The Hermit (64 page)

Whether it’s what Raúl says or simply the truth, Erhard feels the exhaustion in his joints. The thought of having to swim back to land causes him almost physical pain, leg spasms. It’s been years since he last went swimming. He was a good swimmer once. Ten years ago. Ten years. If he’s going to survive, he needs to get into that boat before his body temperature drops.

Raúl stands rocking the boat, watching for Erhard’s reaction. Then he slashes again, wilder, more aggressive. His blow rams one of the oarlocks that’s attached to a long metal track; the track snaps and dangles over the edge, almost completely loose. Without the track, it would be nearly impossible to row the boat anywhere. Raúl bends forward to grab the track, but it’s heavy and it sinks into the water, disappearing. He leans out, and the boat teeters to one side.

It takes Erhard a moment to recognize the opportunity. He swims around the boat. While Raúl’s on his knees staring into the water, Erhard grabs the railing, yanking on it with all his might. The boat tips heavily, and Raúl falls forward and slams his face against the boat just before it jerks back. Erhard almost shouts
I’m sorry
, but he’s glad to see the blow strike Raúl so clean and hard. Raúl goes down without a word, his foot sticking up. The night is quiet once again.

Erhard dogpaddles towards the bow and clutches it. Kicking his legs and hoisting himself up, he clambers head first. He falls across a sitting board and drops to the bottom of the boat, exhausted, but nevertheless revitalized by a final spark of energy as soon as the warm breeze dries his arms and legs.

In the back pocket of his trousers he finds the short plastic strip and fastens it around Raúl’s feet and the remaining oarlock. He makes sure it’s good and tight. Then he crawls across the seat and over to Raúl, who’s sprawled out, unmoving. He takes Raúl’s head in his hands to see his face and to slam it against the edge of the boat.

Raúl opens his eyes.

Erhard wants to look him in the eye when he bashes his head in.

A strange voice emerges from Raúl’s throat. – I’m sorry. I love her. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to.

Erhard lets go. He doesn’t want to hear him. – Shut your mouth, you stupid boy.

– Everything I had was his. I wanted something of my own.

– You’re not well. You need help.

– If you mean the whore, then…

– I mean everything. I mean the boy. Beatriz. Alina. Everything.

– Saving yourself isn’t free, you said so yourself.

– Not that way, you shit.

Erhard grabs his throat, mostly to shake him, but also to choke the life out of him. If only he had enough strength to do so.

But Raúl rolls on top of Erhard, and somehow manages to scramble to his feet even though his foot is fastened to the oarlock.

Erhard is suddenly aware of the difference in their physiques. Even though he’s been locked up for weeks, Raúl is still thirty-five years younger than Erhard. With an ordinary punch he could put an end to Erhard, tap the last of his energy reserve. But Raúl just stands there watching Erhard, his lips moving as if in prayer. Then he raises his arm. There’s a rock in his hand – it must’ve been lying under the seat.

At that moment Erhard shifts to the other side of the boat.

Raúl is standing on one leg. When the boat tips he’s forced to put his foot down to regain his balance, but with his foot attached to the oarlock he stumbles; his hand reaches out for something to hold onto but finds only air. He tumbles over the edge of the boat, ripping the oarlock free. The boat teeters a little, but quickly stabilizes.

A few seconds pass before Raúl emerges a few metres away, gasping for breath, coughing. He reaches for the boat, but he’s too far away. He swallows water and tries to say something that sounds like
Wait
.

Just then, the fireworks begin at Corralejo.

It’s the high point of the festival, when the flotilla bearing the figure of the Virgin Carmen is sent to sea surrounded by tea-light candles and flowers, and the city sings as fireworks explode in the sky. Larger and more ambitious than New Year’s Eve. Erhard can hardly see the glow, but the booms split the sky in two.

I can’t, Raúl seems to want to say, but water keeps lapping into his mouth. He splashes as if something’s nibbling on him from below. Panic-stricken. Fearful. He slaps at the water. Erhard wants to tell him that panicking won’t do him any good, but he says nothing. Just looks down at the man in the water. At the face disappearing in the darkness. Every thunderous clap from the fireworks pounds him, like a nail, deeper and deeper into the sea.

