“A monotonous life, isn’t it?” he croaked.
“Even worse, a monotonous holiday.”
“Well,
they’re
not on holiday.”
“It doesn’t make any difference, they live offof other people’s holidays, they attach themselves to other people’s holidays and leisure and make tourists’ lives miserable. They’re parasites.”
El Quemado stared at me incredulously. Evidently the Wolf and the Lamb were his friends despite the apparent divide between them. In any case, I didn’t regret what I’d said. I remembered—or rather saw—Ingeborg’s face, fresh and rosy, and the certainty of happiness I felt when I was with her. All wrecked. The force of the
injustice quickened my movements: I picked up tweezers and with the speed of a cashier counting out bills I placed the counters in the force pools, the units in the proper squares, and, trying not to sound dramatic, I invited him to play one or two turns, though my intention was to play a full game, through the Great Destruction. El Quemado hunched his shoulders and smiled several times, still undecided. This made him look almost uglier than I could bear, so as he considered his response I stared at a random point on the map, as is done in matches when the opponents are two players who have never met before, each avoiding the physical presence of the other until the first turn begins. When I looked up I met El Quemado’s innocent eyes, and I could see that he accepted. We pulled our chairs over to the table and deployed our forces. The armies of Poland, France, and the USSR were left with an unpropitious opening gambit, though it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, considering that El Quemado was such a beginner. The English Army, meanwhile, occupied decent positions, its fleet evenly distributed—with support in the Mediterranean from the French fleet—and the few army corps covering hexes of strategic importance. El Quemado turned out to be a fast learner. The global situation on the map to some degree resembled the historic situation, which doesn’t often happen when it’s veterans playing each other. They would never deploy the Polish Army along the border, or the French Army on
all
the hexes of the Maginot Line, since it makes most sense for the Poles to defend Warsaw in a ring, and for the French to cover just one hex of the Maginot Line. I took the first turn, explaining as I went, so that El Quemado was able to understand and appreciate the elegance with which my armored units broke through the Polish defenses (air superiority and mechanized exploitation), the massing of forces on the border with France, Belgium, and Holland, Italy’s declaration of war, and the advance (toward Tunis!) of the bulk of the troops stationed in Libya (the conventional wisdom is that Italy should enter the war no sooner than the winter of ’39, or if possible the spring of ’40, a strategy to which I obviously don’t subscribe), the entry of two German armored corps into Genoa, the trampoline hex (Essen) where I based my paratrooper corps, etc.,
all this with a minimal expenditure of BRP. El Quemado’s response could only be tentative: on the Eastern front he invaded the Baltic states and the adjoining section of Poland, but he forgot to occupy Bessarabia; on the Western front he opted for the Attrition Option and disembarked the British Expeditionary Force (two infantry corps) in France; in the Mediterranean he sent reinforcements to Tunis and Bizerte. I still had the initiative. In the Winter ’39 turn I launched an all-out attack in the West; I conquered Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark; through the south of France I reached Marseilles, and through the north I reached Sedan and Hex N24. I restructured my Army Group East. I disembarked an armored corps in Tripoli during the SR. The Option in the Mediterranean was Attrition and I got no results, but the threat is now tangible: Tunis and Bizerte are under siege and the First Italian Expeditionary Corps has penetrated Algeria, which was completely undefended. On the border with Egypt, the forces are balanced. The problem for the Allies lies in knowing exactly where to throw their weight. El Quemado’s response can’t be as vigorous as the situation requires; on the Western front and in the Mediterranean he chooses the Attrition Option and he throws everything he can into the attack, but he’s playing with short stacks and, to make things worse, the dice don’t go his way. In the East he occupies Bessarabia and stakes out a line from the Romanian border to East Prussia. The next turn will be decisive, but by now it’s late and we have to put it off. We leave the hotel. At the Andalusia Lodge we run into the Wolf and the Lamb with three Dutch girls. The girls seem thrilled to meet me and they’re amazed that I’m German. At first I thought they were pulling my leg; in fact, they were surprised that a German would have anything to do with such eccentric characters. At three in the morning I returned to the Del Mar feeling content for the first time in days. Could it be that I was convinced at last that it hadn’t been pointless to stay? Maybe. At some point during the night, from the depths of his defeat (were we discussing my Offensive in the West?), El Quemado asked how long I planned to stay in Spain. I sensed fear in his voice.
