It was evident that he’d placed the boat and food at the centre of his life. Even in winter he wore shorts. His life, constantly out in the open air, had kept him strong, especially his knotty, muscular legs. Mine, by contrast, are skinny and white, almost bluish. He walked with a stoop, which made him look like an animal set on some fixed objective. He didn’t look around, or if he did look at anything, it wasn’t evident. His destinations were the boat, the fish market and the supermarket. That was all he needed. The boat frequently gave off an intense smell of grilled fish, and he tended to eat his extraordinary meals alone with a bottle of wine, probably quite a good one. After his feast he lingered there, lolling around, gazing at the firmament, before going down into the cabin to watch television, turned up full blast because he must have been somewhat deaf.
I was sure that Salva had pinpointed him here, had been observing him as I was observing him right now, and that he’d been thinking of me as he watched. And he would have been wondering how a psychopath like this would have behaved in his private life with his women – both the legitimate one and the lover – and his children. Did he forget his killer instincts at such moments?
He was the dullest of the Brotherhood gang, methodical enough to turn your stomach. I’d ascertained that it took him an hour to walk to both the supermarket and the fish market, although sometimes he tarried a little longer at the fish market, never less. And he took an hour to have dinner and enjoy his stargazing. He had a car parked in the garage of a house belonging to some people living in the port area, but I only saw him get it out once, perhaps to go and meet up with his friends. While I was watching him, everything he needed fitted into two bags that he carried one in each hand.
Two or three days ago, making the most of the fact that he’d headed off towards the fish market, I sneaked onto the boat. Somebody might have spotted me but I took the risk, did it fast and naturally. I’d more or less seen what he had on the deck, so I went down the steps, which were gleaming like everything else in sight. A safe haven for a pig. I could smell recently brewed coffee. The curtains were in red-and-white gingham. In the kitchen drawers, the cutlery was perfectly organized, as were the crockery and glassware in their little cupboards. I took out a knife in case he came back before time and I found myself face to face with him.
There were Tupperware containers in the fridge, with labels detailing what was in them, and he’d even installed a glass wine rack. There was nothing lacking in the bathroom and it smelt like flowers. In a silver soap dish he had a collection of those little bars of soap they give you in hotels. I took one and put it in my jacket pocket. I went into the bedroom-cum-living area. There were some small fresh flowers in a vase and I took one of them too, to keep the soap company. In a small wardrobe he’d organized his underpants and socks in pristine piles. Some reading glasses lay on a shelf and I thought about putting them somewhere else in order to flummox him, though I knew he’d notice the little flower and the soap. I was hoping he’d think he was getting senile.
Where would he keep the hundreds of notes he’d taken of his experiments? The handwritten notebooks must be somewhere, because he wrote down absolutely everything he did. Some of his notebooks had been used in the legal case against him, but there had to be more. He would definitely have fixed things so that he could take with him the material that reminded him of his days of glory, when he was God and human beings were his guinea pigs. Even now, he was still jotting down what he did, because not ceasing to be what he really was, even though he couldn’t do everything he viscerally craved to do, would permit him to go on living better than other people who’d never killed. I too took notes of what I did, so we were alike in that, and I asked myself where I’d hide that information myself. Of course he was counting on nobody understanding the information, because it was written in German, and he’d assumed that nobody would go looking for it because nobody knew who he was. An old foreigner on a boat? What would he be calling himself now?
I wouldn’t keep the notebooks in drawers, or on top of the little wardrobe, or in the folds of a blanket. If no one was going to be looking for them, why should I need to hide them? I’d put them among similar objects. I came out in goose bumps when I took one out. They were in the shelves, all in order, like books. He’d put adventure-novel covers over them.
I’d be back.
I left as I’d entered, cleaning the steps with my handkerchief and, when I was out on the wharf, I realized I hadn’t put the knife back in its place. I’d put it in my jacket pocket and there it remained. I was the one who was getting senile. I was going to throw it in the sea, but then decided not to.
I went off to meet Sandra.
Sandra
As I didn’t find Julián at the lighthouse, I couldn’t tell him that I’d discovered that Frida was in love with the Eel and that this could make her an even more dangerous foe. I got into bed thinking that I’d have to be increasingly tactful with the Norwegians and with Frida. Dealing with them was like walking on a wire. The best thing would be to let them think they were manipulating me more than they were. Julián neutralized the power with which Karin was constantly trying to dominate me, though it must be said she was very often successful. She was used to imposing her will and to treating other people like her playthings. The tension was affecting me physically. And, on top of that, after what I’d seen in the afternoon, I wasn’t at all certain about what Alberto was playing at.
As soon as I turned out the light, I saw monsters hiding inside the normal human bodies of the “brothers”, saw that I was just a toy for them and that, when they completely took over me, they’d also be taking over my son. But when daylight came again, everything changed as if by magic, as if a veil had been drawn back, and they stopped being so dangerous. I thought I’d got carried away by panic. I also blamed my tendency to exaggerate these situations on the fact that I didn’t really know them and I’d never experienced such things before. Then again, the hormonal revolution that was going on inside me was making me all the more unstable. At least, everyone talked about this so-called hormonal revolution, and it might just be that this revolution had changed the whole world for me.