Only one of Raúl’s arms is visible, the other hand is apparently underwater struggling to free his foot from the plastic strip and the oarlock. His movements push him farther away from the boat, but he doesn’t realize that. He lunges and squirms, desperate for breath and swallowing water.

Finally Erhard offers his hand, stretching it as far as he can. He wonders how he might bring the boat closer to Raúl and get into position to drag him out of the water, but the oars are gone, and with both oarlocks in the water, there’s nothing he can do. He can’t create enough forward motion with his hand alone, so he offers it instead. He’s nowhere near Raúl, but Raúl seems to notice the attempt. He looks at Erhard with salt-white eyes, his face dissolving.

I don’t want to
, Raúl says. Submerged.

Erhard stares at his hand before pulling it back. The one with four fingers. The narrower one. A nearly human hand.

Raúl sinks quietly.

Erhard is so shocked that he can’t scream. All the treachery, loss, hatred, and love settles on him with such force that he begins to cry like a man without a past.

Then there’s only the water. And the crackles and pops of fireworks in the sky far away, dying out.

‌

‌LILY

‌28 February

79

She doesn’t realize how relieved he is to see her. To follow Aaz to the door and let him into the house without a word. The anxiety he’d felt when he’d thought Palabras had kidnapped her and would harm her to punish him. He can’t imagine anything more beautiful than her lively old face.

– Are you driving a taxi again?

– Not yet, but soon.

– Will you quit as director?

– Maybe. But I’ll drive for a while, then see.

She tries to get his attention, but he’s gazing down the corridor at the flowers, which he can see behind the kitchen window.

– So no more detective work?

– No more.

– What about the boy?

– I found his mother.

– You did?

– Yes.

– Was she dead? she whispers.

– No, she was very much alive. She owns a restaurant. A tough young lass, but she’s all right.

Mónica grins. – You probably know plenty like her.

Erhard knows she’s referring to herself, but he thinks of Annette and the time in his life that he could not stand her. The most difficult thing is to love someone who needs you; the easiest thing is to love someone who’s not interested.

– See you at five o’clock, he says, then turns and heads down the stairs. She remains standing in the doorway, and he doesn’t hear the door click shut until he reaches the end of the walk.

He drives a red Opel Corsa. It’s Barouki’s. He’s borrowing it until he finds a used Mercedes with less than 90,000 miles on the odometer. He wants a better one this time. His plan is to start at Miza’s in the mornings and only drive until lunchtime. Maybe some afternoon he’ll go to the office to see if there’s anything he might do. Barouki’s very different than Marcelis. They even laugh at the same jokes.

The Opel Corsa rumbles towards Corralejo. On the right he sees Calderon Hondo, the pale triangle against the bright blue sky. The crater will always remind him of Juan Pascual, aka Pesce. Location unknown. When Erhard returned to the Hotel Olympus, the doors of the delivery van were wide open, and someone had set fire to the vehicle. It wasn’t completely charred – the fire had been put out before it really got going – but it was nevertheless destroyed. There was no trace of Juan Pascual. Not even in his flat, which is empty; no one has been there for days. Pascual might have boarded a ship. He might be south of the Cape of Good Hope by now. A sailor knows better than anyone how easy it is to disappear in this vast world.

There’s unrest at the airport. One of the larger airlines recently fired a quarter of its staff and discontinued all flights to the island. Thirty people have been sacked while politicians argue about how to boost tourism. The unions are picketing the airport, parking their honking cars in the middle of the road and not allowing taxis in or out, and the police are trying to clear the roads. It’s all over the radio, and people are discussing it down at the corner kiosk where he parks now. He gets out of his car and cuts through the ally.

He waits ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Then the cook comes out with the rubbish and sees Erhard. Erhard gives him twenty euros. The cook goes back inside.

– I figured it was you, she says.

Although she looks whipped, she doesn’t seem as uncomfortable in his presence as the last time. She looks like someone anticipating a scolding. He considers giving her what she expects.

– Do you wish to know what happened to Søren Hollisen and your son?

She says nothing, just plops down on the rickety old stool.

