The Hermit (2 page)

He approaches the bend that hugs the coast, a fantastic bend – especially with Lumumba up to his Adam’s apple and cheap cognac in every finger joint. It’s a pebbly, potholey road, and the entire car vibrates. Swerving when he reaches 70 mph, he feels a tickling sensation that makes him grin. He breaks wind, too, which isn’t as funny; he just can’t help himself. He’s had the problem the last few years. If he squeezes his stomach muscles even a little, a pocket of air lurches through his gut and into his underwear; it’s both painful and liberating. From there the trail runs downhill, and he hits the final curve. Through the headlights he sees a goat standing in the centre of the road, and he veers around it before glancing in the rearview mirror; it looks like Hardy, but it can’t be him, not here, not this far from the house. The goat has already disappeared in the darkness.

He’s so preoccupied that he doesn’t see the car driving towards him until it passes on the much-too-narrow road. Mostly it’s just sound, a dry whooom. A metallic shadow along the car. The side mirror gets knocked flat against the glass.

– Goddamn amateurs! he shouts, to his surprise, in Danish. He apparently hasn’t forgotten how to curse. He continues around the curve, the other car is out of sight, the red tail-lights vanished in the night. There’s no point even stopping to inspect the damage. He rolls his window down and fixes his mirror. The glass has splintered into tributaries pointing downward in eight fine lines.

A black Montero. No doubt it was the gadabout Bill Haji, who lives up the road at a ranchlike villa with horses; he’s known for taking Alejandro’s Trail fast and furious, as if the sea was ablaze behind him. Erhard’s heart should be sitting in his throat right now, but instead it’s right where it’s supposed to be, numbed by the Lumumba and agitated by the prospect of meeting the hairdresser’s daughter.

He drives off the trail and into Corralejo. The heat rises from the asphalt. Young people in small cars honk and sing. He heads down the Avenida towards the harbour, then parks in Calle Palangre. He dumps the car when he finds a vacant spot.

He plans to walk to the hairdresser’s daughter’s place. He wants to knock on her door. He’s already red-faced and embarrassed by the look she will give him when he’s standing at her door.
Good evening
, he will say, and
Happy New Year
. He’s seen her before.
I’ve seen you in the photograph at your mother’s salon
. What if she’s wearing one of those summer dresses with the lazy straps that are always falling to the side? Who gives a shit if she wears glasses? He’s not picky.

But when he reaches the clothing shop and glances up at the flats above, he sees that the lights are off. On every storey of the building. She’s probably watching TV. Drinking white wine and hoping someone will stop by. He needs to fortify himself with a drink. Something really strong. Just something to get his voice box going. It’ll do him no good just standing there staring like some idiotic
extranjero
. He walks up the street and down Via Ropia. Towards Centro Atlantico. It’s always buzzing there, mostly with tourists, people he doesn’t know. He walks into Flicks and goes directly to the bar. He orders a Rusty Nail, and even buys a round for the two gentlemen in the corner. They’re olive farmers out prowling for women and unaccustomed to city life, huddled close like mice behind a palm tree. They are practically invisible.

3

Eighteen minutes to go. On the back wall of the bar the TV’s showing images from Times Square, fireworks over Sydney Harbour, Big Ben’s long hands approaching XII. The bartender shouts
Are you ready for the new year?
It sounds so promising, so simple. As if one leaves behind all the old, bringing only the new into the new year. But new means nothing to him. He’s not new. He doesn’t need new. He doesn’t want new. He just wants the old to behave properly. Seventeen minutes. He can still ring the doorbell and wish her a Happy New Year. Maybe she’s wearing a negligee or whatever it’s called. She’s been sitting there drinking white wine and watching reruns of
7 Vidas
, which everyone loves. Her hair is wet, she’s taken a cool bath.

A crowd of people moves to exit onto the street. He’s nearly pushed off his stool. He pays with a bill and remembers why he doesn’t frequent tourist traps: it costs more than twenty euros for whisky and Drambuie. He follows the throng out and starts back towards Calle Palangre. He crosses the street and enters her building. It was built during the Franco years, and the stairwell is simple and cobalt-blue. On the first floor he reads the names on each of the three doors. Loud music is blaring inside, but there’s no Louisa or L.

