I replied by twirling around making the skirt ripple.
“Think whatever you like. But if you think I fancy you, you’re dead wrong, loser.”
He looked at me with infinite contempt, but I knew, my instinct was telling me, that he liked me more than he wanted to. He couldn’t keep his eyes off my tattoos. He was your typical fetishist. He was one of those guys in whom you start discovering things, more and more things until you can’t hold back any more. I decided not to let him get to me and went into the kitchen. His steps, the footsteps of new shoes, followed me. I opened the fridge, poured myself a glass of milk, heated it in the microwave, and started drinking it slowly, sitting on the sofa and watching television. Now I could feel him behind me. His clothes smelt wet.
“Who gave you permission to put that on?”
“I don’t need any. It’s mine.”
“Yeah sure, you carry these things around in your backpack.”
I felt a bit cold, but put up with it until he went into the office-cum-den, which he also opened with a key, and then I picked up a shawl of Karin’s and wrapped it around me. It smelt of her, of her perfume, which gave me a slightly disagreeable sensation, because it wasn’t the same as putting on one of my mum’s pullovers. I didn’t get on with my mum, but her smell was as familiar to me as Christmas dinner. Karin’s smell on my body gave me the creeps.
When I was sleepy enough I took it off and, without a word, went up to the bedroom and got into bed. At first I was alert, because there was no bolt on the door, but then I relaxed. Alberto might be an eel but that’s about all he was.
I dropped into a sound sleep, thinking that Alberto probably wanted to be the Norwegians’ favourite grandchild too, and then the sound of the front door opening and closing woke me up. There was an exchange of muted words and yawns. I wondered whether I should come out or if that would make it worse for everyone, because then we’d have to talk about what had happened and that would keep us awake. To tell the truth, I didn’t know what to do. I went barefoot to the stairwell and saw that dickhead Alberto leaving. And I saw Karin in her gorgeous white dress with soft feathers at the neckline, which looked like a disguise on her. I was really surprised to see Fred wearing a uniform that I’d seen a thousand times in Nazi films, cap and all, which made him seem even taller, highlighting his already stern features. It suited him better than her dress suited her. It was just like Alice to be giving fancy-dress parties for her friends, in the style of the old days when the world was elegant and the women wore evening dress every night.
I got back into bed, turned the light off and tried to go back to sleep. After a while I heard them wearily climbing the stairs. There’ll come a time, I thought, when they won’t be able to get up the stairs any more and they’ll have to fit out the library-den as a bedroom and live downstairs. It’d be a lot more practical, I thought, closing my eyes. But just before I completely slipped away from this world, I heard my bedroom door opening and bare feet padding over to the bed, felt eyes looking at me for a while, after which they moved off and the door closed. Or was I already dreaming?
In the morning they were waiting for me in the kitchen, Karin still in her nightdress and Fred all spruced up to go out to some appointment, with pale-grey trousers, blue jacket, shiny shoes and cheekbones and eyes gleaming more than ever. He was standing there having his last sip of tea.
“We thought you didn’t like this house or us after the way you left the other day. Taking French leave, I believe you call it,” Karin said, smiling at me in a way that made me feel embarrassed.
But her husband cut her off and I didn’t have time to offer any kind of explanation.
“I’m glad you’re here, because you can keep Karin company.”
My look of bewilderment flustered him too, and we stood there staring at one another. My questions were: company? How long?
“I have to go away on a trip and I don’t want to leave her alone. I’ll only be away for a day or two,” he said, then stood there thinking. “Of course we’ll make sure you’re properly recompensed. It’ll be good for you to have something put aside for the arrival of the baby.”
“More than anything else,” Karin intervened, “you’d be doing me a great favour. You’ll be fine here and won’t lack for anything.”
Making some money for a change seemed like a good idea. It was better than daydreaming about some improbable inheritance.
“We employ a woman to come and do the housework every day. You’d only be expected to do some shopping and keep me company. Can you drive the four-by-four?”
“No problem.”
Fred’s presence didn’t bother me. He was silent and friendly, but even so I had the feeling that the house would lighten up without him. On the other hand, I wasn’t mad on the idea of being fully responsible for Karin. What if she fell ill? This might have been the ideal time to ask them why they’d given no signs of life all these days, but I thought I already knew, that they wanted me to be the one who came to them, because otherwise it would mean I wasn’t sufficiently interested in them. They’d be wondering about the extent to which I’d want to be hanging around with a couple who were in their eighties.
After she gave me the wool and needles, and while I was trying to reach Karin’s level of perfection, she brought some paper and envelopes from the library-den and started to write some notes. Her birthday was coming up and she wanted to celebrate it. Under her reading glasses, the letters unfolded slowly in very beautiful handwriting that looked like German, but, to tell the truth, I had no idea of what Norwegian would look like.
“Do you know German?” I asked as I was counting the stitches.
Karin took off her glasses to get a better look at me.
“A little. A bit of German, a bit of French and a bit of English. I’m very old and I know a few things.”
“Yesterday you looked lovely in that white dress I saw you wearing at Alice’s party,” I remarked so that my espionage would cease to be a taboo subject.
