The Scent of Lemon Leaves Page 6

  Having said that, I still wanted to say more, to get rid of some of the venom that had rushed to my throat, but it was better to keep cool, be succinct and let his mind get to work.

  Exactly the same as what would have happened to me, he stood there paralysed for a few seconds, not reacting, not knowing where to look, although the voice had come from behind him. He must have been getting by for too long without any frights and he’d let down his guard. The problem was that it was difficult for me to turn my cart around because of this propensity of supermarket carts to go sideways. Maybe I should have just left it there but I was slow off the mark and, when I realized what was happening, he was a few metres away. He was coming up behind me. I didn’t want to turn round and let him see my face, but I could feel it was him, knew for sure it was him, because when I started walking faster so did he, and his cart sounded like a train rattling off the rails. So did mine. I was going as fast as I could to escape his enormous strides and had the advantage that my head didn’t stand out, which meant I could disappear amongst the drums of washing soap. I abandoned my cart in the first place I could and then hid behind a mountain of books. I heard the clattering of his cart moving away and slipped out, heading for the exit. I got into the car and waited, mopping up my sweat and calming down. It wasn’t time yet to take the nitroglycerine tablet I always carried in my shirt pocket.

  It was almost another half-hour before he came out. He stowed his purchases in the boot (it seemed that not even an incident of this calibre was going to make him adapt his programme), his face contorted and with a ruthless look about him. I felt more in command of myself than ever. I was going to do things my way. I’d let myself be guided by intuition and experience. I’d reached the end of the world and, when the end of the world comes, nothing has the same value as before. The step I’d just taken certainly wasn’t prudent but, on the other hand, I wanted to rattle him, wanted him to make some move and, in any case, what was done was done.

  Now I had to be cautious and follow him at a greater distance, because, even if he didn’t know me, he’d be able to detect me as an unwanted presence.

  We went up to El Tosalet, not to Villa Sol but to another villa some three hundred metres away which showed no name, only the number 50. I parked some distance below and when, having waited an hour, I saw that he wasn’t coming out, I left. I now had the place in my sights and it wouldn’t take me long to discover who lived there. I was absolutely certain it was one of them.

  Sandra

  At six Fred hadn’t returned from the shopping centre and Karin started getting anxious. There was no way of contacting him. They didn’t have mobile phones. None of us was very interested in telephones. In my case, when the card ran out, centuries could go by before I got another one. It seemed an absurd way of throwing away money I didn’t have. And they hadn’t got used to the new technologies. They didn’t use a computer either. So I thought it wouldn’t be very nice to leave Karin in this situation of uncertainty and I kept working on the pullover. It was looking better and better, and all the stitches were more even now. In spite of Karin’s worries about Fred, she’d occasionally lean over to see how I was doing.

  At about half-past six we went back inside. A little later I opened the door to the thickset guy from the other night, the one called Martín, who was wearing the same black singlet, jeans and worn trainers, and the skinny one, the Eel, who was much less concerned about clothes and his image than Martín was. The Eel asked if Fred was home. He looked as if he couldn’t imagine what I was doing in that house. He came over and whispered in my ear in a way I found intimidating, “So you’ve moved in here?”

  Thank goodness Karin came at once. She zipped out from the living room to the front door with amazing speed.

  “I’ll see to this,” she said.

  And she ushered them into the office-cum-den on the ground floor where, on walking past, I’d seen a table with papers, an old-fashioned typewriter and a few books. I could hear her telling them that Fred was unexpectedly late and she was worried.

  “They help Fred with the accounts and running messages,” she offered, referring to their visit when she returned to the kitchen where I was hanging around not knowing what to do because I’d suddenly found myself caught up with lives that meant nothing to me. “They say they’ll wait for a while before going out to look for him. Sometimes Fred runs into somebody, gets chatting and time flies by without him noticing.”

  Then she held her head in her hands, not indulging in dramatics but in order to think better. A few anaemic curls, a memento of the days when they must have been beautiful gold ringlets, covered her fingers.

