I felt terrible. Another lost opportunity. I’d left him savouring his glass of champagne and thinking about how we, the winners, had actually lost, because we were fools. I got to my car then drove off past Sebastian’s luxurious apartment complex, thinking that at least Operation Heim was bearing fruit. Talking had never been my forte. I liked talking trivia with Raquel, about what had happened when I went out to buy the newspaper, or discussing the television news, or exchanging views on a film, calling her darling and her calling me idiot in the same tone she used to call me love. Using words seriously had always intimidated me slightly, because Salva and his magnificent dialectics always came to mind. Salva should have been the one who spoke with Sebastian. Not me.
Sandra
Karin rarely came to my room because she was scared of catching my flu. I coughed as loudly as I could so she’d keep that in mind, though the alternatives to Karin were the terrifying Frida or Fred, who tended to appear like a dear old grandfather bearing juice and chocolate. I only wanted to sleep and think about Alberto. My slight fever put me in contact with him, and I wanted to see him so badly I could hardly bear it. I felt in the grip of a passion I couldn’t control, maybe because it was a way of fighting this over-the-top mess I was now in. So I got out of bed and got dressed. Was it morning or afternoon? Who cared? I went down the stairs, half in a trance. I wasn’t asleep and I wasn’t awake. When I got to the last step, a surprised Karin asked me where I thought I was going. I didn’t answer. I asked her where I might find Alberto.
After thinking it over for at least five minutes, Karin asked me why I wanted to know.
“To talk with him,” I said.
I could have answered her in another, more roundabout way, but I wasn’t capable of such a feat, so I’d got to the point.
“About what?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”
She smiled and got that crafty look in her eyes.
“You like that boy …”
And without giving me a chance to answer, she went on, “No, you don’t like him. You’re in love.” She paused. “Well, I’m sorry, but you’ve fallen in love with the wrong person.”
I listened to her with real anxiety. For once, what this bossy old windbag had to say interested me. It was a matter of life and death.
“He’s got a girlfriend. He’s been seen kissing a girl on the beach. I prefer to tell you before you get too carried away.”
This information fitted with what Julián had told me. It seemed that everyone had seen Alberto kissing this girl, who, according to Julián’s description, was nothing to take your breath away.
Karin was really into it. This was a new ingredient in her life. One of her romance novels was coming true.
“You’re pregnant and it’s not good for you to get upset. Aren’t you aware of your state? How could you get it into your head that, out of the millions of girls your age running round here, he’d choose you precisely?”
Karin was going too far. She was a bitch, but she was dragging truths out of my head that I didn’t want to face.
“I didn’t say I wanted anything with him.”
“Then why do you want to see him? You can’t fool me.”
I almost told her that he’d kept the dog I’d tried to give her, and wanted to know if it was okay. Luckily I didn’t open my mouth but kept quiet and had enough time to pull myself together. I didn’t let myself get trapped by the moment or by wanting to protect my self-esteem from any more battering. Before loosening my tongue, I preferred to get carried away by the fever and self-pity so I started to cry.
I sat down on the sofa and cried my eyes out. I was overcome with tiredness. She looked at me as if she was watching a film. She sat down next to me and caressed my hair. I could smell that very expensive perfume that impregnated any place she went and that I was hoping would go off to the next life with her.
“I want to see Alberto. I want to know if he feels anything for me,” I said.
“If it was Martín, I could do something, but I can’t in the case of Alberto. He’s very much his own man, very serious, and I wouldn’t dare to say anything to him. Although,” she said with a nasty smile, “something does occur to me. If you joined the Brotherhood, he’d have to come, because he’s the right-hand man of Sebastian, our leader.”
I lay down full length on the sofa. I was dying to tell Karin that the injections that were costing her all her jewels could be bought in any chemist’s shop. I was dying to tell her that they were pulling a fast one on her and if she didn’t believe me she could get them analysed, and that maybe Alice was keeping the real ones for herself, but I didn’t want to waste such juicy information. I wanted to keep it for some critical moment when I urgently needed to strike the killer blow. Then I think I went to sleep.
Julián
Life is surprising. It was the only sure thing about life that I’d stowed away over the years. Life was cruel and surprising, monotonous and surprising, marvellous and surprising. Now it was time for it to be simply surprising.
It happened when I got back to my room after monitoring the Estrella and Heim’s movements on deck. I came back happy, because I could see he was going downhill by the day. He kept moving up and down from cabin to deck in a state of confusion. He didn’t take it easy after his feast like he used to and, whenever he set off to the market to buy the fish he was so fond of, he’d come back at least twice to make sure everything was well locked up. He looked around him to see if anyone was watching him – he wasn’t far wrong about that – and the last time he took out his imposing Mercedes he scraped it along one side. He would have been going to see Sebastian, blubbering and begging for more injections. What he probably wouldn’t tell him was that he suspected he’d been exposed, because if he was exposed, the rest of them would be too, and then he’d be a danger to the whole group.
