Long before I reached the pedal boats I heard the sound made by the tarp as it slapped against the floaters. Some rope must have come undone. With cautious steps I circled the pedal boats. In fact, there was a loose rope, and the tarp flapped ever more violently in the wind. I remember that the rope seethed like a snake. A river snake. The tarp was wet and heavy from the rain. Without thinking, I grabbed the rope and tied it as best I could.
“What are you doing?” asked El Quemado from the pedal boats.
I jumped backward. As I did, the knot came undone and the tarp made a sound like a plant ripped out by the roots, like something wet and alive.
“Nothing,” I said.
Immediately it occurred to me that I should have added: “Where are you?” Now El Quemado would be able to deduce that I knew his secret, since I wasn’t surprised to hear his voice, which clearly came from within. Too late.
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“Nothing,” I shouted. “I was taking a walk and I saw that the wind was about to rip the tarp off. Didn’t you notice?”
Silence.
I took a step forward and decisively retied the confounded rope.
“There you go,” I said. “The pedal boats are protected. Now you just need the sun to come out!”
An unintelligible grunt came from inside.
“Can I come in?”
El Quemado didn’t answer. For an instant I was afraid that he would come out and curse at me in the middle of the beach, demanding to know what the hell I wanted. I wouldn’t have known what to say. (Was I killing time? Confirming a suspicion? Conducting a small behavioral study?)
“Can you hear me?” I shouted. “Can I come in or not?”
“Yes.” El Quemado’s voice was barely audible.
Politely, I sought the entrance; of course there was no hole dug in the sand. The pedal boats, propped against each other in an unlikely fashion, seemed to leave no gap through which a person could fit. I looked up: between the tarp and a floater there was a space through which a body could slip. I climbed up carefully.
“Through here?” I asked.
El Quemado grunted something that I took as a yes. From up above, the hole looked bigger. I closed my eyes and let myself drop.
A smell of rotting wood and salt assaulted my senses. At last I was inside the fortress.
El Quemado was sitting on a tarp like the one that covered the pedal boats. Next to him was a bag almost as big as a suitcase. On a sheet of newspaper he had some bread and a can of tuna. Despite what I had expected, there was enough light to see by, especially considering that it was a cloudy day. Along with the light, air came in through any number of openings. The sand was dry, or so it seemed, but it was cold in there. I said: It’s cold. El Quemado took a bottle out of a bag and handed it to me. I took a swig. It was wine.
“Thanks,” I said.
El Quemado took the bottle and drank in turn; then he cut a chunk of bread, split it open, stuffed it with some shreds of tuna, drenched it in olive oil, and proceeded to eat it. The space under the pedal boats was six feet long and just over three feet high. Soon I discovered other objects: a towel of indeterminate color, the ropesoled shoes (El Quemado was barefoot), another can of tuna (empty), a plastic bag printed with a supermarket logo… In general, order reigned in the fortress.
“Aren’t you surprised that I knew where you were?”
“No,” said El Quemado.
“Sometimes I help Ingeborg solve mysteries… When she reads crime novels… I can figure out who the killers are before Florian Linden…” My voice had dwindled to almost a whisper.
After gulping down the bread, he scrupulously deposited both cans in the plastic bag. His huge hands moved swiftly and silently. The hands of a criminal, I thought. In a second there was no trace of food left, only the bottle of wine between us.
“The rain… Did it bother you?… But you’re fine in here, I see… You must be happy to see it rain every once in a while: today you’re just another tourist, like everybody else.”
El Quemado stared at me in silence. In the jumble of his features I thought I detected a sarcastic expression. Are you taking time offtoo? he asked. I’m alone today, I explained, Ingeborg, Hanna, and Charly went to Barcelona. What was he trying to insinuate by asking me whether I was taking time offtoo? That I would never finish my article? That I wasn’t hunkered down at the hotel?
“How did you decide on the idea of living out here?”
El Quemado shrugged his shoulders and sighed.
