The Hermit (58 page)

– I did everything I could to make sure no one would find out. If I’d said anything or shown myself in public with a baby, I would’ve been fired on the spot and kicked out of the flat. That’s the truth. And my family may be full of homos, but we’re very religious, especially my aunt. I ate practically nothing. You couldn’t tell that I was pregnant. Fuck, I didn’t even know it myself until I had a bleeding episode. But by then it was too late.

– What do you mean too late?

– It was too late to have an abortion. So I drank and I smoked. But that little monster held on. And then Søren said that he’d take it, that he would pay for it. So I said fuck it, and went to term.

– What did Hollisen do when the baby was born?

– He was involved in everything. He wanted me to breastfeed, but I didn’t want to do that. Søren fed it. He talked to it as if it understood what he said. After seven or ten days, he bolted. I went out to have a fag, and when I came back in he was gone. As if he’d planned it that way. Really ticked me off.

– Ten days? When was it born?

– I think it was 21 October.

– Hollisen ran off with your son at the beginning of November?

– Something like that. I can’t remember exactly.

– What happened then?

– He kept calling me, telling me I could get another chance. But I didn’t want another fucking chance, I just wanted my money. But he didn’t have any money, he didn’t have shit. He kept saying he would leave, that he would fly away, but he had no money. Not even for food.

– You didn’t consider reporting him to the police?

She laughs, and smoke billows out of her mouth and nose. – I didn’t want to involve anyone, don’t you get it? I never should’ve told my grandfather. He went ballistic. He was really looking forward to seeing the kid. He knew people, he said, who could find it. But then he was killed, and I didn’t pursue it any further.

– When was this? Erhard says. He has a strange hunch. He glances down the street as the drunkard falls to the ground.

– Grandpa called on New Year’s Eve to say Happy New Year, you know, and I was pissed and tired and I told him what happened. It made him crazy, so unbelievably crazy.

A police car has turned down the alley and is now heading in Erhard’s direction. It’s driving slowly. The officers inside seem mostly interested in the drunkard, who’s standing on a low wall and having a slash in a bucket. One of the officers stretches his arm out the window, trying to force the man down. Erhard pulls his Barça cap lower over his forehead.

– So you don’t know what became of Hollisen or your son?

She shakes her head, sucks the fag right down to the filter, and lays her hand on her belly.

– Do you know a guy called Rick? Erhard asks.

She stares at him with her dark eyes. Shakes her head again.

Erhard considers letting her know, right now, about the boy in the cardboard box, his dried-out eyes and broken fingers. But she doesn’t care. She’s so fixated on her own anger, whose source is elsewhere, that she feels nothing for the boy. If only she had been on drugs or retarded, she’d have an excuse. This is just deplorable.

– If you find him, tell him he owes me money. I don’t know why you’re looking for him. Did he cheat you, too?

Erhard can’t help himself. – The man sounds like a saint right now, he says.

She begins to speak, but Erhard turns away. The police car is approaching, and one of the officers is gazing intently through the open window. With his face concealed by his cap, Erhard walks calmly around the corner. He hears the word
Stop!
But as soon as he’s out of sight, he runs down the same narrow passage he’d taken earlier. He disappears in the crowd heading towards the beach to watch the Virgin del Carmen
being pushed out to sea. Ducking his head, making himself shorter, he lumbers alongside a family with young kids who snap photographs with their cameras above their heads.
Pardon me, Pardon me
, he says softly to everyone who bumps into him. There’s a pushchair with two blonde girls in his way, and he almost has to step over it to keep moving forward.

– Hermit? he hears someone say behind him. – It’s the Hermit!

– Where? Where?

Erhard glances over his shoulder and thinks he spots Charles and his crutches.

He pushes his way through bodies, people, faces. They come like waves crashing over him: arms, legs, flowers pounding against him, knocking him around and around so that he doesn’t know which way is what. The sea, life, and the relentlessness of humanity, the eternal flow of energy. How does one ever get a chance to become whole?

He finds himself standing on a side street leading downtown, confused, catching his breath. The easiest thing would be to give in, to let himself be pushed along by the current, down to the boat and out to sea. To let himself be overwhelmed and washed away. That’s what he usually does. Life washed him all the way out here, and he crawled onto land, started over. Now it’s happening again, and there’s nothing to suggest that he’ll make a difference, that he’ll be the one to keep the wave at bay. But he has succeeded so far. For two months he has held his breath and survived everything that came at him. Every time an obstacle was put in his path, he managed to find a way around it.