What happened is that Roberto pretended not to notice when I greeted him as I walked past on my way to the lifts, and when I got to my door I surprised Tony, the hotel detective, slipping something underneath it.
He was startled to see me.
“I was asked to leave you a message. You’ll find it when you open the door.”
“That’s very kind of you. The chambermaid could have brought it,” I said, making it clear that I knew that, whatever it was, he was involved.
At least he hadn’t gone in. The transparent bits of paper were in place. He must have been well aware that there was nothing of interest inside. When I went in, I picked up a folded piece of paper but didn’t read it immediately. I drank some water first, then went to the toilet, took my shoes off and lay on the bed. At this stage of my life I knew that whatever might be waiting for you round the corner, it’s better if it comes on you with some things shipshape.
And while I was doing all this, my head was trying to work out who the note could be from and, although I was almost certain it would be from Sandra and that it wasn’t prudent to have let it fall into Tony’s hands, to my surprise and relief I found it had been written by… Sebastian.
I gave a start on the bed. Sebastian wanted to see me. Would I like to meet him in the same restaurant as last time? Could I go there at one thirty tomorrow afternoon for lunch? He hoped I’d accept his invitation this time.
I folded the note over. I folded it twice and put in my trouser pocket.
A thousand stupid ideas ran through my head about how we should have arranged to meet in a place chosen by me, and maybe he’d repented after all…
Sandra
I was so weak that they’d stopped locking me in. I got up and staggered to the bathroom. I had a stomach upset plus fever that I put down to the flu and was spending all day in bed. Frida was making me eat and drink and I started to fear that they wanted to poison me, although at bottom something told me that they wanted my son for the Brotherhood and they wouldn’t hurt him. I threw up my breakfast and the lunchtime soup in the handbasin. It was very big, made of beautiful local ceramic ware
with yellow sunflowers. The walls were covered with a nubbly silky material, also yellow, and there were some old-fashioned wall lamps either side of the mirror. I spattered the yellow fabric with bits of fish and tried to clean it up with toilet paper, but my head was woozy. I picked up as much as I could from the basin with a lot of toilet paper, cursing myself for not getting my head over the toilet bowl, and I couldn’t stop thinking that Frida would have to clean it up. I was terrified she’d get even more pissed off with me.
I hardly saw Karin. Fred came up sometimes to make sure I was still alive. I only wanted to sleep and in my dreams I saw terrible things and had nasty sensations that made me open my eyes all of a sudden. I never dreamt about Alberto’s kiss but, when I was awake, scenes of the lovemaking we should have been into right then kept sneaking into my head. I saw him naked above or underneath me, but I didn’t have enough details to see him totally naked. Then I quickly imagined him dressed in the clothes I knew. I liked him a lot like that and his trousers, his slightly crumpled shirt and the memory of his smell got me very excited. In my normal life, before I went to bed with anyone, I wondered, without really thinking about it, what it would like with him inside me, what his penis would be like… Yet, with Alberto, no such questions occurred to me. With Alberto, what I liked was him and everything that made him the way he was. I imagined myself in perpetual embrace with him, glued to him, and ended up very frustrated because I had nothing, and then I went back to sleep.
Except now, right now as I was closing my eyes, I heard his voice scraping at the closed door, and I opened them again.
“Sandra, are you all right?”
I opened my eyes wider, not daring to breathe. It was very strange that Alberto should have come up to this room and that he should know I was in such a pitiful state. Who would have told him that this room was like a prison for me? I couldn’t believe what I thought I was hearing.
“Sandra.”
My name passed through the wood and came to me.
I sat up in bed. My head was going round and round, like when I drank more than two gin-and-tonics.
“Yes,” I said.
“I want to see you. I think I love you,” he said.
I love you? Had he said it or did I want to hear it?
“Me too,” I said.
Then I heard a voice that was different to Alberto’s. It sounded like Martín’s. The two voices mingled as if in an argument and they moved away. I let my head drop onto the pillow and tried to remember Alberto’s I-love-you as I’d heard it, spoken softly from the other side of the door. I love you. I love you. I love you. And what was I doing?
Julián
Before going to see Sebastian, I drove past Villa Sol in my car. It seemed strange that so many days had gone by with no news of Sandra. I was seriously worried. I was apprehensive. She hadn’t come to our appointments and hadn’t left any message in our lighthouse letterbox and neither had I received any message from her at the hotel. She knew how to get in and go up to my room without being seen to slip a piece of paper under my door. Nothing. None of that had happened.
The windows of the second floor and the loft of Villa Sol were closed. I had no way of finding out whether Sandra had left unexpectedly. She could have found a way of leaving me some explanation. Then again, if she’d had to flee, that wouldn’t have been so easy. If it wasn’t for the fact that I might be putting her in danger, I was tempted to try to find the Eel to ask him about her. The truth is I didn’t know what to do. They had my photo, they knew me and I couldn’t turn up at their house just like that. I therefore went on to Bremer Apartments, which, as I’d suspected, belonged to Gerhard Bremer, another Nazi who played golf with them, a rich builder who’d got away without as much as a hair on his head getting ruffled. Sebastian would certainly have felt safe living there, yet it still seemed stupid for somebody of his intelligence, unless he believed that nobody would get the idea of looking for him there. It hadn’t occurred to me of course.
