The Savage Detectives (32 page)

During dinner that night, I didn't notice any alarming signs of tension, and the next day, as if everyone had only been waiting for me, the grape harvest began. Most of us worked cutting grapes. Hans and Hugh worked as porters. Monique drove the car that carried the grapes to a nearby village cooperative's presses. In addition to Hans's group, there were three Spaniards and two French girls with whom I soon became friends.

The work was exhausting and possibly the only good thing about it was that after the working day no one felt like fighting. Still, there were plenty of sources of friction. One afternoon Hugh, Steve, and I told Hans that we needed at least two more workers. He agreed but said that it was impossible. When we asked why, he said it was because he had contracted with Monique's uncle to finish the harvest with eleven workers, and not a single person more.

In the evenings, after our jobs were done, we usually went to the river to wash. The water was cold, but the river was deep enough to swim in and that was how we warmed up. Then we would soap ourselves, wash our hair, and go home for dinner. The three Spaniards were staying in another house and they led a separate life, except when we invited them to eat with us. The two French girls lived in the next village (where the cooperative was) and every night they rode home on their motorcycles. One was called Marie-Josette and the other was called Marie-France.

One night, when we had all had too much to drink, Hans told us that he had lived in a Danish commune, the biggest and best organized commune in the world. I don't know how long he talked. Sometimes he got excited and banged the table, or stood up, and sitting there we watched him grow, stretching to exaggerated heights, like an ogre, an ogre to whom we were bound by his generosity and our lack of money. Another night, when everyone was asleep, I heard him talking to Monique. She and Hans had the room above mine and that night they must have left the window open. Whatever the case, I heard them. They were speaking in French, and Hans was saying that he couldn't help it, that was all, he couldn't help it, and Monique was saying yes, he could, he had to try. I couldn't hear the rest.

One afternoon, when we were about to finish work, the night watchman turned up in Planèzes, and I was so happy to see him I told him that I loved him, and that he should be careful. I don't know why I said that, but seeing him walk down the main street, I had the sense that certain danger was looming over all of us.

Surprisingly, he said that he loved me too and that he wanted to live with me. He seemed happy. Tired-he'd arrived after hitching around almost the whole
département
-but happy. That afternoon, I remember, everyone except Hans and Monique went for a swim in the river, and when we took our clothes off and jumped in the night watchman stayed on the bank, fully clothed, in fact with too much on, as if he were cold despite how hot it was. And then something happened that might seem unimportant but in which I sensed the hand of something: fate or God. While we were in the water three migrant workers appeared on the bridge and stopped for a long time to watch us, watch Erica and me. They were two older men and a teenager, maybe grandfather, father, and son, dressed in ragged work clothes, and finally one of them said something in Spanish and the night watchman answered them. I could see their faces looking down and his face looking up (the sky was very blue), and after the first few words, more were exchanged. They were all talking, the three migrant workers and the night watchman. At first it seemed like questions and answers and then just like small talk, three people on a bridge and a tramp underneath it having a simple conversation, and it all went on while we, Steve, Erica, Hugh, and I, were washing and swimming back and forth, like swans or ducks, theoretically removed from the conversation in Spanish but partly the object of it, Erica and me in particular being a source of visual pleasure and expectation. But soon the migrant workers left (without waiting for us to get out of the water), and they said
adiós
, a word I do understand in Spanish, of course, and the night watchman said goodbye to them too, and that was as far as it went.

That night, during dinner, we all got drunk. I was drunk too, but not as drunk as everyone else. I remember that Hugh was shouting Dionysius, Dionysius. I remember that Erica, who was sitting next to me at the long table, grabbed me by the chin and kissed me on the mouth.

I was sure something bad was going to happen.

I told the night watchman we should go to bed. He ignored me. He was talking, in his terrible English mixed with French, about a friend who had disappeared in the Roussillon. Nice way to look for your friend, said Hugh, drinking with strangers. You aren't strangers, the night watchman said. Then they all started to sing, Hugh, Erica, Steve, and the night watchman, a Rolling Stones song, I think. A little later the two Spaniards who worked with us turned up. I don't know who had gone to get them. And all this time I was thinking: something bad is going to happen, something bad is going to happen, but I didn't know what it would be or what I could do to prevent it, except drag the night watchman to my room and make love with him or convince him to go to sleep.

