monroe blonde, but gives up because it’s expensive and difficult to dye her hair all the time; she’s wearing a red halter-top, cowboy skirt, opaque stockings, and black knee-high boots with ten-centimetre heels. – I’m your new downstairs neighbour, she says.

Erhard has never seen her before. If he had, he would’ve remembered. – Hello.

– I’d like to invite you to my place for a glass of wine and lunch so we can get acquainted.

– I’m new myself here, he says. Erhard realizes that if this is how he’s supposed to introduce himself to his neighbours, he’s not been showing good manners.

– That’s OK. That’s why I’m inviting you.

– Me?

– Yes. Just a little wine. Totally innocent.

And suddenly she doesn’t seem the least bit innocent. In fact, he’s suddenly aware of her Russian accent and her sexiness, and he’s just to about to slam the door in her face before Mónica sees her. – Can’t right now. I have guests, unfortunately.

– Another time, he hears her say as he closes the door. To his great vexation, he’s completely erect. It normally takes some effort, but right now it irritates him. He forces it back under the waistband of his underwear. What the hell was that all about?

– Downstairs neighbour? Mónica says. She apparently heard the entire conversation.

– Yes, my new neighbour.

– You could have invited her in.

– No thanks. She looked like a prostitute drumming up new johns.

– So what? It wouldn’t be the first prostitute you’ve met, would it? Mónica’s searching for a reaction from him.

– Aaz would blush in shame over such a girl, he says. – Trust me, he wouldn’t have been able to watch much football if I’d let her in.

Mónica stares at Erhard, then laughs. A laugh rising from the pit of her belly. She stands next to Erhard and lays her hands on his upper arm. He gazes directly into her tired, worn face. Like his own.

– Just relax, he says. – I’m not a policeman. Being the director of a taxi company is enough for me.

Her face softens. A little.

Erhard goes into the living room and changes the channel over Aaz’s protests. The football match hasn’t begun yet, and Erhard’s already tired. Still, he decides to bring out the expensive red wine after all.

– No, no, Mónica protests. – Please don’t.

As if he’s about to remove all her clothes in front of her son.

He pours the wine, and Mónica sips it, walking from the sofa to the terrace, discussing the potted plants which have dried out. Erhard hadn’t noticed until now. Finally she sits on the opposite end of the sofa. She doesn’t spread out like Erhard, but sits stiffly, her legs pressed together as if she’s in pain or needs to pee.