The Collector of Names (6 page)

"Two months? What will you do for that long, alone?

"I'm visiting my relatives."

"Well, if you get bored, come to the other side of the island, to the old villa, it's the only one there. Ask your relatives, they'll tell you where."

*

Alfonz nearly suffocated in the toilet. He did not really need to go but as all the others had been he had to. He found it strange that he did not meet Max and thought he must have gone back on the other side of the boat. He remembered the toilet in their own restaurant at home and felt almost homesick. He had had to scrub it out so many times that he could only hate it in a fed up sort of way. And therefore it seemed strange that here on a holiday in the middle of the sea, he did not recall his family but the toilet instead.

Back in the corridor, he slowly let his breath out and glanced into the restaurant. He was thirsty so he went in. He was just about to say hello, when he stopped himself - there was no one there. He leant on the bar and looked at the row of bottles on the ply-wood shelf under the mirror, covered with fly shit and other dirt and oddly stained at the edges as if it had been attacked by some strange fungi or mould. He nearly changed his mind and left before stopping himself. He had been shy all his life and this was his holiday away from the familiar. If he started shyly that was how he would carry on. He had come here for something different.

He cleared his throat.

He had to do it a few times before the waiter came in a crumpled black waistcoat and white shirt with rolled up sleeves, his arms so hairy that it looked as if he was wearing a tight fitting jumper.

The man did not say anything, just leant on the bar and looked through Alfonz with sleepy eyes.

"An orangeade, please." said Alfonz.

The waiter carried out his routine without looking at his customer: he reached under the bar, opened the bottle, put it firmly onto the lino on top of the bar and added a glass, covered with white spots.

Alfonz paid and took the bottle.

"Sorry, but this is warm, could I have a cold one?" he said.

The waiter looked him in the eyes for the first time.

"If there's something you don't like, go to another bar!"

Alfonz was just about to turn round and ask where it was when he realised he had probably just been the victim of the waiter's sense of humour. There was nowhere else on the boat and for kilometres around it. They were where they were and they would just have to survive for a week.

He left his drink untouched and walked out. A strange thought came into his head, as if it was not his but as if somebody had whispered it to him. What if he went in the opposite direction and looked for that girl who had walked past earlier? No, he would not have the courage to talk to her, he just wanted to look at her again. He did not take the idea seriously, it seemed so strange and impossible.

He returned to the bow. Max still was not there. Where was he?

*

The siren went and Max returned. Raf refused to turn away from the outline of the island.

"Another ten minutes," said Samo.

"I've already got a date with the skirt," said Max.

Raf felt he could kill him. Squeeze his neck and keep squeezing until the words stopped coming.

"Really?" said Samo, provoking a new monologue. Alfonz just nodded sadly.

Raf started pulling their rucksacks from under the benches and handing them out in a deliberately rough manner. Alfonz, whilst explaining how he had wrapped each bottle in several layers of newspaper, still asked for care to be taken.

Raf did not listen. He was still thinking about the magic words. How could women be so stupid? How can they fall for such bullshit and ignore an honest and well meaning guy, who did not see them only as an easy lay? But maybe that was the reason? a sharp voice whispered inside, more than surpassing its normal daily quota.

*

"Hey, what's that?" Samo exclaimed with surprise and pointed with his finger.

They could now make out the village, the tree covered ridge surrounding it on all sides and even the little figures in the harbour, on the right hand-side of which there stood a tank.

"A tank!" breathed Max. "These peasants have got a tank!"

Then he added:

"The monument. That's the monument my old man was talking about! Bloody hell, this lot really are behind the times!"

Then he spoke with real enthusiasm:

"They've even got monuments! Just think, ha!"

*

The ramp clanked against the large paving stones in the harbour.

The motorcyclist was revving up his engine and Raf promised himself that at the first opportunity he would check whether this long procedure really was necessary for those heavy bikes to take off, and why the ever so clever Japanese had yet not come up with a revolutionary patent which would enable a bike to drive off after just one turn of the engine.

The village was a real Mediterranean one. Stone houses - there could not be more than thirty - red tiles, decorated chimneys. The villagers gathered by the harbour, waiting for the event of the day. First, with a turn of their heads, they accompanied the motorcyclist, who drove for twenty metres, stopped, found a sign pointing in the direction of the campsite and then spent another few minutes turning the handle before he could take off again, leaving a big cloud of dust behind him.

On the bench in the middle of the square sat the pensioners, with their characteristic caps and deeply tanned faces, who turned back towards the ferry again even before the dust had subsided.

Raf saw the girl. She was standing next to an old man who had to use all his strength to unload her heavy suitcase. Raf felt a sudden desire to help but he resisted it.

The lorry drove to an entrance next to the pensioners and some villagers unloaded the last few boxes from under the tarpaulin. The driver started up the engine and drove back onto the boat, which then blasted its horn and pulled away. The schoolfriends stood alone in the middle of the square with the departing villagers giving them curious looks. The families were walking towards the campsite through the falling dust.

The pensioners were still watching the newcomers with indifference.

"Well," said Max, "let's buy the booze. There's the shop!"

They walked over to the entrance through which the shop owner was still carrying the boxes and on the way politely greeted the pensioners who murmured something in reply.

"We've got to keep in with the natives," whispered Max.

They bought a crate of beer and ten litres of brandy. The owner acted as if he had just signed the deal of the century. Maybe he had, judging by the badly equipped and stocked shop.

"We've robbed him of all his stock," whispered Max in the doorway.

