The Hermit (6 page)

A couple is standing near the roundabout outside of Puerto. He drives them to a bike-rental shop in Via Panitta. He changes gears and drums the wheel rhythmically. Neither one of them says a word to him. Neither one of them stares at his hand. They just talk about, well, something or other. Then he drives to La Oliva: A man and his dog are heading to the veterinarian. The dog, an old sheepdog, sits stock-still gasping for breath. Erhard’s afraid the dog will sniff the finger, but it seems more interested in the hollow space under the hand brake, where there’s a balled-up napkin from lunch. The man tells him the animal’s going to be put to sleep. There’s nothing that can be done, he says repeatedly. One hour later he drives them home. The dog continues to gasp for breath, but the owner is happy. We made it, he whispers to the dog.

16

Then comes the year’s first rainy day. Whenever it rains, he likes to be inside drinking Lumumbas. They don’t know jack about that down here, so if he’s at a hotel – he likes being at a calm, air-conditioned hotel with a bar, where the bartender stands quietly between fags – so if he’s at a hotel, he has to tell the bartender how to make a Lumumba. At the Hotel Phenix down on the beach in Corralejo, he once went behind the bar to show the new bartender how to heat up the cocoa with the same nozzle used to foam milk for a
café au lait
.

He’s at home today, where he keeps cocoa powder, powdered milk, and cognac on the top shelf of his pantry. The rainy season usually comes in the spring, as far as he’s concerned, but there are many different opinions on the matter here. He whips up cream with a fork attached to the power drill. And then he sits, shirtless, in his chair under the tarpaulin, gazing up at the mountain. Into the rain.

He put the finger in a glass of formaldehyde. The glass makes the finger appear elongated and thin. A pharaoh’s finger. A finger to make the heavens thunder. Up close, it’s just brown and twisted. The ring’s loose now; he can spin it, but it still won’t come off. It has begun to irritate him. If he can pull the ring off, the finger will seem more like his own. But he can’t let it dry out. Then it’ll break. Or fall apart. Like a crushed cinnamon stick.

The drops fall so thickly it sounds as if the earth itself is grumbling. As long as it keeps raining, he can’t hear anything else. He thinks about the corrugated plastic sheet above the toilet and the kitchen, which makes everything sound much worse. For seventeen years he’s considered getting rid of it. It doesn’t match the house, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. But he doesn’t care about that, actually. It only irritates him when it bangs in the southerly wind and he lies in bed all morning cursing the wind or the roof or himself, because he didn’t replace that old plastic sheet years ago or, at the very least, lay some rocks on top of it so that it doesn’t bang as much. But when he’s outside sitting in front of his house and staring up at the mountain and the silver-coloured sky, he doesn’t think about anything.

When someone says,
Isn’t it lovely to live in a place where it never rains?
, he says, Yes. But the truth is, those four or five rainy days a year are what he loves most. They break up the monotony of sunshine; they’re like instant holidays pouring from the heavens. The entire island comes to a standstill. Everyone looks up or runs around finding the things they’ve left lying in the driveway, in the window, or on the terrace. And he doesn’t drive his taxi on those days. There are lots of customers when it rains, but he doesn’t want to waste a good rainy day. He parks the cab and sits under his tarpaulin drinking Lumumbas, until the thermos full of warm cocoa is empty. Then he falls asleep. If he’s at a hotel and gets drunk, he loans a room. More often than not, he knows the front-desk clerk. He throws himself fully dressed onto the bed. He doesn’t get hangovers from Lumumbas. It’s the good thing about Lumumbas.

17

A rapping. The roof’s banging in the wind. Or maybe it’s thunder.

It’s a knock at his door.

– Erhard. A voice penetrates the hard, steady rain. There is also thunder, but someone’s knocking on his door. Softly. He throws the blanket aside, stands up, and walks around the house. He doesn’t care about the rain. He likes to feel the cold droplets on his skin; they lead him farther and farther out of his ruminations or his sleep, into which he’d fallen. He recognizes the convertible and the figure waiting inside the car, behind the misted glass. Raúl’s pounding on the door. – I know you’re in there. Put down that Lumumba and come out.

–
Dios mío
, boy, you’re going to blow my house down.

