The Hermit

  There’s movement now in his underwear, and he wishes that he had selected them with more care when he’d changed the day before yesterday, knowing that they’d be pulled off him this evening by a woman. Unthinkable yesterday, unthinkable now, but ultimately meaningless now. For the sight of her muff, trimmed or maybe just naturally, absurdly, exquisitely bristly and lacking a single superfluous hair nestled around the two fiery-red lips, isn’t something he remembers Annette ever offered him. With Annette, sex was a kind of education in which she kindly guided them both to a good climax, crawling on top of him as the conclusion of a fine evening. He doesn’t remember either of them ever losing their minds or fucking the hell out of each other, like he wishes to do with this woman, whose name he can’t even remember right now. Right now he can only penetrate her with his tongue. The bristly hair. The tart tang of her wet sex. And finally her labia – more compliant than a juicy melon and a hundred times more intoxicating than an absentminded whore’s mechanical cock-sucking. He’s not sure if she tastes fresh, or even if she’s clean for that matter. He’s forgotten how it tastes. But he knows she tastes forbidden, enchanting, as if nature has mixed a drink for the persistent fool who can’t get enough of just seeing and touching a woman. There’s a depth, a reality in her chemical acridity that seems right to him. He’s so absorbed in her taste that he only now hears her whimpers – as if they’re emerging not from her mouth but her lungs. It’s like the purring of a cat, a supersonic rumbling she herself doesn’t even notice. When he increases pressure on her labia just a little bit, or slips his tongue into her, the sound increases by a margin. But if he goes around her labia through her pubic hairs that scratch his tongue, dodging her clitoris – which has risen almost a centimetre above her labia – her whimpering subsides by a margin. He doesn’t know what it means, but as he fills his mouth with her, he tries to create a balanced distribution between the deep and the loud. And he feels her body responding, kicking into gear. The sounds come at closer intervals, she responds in kind and without delay. He’s never been a great lover or viewed himself as one, but this is something else. For once it’s as if his age has made him better. His cock has released him from servitude; he’s so curious for what he sees, tastes, and hears that he’s totally in the moment – awestruck, probing, panting – and every time he does something, it only intensifies the feeling, and he can practically taste her adrenalin.

  He feels a sharp cramp in his legs and is forced to change his position, which causes her to grab his hair and pull his head right into her crotch until he can hardly breathe. The cramp flares up, but it passes quickly. She releases him, clutches the edge of the rickety table, and gathers up her legs, enclosing him within a new kind of silence, interrupted only by the swooshing of the blood under his skin. She begins to shift around. A few plants fall to the floor. The soft flesh of her thigh against his ears. He’s never experienced anything like this before. During their fifteen years of marriage, he’d never known Annette to be as unrestrained and strong as this woman. With the women he’d been with before Annette, he wasn’t interested in anything else but penetrating them, letting his cock fill them. Still, he has no doubt. Everyone knows when a climax is coming, and Erhard recognizes it with fear and excitement; fear for what’s to come afterward, and excitement for nature’s incredible reward. There’s nothing to do. They’re on their way. The table jiggles underneath them. She begins to mutter to herself. It sounds like Basque, but may just be a Spanish dialect he doesn’t recognize. A flurry of words, curses, or hoarse battle cries. He doesn’t know which, but they merge with the choir emanating from her lungs, braiding into one voice. His tongue is sore. He responds by sticking it in deeper. He’s good at this. Her thighs chafe against his ears. Is his entire head inside her now? Liquid, skin, hair, and labia surround him. It’s as though he hears her organs shifting, making room for something. Her entire body groans, like an animal on its way through a forest not found on this island; the wood in the table begins to give, a cactus pricks his hip, but it no longer matters. His cock is erect now, it wants out. This is new. His tongue is buried in her vagina; he hears her whimpering again, hollow and low. And finally, her thighs fall to the side, the entire scaffold. They’re beneath the open, purple sky, riddled with cactus, juice dripping from her sex, the turtle laughing on the television, Mónica screaming. The table collapses, and he licks her all the way down, his cock exploding, heat pouring out of him, unaccustomed and rich in pain, and he falls into a chaos without form or meaning.

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  58

  They laugh, crawling among the pottery shards and the broken wood, and he lays his head tiredly on her rounded belly. She does not protest.

  – You’ve got the devil’s tongue, she whispers.

  They laugh again. He’s spent, unable to think. They fall silent. The television’s still blaring inside. How long has it been since he ended his telephone conversation? The sun has dipped below the horizon, and the little rock fence throws a shadow across the garden the size of a man. The temperature may have dropped a tad.