I got up late by Norwegian standards. Fred had gone off to do his Brotherhood things and Karin asked me if I’d go down to the town and fetch her some face and body creams and magazines. It was her way of giving me some freedom and I seized the opportunity. I was dying to know if we had the results of the tests yet. At bottom, I wanted the famous liquid to be worth all of that running around and all the spells of incredible nervousness and fear. I hoped I hadn’t made a mountain out of a molehill.
Since it was an errand for Karin, I took the four-by-four, and within fifteen minutes I was reading a note that Julián had left me under the stone, saying that the test results had been a success. I left him another saying, very briefly, that I’d come by again at the usual hour in the afternoon to see if he was there.
I did the errands in a flash. I spent what remained of the morning walking in the garden, breathing in the fresh air and drinking lots of water trying to wash away the phlegm. Karin was inside writing letters and slathering cream on herself till Fred got back, and then we had some soup that Frida had made and left ready to serve. I set the table with the little embroidered serviettes and waited for them to try it first. This gave me a strange sensation. Did I suspect that they wanted to poison me? Was I going nuts? Was I a hundred per cent in my right mind? Was it reasonable to have listened so much to an old man like Julián? The continuous fighting of my parents had disturbed me a lot. Maybe such a long life had unbalanced Julián too. Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. I watched them take a couple of spoonfuls to their mouths and then I tried the soup. It was good. It had bits of chicken in it, and vegetables. There I was, having this soup made by someone I didn’t know with some old people I didn’t know but who, whether I liked it or not, were now part of my world. And, while they were having a siesta (Fred dozing in the armchair with the televis
ion turned on and Karin snoring on the couch covered with a blanket), I went off to the lighthouse on the motorbike.
Julián was there. He’d come in case I’d left any message for him, thinking that he might even find me there. We’d both had the same idea. We were in luck.
He was dying to tell me that there was no mystery about the ampoules that had cost Fred and Karin a fortune and that were going to end up ruining them. The stuff was easy to make. Basically, time hadn’t gone by for these old Nazis, they were dreaming that their scientists, who belonged to a race superior to that of other scientists, had managed with their experiments to discover the secret of eternal youth, among other things. They were still living out fantasies of grandeur that made them fall for their own self-deception. They’d tried to warp the world in order to make their far-fetched ideas come true. Probably only one of them knew that they weren’t as powerful as they believed.
I didn’t tell Julián that I’d stumbled upon Alberto and Frida together, because it was difficult to talk about that. If I told him that, I’d also have had to confess that I no longer knew where evil ended and where my imagination began.
Instead, I said that after he’d told me about Elfe, his suspicions that they’d killed her and the things he knew they were capable of doing, I’d started to worry about the well-being of the tenant in the little house. Karin had taken against him and had told me that she was thinking about sending Martín there to teach him a lesson.
Julián
I had a demon in me and there was nothing I could do about it. Why was I doing these things? Why was I behaving like this with Sandra? The demon had been asleep for many years and had just woken up. I’d felt it when Salva fell in love with Raquel in that hell, and I was feeling it now, with the difference that now I couldn’t handle it. It was acting alone, was faster than me, and smarter. The demon wanted Sandra to go on being as she was when I’d met her, a mixed-up girl who didn’t know what she wanted. The demon didn’t want her to be in love with the Eel, hated the idea that the Eel might take her away from old Julián. Until now, Sandra and I had been a team, had shared a secret. Suddenly all this could change, and my selfish demon didn’t want me to be left alone. But despite the demon, I didn’t want anything irrevocable to happen to Sandra, didn’t want her to suffer a tremendous disappointment that would leave her marked for the rest of her life. I preferred to keep laying out the truth before her eyes in the hope that she’d decide to go back to her usual life.
I’d promised Sandra to call by the little house, even knowing it was foolishness. Sandra was afraid that the tenant, a teacher who couldn’t possibly have the remotest idea of who had him in her sights, might meet the same fate as Elfe. Neither Karin nor any of the rest of them could permit themselves the luxury of eliminating people they didn’t like, especially when these people were no obstacle to their plans. However, I definitely didn’t want to let Sandra down again, so I went to the “little house” to make sure that the tenant was still alive.
It was like going back into the past. I left the car on the patch by the roadside and walked along the path, letting myself be overcome with the fragrance of flowers and the chirping of birds, so loud it was deafening. The street sloped slightly downwards and the peacefulness was absolute. On this porch I’d spoken with Sandra for the first time. I stood there looking at it and it seemed as if the real Sandra of the piercings and tattoos was going to come out, the girl on the beach who’d drifted where life took her, because life was clear and fresh like the water in a river. But now we were in another life and on another river.
Behind me somebody asked if I wanted something. It had to be the tenant. His hair was all over the place and he had a briefcase in his hand. He must have come from the high school.
“Sandra sent me, the owner’s sister. She wants to know if everything’s all right and if you need anything.”
“If I need anything? What a question. I need more tables and more shelves. This place is like a dolls’ house.”
I followed him in.