“Yes, I know you were looking. I would have been looking too if I could have climbed up on a motorbike,” she said laughing.
I limited myself to a smile, because that totally innocent action seemed to have been given undue importance, and still more so now with some distance and in the light of day.
“What I don’t understand is why you didn’t ring the bell. You know Alice.”
“I don’t understand it either. It was a stupid thing. I think I didn’t want to be an intruder, to gatecrash, to get into a party I wasn’t invited to.”
From Karin’s expression I could see that my explanation had left her totally satisfied. It left me satisfied too.
I made the most of the moment to tell her I’d left my nausea pills down there (we’d started to refer to my sister’s house as “down there”) and I was worried about having a dizzy spell. Deep down, I was desperate to be alone for a while. I just wanted to listen to my own thoughts or none at all. It did my head in being so contradictory, first wanting to be with them and then wanting to be without them. Since it was getting dark, she told me to take the four-by-four. She probably thought that the motorbike was too flimsy and she wanted to be sure I’d be back, which I understood. It’s very easy to be brave when there’s nothing to stop you.
The four-by-four was so big that I parked it on a patch of ground by the roadside just before my street. As I closed the door I had the most idiotic sense of freedom, because nobody was retaining me and nobody was obliging me to do anything. Even so, I took in a deep breath, to get the smell of my street. The dim street lights revealed a man standing by my gate. An old man. I looked more closely. I knew him. It was Julián, the one I’d shown round the house. He didn’t hear me approaching, and when I spoke to him from behind and touched his arm I feared he’d be startled. It was like thrusting my hand into the same bubble of fragility in which Fred and Karin were also trapped. But, no, he turned around, looking calm and with a smile on his face.
“I’m hap
py to see that you’re well,” he said as I let him in.
He’d come about the matter of renting the house. He said he’d missed me once, that this was the second time he’d tried to see me and he apologized for the lateness of the hour. I told him it was pure miracle that he’d caught me. We chatted for quite a while or, rather, only he was talking, mentioning his wife whenever he got a chance and showing interest in my Norwegian friends, maybe because he was intrigued by the fact of my having friends of his age. And he listened with great attention to whatever I told him. I’d always heard people saying that old people love talking about all their little battles, but this wasn’t the case with the ones I was coming across, because it appeared that neither the Norwegian couple nor this one had any little battles to go on about.
When he left I busied myself watering the plants and bringing the towels in from the clothesline. I folded them slowly and left them on the table. I got my pills, picked up the keys and turned the light out. I had a growing feeling of being closer to Villa Sol than to this house.
Julián
I had to go to the hospital, to the Emergency Department. I knew the symptoms of feeling faint with cold sweats. I didn’t want to cause any more problems in the hotel, didn’t want them to be thinking I was the worst client they’d ever had. I liked it there, they knew me and Roberto had decided to be a sort of accomplice in an affair about which he had not the faintest idea. Basically, I knew the terrain and could defend myself better there than I could if I moved to another hotel. This thought got me planning to check out the installations, stairways, meeting rooms and lounges, toilets for public use and kitchens as soon as I felt better. The good thing about being alone is that you don’t worry anybody. You don’t have to go through the double anguish of feeling ill and seeing someone else suffering because you’re ill. It was marvellous having Raquel by my side all those years, managing to make each day fuller with life, but there were times, some bad moments when I would have preferred to be alone and not to have to pretend that I was fine so she wouldn’t suffer. Sometimes one wants to experience what’s happening exactly as it is, in all its dimensions, but not to the point of hurting the person at one’s side, so I had a certain sense of freedom as I headed for the hospital alone in the taxi when I noted something wasn’t quite right. I’ve never been able to stand people who throw their solitude in the face of others, or the ones who experience it as an affront. Solitude is freedom too.
Just as I’d imagined, they asked me at the hospital if I had anyone with me. I said no. I was having a few days’ holiday alone. The doctor shook her head pensively as she contemplated my solitude. She said that, in these circumstances, I’d have to spend the night in hospital, under observation. It was nothing serious, a rise in blood sugar and metabolic decompensation. I said that would be fine. What difference did it make to me whether I slept in the hotel or in hospital?
What bothered me most was that they took their time about giving me the all-clear and letting me go in the morning. At midday I told them I couldn’t wait any longer and that I was leaving. I looked like an old grouch, some old crank, but I had a lot to do and I was perfectly able to see that my system was stabilized again. They made me sign a document taking responsibility for my decision, so that if I died it would be the result of my own negligence. That seemed only fair. A simple signature was enough to reassure everybody.
I hadn’t slept well because of the inordinate snoring of my roommate and because the nurses kept coming in every few minutes and making a racket, but I felt fine, in good shape, and I could even go and have a little dip in the sea when I’d seen to the main task. And the main task consisted in going to Villa Sol, but this was too dangerous right now, at least until I managed to change my car. Hence it would be better to go to Sandra’s house to see if the Christensens had turned up there again.