  He doesn’t understand it. His luck. His observations. His complete surrender to her. He doesn’t understand how a woman can offer him so much when he doesn’t deserve it.

  Nor does he understand why he feels such destructive guilt towards Beatriz. It’s too bizarre and confusing, but he’s disgusted by everything he’s gone through. He’s not sure whether it’s because he’s been with another woman. Or because he hadn’t thought of Beatriz a single time – which is something new for him. Every pore closes, his enthusiasm hardens. It’s like window shopping at a going-out-of-business sale: everything is tallied, put aside, closed down. A terrible thing to witness. He doesn’t know what to do, or if he needs to do anything. Should he fall in love with the woman he just made love to? Can’t he settle on loving the woman hiding in his flat, regardless of her condition?

  He gets to his feet and goes inside the house, having not removed so much as his t-shirt. She remains behind in her underwear. His clothes show no sign of what just transpired, except for some kind of wet, irritating stain on his trousers, though he doesn’t know exactly what it is. Maybe just some urine.

  – I need to go, Erhard says.

  When he enters the living room, he sees that something’s wrong. The only light in the room is from the glowing television, which is showing the same kids programme. Aaz is sitting, turned, in his chair. And gazing directly, unwaveringly, at the door. It’s as if he’s staring directly into Erhard’s eyes, but of course Erhard doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He wants to say something, but no sound emerges. Although he’s not sure they’re staring at each other in the darkness, that’s how it feels. Slowly Aaz spins his chair around without facing the television again.

  Erhard remembers that he needs to take the Boy-Man with him. For once, he’s afraid of the ride. For the first time, the Boy-Man seems as unpredictable as a gorilla. He sees Mónica getting to her feet out in the garden.

  As he lets himself into the flat with trembling hands, he hears his neighbour rattling her door downstairs. Only a few hours have passed since he was home, but it doesn’t feel that way.

  He stands in the bedroom doorway watching the tiny, blinking apparatus on the table and the IV rack with the drainage bag, which are connected via a tube to the humped bundle lying shapelessly under the blanket. What was it that she said? He almost can’t remember, but of course he remembers it quite clearly. The words have a frailness to them, as if they can’t be said or spelled without breaking in two. The less he tries to remember them, the better he hears them. This makes him believe in them, but maybe he hears only what he wants to hear? Maybe he would like her to talk to him?

  A sudden impulse causes him to turn on the lights and pull the blanket from Beatriz, and now he can see her lying flat on the mattress in her sequined jogging suit. He crawls beside her and places a finger on her left eyelid, lifting it so that he can see her eye. The pupil shifts like a loose shirt button. />
  He wants to call out to her. Where are you, Beatriz? Are you in there? But he can hear the desperation himself. All of a sudden he understands what it was all about.

  Up until now, he has felt he was doing a kind, unselfish act – saving her from death, taking care of her, waiting for life to return to her. Up until this moment, he’s dreamed of waking her up with a kiss, breaking the spell. But what he’s doing is not kind, it’s not for her sake, and it doesn’t have a happy ending. This has all been about Erhard and his hopeless attempt to sacrifice so much for Beatriz that she couldn’t reject him later, when he would require something in return. One final opportunity to sweeten his existence with a woman who would normally never fall for him.

  And, in all fairness, he’s been curious. What do the words mean? And what will she tell him when she wakes up? She’s the only one who knows the truth about the night that Raúl disappeared. Though Raúl will never return, Erhard needs to know whether he was the one who hit her, or whether it was all just some unfortunate accident. Whether Raúl has fled from a crime or a stupid, all-too-human mistake. He needs to know. Partly to understand the person he’d believed to be his friend, but whom he didn’t know at all, and partly to reclaim trust in his own judgement.

  While he’s looking into her eye, he feels unbelievably selfish. All the suffering he’s put her through. The degrading dehumanization of being in a coma, every day growing more and more distant from the person she once was and will never be again. Family and friends have said their goodbyes. He’s the only one she has: a miserable old man who has decided that she is to live – for his sake, for his ego, for his curiosity.

  – I’m sorry, he says. He repeats the apology over and over. Until he lies down on the bed and falls asleep, finally close to her, finally not thinking about sex.