The
Lucifia
will have to sail without him. He won’t give in. Not until he’s got such a firm grip on that child-murderer and criminal Palabras that he drags him into the depths with him. And he knows just the right person to knit all the threads of the story together, so that the police will listen and Palabras won’t dare touch Erhard.
One
person who knows what became of Hollisen, and precisely what role Palabras played. Juan Pascual. He angles away from the harbour, heading downtown. But first he has to do something about his appearance.

73

When he gets to the hair salon, Petra is sweeping the floor.

– Unfortunately, my dear, we’re closed for the day. Virgin del Carmen calls.

– Let her wait five minutes, Petra.

She puts her broom aside and regards Erhard. – What’s with you? You smell like a homeless man, your clothes don’t fit you, and… that hat.

– I know, I know. Please, Petra, you have to help me. Five minutes, that’s all I need.

– Who says I want to, or even can?

– I know you can. Just do what you always do.

Petra shakes a styling cape and retrieves her sheers from the counter.

– What happened to you?

Erhard pulls off his hat. – Get your electric razor. I need a buzz.

– I don’t do that to men over sixty. It makes them look like idiots.

– Then make me the nicest-looking idiot you’ve ever met, Erhard says, climbing into the chair.

Petra scrutinizes him in the mirror. – Just this once. Next time you’ll have to go to Hussein. He’ll do it for five euros.

Erhard just stares at her. Then she shaves his head.

She begins at the nape of his neck, where it tickles the most, and runs the razor over Erhard’s scalp. Thick clumps of grey hair fall to the floor. She repeats the same motion, then trims left to right. She’s very thorough around his ears, but she’s not happy about it. She switches on the hairdryer and blows hair off his shoulders. Erhard removes his sunglasses from his pocket, then pops out the lenses to make them look like ordinary glasses.

Petra steps back, startled. – You look like that agent from
Three Days of the Condor
.

– Robert Redford?

– No, the bad guy. Max von Sydow.

– As long as I don’t look like myself.

– There’s nothing wrong with that. What kind of trouble are you in? Does it have anything to do with that boy who was found on the beach?

– No.

– I knew you shouldn’t get involved in that. You’re not a policeman.

– Thanks for your help, Petra. I owe you. He’s already on his way out the door again. The nape of his neck itches.

– I don’t want anything for such a silly haircut. If anyone asks you, I had nothing to do with it. Where are you off to?

– The laundry, he says.

The machines are quiet. It’s been hours since anyone washed a load. He opens the six large dryers one at a time. Clothes tumble out the fourth machine, underwear mostly. The sixth machine has more of what he needs: t-shirts, undershirts, socks. He quickly picks through the clothes and selects a green shirt that reads
Viva La Evolúcion
. He tosses the rest back into the dryer and changes his clothes. Then he hustles through the streets like a new man, pausing to examine himself in a window reflection. All he can see are his hat, glasses, and his gaudy t-shirt, but no one would notice that he’s almost seventy. He looks like a tourist, just as he’d hoped. Maybe even an American tourist. Neither Charles nor Emanuel Palabras would recognize him, even if he sauntered right past them. It’s liberating, and he feels strangely elated.

Number 15 on Lago de Bristol is a low, long, two-storey building. Each flat has a small terrace or balcony overlooking the bay and its windmills. The warm air is moist from the water that pounds against the shore. Seagulls squawk, but otherwise it’s quiet. Everyone is downtown.

He has plenty of time, he tells himself. Juan Pascual has to return home at some point, exhausted from the festival, with a girl or two on his arm. But then he remembers that Pascual’s a ship’s mate and might be out to sea. If that’s the case, he might not be home for several weeks. Erhard approaches the broad gate and finds a series of names fastened to a large sign underneath the number 15. Pascual’s name is on the bottom. Does that mean he lives in the last flat? Top or bottom?

