it as if it can quench his thirst.
It’s dark now.
He boils water, then washes his clothes and hangs them on the line which runs from the house to a tall flagpole. The darkness presses against him. He shaves. Although he looks too proper when he shaves, like a real grandfather, completely smooth-faced, he still does so a few times each month. He irons a shirt, but it’s harder to find trousers; the two pairs that he likes to wear are still drying on the line. He tries on four old, ratty pairs, oil-stained and much too short. In the end he tugs on some shorts. The other cabbies don’t like it when he wears shorts. Shorts are for tourists. But he doesn’t care. He’ll wear whatever the hell he wants, including a pink shirt once in a while. He drinks red wine as he listens to Monk. He removes the finger from the shelf and holds it in the empty slot on his hand. It looks genuine only when he squints. Carefully he returns it to the plastic container, lays the container back on the shelf, then puts the books in place.
Soon the red wine is gone; he hurries to his car, then drives downtown before the alcohol makes him tipsy. A bottle of wine makes him drunk, but at this moment he can’t feel it.
He parks in the courtyard behind Oly’s Laundromat, where no one ever goes at night. The city’s got its own unique tumult, which he loves. A cacophony of music going on and off, people suddenly shouting, piercing machinery turned on in the middle of the night, then dying out as if it’s been choked in oil. He walks up the street to Greenbay Jazz bar and onto the little patio. The band for that evening is already on stage, testing its equipment. It’s the best time to arrive. The asynchronous horns and drumbeats give him gooseflesh; they’ve got a particularly experimental quality, as if he’s listening to a child’s first words. He orders a beer and takes his glass to the back corner of the bar.
Fifteen years ago, this was an exclusive jazz club with expensive drinks and table service. It attracted tourists, but the locals stayed away. Then the place got a new owner who kept the music, lowered the prices, and brought the locals in. The bar still tries to seem sophisticated and exotic, even though the clientele consists primarily of bankrupt directors, tourists with old tourist guides, and prostitutes trying to look like someone’s girlfriend.
Two women are seated on a white sofa out on the terrace and three men are up at the bar. It’s still early, only 10 p.m.
He always recognizes his customers’ faces. There must be something wrong with him. There should be so many faces that he forgets them, that they merge into one. But he remembers them all. He drove one of the women on the sofa six months ago, when she got a flat tyre and had to get to her sister’s wedding. The other woman was abandoned once, long ago, on a barren stretch just beyond Corralejo; she told him several times a friend had dropped her off, but Erhard doubted this. She’d stood waving a bouquet of flowers as he drove past on his way downtown. That was maybe four years ago.
The men are locals. He recognizes them without remembering what they do for a living or who they are. He’s driven them home a number of times, dangerous, charming drunkards who come here as early as possible to drink red wine, looking like people supposed to meet someone. They don’t want to sit at home, and they don’t fit in at Luz, the city’s shabbiest dive, or the Yellow Rooster, where trash collectors, demolition men, lorry drivers, masons, and taxi drivers fill each other up with cheap liquor and stories from the mainland. The three men just sit there trying to keep their balance on the white barstools, glancing towards the entrance every time new voices appear.
The band puts their instruments down and heads to the bar to wait. One can’t quite call them a band. They are four small, thin boys in tight-fitting black jeans and hats and fingerless gloves. One of them
It’s dark now.
He boils water, then washes his clothes and hangs them on the line which runs from the house to a tall flagpole. The darkness presses against him. He shaves. Although he looks too proper when he shaves, like a real grandfather, completely smooth-faced, he still does so a few times each month. He irons a shirt, but it’s harder to find trousers; the two pairs that he likes to wear are still drying on the line. He tries on four old, ratty pairs, oil-stained and much too short. In the end he tugs on some shorts. The other cabbies don’t like it when he wears shorts. Shorts are for tourists. But he doesn’t care. He’ll wear whatever the hell he wants, including a pink shirt once in a while. He drinks red wine as he listens to Monk. He removes the finger from the shelf and holds it in the empty slot on his hand. It looks genuine only when he squints. Carefully he returns it to the plastic container, lays the container back on the shelf, then puts the books in place.
Soon the red wine is gone; he hurries to his car, then drives downtown before the alcohol makes him tipsy. A bottle of wine makes him drunk, but at this moment he can’t feel it.
He parks in the courtyard behind Oly’s Laundromat, where no one ever goes at night. The city’s got its own unique tumult, which he loves. A cacophony of music going on and off, people suddenly shouting, piercing machinery turned on in the middle of the night, then dying out as if it’s been choked in oil. He walks up the street to Greenbay Jazz bar and onto the little patio. The band for that evening is already on stage, testing its equipment. It’s the best time to arrive. The asynchronous horns and drumbeats give him gooseflesh; they’ve got a particularly experimental quality, as if he’s listening to a child’s first words. He orders a beer and takes his glass to the back corner of the bar.
Fifteen years ago, this was an exclusive jazz club with expensive drinks and table service. It attracted tourists, but the locals stayed away. Then the place got a new owner who kept the music, lowered the prices, and brought the locals in. The bar still tries to seem sophisticated and exotic, even though the clientele consists primarily of bankrupt directors, tourists with old tourist guides, and prostitutes trying to look like someone’s girlfriend.
Two women are seated on a white sofa out on the terrace and three men are up at the bar. It’s still early, only 10 p.m.
He always recognizes his customers’ faces. There must be something wrong with him. There should be so many faces that he forgets them, that they merge into one. But he remembers them all. He drove one of the women on the sofa six months ago, when she got a flat tyre and had to get to her sister’s wedding. The other woman was abandoned once, long ago, on a barren stretch just beyond Corralejo; she told him several times a friend had dropped her off, but Erhard doubted this. She’d stood waving a bouquet of flowers as he drove past on his way downtown. That was maybe four years ago.
The men are locals. He recognizes them without remembering what they do for a living or who they are. He’s driven them home a number of times, dangerous, charming drunkards who come here as early as possible to drink red wine, looking like people supposed to meet someone. They don’t want to sit at home, and they don’t fit in at Luz, the city’s shabbiest dive, or the Yellow Rooster, where trash collectors, demolition men, lorry drivers, masons, and taxi drivers fill each other up with cheap liquor and stories from the mainland. The three men just sit there trying to keep their balance on the white barstools, glancing towards the entrance every time new voices appear.
The band puts their instruments down and heads to the bar to wait. One can’t quite call them a band. They are four small, thin boys in tight-fitting black jeans and hats and fingerless gloves. One of them
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