With a feeling of relief, but still numb and trembling, I rose to my feet and left the beach.
At the Del Mar, Frau Else was sitting in a wicker armchair at the end of the hallway that led to the elevator. The lights of the restaurant were all out except for a faint one that illuminated only the shelves of bottles and a section of the bar where a waiter was still laboring away at something I couldn’t make out. When I’d passed the reception desk I’d seen the night watchman with his nose in a sports paper. Not everyone in the hotel was asleep.
I sat down next to Frau Else.
She made some remark about my face. Haggard!
“I’m sure you hardly sleep, and you don’t sleep well. Not a good advertisement for the hotel. I’m worried about your health.”
I nodded. She nodded too. I asked for whom she was waiting. Frau Else shrugged; she smiled; she said: For you. She was lying, of course. I asked her what time it was. Four in the morning.
“You should go back to Germany, Udo,” she said.
I invited her up to my room. She refused. She said: No, I can’t. She gazed into my eyes as she said it. How beautiful she was!
We were quiet for a long time. I would have to liked to say: Don’t worry about me, really, don’t worry. But it was ridiculous, of course. At the end of the hallway, I saw the watchman peer around the corner and then disappear. I concluded that Frau Else’s staff adore her.
I pretended to be tired and stood up. I didn’t want to be there when the person Frau Else was waiting for appeared.
Without rising from the chair, she offered me her hand and we said good night.
I walked to the elevator. Luckily it was stopped at the ground floor and I didn’t have to wait. Once I was inside I went through the farewell ritual again. I said a silent good-bye, only my lips moving. Frau Else held my gaze and my smile until the doors closed with a pneumatic wheeze and I began to rise.
I felt something heavy rolling around in my head.
After taking a hot shower, I got in bed. My hair was wet, and in any case sleep wouldn’t come.
Why, I don’t know, maybe because it was the nearest thing to me, I picked up the Florian Linden book and opened it at random.
“The killer is the owner of the hotel.”
“Are you sure?”
I closed the book.
SEPTEMBER 7
I dreamed that I was woken by a phone call. It was Mr. Pere, who wanted me to come—he offered to take me—to the Guardia Civil headquarters. They had a body there and they were hoping that I could identify it. So I showered and went out without breakfast. The hotel corridors were achingly bleak; it must have been just after dawn. Mr. Pere’s car was waiting at the front entrance. During the ride to the Guardia Civil headquarters, located on the edge of town, at a crossroads plastered with signs that pointed toward various borders, Mr. Pere unburdened himself by talking about the mutations that the natives underwent when the summer—or rather, the summer season—was over. General depression! Deep down we can’t live without tourists! We get used to them! A pale young Guardia Civil officer led us to a garage where there were several tables set up in rows and, hanging on the walls, a collection of car parts. On a white-veined black slab, next to the metal door where the van that would remove the body was already waiting, there lay a lifeless form in what seemed to me to be a state close to putrefaction. Behind me, Mr. Pere raised a hand to his nose. It wasn’t Charly. He was probably about the same age and he might have been German, but it wasn’t Charly. I said I didn’t know him and we left. As we were going, the Guardia Civil stood to attention. We headed back to town laughing and making plans for next season. The Del Mar still looked like a slumbering thing, but this time I spotted Frau Else through the glass, at the reception desk. I asked Mr. Pere how long it had been since he’d seen Frau Else’s husband.
“It’s been a long time since I had the pleasure,” said Mr. Pere.
“It seems he’s sick.”
“So it seems,” said Mr. Pere, his face darkened by an expression that could have meant anything.
After that, the dream advanced (or so I remember it) in leaps. I had a breakfast of fried eggs and tomato juice on the terrace. I went upstairs; some English children were coming downstairs and we almost collided. From the balcony I watched El Quemado, out in front of his pedal boats, musing on his poverty and the end of summer. I wrote letters with intentional and studied slowness. Finally I got in bed and fell asleep. Another phone call, this time real, dragged me from sleep. I checked my watch: it was two in the afternoon. It was Conrad, and his voice repeated my name as if he thought I would never answer.
Despite what I might have expected, maybe because Conrad was shy and I was still half-asleep, the conversation proceeded coldly, in a way that horrifies me now. The questions, the answers, the inflections of voice, the poorly hidden desire to get offthe phone and save a few cents, the familiar expressions of irony all seemed cloaked in a supreme lack of interest. No confidences were shared, except one stupid one at the end; instead, fixed images of the town, the hotel, and my room superimposed themselves tenaciously on the scene sketched by my friend as if they were trying to warn me of the new order in which I was immersed and within which the coordinates transmitted to me over the phone line had little value. What are you doing? Why don’t you come back? What’s keeping you? At your office they don’t know what to think, Mr. X asks about you every day and it’s no use when everyone assures him that you’ll soon be back among us, he’s filled with foreboding and predicts disaster. What kind of disaster? What do I care? All of this followed by information about the club, work, games, magazines, recounted ceaselessly and relentlessly.
“Have you seen Ingeborg?” I asked.