  “If anything happened to Fred, it would be the end, do you understand?”

  Yes, I did have an idea, but on such occasions it’s better not to dig too deep so I said nothing. As for me, I’d hang around a little longer because if I left now I wouldn’t sleep with an easy conscience. It wasn’t so easy to move in and out of situations as if nothing’s happening. From outside everything looked different, just as my baby inside me would be seeing it all in a completely fantastic way.

  When Fred finally opened the door with his key and came in with his bags of shopping, I felt a huge sense of relief, as if he was very important to me when, in reality, he was of almost zero importance. Karin set her knitting aside, got up and literally ran over to Fred. I carried the shopping into the kitchen while they were talking in their own language. Since I couldn’t make out a single word, I concentrated on the intonation. First of all, Karin expressed natural relief mixed with happiness. In his neutral, deep, verging-on-monotonous voice Fred was telling her something important, not something trivial like getting a flat tyre. Karin listened in complete silence, after which she responded with surprise and also alarm. Her voice had got its strength back. Clearly they had a problem.

  It had gone nine when I convinced Karin that I needed to stretch my legs and that I was going to stroll back to the motorbike that I’d left in the little square a thousand years before. Fred was still with his helpers or whatever the visitors in his office were and whatever that room might be.

  I went through the curves, back down to sea level, as slowly as I could. I’d never forgive myself if I crashed. I don’t know why I’d left the Christensens’ house more afraid than I was when I entered it, with a fear that was vague and indefinable, a fear of everything. What would Karin do if she were left alone and had an attack of arthritis? I still had the luxury of fending for myself, of being autonomous. When the baby came, we’d see. I think that Fate, or God, or whatever, put Karin in my path so I’d wake up to the pitfalls lying ahead, so I’d be able to appreciate what I had: youth, good health and a baby on the way.

  I didn’t see them again for several days.

  Julián

  Once they entered Villa Sol and closed the metal gate, you couldn’t hear anything from outside so I headed back to the hotel. I had dinner nearby, breathed in the fresh air of the night and even sat down for a while in a terrace bar to have a decaffeinated coffee and contemplate people’s semi-naked bodies, navels, backs, legs, which I enjoyed because they weren’t totally naked. I went back to my room without a very clear idea of how to get out of this impasse, how to provoke them and make them reveal who they really were. I couldn’t go to the police and just assert without further ado that a dangerous war criminal lived here. Dangerous? But nobody who’s got one foot in the grave is dangerous, they’d say. Would they have enough life left in them to be brought to trial? But what could be done, with the necessary proofs, would be to publish their crimes in the newspapers, so they’d have to deal with the revulsion of their neighbours, so they’d no longer be able to stroll around the supermarket, the hospital and the beach like any other person. It would make their lives a misery. It would oblige them to flee, to sell the house, pack their bags and start all over again, which, at their age, would be true martyrdom. They were certainly dreaming of spending their last days here. But it would be me who’d b
e spending my last days here, not them. They had no right to die in peace. What would Salva have wanted to do with them? He’d left me a legacy of the object but not the objective. In the last years of her life Raquel used to tell me, whenever I was tempted to do what I was doing now, that I was behind the times, that things worked differently now, that there were other means of investigation and that I should stay home. Well, whatever the case, I was aware that nobody was counting on me, that nobody remembered me or my services, that my old comrades were like me or even worse, that the newcomers thought I’d died, that the world was in other hands and that I’d have to go about things my own way.

  On returning to the hotel at night, I was intercepted by the concierge with the big freckle on his cheek. He looked at me in alarm and asked me to sit down in one of the armchairs in the lobby. Something bad had happened.

  “Is it my daughter? Has something happened to her?”

  He waved his hands saying no, it wasn’t that, and I calmed down. If my daughter was all right, it couldn’t be all that serious.

  “Something distressing has happened in your room… It’s been ransacked.”

