The Scent of Lemon Leaves

by Clara Sanchez

  The four-by-four yet again. I was tired of so much driving around and so much road. Why shouldn’t I just forget about this Julián thing for a while and take it easy in the hairdresser’s? I’d chosen a hypothetical hairdresser’s on the waterfront, because it was near the hotel, but I didn’t know if there really was one in that part of the world.

  I was driving slowly, trying to summon up a memory I didn’t have. Karin said that if we didn’t find one, we could go to her usual place. Then I passed my hand over my pocket and the little bag of sand and a few minutes later the word Coiffure popped up. The place was nothing special, but it was more or less where I’d imagined it was and that was marvellous. I was very worried about Julián and preferred taking a little more risk to coping with this uncertainty.

  Luckily I had to leave the car half up on a footpath, although I knew that two or three more streets towards the centre I’d most probably find a parking space. And luckily we had to wait our turn at the hairdresser’s, so I said that, since a perm took longer, it would better if they started with Karin. Meanwhile, I’d go and park the car in a more secure spot.

  I drove off towards the hotel. I parked easily and rushed inside, ignoring the concierge, and didn’t turn my head, but I noticed that he was following me with his gaze. I decided to go straight up to Julián’s suite and, when I was inside the lift, I saw an apparition. It was like being in a film. Martín was walking past with a brawny, thuggish-looking individual. I knocked at the door and, since nobody answered, wrote on a bit of paper, “It’s me, Sandra,” and then slipped it under the door. Julián opened it then and asked me to come in, after checking to make sure there was nobody in the passageway.

  “You’re mad coming here,” he said angrily, really angrily. “Only this afternoon I told you never to do this.”

  “I know, but there’s no time to argue about it. When I got back from the lighthouse, I saw your photo in Villa Sol. They’re keeping an eye on you. Someone’s following you. And, right here in the hotel, I just ran into Martín and some other hoodlum. Don’t worry. I was in the lift and they walked past without seeing me.”

  Without especially wanting to, without paying attention, because I didn’t have time for such things, I could see that the room looked pretty good. I’d never imagined it would be so big and so light.

  “Was this bruiser wearing a suit and did he look like a cretin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were they walking towards the exit or the cafeteria?”

  “To the cafeteria.”

  “In any case, you can’t expose yourself any more. This is getting more and more complicated by the moment.”

  Then the phone rang and Julián hesitated a moment about whether to pick it up or not. In the end he took it and hung up again.

  “No one there,” he said. “That’s a bad sign. Are you sure they didn’t see you?”

  “Fairly sure.”

  “Come on,” Julián said. “You’ve got to get out of here, but not through the main door. Follow me.”

  Instead of going directly down we went up a flight of stairs, and then into a machine room which led to a staircase going down. We didn’t talk. Julián had worked out an escape route. We finally got to the kitchen and went out through the back door.

  Julián would have to cover the same route to go back and I was worried his heart wouldn’t hold out when he had to go up so many stairs, although he could go up only as far as the first floor and take the lift there. He had no reason to hide.

  Once out in the street, I ran to the car, pleading with my talisman to make sure it was still there, that no tow truck had whisked it off and that there’d be no parking fine. The talisman did its job. I started the car and parked behind the hairdresser’s. I was sweating when I got inside. I took my anorak off and, after telling Karin that I’d at last found somewhere to park, went outside again. I was suffocating and the cough I’d had a few days before came back, as if it had just been keeping quiet without being cured. I was comforted by a blast of cold damp air.

  The hairdressers were clustered around Karin with their dye at the ready, wondering what else they could do to make her hair look like it was in the photo. Karin had taken them a picture of herself when she was young, with another face and wavy blond hair. The hairdressers were telling Karin that they could see what beautiful hair she’d had and she was thrilled, as she always was when her own person was the centre of attention. I joined in the chorus of praise and she didn’t seem to have anything else on her mind. I coughed and soon started to shiver, which obliged me to put my anorak back on, but after a while I was too hot again and had to take it off.

  We were in the hairdresser’s for about three hours. Karin had taken one of her novels, but was so well entertained hearing her praises being sung that she hardly opened it. She paid for my hairdo too, which consisted in removing the red streak, making the colour an all-over light brown and adding some honey-coloured streaks, which they said brought out the greenish colour of my eyes, and trimming the ends. It was a good idea not to draw too much attention to myself and to let them do it their way, let them take me to a more neutral terrain in terms of my appearance. In addition, Karin left a hefty tip when she paid. Everyone was happy for the time being.

  On the way home she told me that she really liked the change and that from now on she’d always go there to have her hair done, because after this session our hair had turned into nice hairstyles. She couldn’t stop looking at herself in the rear-view mirror the whole time. She liked what she saw. She must have seen herself as half what she was now and half what she was in that photo from her youth. I wondered if the injections they were using weren’t making them all gaga, if they weren’t creating in their sick minds some completely warped image of themselves. Except in Fred’s case, of course, since he didn’t seem to be injecting anything. Only one thing was bugging Karin, and that was that I was sneezing, and sneezing such a lot. She wasn’t at all embarrassed about covering her mouth with her hand so none of my microbes could get her.