He opened the door without using the key, just by pushing it. He threw the folder on the couch and gestured at the piles of folders on the floor, the heaps of books and all the papers covering the dining-room table.
“Well, these are summer holiday houses.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” he asked, cleaning his glasses with a shirt-tail. “Tell her I haven’t been able to find her folder.”
“Well, I don’t know… Do you actually read all this?”
“Nobody reads everything, but you have to have it all in case you need it at some point.”
“My name’s Julián,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Juan,” he answered without holding out his.
“Forgive me for asking, but don’t you lock the front door?”
He looked at me a little crestfallen, as if I’d caught him out and was going to punish him.
“I lost the key. You can tell her to throw me out of here, and I’ll go looking for another house as absurd as this one, and then I’ll have to move all my things.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell her anything. I don’t think anyone’s going to come in here to steal your books.”
“In that case,” he said, sitting down at the table before a million sheets of paper, “it’s been a pleasure.”
“How are the classes going?” I asked as I moved towards the door.
“A bore. They’re dimwits.”
“And you teach every day?”
I got out of him that his timetable was from three to seven in the afternoon, sometimes three to six, and occasionally three to eight.
I didn’t have to think any more about what strategy to adopt, what steps to take. The plan had worked itself out. A world had slowly been building up around me, one that was invisible for other people, a world in which I had something to say and do. So having done the job for Sandra, I knew what I had to do when I got into the car.
I had to go to the Butcher’s boat again. He’d be out shopping now or having a walk and this was the only home or dwelling of all the Brotherhood members that was accessible, probably because he’d spent so many years living like that without anything happening that he had no reason to be wary. Getting around unnoticed, camouflaged, being one of many, apparently not having anything to hide, this was more secure for him than being surrounded by high walls and guards. Yet all of a sudden one bar of soap had gone, one small flower was missing, one knife had disappeared. But who would have boarded his boat to take these things? He would only be able to explain it by his own absent-mindedness.
I took my shoes off and went down the steps in my socks. Everything was the same as last time. Being so intensely organized must give him a sense of stability and the feeling that nothing could change in his little world. I understood, because it was the same with me. If I put my glasses in another pocket, I got flustered. So I put the soap back where it belonged, the knife too, and didn’t touch the flowers. Then I took from the shelves as many of the notebooks filled with Heim’s handwriting as I could carry. I went out, put my shoes on again and sat on a bench facing the boat, waiting for him to come back.
He went on board with his strong knotty legs, his head looking down, and descended into the sacred precincts. I was cold, but I waited to see him come back onto the deck. He strode from one side to the other. There was nobody on board the catamarans either side, so he couldn’t ask anybody if somebody had got into his boat. Why would somebody get in to do something so stupid? He’d try to be sensible. He’d assume that he hadn’t seen things properly and had thought something was missing when it actually wasn’t. So he decided to go down once more. When he came up again, he checked the boards of the deck in the same way as he must have checked inside the cabin and the steps. At one point he shook his head as if telling himself that this was stupid and not worth thinking about any more.
But the next day, before I went to meet Sandra, I saw that he didn’t leave the boat at the tim
e when he usually went to the fish market or to have a stroll on dry land. No doubt he wanted to see if anything was moving around, disappearing or appearing when he was there. The seed of mistrust in himself was sown, and now I only had to wait for it to grow. I was certain that he’d start doing to himself what I’d done to him. He himself would be responsible for watering the plant of suspicion. I’d go by every couple of days as I didn’t want to lose sight of the Butcher. It hurt me to see him, and yet I couldn’t give up watching him going about his daily tasks, like washing his beloved deck, as in former times he’d gone about his other daily tasks of killing human beings, with the same attention to detail and organization.
Sandra’s going into the bunker of Villa Sol meant that we were out of touch, so I didn’t know when I’d be able to set her mind at rest by telling her that the tenant was fine and, however demented they all were, they weren’t going to take any chances with him because of some whim of Karin’s.
I had to wait to meet her at the lighthouse at four o’clock every two days to exchange news, unless Sandra managed to work out a way to leave me some message at the hotel, in our lighthouse letterbox, or of getting to see me when she brought Karin to town and dropped her off at the gym. The good thing about being creatures of habit is that we end up having a more or less fixed timetable. Even I, despite not having to offer explanations to anyone and needing to make the most of every opportunity to continue with my enquiries into the Brotherhood, had no choice but to take a rest break at lunchtime and to go to bed early at night.
I had to husband my energies and not skip my medication. And thanks to this trip I’d realized that I was able to look after myself. I watched over myself as if I was outside my own skin, obliging myself to drink a lot of water even when I wasn’t thirsty, to eat even if I wasn’t very hungry, and to do a few stretches when I got up, a few minutes of Swedish gymnastics, which Salva had taught me in the camp when we first arrived there. In the end, we hardly had enough strength to breathe, but until that point Salva said that the workout was very good for the head because it activated the blood circulation and the transfer of oxygen to the brain. And after I had tried to kill myself in such a pathetic, lamentable way, I didn’t let a single day go by without doing the exercises.
The Scent of Lemon Leaves Page 28
