“The punctual ones are the English, not the Germans.”
“But the Germans are supposed to be better organized. You should see the suitcases this man’s brought. They’re so well organized.”
I agreed with her. The Germans I’d known were very well organized.
“Listen, Pilar,” I said, looking her straight in the eye, “I don’t know how you can stand being around all these old crocks. A woman as attractive as you should be showing off her charms elsewhere.”
She laughed, not very happily.
“Elsewhere, all that glistens isn’t gold,” she replied.
“That’s true too,” I said, “so how would it seem to you if an old man like myself suggested going to see a film or sallying out to see what’s in the world?”
I did pretty well holding out as she took her time in answering.
“It wouldn’t seem too bad. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of stories to tell.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
11
Under the Ground, Under the Sky
Sandra
I convinced my sister that we should all go and spend a few days in the little house. I told her that the sea air, having other kids around and the warm presence of the family, including grandparents, would be fantastic for the baby. He was six months old now and was very alert, or rather very observant. If it’s true that the foetus receives sensations from the outside world, he must have taken in a lot of suspicion, fear, watchfulness and the clear message that nobody is what he or she appears to be. When he was staring at us, it was as if he was seeking the truth inside us, or as if he knew that behind whatever he saw there was always something else.
After lots of thinking about hundreds of names, I’d settled for Julián and we called him Janín. I wanted the old Julián to know this and I sent him a letter to the Costa Azul Hotel but it was returned. He wasn’t staying there any more, so I imagined he might have gone back to Argentina.
I think that, if I decided to go back to Dianium now, it was in the hope of bumping into Alberto on some street corner. At first I dreamt about him. I dreamt that we were on the motorbike, going down together, away from Villa Sol, or that we were walking along the beach. I dreamt that this world was flooded in very bright light that blinded me and stopped me from seeing what was around me. I dreamt of the girl on the beach as if she wasn’t me. And now I wasn’t totally her. I remembered her as a little sister full of doubts. It’s not that I was sure of everything now, but I’d entered the house of evil, I’d had a taste of evil as one has a taste of illness or wretchedness, of everything that sets you in a world apart, and you don’t forget this.
I was quite affected when I went inside the little house. It smelt of flowers. A thousand years ago I’d come here with my backpack and a head that was all over the place. Now we shot out of the cars, filling the garden with shouts. No sooner had they arrived than my parents started fighting. Janín observed them with eyes like saucers. Traces of books and papers of the tenant still remained. My brother-in-law immediately started to come up with his excuses to do a runner to the town, without the troops, as he called us. What had happened to me could never have happened in these circumstances. Fred, Karin, Villa Sol and Julián couldn’t have existed. Now Alberto couldn’t exist.
I settled into the smallest room. My father installed my nephews’ old cot, which he got out of the garage, and I opened the window wide. The birds were boisterous in the green branches.
Julián
Once you got used to it and stopped being interested in what was happening in the outside world, the days slipped by peacefully in Tres Olivos. Sometimes they took us on excursions to Benidorm or Valencia, and that was pleasant if you didn’t have ideas about doing things on your own. Sometimes somebody died and that was discussed in the dining room as if it was never going to happen to any of the rest of us. Heim was as out of place as an octopus in a garage and Elfe fluttered around here and there, half drunk, completely out of it. Elfe occasionally exchanged a few words in German with Heim, but I’m sure she never managed to work out exactly who he was.
Thursday was Pilar’s day off and we went out. She drove her BMW and I talked about the concentration camp and my time as a Nazi hunter. I tried not to talk too much about Raquel.
It turned out that she found me an interesting old chap. When I realized that she was falling in love with me, I told her about my heart disease and that I was taking ten pills a day. I told her I was in no state to be satisfying her needs and that I could snuff it any moment. I told her I didn’t even have enough money to pay for my burial and barely enough for Los Olivos. But Pilar was very stubborn. She was trying to make us into one of those couples where the woman’s like the nurse or carer. That was fine by me. The last woman for whom I might have been able to do something was Sandra. Now I was looking for ways to mortify Heim. He’d always managed to escape from his pursuers but the one he couldn’t escape from was himself.
One afternoon I asked Pilar to come with me to the little house at the time when the tenant was teaching at the high school. She stayed in the car while I sneaked in, made my way through piles of papers and went up to the room where, months earlier, I’d hidden the photo album and Heim’s and my notebooks. They were there, where I’d left them. As if no time, no wind, no gaze had entered among those four walls. I picked them up and returned to Pilar.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“This? Nothing. It’s an errand. We have to go to the post office.”
Pilar looked at me admiringly. She took it for granted that anything I did would be interesting. What a shame my life was beginning just when it was ending, or perhaps it was better like that. Right, Raquel?
I sent my old organization Elfe’s photo album, Heim’s notebooks and my own notes, amongst which were jotted down the addresses of Villa Sol, of Sebastian, Otto and Alice and Frida. As for Heim, I preferred to keep quiet. Heim was mine.
