The Hermit (39 page)

– What if our drivers carry up the luggage? Erhard says.

– We’ve had that arrangement. The young drivers don’t care to do it. They’re busy. And the old ones, no offence, they aren’t capable. Like Alberto.

– If I can get the drivers to do it, do we have a deal?

– TaxiVentura can get there in seven minutes. I’ve been told that Taxinaria can do it in six.

Erhard knows this is a lie. Gran Hotel & Spa Atlantis is remote. There’s no development nearby, just a few ordinary stretches of beach. It’s a question of luck, getting to the hotel in seven minutes. From Puerto north, where the taxis park outside the theatres, it takes a minimum of eleven minutes to reach the hotel. – We can be there within thirteen minutes.

The deputy manager laughs. He tosses out a few of the hotel’s catchphrases. How they are customer-oriented, how they do their best to go beyond the customer’s expectations, training their personnel’s customer-service intelligence. But all that depends on pushing more than 3,000 guests a month, on average, through the machine, and during the summer that figure rises to 8,000. He makes it sound like a mincer. – We can’t afford to let them wait for thirteen minutes.

Now it’s Erhard’s turn to laugh. – Make them a good cup of coffee for four euros while they wait. Let them relax.

The deputy manager hadn’t considered that. Instead he says: What do
you
think about your offer?

– I think it’s realistic. I think the person who told you we can do it in under eleven minutes is irresponsible.

– It was Marcelis Osasuna last year when I sat with him in this very restaurant. Ate the same sancocho. If nothing else, you’re persistent.

– I’m not Marcelis. But Marcelis doesn’t know anything about driving a taxi. Marcelis knows how to run a business, Erhard says. And Marcelis knows how to send me to meetings like this one. – I can’t get the taxis there any faster, but I can give you a realistic offer that you can count on, and ensure that our drivers help your guests with their luggage.

The deputy manager says nothing, but raises his glass as he studies Erhard. – Excuse my impertinence, but where the hell did they dig you up?

– Cotillo Beach, Erhard says simply. The deputy manager laughs. It’s an infectious laughter. Erhard can’t help joining in.

Soon the bored head waiter returns with half-melted bowls of ice-cream with tinned peaches.

– A few years ago, the deputy manager says, poking around in the dessert, – this was the peak of Fuerteventura’s gastronomical capacity. Sad-looking, unserious, tinned food. The sancocho was average, but this is a joke, a disgrace. We need to do better if we’re going to survive as a tourist destination. Do you know how many bad reviews this place has on TripAdvisor? More than ninety. Ninety people have spent time writing negative reviews about this shithole restaurant, because they’ve sat here and stuck their spoons into an absurdly disgusting bowl of ice cream that costs four and a half euros. That’s what we’re up against. Every time someone fucks something up here on the island, a flag is raised on the Internet to the delight and benefit of anyone who wants to avoid a four-hour flight just to be treated like an idiot.

Erhard knows what the man means; he’s heard about instant Internet reviews, but he has a hard time believing it. On the other hand, Alina and Mónica found images rather swiftly on the Internet that were only a few days old. Everything moves so bloody fast now. One would hardly believe that anyone had enough time to post images online, but some don’t seem to do anything else.

– You don’t understand a word of what I’m saying, do you? the deputy manager says.

– No, Erhard says. No reason to explain himself.

The deputy manager laughs again. – Fantastic. You look like a wasted drunkard three days before his retirement, and we’re sitting here at one of the island’s shittiest restaurants. Still, you’ve given me hope, or what passes for hope, that we can still work together and earn some good money. You can pass that on to your boss.

– He’s not my boss. I belong to no one.

The deputy manager’s smile vanishes. – OK, he says. The vanilla ice cream melts while they drain their beers.