  I listened to him wide-eyed. “My room?”

  “Yes, your room. Somebody got in and turned everything upside down. They also slit open the mattress and the upholstery on the armchair. We have safes here. If you’ve brought anything of value with you, it would have been better if you’d hired one.”

  I’m certain that the composure with which I received the news made him shift from discomfort to giving me a ticking-off.

  “The hotel can’t be responsible for this kind of oversight.”

  “I don’t have anything of value, if what you mean is money, jewels or something like that.”

  He’d stopped seeing me as a helpless old man and was trying to look beyond the wrinkles and the decrepitude.

  “Yes, but well… what about drugs?”

  I didn’t laugh at his question because I’d just understood that Fredrik had found me out and given orders for me to be given a good fright. I didn’t know how, but after the supermarket episode he’d managed to locate me. More alarming still was that Fredrik wasn’t alone, or at least not surrounded only by geriatrics, because he couldn’t have done it by himself. Something like this required strength and speed.

  “I think that whoever did this got the wrong room. I can’t think of any other explanation,” I said.

  The concierge apologized and suggested that they should change my room. I could have a drink in the bar while they took my things to another floor. I accepted, thinking that what I ought to do was to go to another hotel, but on second thoughts I realized they’d find me again. They would most probably have found the file I’d taken out of my personal records. Fortunately, I’d stowed the newspaper cutting in my jacket pocket along with the only two photos from their youth that I possessed. She was dressed as a nurse and he was in a T-shirt doing gymnastics.

  I sat at the bar in the cafeteria and asked for a decaf, thinking that, now I’d been found out by Fredrik, the whole situation had changed and, what was more frightening, Fredrik was more alert than I’d imagined. Furthermore, he had people working for him and I was alone. Would they be capable of killing me?

  After an hour, Freckle-face came back to inform me that they’d moved my luggage but I could go back to my old room to check that they hadn’t overlooked anything.

  “It’s the first time that something like this has happened in the hotel. Please forgive the inconvenience. We are very, very sorry about this.”

  I gestured with my hand as if to say he could stop apologizing. It made me feel uncomfortable and also guilty.

  “Don’t worry, we old people are an easy target,” I remarked, getting my wallet out of my pocket, in vain as it turned out since he wouldn’t let me pay.

  All that was left in my room was my lens case and one of the two notebooks I’d been jotting things in. The other one was in the car. It wasn’t surprising that they’d missed it, what with all the things strewn around on the floor: the pillow, the pillow case, stuffing from the slashed cushions and mattress, the blankets out of the cupboard, the little bottles of shower gel and shampoo from the bathroom, the drawers of the writing desk, a few cheap pictures, and bottles and bags of nuts from the minibar. The radio alarm too. They wanted me to get the message that they were after me.

  “Good Heavens!” I exclaimed. “They got it wrong, no question about it.”

  “In any case, check that there’s nothing missing. The hotel detective will have to speak with you tomorrow. I hope you don’t mind.”

  In compensation for the fright they’d moved me to a suite on the top floor. It was a pity my poor Raquel couldn’t have been here to enjoy it. There was a living room with armchairs and sofas and, embellished with huge-leafed tropical plants, there was a large terrace from which you could get a glimpse of the port. Raquel would also have loved the hydro-massage bath, the flowers, the basket of fruit and the bottle of champagne. Nonetheless, I was happy that my daughter hadn’t come with me, because, this way, I only had myself to worry about. I breathed more easily when I noticed the file mixed up with my shirts and trousers. Fredrik’s thugs hadn’t unearthed it.

  “Enjoy your stay here. Let me know if you need anything else. My name is Roberto.”

  I told Roberto to take the champagne, to enjoy it with his wife, because I wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol. Roberto smiled and said he’d send a chambermaid to take it away.

  I checked the locks on the hallway door and the terrace door to see how I could reinforce security. When I was in there it would be very difficult for them to set upon me by surprise. The problem would arise when I went out again.