He walks up another flight. A couple stands kissing beneath the artificial light of the stairwell, but when he passes them they stop, shamefaced, and head down the stairs.

As he stands catching his breath a moment, he looks at the nameplates, then continues to the top floor. Three floors with doors equals nine doors.

On the third floor live one Federico Javier Panôs and one Sobrino. And in the centre, Luisa Muelas. The sign on her door is large and inlaid with gold, her name etched in thick, cursive letters. No doubt a gift from Petra and her husband. It’s one of those traditional items parents give their children whenever they, as thirty-year-olds, move out of their childhood home.

It seems quiet behind each of the doors. He puts his ear against Luisa Muelas’s and almost wishes her not to be home. But there’s a faint noise inside – clatters, creaks, mumbles – but perhaps it’s just the TV.

He straightens up and raps his good hand, the right, against the flat chunk of wood above the peephole. It’s four minutes to midnight. Maybe his knocks will fade into the raucous noise of New Year’s Eve.

Suddenly he sees a face in the nameplate.

The face is indistinct. A pleading, confused face dominated by two eyes wedged between a stack of wrinkles and shabby skin, topped off with a tired beard. A desperate face. In it he can see love and sorrow, he can see decades of bewilderment and alcohol, and he can see the cynical observer, appraising and judgemental. It’s an appallingly wretched face, difficult to penetrate, difficult to stomach, difficult to love. But worst of all it’s his face. As seen only from the rearview mirror of his car, or in the distorted mirrors above the chipped sinks of public toilets, or in shop windows, but preferably not at all. There’s only one thing to ask that face.

What have you got to offer?

In reality there’s nothing more frightening than this. The encounter. The moment in a life when one takes a risk. When one says,
I want you
. The moment when chance ceases, when one makes a stand and asks another to accept. The moment when two soap bubbles burst the reflection, merging into one. It doesn’t happen during a kiss, or during sex, and not even when one person loves another. It’s in the terrifying second when one dares to make a mad claim that one has something to offer another by one’s very presence.

He hears sounds behind the door now. Like stockinged feet.

– I’m coming, a soft voice says.

It’s two minutes to twelve.

He can’t do it, he just can’t. He leans over the stairwell and starts down. Down, down. He hears the door opening on the top floor.
Hello?
the voice says. Past the doors with loud music and outside. Onto the street. He hobbles along the wall like a rat, then cuts across the street to his car. Calle Palangre is filled with people now. There’s a group of cigar-smoking men standing beside his car, and girls astride scooters, champagne flutes in their hands.

Voices call out from the flats above. He fumbles his way into his car and wriggles it free of its parking spot. Following the one-way street, he parts the throng. A group wants to catch a ride, not seeing that his sign is turned off, but he’s not interested. He pays no mind to their hands on his windscreen or their pleading eyes. Happy New Year, asshole!
,
a young girl wearing a silver-covered bowler shouts at him.

He drives away from the city’s light and into darkness. The grey road ends and becomes a pale track. He presses down hard on the old Mercedes’ creaky gas pedal. Gravel plinks against the undercarriage.

The image of the hairdresser’s daughter opening the door returns to mock him. Now in socks – hair rumpled and a little glass of whisky in her hand. A fantasy only a horny man can imagine. That’s something he hates about growing old. Going from the physicality of a youth lacking spirit to pure spirit lacking physicality. To the point where the best moments are comprised of thoughts, of conceptions of the future, of reminders from way back when. For almost eighteen years he’s imagined intimacy with a woman. Imagined it. Even when he was with Annette, he imagined it. Back then it had just had a more concrete means of expression, back then it resembled intimacy with everyone else but her, right up until he was no longer near her.

His feet shift from the gas pedal to the brake. In the centre of his headlights’ bright yellow cone he sees a giant object lying in the middle of the road.

‌

‌THE LITTLE FINGER

‌1 January–3 January

4

At first he thinks it’s a fallen satellite, then he sees that it’s a car, an overturned car.

It’s a bloody Montero, a black Montero like Bill Haji’s.

It is Bill Haji’s.

It’s four or five hundred metres from the spot where they’d passed one another, but how long ago was that? An hour? He can’t make any sense of time. Maybe the Rusty Nail went to his head after all.

He cuts his engine but leaves the headlights on, so he can see the car. He hears the ocean and the soft hum of the Montero’s motor. The dust settles.