Then Hans came out of his room (he and Monique had gone to bed early, soon after dinner) and asked us not to make so much noise. I remember this happened several times. Hans would open the door, look at us one by one, and tell us that it was late, that the noise was keeping him up, that we had to work the next day. And I remember that no one paid the slightest bit of attention. When he came out they would say yes, yes, Hans, we'll be quiet now, but when the door closed behind him they would immediately start shouting and laughing again. And then Hans opened the door, his nakedness covered only by a pair of white briefs, his long blond hair wild, and he said that the party was over, that we should get out that instant and go to our rooms. And the night watchman stood up and said: look, Hans, stop being an idiot, or something like that. I remember that Hugh and Steve laughed, whether at the look on Hans's face or at how awkward the sentence was in English. And Hans stopped for an instant, confused, and then roared: how dare you? that was all, and rushed at the night watchman. There was quite a distance between them, and we were all able to watch him in great detail, a seminaked colossus crossing the room at a near run, coming straight at my poor friend.

But then something happened that no one expected. The watchman didn't move from where he was sitting, remaining calm as the mass of flesh hurtled across the room toward him, and when Hans was just a few inches away a knife appeared in his right hand (in his delicate right hand, so different from a grape cutter's hand) and the knife rose until it was just under Hans's beard, in fact just barely embedded in its outer fringes, which stopped Hans cold, and Hans said, what is this? What kind of joke is this? in German, and Erica screamed, and the door, the door that Monique and little Udo were behind, opened a crack and Monique's head appeared chastely, Monique herself possibly naked. And then the night watchman started to walk forward in the direction from which Hans had come barreling, and the knife, I could see clearly since I was only a few feet away, slid into Hans's beard, and Hans began to retreat, and although to me it seemed as if they crossed the whole room back to the door behind which Monique was hiding, they actually only took three steps, maybe two, and then they stopped and the night watchman lowered the knife, looked Hans in the eye, and turned his back on him.

According to Hugh, that was the moment when Hans should have tackled him and overpowered him, but the truth is he stood still, not even noticing that Steve had come up to him and offered him a glass of wine, although he drank it like someone gulping air.

And then the night watchman turned and insulted him. He called him a Nazi, saying what were you trying to do to me, Nazi? And Hans looked him in the eye and muttered something and balled his fists and then we all thought he would lunge at the night watchman, this time nothing would stop him, but he controlled himself, Monique said something, he turned and answered her, Hugh went over to the night watchman and dragged him to a chair, probably poured him more wine.

The next thing I remember is that we all left the house and started to walk the streets of Planèzes in search of the moon. We were looking up at the sky: the moon was hidden by big black clouds. But the wind pushed the clouds eastward and the moon appeared (we screamed) and then disappeared again. At some point I thought we seemed like ghosts. I said to the night watchman: let's go home, I want to sleep, I'm tired, but he ignored me.

He was talking about someone who had disappeared and he was laughing and making jokes that no one understood. When the last houses were behind us, I thought it was time to go back, that if I didn't go back I wouldn't be able to get up the next day. I went over to the night watchman and gave him a kiss. A good-night kiss.

When I got back to the house all the lights were out and it was completely silent. I went over to a window and opened it. No one made a sound. Then I went up to my room, undressed, and got into bed.

When I woke up, the night watchman was sleeping beside me. I said goodbye and went to work with everyone else. He didn't respond, lying there as if he were dead. A smell of vomit floated in the room. By the time we got back, at noon, he was gone. I found a note on my bed, in which he apologized for his behavior the night before and said that I should come to Barcelona whenever I wanted, that he would be there waiting for me.

That morning Hugh told me what had happened the night before. According to him, after I left, the night watchman went crazy. They were close to the river and he kept saying someone was calling him, a voice on the other side of the river. And no matter how many times Hugh told him no one was there, that the only sound was the noise of the water, and even that was faint, he kept insisting there was someone down below, on the other side of the river, waiting for him. I thought he was joking, said Hugh, but when I wasn't paying attention he went running downhill, in the pitch darkness, toward what he thought was the river, plunging blindly through scrub and brambles. According to Hugh, by then only he and the two Spaniards we had invited to our party were left from the original group. And when he took off downhill all three went after him, but much more slowly, because it was very dark and the slope was so steep that stumbling would have meant a fall and broken bones, so he soon disappeared from sight.