Peering over the nearly two-metre-high brick wall that encloses the courtyard, he studies the bottom flat. The balcony door is closed, and there’s a table on the red flagstones along with three wrought-iron chairs. He notices a long, meaty bone next to the building, the kind that medium-sized dogs like to gnaw on. If Juan Pascual lives alone, then he doesn’t have a dog. And if he lives with someone, surely there would be two names on the sign. Erhard glances up at the second-storey balcony; the door is ajar, and a curtain flutters like a flag. He creeps among the trees and steps onto a small wooden box that’s beside the wall. In many of the flats, towels hangs on racks, and there are potted plants or small patio tables with umbrellas. But not this one. This one is unused. A man who does not wish to gaze at the sea lives here. A man who does not wish to sit in the sunlight.

A sailor.

If he stands on the wall, Erhard believes it’s possible to reach the second-storey balcony, to grab hold of the balustrade. But the only way he can scale the wall is from this very spot, which means that he will have to walk seven or eight metres along the top of the narrow wall – the entire time visible from the other flats and the street. He might fall, too. It wouldn’t be a long drop, but his knees would feel it; they would immediately buckle, and it would be difficult to get to his feet again.

He clutches a branch, lifts his leg, and clambers up on the wall. Once on, he balances a moment to regain his equilibrium. Standing atop the wall doesn’t seem that difficult. It’s a simple brick wall, about twenty-five centimetres wide, polished and painted. But it’s rounded and slick, and he feels strangely vulnerable. Like one of the bears in the Bear Hunt game at Tivoli in the old days, the ones he would shoot in the belly with a red light, causing them to roar and spin. The wind suddenly picks up. Putting one foot in front of the other, he edges towards the middle. A gull swoops past. Cheers and applause from the festival echo between the houses. Though he doesn’t dare look up, there must be only four or five metres to the building, where he’ll be able to brace himself. Still, it takes time to get there, and he begins to sweat. It’s hard to stay balanced. He has to continually shift his weight, forget where he is, and feel his way forward with his feet. Like a crow. Ahead of him, and above, is the balcony. He hasn’t considered how he’s going to manage it, but now that he’s almost there, he knows there’s only
one
way. And he’s not sure he can do it. Somehow he has to get his legs onto the balcony, and that will require him to lift himself with his arms. He leaps up and clutches the balustrade in both hands.

Loud music blares in the distance. Samba rhythms with flutes and drums. Two flats down, the balcony door swings open, and an 8- or 10-year-old boy appears. He’s munching on a biscuit. Women’s voices debate excitedly in the flat behind him, but no one speaks to the boy or tells him to get back inside. Not wanting to attract attention, Erhard stands motionless, but before long the boy shifts his focus and stares directly at him. Knowing that he’ll have to lean forward and hope that his arms are strong enough to pull him up, Erhard jumps up, grabs the balustrade, and dangles in mid-air.

– Mama, the boy says.

Erhard can no longer see him. He’s too focused on holding on for dear life.

– Mama?

Desperately, Erhard swings his legs to the side and kicks one foot so that it strikes the edge of the balcony. But it slips free and dangles again, forcing his hip to slam hard against the building.

The mother responds to the boy, but Erhard can’t quite make out what she says, and the boy ends up calling for her again. – Come see.

Erhard tries a second time, jerking his left leg up and jamming his foot under the metal balustrade. Then he hoists himself up, kicks his other foot up onto the railing, and climbs over. His body aches. It’s not used to using its muscles like this.

The boy calls for his mother a third time, then runs inside to find her.

Erhard crawls over the railing, pushes open the door, and enters the flat.

74

He’s still not sure he’s in the right flat. He’s not sure what he expected to find. Old nautical charts on the walls? Ships in bottles on shelves? Ashtrays filled with foreign coins? Timetables on the refrigerator door? Or just a tired sailor snoring on the sofa?

Instead the flat looks like temporary living quarters, as sterile as a waiting room. Clothes are piled on the floor along with colourful computer games, a Real Madrid team-photo towel from 2009, and sweet wrappers. Erhard’s nearly certain that the black-and-white photographs on the wall were there before Juan Pascual moved in. The living room and kitchen are one room. From the kitchen table there’s a view of the bay. The cupboards are bare. Well, except for paper plates, paper cups, plastic cutlery, microwaveable meals, boxed wine, salt, and so on. How long has Pascual lived here? Apparently long enough to be listed in the telephone book. Four or five years? Still, it’s as if the man is waiting for something that will change his life. Maybe he’s a junkie? Erhard has seen how junkies live: sad, filthy, disgusting. But here the sadness seems desperate. A person who has a very poor quality of life. A rootless person.