He’s about to turn on his CB radio and contact dispatch; it’s the best he can do. Then he hears some rapping sounds, as if someone’s trying to communicate or get free. He gets out of his car. He calls Bill’s name. He calls as though they know each other. Bill Haji. They hardly know each other. Everyone knows Bill Haji. A colourful, obnoxious person. Never at rest, always on his way to or fro. Erhard has driven him a few times. The first time was to the hospital. And after that – upon request: a couple of trips to the airport and home to Haji’s villa some miles away. Haji arrived from Madrid with four or five suitcases and a young man who seemed tired. They were the same suitcases both times, but not the same guy. Erhard didn’t care about the rumours, or how Haji lived his life. One shouldn’t get involved in that kind of thing. As long as the boys are over eighteen and have made their own choices.

– Bill Haji, he repeats.

The car is smashed up. It must have rolled a good distance. Stupid Montero. No better than Japanese cardboard. There’s a long trail of glass. Which suggests to him that the vehicle skidded along the road. He calls again as he walks around the car and peers through what might have been the windscreen, but is probably a side window. There’s no one inside. Neither Bill nor any of his boys. Erhard breathes easier. Even though he doesn’t much care for Bill Haji, he feared seeing him mashed between the steering wheel and the seat like a blood-gorged tick. The vehicle is empty; one of the doors is open, hanging from its hinge. Maybe he’s gone after help or was picked up by his sister, who’s always close by Bill Haji, whenever he sees him downtown or at La Marquesina. He bends forward and touches the car. It’s still warm.

For a moment the darkness and the car fade away, and the entire sky is lit up in shades of green and cyan and magenta, and it’s as if hundreds of eyes are looking back at him.

5

The sky above explodes. Erhard stares across the vehicle. More booms follow in choppy rhythm, streaks and flashes of light. At first he thinks that they’re emergency lights from a ship. Then he remembers that it’s New Year’s Eve and he spots the stream of fireworks down in the city. When his eyes adjust to the darkness again, he sees something moving right in front of him.

Sitting on top of what was once the car’s exhaust is a dog.

Two dogs.

They’re watching him like cute puppies heading out for a walk. They’re wild dogs. No one knows where they come from. Maybe from Corralejo seven miles away. Whether they are sitting there or running along the edges of cliffs in the moonlight, they’re handsome animals. In the daylight they appear emaciated and beaten, like old blankets. They’re a plague to anyone who raises sheep and goats, and among bored young men they’ve become something one shoots as target practice from the bed of a lorry. And yet somehow there are more of them than ever. Erhard guesses that ten or fifteen of them are out there in the darkness. Maybe Bill Haji hit one of them, maybe that’s why he crashed. One of the dogs is drooling. Erhard stares through its forelegs.

Even though most of his face is gone, he can still recognize Bill Haji’s remains. There’s nothing left to save. Maybe he was dead before the dogs got to him. His famous sideburns look like rabbit fur turned inside out.

Then he sees it.

6

It’s lying right behind the left front wheel, in darkness. He only sees it because it sparkles a little each time the fireworks explode in the sky. At first he’s not sure what it is. There’s heat in the reflection, an amber radiance. He guesses that it’s some copper or something embossed in gold, perhaps part of a pair of sunglasses or a cord sliced in half. For a moment he wonders if it’s a gold filling, then he sees the fingernail and the small folds around the joint. He notices that the broad ring is surrounded by flesh.

It’s Bill Haji’s engagement ring. On Bill Haji’s ring finger. Ten minus one.

He doesn’t want to go around the vehicle, so he reaches for it; he doesn’t even know if he can reach it. It’s only a metre or two away from him on the other side of the car. He stretches across the undercarriage, but the two dogs glance up from their dinner. One bares its teeth and repositions its front paws, ready to spring. Erhard might be able to snatch the finger, but not without having a dog stuck to his arm.

He walks slowly back to his own car and snaps on the high beams. He blinks the lights on and off a few times until the dogs glower at him in irritation. Then he lays his hand against the centre of the wheel and puts all his weight into it. The car emits a few shrill honks that most wouldn’t believe belonged to a Mercedes. He presses the horn until the two dogs on the other car hop sluggishly down like junkies and slink off a few metres into the darkness.