Raúl turns the doorknob, then holds up his hand as a shield against the rain to see Erhard. He laughs and embraces Erhard, wetting them both. – Come, he says, and tugs him to his car. – We’re going on a little excursion.

Erhard has grown accustomed to this kind of thing from Raúl, so he just follows him. – Just a moment, he says. – I’m coming. He walks around the house and grabs the glass with the finger. He lays it on the top shelf between tins of food and cocoa. He studies the finger for a moment. Then, with a pair of tongs, he removes it from the glass and carefully places it inside a freezer bag before cinching the bag in a knot. It fits in the pocket of his Khaki shorts without sticking out. No one would be able to tell what it is.

Beatriz crawls into the backseat, and Erhard’s nudged into the front seat. That’s how Raúl is. Beatriz hugs him from the backseat, and he can feel her curls against his neck. Either she always smells different or she never uses the same perfume. Tonight it’s vanilla and salt. Raúl backs the car all the way down to Alejandro’s Trail and spins around, spattering mud. The music is loud. It’s noise. Not really a song.

– It was Bea’s idea, Raúl shouts.

– I just said the lightning was beautiful.

– And then you said Cotillo.

– You can see them there.

– That’s what I’m saying.

– But why Cotillo? Erhard asks. The windscreen wipers whip back and forth at full speed. – Why not up here?

– Nothing’s too good for my friends. We’re heading down to the breakers to feel the sizzle of the water. Raúl sounds as if he ordered the lightning himself.

He doesn’t drive recklessly, but much faster than Erhard appreciates. All in all, Erhard has grown so used to driving that he doesn’t like being a passenger. He glances over his left shoulder each time they turn, and he reaches for the gear stick when they drive up a hill. The road glistens, and the landscape is utterly strange, as though slathered in black plastic. It’s the rain – it’s everywhere. It doesn’t go anywhere. The ground is too dry to absorb it.

– You’d like to go down to the real beach, Raúl says to Beatriz. They splash through Cotillo, water spraying against the houses next to the road. It’s easy to sense Raúl’s joy. Beatriz likes it too, maybe she’s pissed, Erhard thinks. Maybe Raúl’s pissed, too. It’s possible.

They leave the city behind, heading towards the car park and the flat terrain just before the slope down to the beach. The car park is filled with cars, not in orderly rows like in a drive-in theatre, but randomly chaotic. There are probably twenty or thirty of them, and even a couple of police vehicles. Behind the cars the sky is a grey canvas that lights up bright green every time the lightning strikes.

– Here we are, Raúl shouts. He has opened his door and is standing in the rain, his jacket over his head.

– Can’t we see it from in here? Beatriz asks.

Raúl doesn’t hear her. He slams his door and runs around the car to open hers. She doesn’t repeat the question, but follows him when he offers his hand. Erhard climbs out too. He’s quickly soaked, but it doesn’t bother him.

They run towards the slope. Almost as though they’re searching for the queue to that evening’s entertainment. It’s not there. Not on the slope in any case. They continue to the water, stumbling down the slope, Beatriz shrieking in excitement. Lightning cracks unremittingly across the sky. The sound is far away, almost buried by the rain. Each bolt forms a unique thread from the base to the top, or vice versa. And in the midst of everything, the sea foams and roars.

Then they spot the throng standing near the beach. Dark silhouettes and a few people with torches or lamps draw attention to the scene. Messages are shouted, and some kind of machine whirls around and around.

– What the hell? Raúl says. – What’s happened?

– It’s probably some tourist group, Beatriz calls out.

– Not in this rain, Raúl laughs.

They start towards the crowd, which isn’t as dense as they’d first thought; it has formed a semi-circle around others. A blue light blinks and a man shouts, Get back, get back. But no one moves. The waves lash at their feet, and some of the people are standing up to their ankles in the foamy water.

– There’s a car, Beatriz shouts. – What’s it doing here?

18

A policeman is trying to stretch barricade tape around the car. It’s a black Volkswagen Passat. A few tall lamps light the vehicle, but the generator can’t keep up and the lamps alternately flicker off and on, then fall over in the soft sand.

They pause amid the throng and try to find out what happened. It looks like a terrible parking job or a stolen, abandoned vehicle. Erhard has seen both kinds many times.

– Let’s get away from here and watch the lightning, Beatriz suggests.

– We can’t do that, Raúl says. – Something awful has happened.

– That’s what I mean. We can’t stand here watching. Someone was hurt.

A person in front of them says, – Someone drove over the edge and rolled into the sea.

– How do you roll all the way down here? You’d have to want to, another says. – Is it a suicide?

– Who was here first? a policeman tries. A few people raise their hands, but lower them when they see the others.

– Who called us? I can’t recall who I spoke to earlier.

A man steps forward. Their conversation is silenced by the rain. The man points up the slope. The policeman tries to write something down in a notebook, but there’s so much rain that he’s forced to give up. His pen doesn’t work, either.

– It must’ve been stolen. There are no licence plates, someone says. An amateur surfer in a colourful wetsuit.

– They keep looking at something in the backseat, says the other.

– Step back, damn it, step back.

Erhard recognizes the policeman. It’s Bernal. He’s soaked, his clothes practically glistening underneath an umbrella, and he’s shining a torch into the backseat and snapping photographs with a big camera.

– Hassib, Bernal shouts. – I need some help here.

No one comes to his aid. His voice, enveloped in noise, disappears. The other officers can’t hear him. One is busy trying to get the lamps to stand upright, another is talking to a paramedic with a bag tucked under his arm. A crane is backing into place on the clifftop, ready to hoist the vehicle up. In the meantime, rain continues to fall.

– Can’t we go? I don’t feel too well, Beatriz whispers.

– Come here. Raúl pulls her close to him.

– Anyone from the media here? an officer asks.

No one says a word.

– Not yet, boss, the officer shouts at Bernal.

Bernal photographs something on the backseat. They look like papers, newspaper cuttings. A colleague arrives and helps him spread the papers on the seat. They discuss them and shuffle them around as he snaps pictures. Lightning winks across the black sky, as if responding to the camera’s flash.

An acrid stench emerges from the car in gusts. At first Erhard thinks it’s coming from the bag. From the finger. He feels for it in his pocket, wondering whether the knot’s come undone. Maybe running down the slope punctured the plastic. The Lumumba has been flushed out of him. But the bag is right where he put it. At the same time, the smell from the car is more hostile and insistent. Like something that should have been stored away long ago.

– It must be an accident. Did it just happen? Raúl asks the amateur surfer.

– I think the car’s been here for a day. Then someone realized that it wasn’t locked, he says.

The man who’d just spoken to the officer interjects. – I could tell there was something inside the box on the backseat. Something was sticking up.

– What was sticking up? says the amateur surfer’s friend, who is the only one wearing a rain jacket.

– It looked like… He doesn’t say anything more.

The vice police superintendent walks past them, an irritated expression on his face. For a moment Bernal and Erhard look at each other. Bernal stops abruptly and returns. Raúl takes a step back. Clearly he’s not interested in speaking to a policeman.

– Hermit, Bernal says. – Do you have a nose for drama, or what?

Erhard doesn’t know what to say. He wants to tell him that he wasn’t seeking out another accident.

– What’s happened here? the surfer asks.

Bernal doesn’t respond. – I want names of everyone who saw anything. If you’re just here for the show and curious, then you need to leave this place, he says, staring at Erhard.

– We came to watch the lightning, Beatriz says.

Bernal just looks at her. – Then watch the lightning, Señorita. He walks up the slope, vanishing within the rain, which has become a kind of dense, black cloud.

– Can we go now? Beatriz whispers.

Raúl stares at the vehicle for a long time. – Of course, my angel.

The water has already retreated a few yards, the waves lashing like savage animals.

– You owe me a Lumumba, Erhard says to Raúl while watching Beatriz, whose dress is so drenched that it clings to her.

19

Once upon a time, the Boy-Man took the bus each Wednesday. It took him most of the morning to get to Tuineje, and most of the afternoon to get back to the Santa Marisa Home. A few times, he’d gotten off too early, in some tiny village, and had to be picked up by the police after he started running up and down the street hitting himself in the head. He’s at least 6’7, maybe 6’9, but his face resembles that of a 7-year-old boy, so do his gangly limbs and clothes. His eyes dart around restlessly. As though he’s trying to understand the world by reading it as a code or musical notes. In the taxi, he loves to lay his forehead against the window and watch the landscape. To follow the uninterrupted line.