  Julián

  After Sandra’s alarm, nothing appeared to be happening in the hotel. I got to the first floor via the escape path, or the alternative route, and then took the lift downstairs, went to reception as if I was coming directly from the suite, and asked Roberto, who had called me because nobody answered when I picked up the phone. Roberto shrugged and said that no one had phoned me from reception. I only half-believed him. Roberto would more plausibly be on Tony’s side than mine. Heading for the lifts and reaching a point at which Roberto could no longer see me, I went on to the cafeteria, and from outside spied Tony with Martín, who was strong but not as strong as Tony.

  Close-shaven, tattooed head, very fine sideburns going down under his chin, a well-cut, dark-grey or black suit incongruously paired with trainers instead of formal shoes – the fashion maybe – and, instead of a shirt, a polo-neck jersey, also black. Tony was conservatively dressed and, next to the other brute, his suit looked like he’d picked it up in the sales. They were speaking with a certain hush-hush air and I couldn’t work out what they were saying, but neither did I want them to catch me looking at them, so I sidled off to the lifts and that was that, for the time being.

  After all the effort of rushing around passageways and stairs my body was feeling the strain. I had a French omelette for dinner in my usual bar and, when I got back, phoned my daughter from the public phone box at the hotel. It was so long since I’d spoken to her that I suddenly feared that something might have happened to her. I was too concerned with people I didn’t know and was neglecting the really important people, the people for whom I meant something. It was always the same with me. This “always” came after the camp. I was always more involved with the people who’d harmed me than with the ones who loved me, and there was always something more urgent than lying on the beach and watching how my daughter was growing up, and how my wife applied the sunscreen cream so unhurriedly and meticulously.

  She used to say,
you’ll be sorry when your life’s gone by and you realize what was really important. The important things are the ones that inadvertently stay in your head – a sunny day, a pleasant meal, an evening stroll. Raquel was right. Until the time’s gone you don’t realize what’s been important in your life. Engraved on my mind was my daughter as a little girl playing in the schoolyard as I watched from the other side of the fence, and Raquel too, getting dressed up on Fridays when we used to go out to see a film and have dinner afterwards.

  My daughter was fine, but very worried about me. She begged me in the name of all the saints to get a mobile phone so we could be in contact. She asked if I was eating well, if I was taking my medication, if I’d had my blood pressure taken, if I was watching my sugar intake, all the typical things one asks dotty old people. I said I’d never felt better and that the plans for the summer house were well underway. I told her I’d made a few friends, and was about to tell her about Sandra and that she could be my granddaughter, but my daughter couldn’t have children so it seemed cruel to say something like that. I told her I’d found a group of people who lived in an old people’s home and that, in these parts, there were a lot of senior citizens still wanting to fire their last rounds.

  My daughter only partly believed me but didn’t say anything, because she wanted to believe me. She wanted with all her heart for me to be just a widowed pensioner hoping to have a bit of fun and to make the most of the time I had left. The problem was that she’d hang up and start thinking, because she knew me, knew that it wasn’t like me to have fun just for the sake of it. Before the “always” I might have been able to do that, but after the “always” it was impossible. Anodyne, mediocre creatures like Hitler couldn’t stand the idea of other human beings knowing how to get more out of life and how to enjoy it more than they did, so they not only wanted to terrify and exterminate people, but also to snatch away the will to live. Hitler wanted the world to be horrible. And it was for many people. For me too the world turned into a place that could be horrible when someone in power got it into his bloody head to make it so.

  I opened my room. Nobody had been in. Tonight the world might be quite peaceful. Through the glass doors opening onto the terrace, the stars and a laser ray from some nightclub were visible as storm clouds melted away in deep blue darkness. I turned on the little lamp on the bedside table.

  With the new day, however, with light, the action started. I didn’t want to get too impatient about the results of the tests so waited till the afternoon, as I didn’t want the people in the laboratory to get more suspicious than necessary.

  To make good use of the morning I went to the Nordic Club, where Fred and Otto tended to play golf with other old foreign Nazis and their Spanish sympathizers. Martín was there and the Eel joined them later. The Eel was playing. He was very well equipped and was mild-mannered. Martín was only watching, but they were all talking, talking about Sandra maybe, because at one point Fred banged the ground with his golf club. They were enraging him. The rest went on without paying too much attention to him, and one of them hit the ball, a very long shot. I kept watching them until they moved off to some other holes and then I returned to the car. I couldn’t let them see me now that I knew through Sandra that they had my photo. At least I could avoid unnecessarily goading these types into wanting to get me out of the way.

  I was going to wait for them to leave, until it occurred to me that, now they were all here together, it would be a good time to go and see what cold-blooded Frida was up to. First I’d drive past the communal house she shared with Martín and others of his ilk, although this was the time she’d be cleaning Fredrik’s and Karin’s house. I’d have to move very carefully, because, from what Sandra had told me, they must have distributed the photo of me among the members of the Brotherhood. It would be one way of warning them about me or of asking for my head. I didn’t know how much they knew about who I was, when not even my own people knew that, although they might easily have deduced it from that fact that someone of their own age was so interested in them, somebody they weren’t going to be able to deceive.

