The Hermit Read Online Free PDF Page B

a legend, he shouts back at them, he’s going to tell me all his secrets. But Erhard doesn’t tell him his secrets, it’s not something he can explain. All he can say is, Keep your eye on the traffic, think about the people. Where would you want to go if the weather was so and so? Is it a heavy-travel day? And so on. Good advice, but no doubt unusable. The truth, of course, is that he doesn’t even know himself how he does it. It’s like music, he tries to tell the young drivers, who usually don’t know anything about music.
    The younger drivers want to learn, but the middle-aged drivers are bitter. They’ll never do anything but drive taxis, and they’ll never live well doing so. They see Erhard as a parasite, an extranjero , who not only takes their customers, but also acts as if he’s better than them. He lives alone out in Majanicho, he doesn’t talk to the other drivers, and he just sits in his old Mercedes reading books if he’s not out stealing the only customers of the day. That’s what they think, and some of them even tell him that. And they’re right too. Also about the books. In the beginning, reading was something he did to relax and to show the other drivers that he wasn’t busy finding new customers. He started driving past potential rides and parking at the back of the queue, doing everything he could to remain there all day with a good book.
    In the boot he keeps a box stuffed with paperbacks, which he rummages through and selects from. He likes looking at the covers and touching the raised letters the titles are printed with. Or he riffles through a book and inspects it to see how many dog-ears it has. If there are many, it’s good. He buys books, sometimes by the boxful, from a friend in Puerto. She owns a secondhand shop. A few times each month, if he’s been out to the airport, he drives past Solilla’s and purchases books and maybe some clothes. There’s nothing wrong with the books. The clothes smell a little; he washes them before he wears them. Hangs them on the line behind the house and leaves them for a week. Then the smell goes away, and is replaced by the scent of the island’s piquant soil. He can stay there all day reading. There should be something left for the others. They all have children and wives, they have to provide for others, and they don’t have the luxury of sitting around reading. He doesn’t have the same issue. The more he earns, the more he sends to Annette. Every month he transfers most of his salary to her account. Not with a friendly message, but electronically and soullessly. He doesn’t deserve anything else, and he doesn’t need anything special. He can live on coffee and tinned food that he bought many years ago and which he warms up and eats directly from the tin. It doesn’t bother him. Sometimes he goes to the island’s finest restaurants and takes a long time choosing expensive wine and cutting a good cigar. That doesn’t bother him, either. During the summer he sits in his car and reads with the window open, and during the winter he keeps a reclining chair that he arranges on the sidewalk beside the car. The other drivers, sweating inside their vehicles, hate this.
    When one drives through the Dunes and slowly past the quiet hotels with their gardeners and their eager water hoses, one can see the kites out over the water. Back and forth like birds hunting. He parks the car on the road and crosses the sandbanks to the water. Out here the sun is fierce. It feels that way, anyway. The beach stretches endlessly, the sea like a giant air balloon that’s suddenly lying at the end of the beige dune. There are no families walking on the beach today. The wind is too strong; the sand is drifting and stinging.
    Next to a container filled with surfing equipment, there’s a little shop on a couple of pallets. It offers ice cream, music, and shelter from the wind and sun. Erhard drinks a San Miguel while watching the figures being dragged around by ropes.