  Fredrik would imagine that after the incident at the hotel I’d go running back home again. The message was clear. They could slit me open like the mattress and cushions. They could trample on me as they’d done with the pictures. It’s not that the possibility didn’t scare me, but I had nothing to lose, and retreating at this point would cause me great mental fatigue. The idea that they might kill me made me feel really bad about my daughter. I didn’t want to make her suffer, but it was also true that the writing was on the wall and I’d be dying well before her, so she’d have to bear my loss one of these days. I therefore decided to sleep like a log and almost managed it. I was awakened by some tepid rays of light crossing the suite.

  Whatever the case, I was in no mind to do anything crazy. Given the circumstances, I’d give the Christensens a breather, at least for today. With the new day, a better plan had occurred to me: I’d go over to the house of the girl with the red streak in her hair.

  It was Saturday, around eleven. The sun was shining but not scorching hot. Summer was on the way out. Before leaving my room, I decided not to let myself be stymied by whatever amount of technology the enemy might be wielding, and to resort to the old tricks I’d always used. As I went out, I hung the “Please Do Not Disturb” sign on the door handle so the chambermaid wouldn’t come in, then took some tiny bits of transparent paper cut from the cellophane that had been used for wrapping the bottle and lodged them between the door and the frame, and between the bottom of the door and the floor. They’d necessarily move or fall when the door was opened. I didn’t have time to get up to date with things or to try anything more sophisticated. I had to be myself, an old fogey who couldn’t even count on his own people.

  Sandra

  When somebody was going along the track, when the postman came or workers from the gas or electricity company, or when some motorbike went by, crushing pebbles and flattening the ground, the ghostly life of the neighbourhood was revolutionized. The man in the Panama hat who stopped at my house and rang the doorbell didn’t imagine he wasn’t interrupting any kind of activity. It was rather pure and simple inactivity that was sending me off to sleep. He interrupted such thoughts as I-should-be-sewing-something-for-the-baby-to-wear. He interrupted my simultaneously not wanting to be with anyone and wanting to b
e with someone. He also interrupted thoughts of who-would-have-said-some-time-ago-that-I’d-be-hanging-around-with-these-two-old-foreigners? Of course I was thinking about Fred and Karin, who’d given no signs of life since I’d left Villa Sol some days before. One of them must have fallen ill, or they’d gone off on a trip, or some relatives had come to see them and their daily routine had changed. All kinds of things were running through my head. I had to admit I was missing them. This was idiotic, because they meant nothing to me, but even so, I’d stop watering if I heard a car on the gravel at the entrance. Their faces were engraved in my mind, maybe because they had something slightly out of the ordinary about them. All faces end up having something special sooner or later but these had had it straight away, almost at first sight.

  The man at the wrought-iron gate would have been about eighty, or more perhaps, and he looked as if he needed to rest, so I invited him up to the porch. He said he liked my little house. He said “little house” as if I were a gnome or a princess. He can’t have taken a good look at me. He spoke with an Argentine accent that refined his already very good manners even more. I took advantage of his interest in renting the house to show him round and to spend a bit of time chatting with someone. He conveyed this sense of neatness that thin old people tend to have. He had light-coloured eyes, or they’d turned light over the years, and it was probably also the case that the years had made him shorter, so now he was about the same height as me, a couple of centimetres short of one metre seventy. As I was showing him round the little house I had a great sense of anxiety that I was wasting my time, precious time in which others were finishing university degrees, getting work experience, becoming bosses, writing books or appearing on TV. I don’t know, I really don’t know how I could have got to this point without having done anything useful except for this little baby I was carrying inside me, and not even this was my own work. I was the bearer, the person responsible for bringing the child into the world, and at least I wanted to be in good shape to do this, so I stopped smoking and drinking as soon as I knew I was pregnant and, though I’ve been tempted many times to smoke a cig out in the moonlight in this place at the arse end of the world, responsibility won the day.