My clothes had a hospital smell about them. I felt in my pockets to make sure I had everything with me. It was an extraordinarily beautiful day. I parked the car in a different spot for caution’s sake, although I didn’t think there was any way they could possibly link me up with Sandra, and walked down through the streets to the little house.
Nobody came out when I rang the bell. The shutters were ajar, there were towels hung out on the clothesline and the hose snaked over the flagstones. I couldn’t see the motorbike in the garden or hear any music. I therefore went back to the car and drank a little water from one of the bottles I managed to have always within reach, thinking that the most likely explanation was that this was the time that Sandra would be on the beach, and probably with the Norwegians. I headed off in that direction.
They weren’t there, at least not in the place they tended to go to. There were only a few children running around and a couple kissing. I walked almost a kilometre along the top in the hope of spotting them somewhere until I decided to abandon the project and go back to the car. I felt a lot sprightlier than I had before going to the hospital. Even though it wasn’t overly hot, the water was so blue and the foam so white, and since Fredrik’s thugs or a heart attack might put an end to my life at any time, I decide to strip down to my underpants – which, fortunately, were boxers going halfway down the thigh so they almost looked like bathing trunks – and have a dip. I was committing what Raquel called an act of madness, because what for a young person was healthy activity could mean pneumonia for me, but by the time I decided to take that into account I was already in among the waves, with a continuing feeling of great well-being in the cold. Why not enjoy paradise when it’s within an arm’s reach? Raquel always used to say that people like us who’d suffered a lot were afraid to enjoy things, were afraid to be happy, and she also said that there were many kinds of suffering in the world and nobody was totally free from suffering, so we shouldn’t feel special about it either. To tell the truth, I really admired frivolous people with a great capacity for enjoying their lives and for having fun with everything. Going shopping, playing a game of cards, having dinner with friends, with no more than that to think about. For me, their way of life was desirable and unattainable. Innocence was a miracle more fragile than snow. It was easier for happy people to join my fold than for me to join theirs. Deep down, I wanted the frivolous, corrupt and perverse Fredrik and Karin to join my fold, wanted them to suffer, to discover what pain is. I could see it clearly now: justice would never be done in the way I wanted it to be. If Fredrik had his thugs, I had my hatred.
I dried myself by raising my arms and doing a few little jumps on the sand, then sat down to receive as much vitamin D as possible from the sun. I felt better than ever and closed my eyes. Right then, I was less afraid than I should have been.
In the interests of precaution I changed bars at lunchtime and asked for the set menu. I still felt the salt on my skin and also noted that my hair, the little I had left, was scruffy and all over the place. One of these days I’d have to get it cut. The swim had made me hungry, along with the fact that I’d hardly touched the hospital breakfast, which bore no resemblance whatsoever to the buffet they offered at the hotel. Though I still had enough energy to keep going and head off for Christensen territory, I realized that I didn’t have my pills with me, so I went back to the hotel.
At the reception desk Roberto stopped me in my tracks with a concerned expression on his face. He spoke very quietly so as not to be heard by the other concierge or by the other hotel guests leaning on the counter.
“I was worried. The chambermaid told me you didn’t sleep in your room.”
It was obvious that, with somebody like me, one could only surmise that if you haven’t slept in your bed it’s because you’ve died in some other place.
“No, it’s nothing to worry about. I went off on an excursion and it got so late that I spent the night in another hotel. Thank you for your concern.”
And then I added in a confidential tone, “Anything new?”
“Not that I know of. Ah yes… the detective wants to see you.”
Without consulti
ng me, Roberto picked up the phone, informed someone that I was in the hotel now and hung up.
“The detective’s called Tony and he’s waiting for you in the bar. Have you had lunch yet?”
I said I had, wondering whether I should or shouldn’t go up to the room to get my pills.
“Then you can make the most of the occasion to have a coffee.”
I beat my hat against my leg, letting fly a bit of sand. Then I went off to the bar.
Roberto must have provided a good description of my appearance, because no sooner had I entered than a solidly built young man, who was going to be fat in a couple of years, came over to me, holding out his hand. He led me to a small table, a pedestal table, Raquel would say, on which a little lamp was lit even in daytime, but this didn’t make the bar any less shadowy than it always was, because the idea was to create an atmosphere of intimacy.
“We very much regret the incident in your room the other day.”
“Well, these things happen.”
Tony had a bottle of beer clenched in his beefy hand. I asked for a coffee – which was very good, by the way – and as I savoured it, Tony apologized again. He was wearing a jacket that looked as if it was going to split down the back when he leant forward over the small pedestal table.
“I’ve been in this job for a long time,” Tony said, staring at me with his slightly protuberant eyes, “and everything always, and I mean always, has an explanation.”
I mulled over his words for a while, holding the cup against my lips.
“Then, son, you’ll be able to tell me what happened.”
I don’t think he liked me calling him “son”, and I wouldn’t have liked it either, but I did it on purpose to test how sure he was of himself. Not very.
“I can’t yet, but I will,” he ventured with a more serious expression. “Are you planning on staying with us for a while?”
“I hope so, as long as the weather’s good.”
The Scent of Lemon Leaves Page 8