I parked nearby. With the sun striking the glass, the restaurant looked as if it was about to take off and fly over the cliff. At the door, Martín informed me that he was sitting at a table at the back. It was very comfortable not even having to ask for him.
At the back table, in a nimbus of diabolical luminosity, Sebastian had a cigarette in his hand. I believe he was sporting it more to complete his image than to smoke it, and indeed, at no point did I see him take it to his lips. Seeing me, he gestured to me to sit down.
“I have ordered black rice with lobster,” he said. “Naturally, if you prefer something else, I shall ask them to bring the menu.”
I told him that his choice was fine by me, but didn’t tell him that I had no intention of tasting it, not a single grain of rice, nothing paid for with his money.
“I didn’t expect that you’d want to see me,” I said. “Well, actually I did expect it deep down but I’m not sure why.”
“We will never understand one another. Reconciliation is impossible. You do not forgive and I do not repent. I think there was a moment when we failed to keep reality in sight. That is all.”
“And that’s why you’ve got me to come here?”
The waiter started to fill the table with food. The only thing he didn’t do was fall on his knees before Sebastian. He didn’t look at me.
“I have got you to come here because I want to ask you to do something for Sandra, the girl who lives with the Norwegians.” He too called them that, just like Sandra and me. “She is ill and I would not like anything bad to happen to her. That is all in the past now. We lost. Useless damage is not good for anyone. We know she is your mole, your contact inside the group. Take her away. We shall not live for ever. Take her away and get her to a doctor.”
“I met Sandra on the beach when she was already living with the Norwegians. I was investigating you people and I came across her. We became friends but she doesn’t know what I’m doing. She thinks I’m just some old man who reminds her of her grandparents.”
He looked pensive. He passed me the trays but I took nothing, so he put them back where they were while he was pondering whether I’d told him the truth.
“She suspects nothing?”
I wasn’t going to give him any ammunition against Sandra. I had no intention of admitting the truth. In cases like this you have to deny, deny and deny until you die.
“Nothing at all. She likes you a lot. She calls you the Black Angel. She hasn’t got a clue about the SS.”
“Then why has she never invited you to the Norwegians’ house?”
“She has invited me. I was the one who made up excuses about not going there. You people will have to convince her to leave. I don’t have any compelling arguments, and anyway, it’s quite a while since I saw her.”
“This girl is marvellous,” Sebastian said. “Why does she call me Black Angel?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe because she saw you at night, in the moonlight, and she thought you seemed better than the rest of them.”
“Better?” he asked with a sceptical, sardonic, disagreeable smile. “I am like them, and they are no worse than a lot of people walking round the street.”
“Well, I’ve lived for a long time and I’ve never known anybody worse.”
They filled our plates with an aromatic serving of black rice, which I didn’t try. He took a couple of mouthfuls and left it. This time they’d served red wine and water. He wet his lips with the wine and drank water. I was thirsty but didn’t drink any.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, wiping his mouth with a linen serviette. It seemed a pity to crumple it. “We have a traitor in the group and I am glad it is not Sandra. I am glad that she will be spared some kind of accident. I am glad that she is pure and happy.”
Sandra
They took me downstairs with two of them holding me up. I was dizzy with fever and weakness. At the foot of the stairs some faces I recognized were waiting for me, and there were others I’d never seen
in my life, but they must have been members of the Brotherhood. There were a few guys like Martín, and Martín himself, a man with white hair with two or three others who looked Spanish, a couple of other foreigners, and the rest looked familiar. I closed my eyes so the faces wouldn’t melt together.
“Do you feel all right?” Karin’s voice asked as sweetly as possible.
I shook my head. How could I feel all right? It was a ridiculous question. She knew perfectly well how ill I was, but she wanted to throw a party and any pretext was good enough for her.
I’d managed to get dressed, making a huge effort. Actually Frida dressed me. She put on one of the two dresses I had hanging in the wardrobe because all the rest was jeans, T-shirts and pullovers. On this occasion she, who normally didn’t speak, made all sorts of comments about my clothes, my mountain boots, my hairdo, my piercings and my tattoos. Since it was difficult for me to raise my arms to get the dress on, she roughly shoved me around me until I got pissed off and told her to get her hands off me, and I wasn’t in the mood for ceremonies. Fuck off, I told her. Fuck off the lot of you and leave me alone, I said, half-lying sideways on the bed, with the dress only half on.
“I’m going to give you an aspirin,” she said.
“Forget about giving me an aspirin. I can’t take anything.”
Her eyes were bright. They were so blue and so shiny that they looked a lot like the little globes that my mother hung around the terrace at Christmas time. She wanted to kill me but she couldn’t. There were a lot of people downstairs waiting to see me.
The Scent of Lemon Leaves Page 33