Pilar settled for not much, for my telling her that she was very beautiful, which was absolutely true, and that she was the nicest, happiest woman I’d known in all my life, which was also true. I ended up giving in when she set about passionate kissing and a couple of times I let her drag me off to her bed. She tried to pretend that she liked my body, which made no sense. Then I told her that this was over, that I’d got out of the habit of sex and didn’t want to get back into it and thus acquire another need.
In the end, Pilar and I were a fine team. We had a good time without having to rip our clothes off in a hurry and flurry. It was better that she should undress with others and leave me in my pigeonhole of “very interesting”. However, at bottom I think that any psychologist would tell me that I was trying to repeat my marvellous relationship with Sandra. What would her life be like now? I didn’t want to know. I belonged to her past.
Sandra
The motorbike was still there, chained to the bougainvillea. Even though I now had a car and didn’t need it, I got on it. I happily started it, savouring the moment, and headed for El Tosalet. I felt free – now yes – completely free, knowing that my son had come into the world and that if anything bad happened to me it wouldn’t happen to him too. Mission accomplished.
When I got to Villa Sol, some children with towels over their shoulders were hurling themselves at the gate, followed by their father. He ticked them off, telling them not to carry on like animals.
I went over to him and asked if he lived in the house. He was suspicious and asked why I wanted to know. I told him that it was for sentimental reasons, that I’d also lived there for a time. He stared at me incredulously.
“What are the upstairs rooms like?” he asked while he warned the kids to watch out for cars.
I described them.
“Come in, if you like,” he said. “Come and wallow in nostalgia.”
The hammocks were the same, but now they were full of towels and in the wrong place. The pool was the same but there was something different. It was the di
fference of now, when doors were wide open and Karin’s face wasn’t appearing in the kitchen window.
“I’ve rented it for the whole month. Come whenever you like. We’ll invite you to dinner.”
His eyes had got brighter. He was probably divorced and it was his turn to have the kids. I thanked him and went back to the motorbike. He didn’t have the faintest idea of who the owners were, for sure.
I went past Otto’s and Alice’s house. It was silent and emanated a feeling of heaviness, suggesting that any moment it was going to sink and drag all the surrounding villas, the region and the whole world with it. I climbed up on the seat as I’d done that rainy night of the party and saw that the garden was a complete mess, with weeds springing up everywhere. I can’t explain why, but the Doric columns gave off a tremendous air of neglect, like those temples that time chips away at, trapping them in the past.
On my way back, I went past the Costa Azul Hotel. I went in and walked around the vestibule. The receptionist with the big freckle was there. He looked at me, trying to place me. I’d taken out the piercings and my hair was longer and chestnut brown all over, the way I’d had it done the last time it was dyed, when I was with Karin. I’d opted for comfort. Since I’d got myself a job, I paid more attention to my clothes and to making a good impression on the clients. The only thing that mattered was that my son wouldn’t go short of anything. I didn’t care what people thought of me. I only cared about what I thought about life. I no longer had any sense of danger in this place. I went out again followed by the receptionist’s eyes.
Was that all? No. There was still the lighthouse. I left that till last. The worst thing was that nobody could share this with me. I felt as if my head and my heart were going to explode. Now instead of the ice-cream parlour there was a small restaurant with a big terrace shaded by a vine-covered lattice, which took up part of the esplanade. I was afraid that they’d taken away the bench among the palms, but no, it was still there. A couple was sitting on it. It didn’t matter. Right under their noses, I lifted up stone C.
They were staring at me, not knowing what to think. The corner of a plastic bag was sticking out. I removed the compressed earth and pulled it out. It was a plastic bag that said “Transylvania Souvenirs”, and inside was a lacquer box, the size of about half a hand. There was nothing in it, and there was a lot in it. I never thought that my life could be so full of emotions. I sat on the bench next to the couple. They were invisible to me. I made them feel uncomfortable and had barged in on their magic moment, so they left.
Thanks, I said mentally to the couple and the whole universe. I touched my pocket and the little bag of sand that Julián had given me one day. I always carried it with me. I took it out and put it under the stone. I wanted him to have it, wanted it to bring him luck again. I’d had plenty.
On the way back, I filled up the petrol tank, surrounded by nonchalant people aimlessly wandering around wherever the mood took them, and then went back to the little house. I went up to my room. Janín was asleep, sprawled in his cot. The breeze was coming in through the half-open blind. I put the box on the chest of drawers.
Julián
The truth is that most of the time the bits fit together too late, when you can no longer do anything. Then why should we know certain things? Sandra had gone back to her normal life and the rest of us had rushed off to our respective destinies. Mine, for the moment, was Tres Olivos and Pilar. Last Thursday, like every other Thursday, Pilar picked me up early. We had a nice drive in the car, listening to rancheras, stopped to eat in a very nice-looking restaurant where she paid as usual, and then went back into town to do some shopping. Our first stop was at her favourite boutique. It was incomprehensible to me that she should waste her time and money with someone like me, but there we were, Pilar trying on dresses for New Year’s Eve and me looking for somewhere to sit down.
And it was between a black velvet dress and another in red silk, I think it was, that I heard a woman’s voice at my side.