“No, of course not.”
We were silent for a brief instant, after which there came a new avalanche of questions and appeals: at my office they were more than a little upset; the group wondered whether I still planned to go to Paris to meet Rex Douglas in December. Would I be fired? Would I get into trouble with the police? Everyone wanted to know what mysterious and inexplicable thing was keeping me in Spain. A woman? Loyalty to a dead man? To what dead man? And incidentally, how was my article going, the one that was going to lay the foundations for a new strategy? It was as if Conrad were mocking me. For a second I imagined him taping the conversation, his lips curved in a wicked smile. The champion in exile! Out of circulation!
“Listen, Conrad, I’m going to give you Ingeborg’s address. I want you to go see her and then call me.”
“Yes, all right, whatever you say.”
“Perfect. Do it today. And then call me.”
“Fine, fine, but I have no idea what’s going on and I’d like to be as useful as I can. Do you follow me, Udo? Can you hear me?”
“Yes. Tell me you’ll do as I say.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good. Did you get a letter from me? I think I explained everything in it. You probably haven’t gotten it yet.”
“All I’ve gotten are two postcards, Udo. One of hotels on the beach and another of a mountain.”
“A mountain?”
“Yes.”
“A mountain by the sea?”
“I don’t know! All you can see is the mountain and a kind of monastery in ruins.”
“Anyway, you’ll get it. The postal system is terrible here.”
Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t written any letter to Conrad. I didn’t really care.
“Are you having good weather there, at least? It’s raining here.”
Instead of answering his question, as if taking dictation, I said:
“I’m playing . . .”
Maybe I thought it was important for Conrad to know. In the future it could be useful to me. From the other end of the line I heard a kind of amplified sigh.
“Third Reich?”
“Yes . . .”
“Really? Tell me how it’s going. You’re incredible, Udo, only you would think to play at a t
ime like this.”
“Of course, I know what you mean, with Ingeborg far away and everything hanging by a thread,” I said, yawning.
“That’s not what I meant. I was talking about the risks. About that strange drive of yours. You’re one of a kind, kid, the king of fandom!”
“It’s not such a big deal, don’t shout, you’re hurting my ears.”
“So who are you playing? A German? Do I know him?”
Poor Conrad. He took it for granted that in a small town on the Costa Brava it was possible to run into another war games player who also happened to be German. It was clear he never went on vacation and God only knows what his idea of a summer on the Mediterranean, or wherever, was.
“Well, my opponent is a little strange,” I said, and I went on to give him a general description of El Quemado.
After a silence, Conrad said:
“I don’t like the sound of that. It doesn’t make sense. How do you communicate?”
“In Spanish.”
“And how did he read the rules?”
“He didn’t. I explained them to him. In a single afternoon. You’d be amazed how sharp he is. You don’t need to tell him anything twice.”
“How is he as a player?”
“His defense of England is acceptable. He couldn’t prevent the fall of France, but who can? He’s not bad. You’re better, of course, and so is Franz, but he’s a decent sparring partner.”
“The way you describe him . . . it makes my hair stand on end. I’ve never played with someone like that, the kind of person who might scare me if he showed up all of a sudden . . . In a multi-player match, all right, but alone . . . And you say he lives on the beach?”
“That’s right.”
“What if he’s the devil?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. The devil, Satan, Belial, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness . . .”
“The Prince of Darkness . . . No, he’s more like an ox . . . Strong and brooding, the typical ruminant. Melancholic. Oh, and he’s not Spanish.”
“How do you know that?”
“Some Spanish guys told me. At first, of course, I thought he was Spanish, but he isn’t.”
“Where is he from?”
“I don’t know.”
From Stuttgart Conrad protested weakly:
“You should find out. It’s crucial, for your own safety . . .”
I thought he was exaggerating, but I promised that I would ask. Soon afterward we hung up, and after I showered I went out for a walk before returning to the hotel to eat. I felt good, as if the passage of time had no effect on me, and my body was wholly surrendered to the pleasure of being precisely where I was, and nowhere else.
Autumn 1940. I play the Offensive Option on the Eastern front. My armored corps break through the flank of the central Russian sector, advancing deep into Russian territory and sealing offa vast swath one hex west of Smolensk. Behind me, between Brest Litovsk and Riga, ten Russian armies are trapped. My losses are minimal. On the Mediterranean front I spend BRP for another Offensive Option and I invade Spain. El Quemado is taken completely by surprise. His eyebrows shoot up, he sits up straighter, his scars vibrate. It’s as if he hears my armored divisions advancing along the Paseo Marítimo, and his confusion doesn’t help him to mount a good defense (he chooses—unconsciously, of course—a variant of David Hablanian’s Border Defense, undoubtedly the worst possible response to an attack from the Pyrenees). And so with only two armored corps and four infantry corps plus air support I conquer Madrid, and Spain surrenders. During the Strategic Redeployment phase I place three infantry corps in Seville, Cádiz, and Granada, and an armored corps in Córdoba. In Madrid I station two German air fleets and one Italian fleet. Now El Quemado can see what I’m up to . . . and he smiles. He congratulates me! He says: “That never would have occurred to me.” He’s such a good loser it’s hard to even comprehend Conrad’s suspicions and fears. Bent over the map during his turn, El Quemado talks and tries to repair the irreparable. In the USSR he moves troops from the south—where there’s been almost no fighting—to the north and center, but his capacity for movement is minimal. In the Mediterranean he keeps his hold on Egypt and he reinforces Gibraltar, though not very convincingly, as if he didn’t believe in his own efforts. Muscular and charred, his torso looms over Europe like a nightmare. And he talks—without looking at me—about his work, the scarcity of tourists, the fickle weather, the retirees who flock en masse to certain hotels. Prying while feigning a lack of interest—I’m actually writing as I ask him questions—I learn that he knows Frau Else, who’s called “the German lady” around the neighborhood. Forced to give his opinion, he concedes that she’s pretty. Then I inquire about her husband. El Quemado answers: he’s sick.
“How do you know?” I say, leaving my notes aside.
“Everyone knows it. He’s been sick for a long time, years. He’s sick but he’s not dying.”
“He feeds it!” I say with a smile.
“Never,” says El Quemado, returning to the tangle of the game, his whole logistical network in ruins.
In the end our farewell follows the usual ritual: we drink the last cans of beer that I’ve bought for the occasion and that I keep in the sink full of cold water, we discuss the match (El Quemado outdoes himself with compliments but he still won’t acknowledge defeat), we take the elevator down together, we say good night at the door to the hotel . . .
Just then, as El Quemado disappears along the Paseo Marítimo, a voice beside me makes me jump in alarm.
It’s Frau Else, sitting in the shadows, in a corner of the empty terrace scarcely reached by the lights from the hotel and the street.
I admit that as I walked toward her I was angry (at myself, mostly) because of the fright I’d just gotten. When I sat down across from her, I saw that she was crying. Her face, usually full of color and life, glowed with a ghostly pallor that was heightened by the effect of glimpsing her half-hidden under the giant shade of an umbrella that swayed rhythmically in the night breeze. Without hesitating, I took her hands and asked what was wrong. As if by magic a smile appeared on Frau Else’s face. You, always so considerate, she said, forgetting in the heat of the moment to use the informal du. I protested. The speed with which Frau Else’s mood changed was surprising: in less than a minute she went from ghostly mourner to concerned older sister. She wanted to know what I was doing—“but tell me the truth, now”—in my room with El Quemado. She wanted me to promise that I would return soon to Germany, or at least that I would call my bosses at work and Ingeborg. She wanted me to go to bed earlier and spend the mornings lying in the sun—“the little we have left”—on the beach. You’re pasty, it must be months since you took a look in the mirror, she whispered. And she wanted me to swim and eat well, which was an exhortation that went against her best interests, since I ate at her hotel. At this point she started to cry again, but more softly, as if all the advice she had given was a bath that cleansed her of her own suffering, and little by little she grew calmer and more relaxed.
This was the perfect situation, everything I could have asked for, and I hardly noticed the time passing. I think we might have sat across from each other like that all night, our eyes scarcely meeting and her hand clasped in mine, but everything comes to an end, and this time the end arrived in the form of the night watchman, who, after searching for me all over the hotel, appeared on the terrace with the message that I had a long-distance phone call.
Frau Else got up wearily and followed me down the empty corridor to the reception desk. She ordered the watchman to take out the last bags of garbage from the kitchen and we were left alone. The immediate sensation was of being on an island, just the two of us, except for the receiver lying there offthe hook, like a cancerous appendage that I would happily have ripped out and handed to the clerk like another piece of garbage.
It was Conrad. When I heard his voice my disappointment was great, but then I remembered that I??
?d asked him to call me.
Frau Else sat on the other side of the counter and tried to read a magazine that I suppose the clerk had left behind. She couldn’t. Nor was there much to read because it was almost all photographs. With a mechanical gesture she dropped it on the edge of the desk, where it rested precariously, and pinned her gaze on me. Her blue eyes were the shade of a child’s colored pencil, a cheap and beloved Faber.
I felt like hanging up and making love to her right there. I imagined myself—or maybe I’m imagining it now, which makes it worse—dragging her to her private office, lifting her up on the desk, ripping offher clothes and kissing her, climbing on top of her and kissing her, turning offall the lights again and kissing her . . .
“Ingeborg is fine. She’s working. She doesn’t plan to call you, but she says that when you get back she wants to talk to you. She asked me to say hello to you,” said Conrad.
“Fine. Thanks. That’s what I wanted to know.”
With her legs crossed, Frau Else was gazing at the tips of her shoes now and seemed immersed in labored and complicated thoughts.
“Listen, your letter never came. It was Ingeborg, this afternoon, who explained everything to me. As far as I can see you’re under no obligation to stay there.”
“Well, when you get my letter, you’ll understand. I can’t explain anything to you now.”
“How’s the match going?”