Outside they noticed that the sun was still quite hot in spite of it being nearly six o’clock and realised just how heavy the drink was.

Max went over to the pensioners' bench, said hello in the sweetest possible voice and asked if there happened to be a taxi on the island. For a moment it seemed that he would have to explain the word but then one of the men shook his head and said that there was only one vehicle on the island and that even that was very rarely used.

"Could we hire it?" asked Max.

The old men shook their heads and started gazing through him at the open sea, towards the progressively reddening sun and a seagull, floating in the air and then deciding to catch the departing boat before it disappeared.

Max gabbled something and returned to the rest of the expedition.

"We'll carry it," he shrugged his shoulders.

*

From the slope, they looked back at the village in the middle of the bay. The tank on its stand looked as if it was aiming right at them and it seemed bigger than the stone houses. There were only two that had been painted in white with bright red roofs and they stood out from the rest of the crowd which seemed to be squeezed into the bottom of the bay.

"This lot really are backward," sighed Max. "That monument! Stupid peasants! Where have we come! Ciao civilisation!"

Raf did not dare look in Alfonz's direction but it seemed to him that Alfonz, too, had twitched with embarrassment. Max did not sense the unease.

"That's strength!" sighed Samo. "They must have copied us, humans, when they designed it. The turret is like a head and the tracks like shoulder muscles!"

The tank did not produce the same feelings in Raf, to him it seemed clumsy and ridiculous rather than dangerous and strong. Surprisingly tall, with a barrel that was too long, it reminded him of a vehicle he had seen in an old comedy where Laurel and Hardy drove their car into a tunnel, encountered a train and emerged with the car somewhat longer and narrower. Still, he wanted to have a closer look, he had only seen heavy armoured vehicles on television and in films. He was curious as to how the tank worked - the wheels at the side, all the lids and covers, visible even from that distance.

"I'd like to see it from close up. Shame we didn't have a good look at it," he said.

"We'll go to the village again," Alfonz tried to comfort him.

"At least we know where we are now! Fifty years back!" Max concluded the conversation.

*

Her uncle was dragging the suitcase whilst Ana made sure from the back that it did not turn over or get stuck in the paving stones.

She had already had a good look at her relative and earlier, when he arrived to meet her at the bottom of the stairs leading off the boat, she found it very hard to hide her astonishment.

He was not an albino as she had concluded from the old, yellow photographs in the family album. None of them were taken from nearby, and her uncle was still quite young, but he was instantly recognisable next to the other relatives whose names, or at least the deeds and professions which were supposed to give them their place in the family history, even her mother sometimes could not remember.

She looked at the complete whiteness of the hair in front of her and she just could not hide a smile over a funny detail, which she had never noticed before. The hair stood up, even though it was not of the bristly kind but feathery soft.

"Maybe he combs it that way?" she thought and stopped her smile from widening with a realisation that in the next two months she would have enough time to find out her uncle's every little secret.

And by the look of things, there would be no spectacular revelations.

2

One of them should have fainted or at least said that he could not go on and just sat down.

But it seemed to Max that it would never happen. He could not say it himself because it would not be right considering his position, Samo was not a serious candidate, and as for Raf, Max felt he did not really know him well enough to be able to say. He did not look like a sporty type, but skinny and bony. Alfonz with his thick shirt and corduroy trousers seemed Max's best bet. His face was red hot and he kept having to use his sleeve to wipe away the streams of sweat pouring from his forehead.

Not one of them wanted to admit defeat and there they were, carrying the drink - Samo and Alfonz a crate of beer, Raf and Max the other bottles - with rucksacks on their backs. The previously quite innocent sunshine was tormenting them whenever it reached at them between the branches of the pine trees through which the road led. Up to the top of the hill and down to the campsite the road really was worthy of that name but after that it turned into a neglected and overgrown cart-track lined with electricity poles.

They stopped at the junction without putting down the drink and had a look at the campsite in front of them. The last group of tourists had crowded into the reception, and the guy with the motorbike was already on the restaurant terrace with his bike gleaming near the fence.

"This is where we'll come to eat for the next few days," said Max. "Today we'll just finish off the sandwiches, and anyway, we came here to drink not to eat. And while we're here we'll catch a bird or two which will make it a real holiday."

He turned towards them:

"You know, the seaside isn’t just about food and drink, but about squeezing, sucking and licking too."

He burst out laughing and the others nodded.

Before Raf joined in the nodding he thought:

"And love."

He was afraid he had said it out loud. He would have died with embarrassment if the others had not killed him with their teasing first, that is.

They said goodbye to paradise with wistful looks and went on, without too much moaning, just the odd observation about the island being bigger than it first seemed from the ferry (wider, they should have said wider!), and how the summer had already started in earnest there. But not for long, soon the desire to talk was gone.

Alfonz was dripping with sweat, Max was nearly as bad, Samo kept his hard-as-stone image of bravery and only once did Raf manage to catch an expression of suffering on Samo's face before he quickly hid it again. Lifting weights is one thing, but carrying them for over half an hour is something quite different.

The cart-track had recently been churned up by a vehicle, its tyre marks were visible all the way from the junction.

"The jeep," said Max. "Before my old man bought the villa he came to look at it and then sent some builders to sort out the wiring."

He looked at the electric wires and the rotten wooden poles. Some poles had gone altogether and the wires were supported by the taller pine trees.

"There's no water in the villa?" asked Raf, who could not restrain himself, his desire for a long cool shower was too strong.