  Sandra had told me that Frida worked there three hours a day, from eight to eleven, and that sometimes she stayed longer if necessary. Hence I took up position next to the square looking towards Villa Sol. It was ten to eleven and I only had to wait till five past. Then I saw her closing the gate and getting on her bicycle. I let her get quite some distance ahead and then went after her. I immediately realized that she was on her way to Otto’s and Alice’s house. The big black gate of number 50 opened up; she went in. I waited for a while until I thought it would be stupid to stay there keeping watch when Frida was probably cleaning this house. But, no, I did well to wait. Sometimes intuition’s more powerful than reason, and this was confirmed when I saw a solidly built gleaming Audi coming out. Frida was driving and Alice was sitting beside her.

  Where could they be going? I was afraid that Frida would see me and recognize me, so I hung behind as far as I could, with my heart in a knot until we got to the main road. In one of the streets near the port they stopped in front of a small arts-and-crafts shop called Transylvania. The first to get out of the car, with astonishing agility, was Alice. Her straight hair, somewhere between brown and blonde, hung down to her shoulders, so perfect that it looked like a wig, and she was wearing jeans with a three-quarter leather jacket, which may have been excessive in this climate, but it was perfectly in tune with the Audi. From the way she walked, nobody would have said she was any more than fifty. Frida caught up with her at once, showing off sturdy legs in black tights under shorts. Unnerving attire. She looked back as if to check the street, but couldn’t see me. Alice went in first, with Frida following. After a while they came out with a cardboard box carried by Frida. The box was closed. It wasn’t the typical box that you only use to carry things out to the car, the kind I’d used a lot. For a while I hesitated between following them and going into the shop. On this occasion, I thought pretty quickly and concluded that the shop would still be there in the afternoon. I got the car out with an expertise that amazed me, without worrying about touching the one behind me, or anything for that matter. If I told Leónidas, my friend in Buenos Aires, about the adventures I was having while he was there playing cards, he wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t take the trouble to hide the fact I was following them. They were having such a heated discussion that they wouldn’t be taking any notice of me.

  It took us almost half an hour to reach the Bremer apartments. Pure luxury, a fortress with iron-clad security at the entrance. Even the smells and noises that escaped over the flower-covered walls had a more affluent style than the rest.

  But how could I know if I was right, if what they’d picked up in the shop was the famous injections? This was all just suppositions. I was so wound up about the laboratory results I could barely keep still.

  The guards at the Bremer complex raised the barrier to admit Alice’s large shiny Audi. Somehow, it seemed that Salva was still guiding me from the past. I settled down to wait in the car with the bottle of water at my side. I didn’t have anything better to do or any better place to be. Would my friend Salva have covered these same tracks? I don’t know how he would have managed when he couldn’t drive and had to depend on taxis. It must have been very difficult. I at least had a car and didn’t depend on anyone. I believed that in my shoes Salva would have done what I was doing.

  After an hour I was getting sleepy in the car, so I turned on the radio. From time to time they gave news of what was happening in the world, in contrast with this world where things were also happening but they weren’t news. I was in no hurry. Alice couldn’t stay in a place that wasn’t her own home for ever and sooner or later she’d have to emerge. And indeed, at about half-past one she did emerge, now with an ageing playboy in a dark-grey suit with cuffed trousers, the lapels of his jacket turned up, a black scarf knotted the way they do it in magazines, and sunglasses.

  There are times when you don’t need
to think, because the world falls into place all by itself and, without further ado, all the bits click together. There, before my eyes, I had Sebastian Bernhardt, the Black Angel as Sandra called him. I recognized him instantly, as if his presence had sparked something in me. Today was turning out to be quite a resounding success: the most invisible of the invisible, and probably the most important member of the Brotherhood, the one who had the last word, was practically under my nose, just a few metres away. He and Alice were chatting as they walked down the street. They looked young and attractive, obviously much more than they really were. I started my car and went down to the end of the street where they’d turned. I saw them sitting in the covered terrace of a restaurant looking out over the sea. He took her hand and kissed it and she was laughing. They could be lovers, hence Alice’s control over the fabulous liquid and hence too the fact that right now Otto was caught up in his game of golf. Then it looked as if they were talking about something serious. They both had salad and coffee and, after an hour, walked back up the hill. I stopped halfway up the street, quite a way from the two of them. They were now standing at the entrance to the apartment complex, still talking non-stop, especially Bernhardt, who seemed to be giving her instructions. She was nodding. After five minutes, Frida came out and she and Alice left in the Audi.

  This time I didn’t trail them. They’d be going back to Alice’s, straight into the garage, and I wouldn’t be able to confirm whether or not they took out the box they’d carried out of Transylvania. In all likelihood they’d handed it over to Sebastian.

  I didn’t know what else to do. This was maddening, but then I thought of something. Watching Alice and the Black Angel eating had made me feel hungry, so I went off to my bar and asked for the set menu. I had lentils, grilled cuttlefish and some custard for dessert, with still mineral water to drink. I left feeling quite bloated and ready for a short nap, until it was time to go and get the results of the tests.