“I can understand that it must be beautiful to sleep under the stars, out in the open, though from here I doubt you see many stars.” I smiled and slapped myself on the forehead, an unusual gesture for me. “No matter what, you sleep closer to the water than any tourist. Some people would pay to be in your place!”
El Quemado dug for something in the sand. His toes burrowed slowly up and down; they were disproportionately large and surprisingly (though there was no reason to expect otherwise) unmarred by a single burn, smooth, the skin intact, without even a callus, which daily contact with the sea must have endeavored to smooth away.
“I’d like to know how you decided to set up house here, how it occurred to you to arrange the pedal boats like this for shelter. It’s a good idea, but why? Was it so you wouldn’t have to pay rent? Is it really so expensive to rent a place? I apologize if it’s none of my business. I’m just curious, you know? Shall we go get coffee?”
El Quemado picked up the bottle, and after raising it to his lips he handed it to me.
“It’s cheap. It’s free,” he murmured when I set the bottle back down between us.
“But is it legal? Besides me, does anyone know you sleep here? Say, the owner of the pedal boats, does he know you spend the nights here?”
“I’m the owner,” said El Quemado.
A strip of light fell directly on his forehead: the charred flesh, in the light, seemed to grow paler, stir.
“They’re not worth much,” he added. “Any pedal boat in town is newer than mine. But they still float and people like them.”
“I think they’re wonderful,” I said in a burst of enthusiasm. “I would never get on a pedal boat built to look like a swan or a Viking ship. They’re hideous. Yours, on the other hand, seem… I don’t know, more classic. More trustworthy.”
I felt stupid.
“That’s where you’re wrong. The new pedal boats are faster.”
In a scattered way, he explained that with all the speedboat, ferry, and windsurfing traffic, the beach could sometimes be as busy as a highway. So the speed that the pedal boats were able to attain in order to avoid other craft became an important consideration. He had no accidents to complain of yet, just a few bumps to swimmers’ heads, but even in this regard the new pedal boats were better: a collision with the floater of one of his old pedal boats could crack someone’s head open.
“They’re heavy,” he said.
“Yes, like tanks.”
El Quemado smiled for the first time that afternoon.
“You’ve got a single-track mind,” he said.
“True.”
Still smiling, he traced a picture in the sand that he immediately erased. Even his infrequent gestures were enigmatic.
“How is your game going?”
“Perfect. Full sail ahead. I’ll destroy all the schemes.”
“All the schemes?”
“That’s right. All the old ways of playing. Under my system, the game will have to be reinvented.”
When we emerged, the sky was a metallic gray, auguring new showers. I told El Quemado that a few hours ago I had spotted a red cloud in the east; I thought that was a sign of good weather. At the bar, reading the sports news at the same table where I’d left him, was the Lamb. When he saw us he beckoned us over to sit with him. The conversation then proceeded into territory that Charly would have loved but that frankly bored me. Bayern Münich, Schuster, Hamburg, Rummenigge, were the subjects. Naturally, the Lamb knew more about the teams and personalities than I did. To my surprise, El Quemado took part in the conversation (which was in my honor, since there was no talk about Spanish sports stars, only German ones, which I did fully appreciate and which at the same time made me uncomfortable) and he revealed an acceptable knowledge of German soccer. For example, the Lamb asked: Who’s your favorite player? and after my response (Schumacher, for the sake of saying something) and the Lamb’s (Klaus Allofs), El Quemado said “Uwe Seeler,” whom neither the Lamb nor I had heard of. Seeler and Tilkowski are the names El Quemado holds in highest esteem. The Lamb and I didn’t know what he was talking about. When we asked him to tell us more, he said that as a boy he saw both of them on the soccer field. Just as I thought that El Quemado was about to reflect on his childhood, he suddenly fell silent. The hours passed and despite the grayness of the day, night was long in coming. At eight I said good-bye and returned to the hotel. Sitting in an armchair on the first floor, next to a window through which I could see the Paseo Marítimo and a slice of the parking lot, I settled down to read Conrad’s letter. This is what it said: