The Hermit

by Thomas Rydahl

  He folds up the bills and stuffs them in his pocket. He hides the rest of the wallet’s contents behind his books, on the shelf next to the finger. It’s not the most original hiding spot if someone were to search for valuables in the house, but for now he can’t think of a better place. And anyway, who would look for valuables in such a dump?

  When he reaches the road, he parks the car and cuts the engine to listen. Her banging and shouting were so clear up at the house, even after he’d climbed into his car, that he feared they could be heard down here. But the wind, always the wind, erases all sound. Even the wind is difficult to hear; it’s just part of the scenery.

  Maybe he doesn’t need to work, but he needs to think about his situation, and a few hours in the car, on the road, tends to help him whenever he feels this way. He drives around picking up some pedestrians, but at eleven o’clock he parks in the queue at Carmen. He pulls out his book and tries to read, but he can’t focus on the pages. He imagines Alina slipping out of the shed and running – naked for some reason – down the road, to Guzman, where she points up the hill and explains how the Hermit, that crazy man, locked her up. He knows that’s not likely. She can’t get out of the shed. Despite its rickety appearance, the shed is solidly built, the boards are thick, the door has four hinges, and it would take two men with a bolt cutter to break the padlock. Then he imagines a scene in which he comes home and invites her into the kitchen; he grills a fish – for some reason, they eat it together – and sit out back watching the goats and gazing up the hill. He doesn’t even like grilled fish.

  While he’s out grabbing a cup of coffee, he saunters past a taxi, inside of which two men are arguing. One is Pedro Muñoz, who normally drives on weekends, and the other is Alberto, an older cabbie who works a regular Monday to Friday shift. Alberto waves him over to the window.

  – Hola, Jørgensen. Tell this young man here, again, why we use a taximeter.

  Erhard dips his head forward and peers into the car. Muñoz looks a little trapped.

  – What’s the problem? Erhard asks.

  Whenever there are disagreements, his colleagues come to him. He’s earned a reputation for being a fair man of few words.

  – The problem is that Alberto doesn’t like a little competition, Muñoz says.

  – All I’m saying is that you’ve got to use your taximeter and not give customers any discounts.

  – You always tell me that the taximeter is best for the customer, and I get that. But, well, don’t you get discounts when you buy new shoes? The price signs are only for tourists.

  – It’s not just about money, Erhard says.

  – We’re not shoe salesmen, Alberto says, affronted.

  Pedro Muñoz throws up his hands. – Ridiculous. What about regular customers who ask for you? Or some girl who’s afraid to walk home alone?

  – I know it’s against the rules, but why can’t Pedro do as he wishes, so long as he settles his accounts? Erhard asks.

  – Because it’s my car, Alberto says, and I need to pay TaxiVentura along with all the expenses! I can’t tell if he’s had a bad day or just pocketed all the money. His discounts don’t always make it into his accounts.

  – Did you cheat? Erhard asks Muñoz, knowing that will push his buttons.

  – Of course I haven’t! he says, red-faced. – Honest.

  – Why would you let him drive your car if you think he’s cheating you?

  – Because he takes 70 per cent of the cut, Muñoz says on Alberto’s behalf.

  The men fall silent.

  There are two possible outcomes to this. Either they figure it out or Muñoz quits driving for Alberto and officially begins working for TaxiVentura. It’s happened before. Alberto would have to work full-time again, at least until he finds someone new to drive nights for chump change. Some drivers still rent out their cars to substitutes; it’s a way to finance their cars without working all the time. But it’s usually not a good deal for the substitutes. That’s why part-time cabbies are on the way out, and the two large taxi companies, TaxiVentura and Taxinaria, have organized all the drivers on the island.

  – What if Pedro gets 35 per cent and stops giving discounts? he says to Alberto, offering one last chance to keep his comfy day shifts.

  Alberto stares at the photograph taped to the dash. It’s a faded old photo of a woman balanced on a ladder picking olives. His wife, or maybe his mother. – OK. But from now on everything goes through the taximeter, he says.

  Muñoz appears to be calculating whether it’s worth it for him. He simply nods. In a few months’ time, he’ll probably move on. Erhard doesn’t know what the guy wastes his time on during daylight hours, but if he wants to earn real money driving a cab, he’ll have to find a better arrangement. The 35 per cent solution only solves the problem here and now, and it helps Alberto as he draws nearer to his retirement.

  – And you have to clean up all your coffee cups, Alberto says, handing Muñoz a paper cup.

  – Muñoz smiles, takes the cup, and steps out of the car. For a moment he and Erhard walk side by side on the pavement, each carrying a cup. When they come to Erhard’s vehicle, Erhard sets his on the roof to open the door.

  – Thank you, Muñoz says.

  – You’re welcome, Pedro.

  – It’s hard, you know, because he’s a nice fellow.

  – Alberto’s not as friendly as he seems. Just ask some of the others who started with him.

  – Why did you help me? I thought you’d help him. You go back a bit, don’t you?

  An honest boy. Curious. Erhard appreciates that. – Justice, he says. – It’s a matter of fairness. Without justice, what have you? What comes around, goes around.

  – Kind of a yin and yang thing, huh? Is that what you mean?

  – Why do you ask?

  Either the lad’s smarter than he looks or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  – They say you’re a wise man, that you read a lot of books. Muñoz peeks through the passenger window at Erhard’s book.

  – The blind leading the blind, or whatever people say, Erhard says, getting into his car.

  – What?

  – Don’t believe everything you hear. And come speak with me if you have any more trouble.

  Erhard starts his engine and rolls forward in the queue.

  During siesta he drives home, suffering from a bad conscience. She’s been locked in the dark shed all day long. He listens at the door and calls out for her to step forward. Without waiting for her response, he prepares a few things inside his house, then carries out a long tow chain and hitches it to a metal ring on the side of the house, where the tarpaulin used to be. He drags the chain to the shed and unlocks the door.

  It’s silent in there. At first all he can see is darkness, the compact kind that swallows virtually all light. But then he sees her face. She was waiting just inside, and has begun sneaking towards the door, trying to slip around Erhard to get outside. He discovers her in the nick of time, forces the door shut with all his might, and slams the padlock closed. She screams in frustration.

  – You can’t do that, he says.

  She doesn’t reply, but he hears her punching the wall.

  – I want to let you out, but don’t try anything. Do you understand?

  No reply.

  – Do you understand?

  – Yes! she shouts shrilly.

  – Stand against the wall. And stay there. Cautiously he opens up and peers inside, positioning his foot against the door. She’s standing against the back wall, hands at her sides. She’s been in the shed for only seventeen hours, and yet she looks like a shipwreck. Her hair, once meticulously coiffed, has tumbled loose. Her makeup is smudged and smeared with dirt, and the thighs of her creased, filthy trousers are torn. He steps towards her, and she stares in terror at the chain he holds in his hand.

  – I’ll let you go soon, he says. – When the police have figured out they’ve got the wrong person.

  She says nothi
ng.

  – Did the telephone ring?

  She doesn’t look at him.

  He shakes her. – It’s important. Did the telephone ring? He hopes the journalist will call to let him know that he went to the hearing, and that the police will now continue their investigation. Maybe he should’ve gone to the hearing himself. It was probably open to the public.

  He repeats his question, but she stares at the ground.

  He shows her the chain. – I thought I’d put this around your ankle, so you can be outside instead.

  She shakes her head almost imperceptibly, but he quickly drops to his knees and fastens it to her ankle, securing it. It’s clamped tight around the skinniest part of her leg, and will begin to hurt at some point, but it’s got to be better than sitting in the dark.

  The chain is long enough for her to enter the house. She can use the toilet. She can reach the kitchen and open one of the cupboards, which he’s removed the glasses from and stocked with water bottles, biscuits, old cookies. If she’s inside, he won’t be able to close the main door because the chain will be in the way, but that doesn’t matter. No one ever visits anyway.

  He shows her around and explains everything. – You can’t reach the telephone or the bookshelf, so don’t bother trying. You can sit here or sleep.

  He points at an old mattress that he’s positioned in the corner, near the door. She stares at it disinterestedly, almost in disgust. He’d hoped for gratitude, and he’s irritated at himself. It confuses him that he continues to give her chances, acting like she’s a guest in his house. Perhaps it’s her wretched appearance and round, dirty cheeks that arouse his compassion. She deserves exactly what she’s getting, an old mattress and a chain around her ankle. He leaves her alone while he boils water for coffee.

  For a long time she just stands there. But finally he hears her plopping down on the mattress, the chain rattling against the floor. He pours coffee and drinks it, sitting in the chair where he can see her feet.

  – Don’t take pictures of me or anything gross, she says.

  – Why would I do that?

  – Many men do. Then they post them somewhere on the web without permission.

  – I’m not one of your disturbed johns.

  – You’re just as disturbed. The only difference is that I don’t want to fuck you.

  – Stop talking like that, Erhard says, and sips his coffee. – I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t care.

  She’s asleep when he walks past. Once again he feels a certain satisfaction, almost delight, that she’s relaxing. Like an exhausted girl in a day-care centre, her arms and legs splaying every which way after a busy day in the playground. He closes the door, though not completely because of the chain.

  The Dutch winter holiday began early this year, and suddenly there are two or three flights a day, spitting tourists onto the streets of Corralejo; this means short trips to Las Dunas, the harbour, or the nearby hotel.

  After all of Alina’s questions, he suddenly notices cameras everywhere. Customers snap photographs through the car window, of each other in the back seat, of him driving. Out near Las Dunas men with a small video camera film the sun, the sand dunes, and goats. Once upon a time, back when he went on holidays with his mum and dad, he would take carefully planned snapshots. With twenty-four or thirty-six pictures on a roll and only two extra rolls in the suitcase, you had to be selective when on holiday. Ten photographs a day. You didn’t take unnecessary photos of passing goats or sweaty socks or ordinary meals at ordinary restaurants. You didn’t take photographs of people you didn’t know or rubbish along the side of the road or a cloudless sky. Photographs were a rare event. Now it’s completely different: People snap a surplus of photos; everything is photographed. And it sounds as if there’s a place on the Internet where you can develop your photographs. He recalls a girl who photographed her girlfriend with her tongue jammed in a beer bottle outside the discotheque Corralejo Beach in Calle Cervera.

  Were photographs taken of the car, of its owner, when they arrived in Cotillo? Images of the boy’s mother or father saying farewell through the car window? Images of the car, alone, as the water edges up the beach?

  At six o’clock, he turns on the radio and listens to the news. But it’s just the international news, nothing local. Maybe the hearing was postponed, maybe the boy’s story is no longer newsworthy. He won’t reach out to Bernal again, but he wishes he knew a policeman who could fill him in on what happened at the hearing. The courthouse is in a separate wing of the Palace; the executive and judicial branches are so close that one can hear the judge’s gavel while standing in police headquarters, quite literally.

  For dinner he picks a brown rotisserie chicken that has rotated on a spit most of the day, along with a carton of sliced tomatoes mixed with firm goat cheese. He buys enough for two and hopes Alina will like the food. Things will go much smoother if he keeps her calm, more manageable – more receptive to his point of view. He’s heard of the Stockholm Syndrome, but how does it work? How long does it take to go into effect?

  Alina knows nothing about the Stockholm Syndrome, and she despises chicken – it tastes like rubber, she says – so she tells him to sod off. She bangs the chain angrily against the floor until he’s close to losing his mind, and considers throwing her back in the shed. When he tells her what he’s thinking of doing, she calls him a pathetic extranjero. He can do whatever he wants with her, she says, spitting and hissing at him, yanking on her chain. Erhard has to get away from her, so he goes outside to feed Laurel and Hardy, who’re standing up on the hill licking a rock. It’s like being kicked out of his own house, he thinks, hoping that it’s only a matter of hours before he can release her. He hardly cares what the police will do to him if she reports him for kidnapping. But he hopes she doesn’t. He wishes she’ll crawl into a tiny cave and stay put. No more johns, no more drugs.

  Listening to her railing inside the house, however, he’s not sure how it’ll play out.

  From the hill, he can see several miles: the mouse-grey water pounding the surf all the way from the West Indies and South America, crashing and ripping against the choppy, jagged coast. As Laurel tries to get at Erhard’s belt loops, his little bell dings. Erhard gently scratches the goat behind one of his long, soft ears and gives it a handful of food from a bag.

  Back at the house, he finds Alina sitting on the kitchen floor. She has pulled everything out of the cupboard, so honey, rice, and peppers are strewn across the floor. She’s worse than a naughty child. Luckily, she couldn’t reach the refrigerator. Not that there’s much in it. Her salmon-coloured outfit is unrecognizable now, more like a prison uniform.

  – If you help me with one thing, I’ll let you go.

  This seems to discourage her, and Erhard doesn’t understand why. It occurs to him that she might feel hopeless, lacking any spark of life. Maybe this lie she was set to tell and her trip to Madrid were all she had left. And now Erhard has snuffed them out.

  – You mentioned posting photographs on the Internet. How’s that done?

  She squints at him. – What do you want?

  – To find a photo on the Internet, where would I look?

  – Of me?

  – No, he says. She probably thinks he’s looking for a pornographic image; he doesn’t care to know what photographs of Alina he might find. – A photo of the car stranded on the beach in Cotillo. My customers say they find photographs on the Internet, snapshots taken a few days or even hours before, and so I thought maybe I could find some of the boy’s mother or father when they first arrived in the car.

  – You’re still stuck on that, Fourfingers?

  – Just tell me where I can find the photographs.

  – I can’t, she says. – They’re all over. Google it or something. She stands, then plops down on the mattress next to the door. Like a tired dog.

  – Help me find it and I’ll give you your cigarettes.

  – Fuck you. You’ve already ruined m
y deal. My trip to Madrid is gone.

  – I saved you. You would’ve regretted it the moment you signed your name.

  – I regret everything I’ve done since coming to this cursed fucking island. In fact I regret everything that’s happened to me since my mother, may she burn in hell, gave birth to me.

  – Help me. Help the boy.

  – Are you daft? I don’t give a shit about that boy. If I do anything to help you, it’s only because I want to get away from here.

  – I’ll drive you downtown as soon as I’ve found what I need.

  – What if I can’t find it? If the photo you’re looking for doesn’t exist?

  – Help me and I’ll let you go whether we find it or not.

  She studies him at length, then shrugs. Which means yes.

  – So how does this work? Erhard asks.

  – How should I know? Type it into Google and hit return. She glances around. – Where’s the computer?

  Erhard stares blankly at her.

  – You don’t have a computer?

  – I don’t need one.

  – What, you think we’ll search on my mobile? That’s fucking expensive. Will you pay for it?

  He almost says yes, but changes his mind. – If you find the photo I’ll remove the chain.

  – Get my purse. Where is it?

  He doesn’t respond, just saunters into the living room and finds her mobile. He hands it to her. – Cotillo Beach. Right around 7 or 8 January.

  – I don’t have much battery left, less than a quarter.

  She pokes around on the device. He stands behind her, so he can watch her. It would be easy for her to call the police or send a message to someone she knows. But she’s already found a bunch of photographs, and more emerge as she scrolls down her screen.