After that he begins to enjoy the meetings. He still feels awkward around his former colleagues. Sitting and drinking and eating doesn’t feel like work, but the meetings go well. He gets Ana to reserve a table at Miza’s instead, and even though the food is a salad or a sandwich, it’s better than Muñoz. The view is better too, and Erhard feels more at home. He wins five contracts before he gets his first taste of defeat. The female head of sales, the so-called Customer Experience Officer, from the Oasis Park Zoo doesn’t like the fishermen’s city of Alapaqa and seems uncomfortable. She says she would rather sign a pact with someone who knows the island and respects its culture. He tries to explain to her that he does indeed know the island, but she notes that neither Osasuna nor Erhard are from Fuerteventura. And besides, Osasuna has a reputation for being disloyal. In the end it sounds as though she has talked to Barouki or already received a good offer, and Erhard is forced to give up. Miza, who overheard the conversation, rests a hand on Erhard’s shoulder when she strolls past him.

At the office, he sees flashes of the same hostility.

One morning he meets Marcelis out in the hallway and says hello. – Señor Castilla, I presume, Marcelis practically shouts. Erhard already knows what’s coming next. Castilla is the main character in
El Comisario
, the most popular Spanish detective series, which airs every Thursday. Erhard has watched a few episodes at the cafe. – You are well aware that you are contractually obligated not to work a second job. I don’t go around building houses in my spare time.

He knows exactly what Marcelis is driving at, but he steers it in another direction. – Palabras gave me permission to continue with some clients on the side.

– I’m not referring to your piano tuning. I mean your detective work.

– I don’t have detective work.

– You know what I’m talking about, Jørgensen. Apparently, people are talking about it. Ana brought it to my attention.

It takes Erhard by surprise. She hasn’t said a word about it. – It’s nothing, he says. – It’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. It’s just something I spend a little time thinking about. Nothing more. It’s not a second job.

– Well, stop assembling your puzzle. Just do your job.

Erhard is unable to muster a reply before Marcelis stomps off in the direction he came from. He considers speaking to Emanuel and asking him to put Marcelis in his place, but he knows that, since he has to work with Marcelis, that’s not a good solution. Besides, Palabras would probably say the same: Do your job, forget about your little exploration.

Those who don’t know him very well, like young Mijael and Gustavo, easily accept that he’s the new director without giving it a second thought, but Luís sends him dirty looks and stops talking whenever Erhard marches down the corridor with his vending-machine coffee. One afternoon, Erhard sits down in the break-room to talk with the drivers who stop in during siesta. At first they don’t say much, but before long they forget that Erhard is one of the directors, and they begin to complain as usual – about the system and their hours. Erhard simply listens, then heads to his office and jots down some of what they said. He doesn’t tell them anything about it, he doesn’t make promises, but he would like to improve everything they mentioned. He has begun to understand why management can’t satisfy the drivers’ wishes, but he thinks that he might be able to show the drivers that management does indeed care about them and their frustrations. That they would like to change some things – if there’s enough money to do so. Marcelis isn’t against improvements. Erhard has learned that much in the past few weeks. But Marcelis is mostly interested in getting more vehicles on the street, not spoiling the drivers with coffee machines and massages. The lack of tourists and the rising prices of petrol haven’t made things any easier.

On those days when he stays in his office, he listens to Radio Mucha on a little transistor radio and riffles through files of contracts and agreements, examining old accounts to understand how they spend their money and how much they spend. Ana or Marcelis has put a globe on one of the filing cabinets, as if the company has an international reach. He spins it and peers at the tiny speck in the middle of the sea that is Fuerteventura, and the almost-as-tiny speck above Germany that is Denmark. And when there’s nothing left on his schedule, he sits on the toilet and reads.

51

Saturday morning he wakes on the sofa before sunrise. Still wearing the same clothes as the night before. Maybe it’s the light that woke him, the blue-violet light, the thinnest fissure between the dark sky and the sea. He thinks of Raúl. Becoming Raúl. As if the dream he’d just had was all about being Raúl. As if he has just been Raúl and now can’t shake the feeling. He doesn’t wish to be Raúl. He doesn’t wish to live like him. He would like to be Raúl’s age, would like to enjoy his effortlessness, his unconcerned waltz through life. He would like to experience Beatriz’s gaze, the way she looked at Raúl whenever he told a story or philosophized about the sea or commented on some wine.