– Søren Hollisen is dead. He sailed the Atlantic Ocean on a ship. Someone shoved him overboard, and he drowned.

Still she does not speak, just stares at the ground. He figures that her automatic smoking mechanism will kick in at any moment and she’ll draw her fags from the small pack she keeps strapped to her waist, but all she does is fumble with the zipper.

– The dumb shit, she whispers. Her eyes are hard in her pale, powdered face. She’s the type of person who hates the sun, who never spends any time outside. She dyes her hair black and paints her eyebrows, and she probably has a bunch of piercings all over her body. But she can’t cover with makeup the fact that she’s fragile and feminine, an angry little girl.

– He wanted to take the boy to Morocco, but fate had other plans. The ship was hijacked.

She looks up, troubled. – What do you mean?

– The ship’s crew thought he’d gone crazy, but he just wanted to save your son, who was inside one of the containers.

She gazes ahead. Waiting for Erhard to continue. Waiting for worse news.

– Hollisen had hidden the boy in a car. When he tried to stop them from transferring the cargo to the second ship, the car slid from the container and plunged into the water. At least that’s what I suspect happened.

– So the boy drowned?

– No. Somehow the car floated on the current, and it wound up at Playa Cotillo.

– What? she says, confused.

– It might have floated for a day and a half, before it washed up on the beach. The tidewater left it almost without a scratch. The police thought it had been stolen from a dealer in Puerto del Rosario. There was a lot of chatter about it here on the island. The boy in the cardboard box.

– Cardboard box?

– For some reason, Hollisen had put the boy in a cardboard box. Perhaps it was only temporary, and maybe the boy had been in the car only for a short time, but once the ship was hijacked it didn’t really matter.

– I didn’t hear anything about any boy in a cardboard box. I heard about a whore who’d abandoned her child in a car on the beach. There was talk of that right when I moved back. But I don’t care about some whore’s kid.

– It wasn’t a whore’s kid. It was your son.

She glowers at him as if she’ll bite his head off.

– Is it possible that you gave birth to him on 23 October?

– No, it was 21 October. You think I can’t remember that? You think I’m that dumb?

– Then why did Hollisen think the boy was born on the 23rd?

– Because I lied to him. I didn’t want him to know. I was going to take care of the kid myself. Without him. I didn’t need him. I’m not into men, you know? But then the kid started screeching and being difficult, and I couldn’t take it any more. I brought it home from the clinic and found Hollisen, high as a kite as always. I didn’t want him to think that he could have a kid handed over to him and just run away. I put the kid in his arms. Look what I’ve made. It’s yours. He was angry that I hadn’t told him. He said he could’ve helped me. Been with me for the birth and all the other shit men say.

He shows her the newspaper fragment with the text
rick 2310
. He found it along with the dried-out finger on his bookshelf in Majanicho after he moved home and began to clean up.

He figures that she’ll ask him questions. Instead she begins to cry soundlessly. Tears roll down her cheeks. She crumples the fragment into a ball and tosses it into the rubbish bin. He’s about to say something, but stops short.

– He loved that ridiculous film, and he kept talking about opening a cafe in Morocco. We saw the film together, in some theatre in Santa Cruz. Down near the water. That was before he realized I wasn’t into him.

– Which film is that?

– The one with Humphrey Bogart. Where he owns a cafe called Rick’s.

Søren Hollisen the dreamer. Erhard realizes to just what degree the man had tried to lead an extraordinary life only to repeatedly make poor decisions. This is how it looks, he thinks, when a man has to continually clean up after his own irresponsibility. But also how it looks when a man keeps believing that his luck will turn, that all hope is never lost. Until, of course, it is lost.

Erhard takes her hand. At first she’s indifferent to his touch, but then she squeezes his four fingers until it begins to hurt.

– The boy was interred near Playa del Matorral, but I’m having him transferred to Oleana. Rick Hollisen’s name is on the marker, but if you’d like, I can add your name as well.

Though she doesn’t respond to this, she stops crying. – What about the people who did him in? Who pushed him overboard? It’s all their fault, they are…

– I found the one responsible. He’s been punished.

– What kind of punishment? A couple years at the Palace with free room and board?