  Erhard knows where Aritza’s office is. It’s in Puerto, east of the Selos District. In something called Parque Occidente. A few years ago, no one wanted to live or work in the area, but now it’s the exact opposite. Young people with money have arrived. Erhard doesn’t understand what they all do for a living, but one of the island’s most expensive restaurants has opened on the street, and the area is packed with big cars and high-end rental vehicles. The only reasonable explanation for Parque Occidente’s transformation is the view. The Selos District is surrounded by auto workshops, cheaply constructed buildings, and the remains of the old harbour district. Parque Occidente is nearly the same, except for what’s called the fourth flank, which opens towards the sea. Erhard is on his way into one of three drab structures linked in a horseshoe pattern. They have been furnished as luxury offices with a communal lobby, an indoor fountain, and a lounge redolent of freshly ground coffee. He enters the lift and presses the button to the fourth floor, and he’s carried soundlessly upward. He stares through one glass wall across the harbour to the sea.

  The lift opens to a large office with more than thirty tables, sofas, plants, meeting rooms behind red glass, and computer screens. Plenty of computer screens. People – many of them Indians – are clustered around a pair of long tables, and a number of young men wearing hats. Just as he exits the lift he sees a sign listing the businesses located on this floor, including Eawayz, Aritza’s company, to the right. As he strolls down the hall, he sees Aritza inside a glass office, his back turned. He’s facing the sea and talking on the telephone. Erhard waits at the door until Aritza sees him and waves him in, concluding his conversation with bye-bye.

  – Good morning, Aritza says, glancing at his mobile. Erhard sits down on a soft, red, ball-shaped chair. Aritza sits down, too, and now looks at Erhard. – Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. It’s nothing, it was nothing. You saw nothing.

  – I hope not. For your wife’s sake. And your niece’s.

  – My wife doesn’t give a shit. She’ll laugh at you if you run to her with such a story.

  – Then why are we meeting here?

  – What is it that you want?

  Erhard scrutinizes him. – To be honest, I’ve come to you because I don’t know anyone else with connections to the shipping industry and logistics. I’m guessing there is sensitive information a person needs a clearance to obtain.

  – You could’ve just asked me nicely.

  – That’s what I’m doing.

  Aritza leans back in his chair. – You want to talk with my friend Robbie, Robert Jamieson.

  – I want to talk to someone who can help me find crewmembers of a particular ship.

  – Right. But you see, I’ve already spoken to Robert. He says that the ship you’re looking for, the Seascape Hestia, was hijacked.

  – I know that. That’s why I’m looking for the crewmembers.

  – Robbie tells me the authorities are also searching for these crewmembers.

  – OK. That sounds right, Erhard says.

  – So why are you looking for them?

  – It’s nothing criminal, I assure you.

  – It’s already criminal. A ship was hijacked. A man was killed. The crew and cargo vanished.

  – But I’m not asking for your help to do anything criminal.

  – You say you’re looking for a person?

  – Someone from the ship who can tell me what happened.

  – There doesn’t appear to be anyone who can. All the crewmembers are gone. What are you planning to do?

  – I don’t know.

  – So, if I help you, you will not…

  – I hadn’t planned on saying anything. As long as you get divorced and marry your niece.

  André Aritza stares at Erhard in alarm. – I…

  – Relax. Just help me with this. You can do whatever you wish in your private affairs.

  – And you’ll promise me that you won’t harm my friend or get him into trouble? We’ll call him together.

  – I’d like to talk to him by myself.

  Aritza nods. He glances at his mobile, then lifts it to his ear. His face suddenly changes. – Hey, Robbie, it’s André. OK. I’ve talked to him. He’s all right. Yes. No, he won’t do that. Yes. OK. Here he is.

  Aritza hands the telephone to Erhard.

  – Good morning, Erhard says.

  Static on the other end of the line. A very British voice speaks. – Good morning. André tells me you are searching for a ship’s crew.

  – Yes. But not for the reason you probably think.

  – Right.

  – A boy died here on the island. I believe his death is connected to the ship.

  – A boy? Do you mean the engineer?

  – No. A 3-month-old boy.

  – What does that have to do with the hijacking of a ship?

  André Aritza looks a little confused.

  – I don’t know yet.

  – OK. I do not know about a 3-month-old boy. André requested that I find some information on the ship you are looking for. The Seascape Hestia?

  – I just need one of the crewmembers, someone I could call or something.

  – Do you know anything about maritime law and administration?

  – No, Erhard says. – I don’t know anything about that.

  – According to maritime law, any person who signs on to a ship must be listed in a register. In England we do that more or less digitally, but the system isn’t standardized. In many countries, crew lists are simply a photocopied sheet of paper with names written in illegible handwriting. In Spain you have it both ways. Valencia and Algeciras, two of the larger ports, have a pretty good handle on it. But even though Las Palmas and Santa Cruz are also relatively good, ships from those ports often sail under the flag of Dakar or Abidjan, and one does not quite need to have one’s papers in order there. Not always, in any case.