“Excuse me, could I speak with you?”
I turned around to face her. The dog she held in her arms barked at me.
She was young, between thirty and forty, with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was slim and strong, and you could see from a mile away that she did a lot of sport. She was wearing jeans and a yellow cagoule lined in navy blue, like the ones worn by sailors you see in films. I took a few paces backwards, to see her better. She looked very familiar. I’d seen her before.
“I’m a friend of Alberto’s, Sandra’s friend. You are… Julián. I’ve been trying to track you down for weeks and had given up hope. Then – it’s amazing – I saw you coming into the shop.”
“You’re the one who was with the Eel on the beach.”
“With the Eel? Who is the Eel?”
“I saw you with Alberto on the beach some months ago, carrying on like a couple of sweethearts. Would that be right?”
She nodded. Pilar came out of the fitting room and whirled around. The skirt must have been sequinned because it glittered when she moved.
“That’s lovely,” I said. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
We went out and instinctively crossed over to some benches opposite the shop. The damp cold seeped into my bones.
“My name’s Elisabeth.”
The tip of Elisabeth’s nose was going red. She had a lot of presence, though you couldn’t say she was pretty. She stroked the dog and put it on the ground, tying the lead to a bench. She stretched out her arms as if they’d gone numb.
“Alberto told me that if anything happened to him I should look for you and speak with you. I saw you too, that day on the beach. You were watching us.”
We sat on the bench, both of us with our hands in our pockets. I sensed she was going to tell me something disagreeable, one of those things that casts a pall over life.
“Alberto is dead. Or rather, they killed him.”
So that was it, the thing that turns life disgusting.
“He’d infiltrated the Brotherhood and I was his contact.”
“Police?”
“Something like that. Detectives. They found him out and killed him. A traffic accident, you understand? But I know it wasn’t an accident.”
The news left me paralysed. It was hard to know how to react. The past was still getting fat on disasters. The Eel was left definitively in the past, while Sandra would navigate through the future. Only Heim, Elfe and I were locked in the circle of the present, until Heim went completely mad, until Elfe failed to emerge from her last attack of the DTs, and until I had the last heart attack.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He helped Sandra and, in spite of everything, I think he tried to help me.”
“Now we’re looking for the Christensens, Alice and Otto. They’re scared and not only because of us. It seems that there are other people on their trail. We know they’ve gone into hiding. They might have remade their lives in any housing estate near any beach. The coast is very long. We believe Heim’s fled to Egypt. There’s no sign of Elfe.”
I looked into her eyes without saying a word. They were blue, but they couldn’t compare with Sandra’s greenish-brown eyes that made you laugh inside. The Eel and Elisabeth didn’t make a good couple. It was obvious that there couldn’t have been anything between them. That long ago day on the beach they’d been acting at embracing and kissing. How I would have loved to say to Sandra, guess what: the Eel and that girl were only colleagues in a job that was too dangerous; I want to ask your forgiveness for letting my head go sometimes, for my thoughts about you that weren’t as honest as you deserved, because there were some moments when I wished I was young too; and as we know, I abused your trust in the matter of the puppy. Sandra, I’m disgusting.
“Alberto liked this girl Sandra. He said that when he was with her he wanted to laugh and conquer the world, and that this had happened very few times in his life, but unfortunately he’d met her in the worst possible circumstances.”
“
It doesn’t matter any more,” I said impotently.
“Yes,” Elisabeth said, staring at the ground. “It’s very strange the way things happen.”
When I saw Pilar leaving the shop and coming over to us, I got up from the bench. Elisabeth got up too and untied the dog.
“He’s called Bolita,” she said.
“I know,” I answered. “And you don’t know what to do with him. You’ve got fond of him but he’s a burden too. Isn’t that right?”
She nodded and, surprisingly, she blushed slightly.
I picked Bolita up. He weighed a lot. Dogs grow fast. He licked my neck and I put him down again.
“I’ll have him. I have a lot of free time and a house with a garden, but you can’t visit him. Agreed? He can only have one master.”
Elisabeth stroked his head and flank for the last time and didn’t look at him again. She knew how to leave behind the people and things she loved.
“It would be good if you could tell me anything I might not know.” She went quiet for a moment, using the tactic of staring at me unblinking. “I don’t want it all to end here.”
“Coming,” I called as I turned my back on her to go over to Pilar, tugging at the dog’s leash.
“I know you’re not living in the Costa Azul any more. Where can I find you?”
I limited myself to waving goodbye. I took one of the bags Pilar was carrying.
“Who was that?” Pilar asked, full of curiosity.
“An admirer. I don’t think I ever told you I used to be a film star.”
Pilar took my arm, looking at me out of the corner of her eye, wondering if it was true that I’d been a silent-movie star.
“And this dog?”
“A gift from my admirer. We could do with a dog.”
The three of us started to walk. Elisabeth would be watching us and, if she didn’t throw in the towel right away and forget the whole affair, she’d end up finding Tres Olivos and thus Heim and Elfe.
The Scent of Lemon Leaves Page 37