“Until Charly’s body turns up,” I said.
SEPTEMBER 5
After breakfast I headed to the Costa Brava. The manager was at the reception desk. When he saw me he finished up a few things and motioned for me to follow him into his office. I don’t know how he knew that Ingeborg had left, but he did. With a few rather inappropriate insinuations, he made it clear that he understood my situation. Then, without giving me a chance to respond, he proceeded to sum up the current state of the search: no progress, many of the searchers had given up, and the operations, if one could dignify with such a name the efforts of one or two police Zodiacs, seemed headed for bureaucratic deadlock. I told him I planned to demand a personal report from Navy Headquarters and if necessary I was prepared to twist the requisite arms. Mr. Pere shook his head paternally. Not necessary; there was no need to get all worked up. As far as the paperwork was concerned, the German consulate had taken care of everything. Really, I was free to leave whenever I liked. Of course, they understood that Charly was my friend, the bonds of friendship, it goes without saying, but . . . Even the Spanish police, usually so skeptical, were about to close the case. All that remained was for the body to appear. Mr. Pere seemed much more relaxed than he had during our previous encounter. Now, somehow, he saw the case as if he and I were the sole, dutiful mourners of an inexplicable but natural death. (So is death always natural? Is it always a part of the essential order of things? Even if it involves
windsurfing?) I’m sure it was an accident, he said, the kind we see every summer. I hinted at the possibility of suicide, but Mr. Pere shook his head and smiled. He’d been in the hotel business all his life and he thought he knew the
souls
of tourists; Charly, poor bastard, wasn’t the suicidal type. In any case, when you really thought about it, it was always a bitter paradox to die on vacation. Mr. Pere had been witness to many similar cases in his long career: old women who suffered heart attacks in August, children who drowned in the pool under everyone’s eyes, families wiped out on the highway (in the middle of their holidays!) . . . Such is life, he concluded, I’m sure your friend never imagined that he would die far from his homeland. Death and Homeland, he whispered, two tragedies. At eleven in the morning, there was something crepuscular about Mr. Pere. Here’s a happy man, I said to myself. It was pleasant to be there, talking to him, while at the reception desk tourists argued with the receptionist, and their voices, inoffensive and remote from matters of real concern, filtered into the office. As we talked I saw myself sitting comfortably there at the hotel, and I saw Mr. Pere and the people in the corridors and rooms, faces that were attracted to each other or pretended to be attracted to each other in the midst of empty or tense exchanges, couples sunbathing with linked hands, single men who worked alone, and friendly men who worked with others, all happy, or if not, at least at peace with themselves. Unfulfilled! But still convinced they were at the center of the universe. What did it matter whether Charly was alive or not, whether I was alive or not? Everything would roll on, downhill, toward each individual death. Everyone was the center of the universe! The bunch of morons! Nothing was beyond their sway! Even in their sleep they controlled everything! With their indifference! Then I thought about El Quemado. He was outside. I saw him as if from underwater: the enemy.
I tried to spend the rest of the day being productive, but it was impossible. I was incapable of putting on my bathing suit and going down to the beach, so I settled at the hotel bar to write postcards. I
planned to send one to my parents, but in the end I wrote only to Conrad. I spent a long time sitting there just watching the tourists and the waiters making the rounds carrying trays loaded with drinks. I don’t know why, but I had the thought that this would be one of the last hot days. Who cared? For the sake of doing something, I had a salad and tomato juice. I think the food made me sick, because I started to sweat and feel queasy, so I went up to the room and took a cold shower. Then I went out again, this time without the car, heading toward Navy Headquarters, but when I got there I decided it wasn’t worth enduring another string of excuses and I walked on.