Hugh thought he intended to throw himself into the river. But the likeliest thing, he said, was that he would pitch headfirst onto a stone, plentiful as they were, or trip over a fallen branch, or end up tangled in a thornbush. When they reached the bottom they found him sitting in the grass, waiting for them. And here comes the strangest part, said Hugh, as I came up behind him he whirled around and in less than a second I was on the ground, he was on top of me and his hands were around my throat. According to him, it all happened so fast that he didn't even have time to be afraid, but the night watchman really was strangling him and the two Spaniards had gone off somewhere and couldn't see or hear him and anyway, with his hands around his neck (hands so unlike our hands at the time, which were all full of cuts), Hugh couldn't make a sound, wasn't even able to shout for help, was struck dumb.

He could've killed me, said Hugh, but the night watchman suddenly realized what he was doing and let him go, saying he was sorry. Hugh could see his face (the moon had come out again) and he realized that it was, in his words, bathed in tears. And here comes the strangest part of his story: when the night watchman let him go and said he was sorry, Hugh started to cry too, because, according to him, he suddenly remembered the girl who had left him, the Scottish girl; he suddenly realized that no one was waiting for him in England (except for his parents); he suddenly understood something he wasn't able to explain to me, or could only explain poorly.

Then the Spaniards turned up, smoking a joint, and they asked Hugh and the night watchman why they were crying, and they both started to laugh, and the Spaniards, such decent, normal people, said Hugh, understood everything without having to be told and passed them the joint and then the four of them headed back together.

And how do you feel now? I asked him. I feel fine, he said, ready for the harvest to be over and to go home. And what do you think about the night watchman? I asked. I don't know, he said, that's your problem, you're the one who has to think about that.

When the work ended, a week later, I went back to England with Hugh. My original idea was to travel south again, to Barcelona, but when the harvest was over I was too tired, too ill, and I decided that the best thing would be to go back to my parents' house in London and maybe visit the doctor.

I spent two weeks at home with my parents, two empty weeks, not seeing any of my friends. The doctor said I was "physically exhausted," prescribed some vitamins, and sent me to the optician. He said I needed glasses. A little while later I moved to 25 Cowley Road, Oxford, and I wrote the night watchman several letters. I told him all about everything: how I felt, what the doctor had said, how I wore glasses now, how as soon as I had made some money I was planning to come to Barcelona to visit him, that I loved him. I must have sent six or seven letters in a relatively short period of time. Then term started, I met someone else, and I stopped thinking about him.

Alain Lebert, Bar Chez Raoul, Port-Vendres, France, December 1978
. Back then I was living like I was in the Resistance. I had my cave and I read
Libération
in Raoul's bar. I wasn't alone. There were others like me and we hardly ever got bored. At night we talked politics and shot pool. Or we talked about the tourist season that had just ended. Each of us remembered the stupid things the others had done, the holes we'd dug ourselves into, and we laughed our heads off on the terrace of Raoul's bar, watching the sailboats or the stars, very bright stars that announced the arrival of the bad months, the months of hard work and cold. Then, drunk, we each headed off on our own, or in pairs. Me: to my cave outside of town, near the rocks of El Borrado. I have no idea why it's called that I never bothered to ask. Lately I've noticed a disturbing tendency in myself to accept things the way they are. Anyway, as I was saying, each night I'd go back alone to my cave, walking like I was already asleep, and when I got there I'd light a candle, in case I'd gotten turned around. There are more than ten caves at El Borrado and half had people in them, but I never ended up in the wrong one. Then I'd climb into my Canadian Impetuous Extraprotector sleeping bag and start to think about life, about the things you see happen right in front of you, things that sometimes you understand and other times (most of the time) you don't, and then that thought would lead to another, and that other thought would lead to one more, and then, without realizing it, I'd be asleep and flying along or crawling, whatever.