But he doesn’t want to be Raúl whenever she looks at him in fear. Like just before, in the dream, when Beatriz was lying naked underneath him, screaming as he beat and raped her. One of her brown breasts jiggled while, for some reason, the other stood firm. Her screams sounded like a rope swiftly lashed around a post, a screechy, dry trill. He is Raúl, his arms are Raúl’s hairy arms, so hairy that you can’t even see his skin beneath fists bashing her from either side, like a piñata, while he fucks her. She cries out, No! Crying and praying to Santa Maria. Erhard can’t remember if she’s Catholic. No, she never went to church; he never saw her anywhere near one. She’s not reciting Santa Maria, she’s repeating the lyrics from one of those pop songs Raúl loved: ‘Only When You Leave, I Need to Love You’. She stops talking. She falls silent. She lies still beneath him. He counts his arms, and there are more of them. Up to eight or nine flapping in front of him. Then Beatriz disappears.

He almost can’t bring himself to go into the bedroom to check on her. The body that’s lying in that bed is so different from the one he’s just touched in his dream that it’s both a relief and a grief. In the dream, she was a broken soul trapped in a pure sex machine; in reality, she’s nothing more than a distressed soul trapped in a broken body. Without turning on the light and seeing her face, he changes her drainage bag and rolls her over in the dark. He doesn’t care to see her eyes, the glossy dull buttons, and doesn’t care to see the atrophied muscles of her cheeks.

He goes for a walk down to the beach. It’s the best time of the day to be reminded how the town used to be. The seagulls eye the cafes’ stacked tables, a married couple is having a row on a bench underneath a blooming tree, a young man rakes the sand and then arranges reclining chairs in a straight row. And of course there are fishermen out along the coast, lonely and inept silhouettes, always early to rise so they can do something that resembles work and can get sloshed with a good conscience before lunch. He watches one of the boats chugging into the harbour. If it were a car, one might say it was lurching, but he supposes wind and currents take their toll – just as when the wind out near the Dunes lashes against vehicles and practically sweeps them off the road. Changing direction, he heads towards the harbour. This is also the best time of the day to speak to anyone who knows how the tide and the sea push around large objects.

He sees the boat winding round the breakwater and dock among a couple of empty fishing cutters. Working in silence, the men leap about, and one of them fastens the dock lines to the cleats. Erhard studies them to figure out which one is the captain or even the most experienced sailor. It must be the one with the scarf around his neck, or maybe the one wearing bright orange overalls. He picks the one with the scarf, who’s standing on the breakwater now and rinsing out some grey tote boxes.

– Who’s the captain of your ship?

– Who’s asking? the man says, without looking at Erhard.

– A curious soul.

– There aren’t many of those at six o’clock in the morning.

– But it’s almost 7.30 now. Are you the captain?

The man chuckles and points at the boat, where a young man stands jotting a note in the little cockpit.

Since the other man’s farther away, and the motor’s still running, Erhard has to shout. – I have a question for the captain!

A moment passes before the sound reaches the man in the cockpit, and he glances at Erhard. His face is reddish-brown, and his eyes are white, as though bleached of colour by the sun. Erhard recognizes him. Not because he knows him, but because the man grew up near the harbour in Corralejo; he’s one of the kids who sold fish on the street and who used to run around naked on the rocks, showing crabs to the tourists, one of those who cries when the flotilla with the Virgin is sent to sea, because his own father died out there, and because he too will die out there one day. A young fisherman of the old school, a child of the island if ever there was one.

The man hops down from the cockpit and offers Erhard his hand. – Polo, he says. The other side of the man’s face, Erhard sees, is flattened as if it was once injured by a blunt object. Erhard introduces himself.

– I have a question to whichever one of you has the most experience on the sea, Erhard says, and glances around expecting one of the others to look up.

– Ask me, Polo says.

Erhard doesn’t quite know how to formulate his question without making the men laugh. – In all the years you’ve sailed, you have probably seen a little bit of everything. But I’m just a landlubber who randomly ended up on this island, and I don’t know anything about conditions on the sea.

Polo stares at him.

– And I was wondering, well… what’s the strangest thing you’ve seen floating around out there? I’ve read in the newspaper that there’s a massive island of plastic west of Hawaii. Have you ever seen anything strange floating around?