The town was sunk in a kind of crystal ball; everyone seemed to be asleep (transcendentally asleep!) no matter if they were walking or sitting outside. Around five the sky clouded over and at six it began to rain. The streets cleared all at once. I had the thought that it was as if autumn had unsheathed a claw and scratched: everything was coming apart. The tourists running on the sidewalks in search of shelter, the shopkeepers pulling tarps over the merchandise displayed in the street, the increasing number of shop windows closed until next summer. Whether I felt pity or scorn when I saw this, I don’t know. Detached from any external stimulus, the only thing I could see or feel with any clarity was myself. Everything else had been bombarded by something dark; movie sets consigned to dust and oblivion, as if for good.
The question, then, was what I was doing in the middle of such gloom.
The rest of the afternoon I spent lying in bed waiting for El Quemado to return to the hotel.
On my way up to the room I asked whether I had received any calls from Germany. The answer was no; there were no messages for me.
From the balcony I watched as El Quemado left the beach and crossed the Paseo Marítimo toward the hotel. I hurried downstairs so that when he arrived I would be at the door, waiting for him; I
suppose I was afraid that they wouldn’t let him in if he wasn’t with me. As I was passing the reception desk, Frau Else’s voice brought me up short. It was hardly louder than a whisper, but it took me by surprise, echoing in my head like a trumpet blast.
“Udo, you’re still here,” she said as if she hadn’t known.
I stood there in the main hall, in an embarrassing position, to say the least. At the other end of the hall, behind the glass doors, El Quemado was waiting. For a moment I saw him as part of a film projected on the door: El Quemado and the deep blue horizon punctuated by a car parked across the street, the heads of people walking by, and the fuzzy images of the tables on the terrace. Only Frau Else was completely real, beautiful and solitary behind the counter.
“Yes, of course . . . As you well know.” When I addressed her with the informal
du
, Frau Else blushed. I think I had seen her like that only once, with her defenses down. I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not.
“I hadn’t . . . seen you. That’s all. I don’t keep track of all your movements,” she said in a low voice.
“I’ll be here until the body of my
friend
turns up. I hope you don’t have any problem with that.”
With a scowl of distaste she looked away. I was afraid she would see El Quemado and use him as a pretext for changing the subject.
“My husband is sick and he needs me. These last few days I’ve spent with him, unable to do anything else.
You
wouldn’t understand that, would you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, that’s enough. I didn’t mean to bother you. Good-bye.”
But neither she nor I moved.
El Quemado was watching me from the other side of the door. And I have to imagine that he was being watched by the hotel guests sitting on the terrace or by the people walking by on the sidewalk. At any minute someone would come up to him and ask him to leave; then El Quemado would strangle him, using only his right arm, and all would be lost.
“Is your . . . husband better? I sincerely hope so. I’m afraid I’ve been an idiot. Forgive me.”
Frau Else bowed her head and said:
“Yes . . . Thank you . . .”
“I’d like to talk to you tonight . . . to see you alone . . . But I don’t want to force you to do something that might cause trouble for you later . . .”
Frau Else’s lips took an eternity to move into a smile. I don’t know why, but I was shaking.
“Someone’s waiting for you now, yes?”
Yes, a comrade in arms, I thought, but I didn’t say anything and I nodded in a way that expressed the inevitability of the engagement. A comrade in arms? An enemy in arms!
“Remember that even though you’re a friend of the owner, you should respect the hotel rules.”
“What rules?”
“Among many others, the rule that prohibits certain visitors in the guest rooms.” Her voice was back to normal, sounding part ironic and part authoritarian. Clearly, this was Frau Else’s realm.
I tried to protest, but her raised hand commanded silence.
“This is not to suggest anything, or say anything. I’m not making any accusations. I feel sorry for that poor boy too.” She meant El Quemado. “But I have to look out for the Del Mar and its guests. And I have to look out for you. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“What could possibly happen to me? We’re just playing.”
“What?”
“You know very well what.”
“Ah, the game at which you’re champion.” When she smiled her teeth gleamed dangerously. “A winter sport; at this time of year you’d do better to swim or play tennis.”