Silent Island

  SILENT ISLAND

  Pablo Poveda

  Copyright © 2020 by Pablo Poveda

  Translation: Mauro Rivera

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 9798566906713

  Imprint: Independently published

  Pablo Poveda Books

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Silent Island

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  How did you like it?

  About the author

  “For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.”

  Karl Ove Knausgård,.

  1

  Being a journalist comes down to one thing — being a lie. I was never told that in college. I remember asking about it on several occasions. But ultimately, who would come clean with such a thing? It would have ruined the major of many and would have led others to pursue medicine or law. In my case, there would not have been much of a difference — besides, I had always been pretty much of an imbecile. That is why I took up the profession and became the best among my colleagues. I mean, the best there ever was in that damn newspaper.

  However, my career finished soon. The Internet killed off the little that was still printed on paper, and everyone went crazy, like during the Big Depression, but this time, instead of jumping off of a window, they switched from one window to another. The economic crisis, Spain and the World Cup, and a generation of youngsters drinking at the square of Puerta del Sol. It was July, and the riot police delivered beatings while we watched on TV, sitting in the couch at the dorms, beer in hand.

  Alicante was like a Spanish San Francisco with palm trees, sneaky prostitutes, and tourists with sandals and knee socks. I was luckier than other of my college classmates, who back then, made a living selling hot dogs or dressing up as Harry Potter. I had been able to get a writing gig, and even though it was not much, I got paid for it. That bit of work and an unpaid internship got me a little space at a shared desk and a position. A bunch of recycled paper and an ancient computer sufficed me to write the news at “Las Provincias,” the second most read newspaper — from the bottom up — that covered the Spanish Levante in the south of the country.

  That summer was a true hell, and not just for the stupor of the heat in the street, which turned the avenues into a furnace. No, not only that. It was also for the people. People around me. I had either reached my limits or theirs. In early summer, I was determined to stay in the paper and thus decreed my professional death by taking the current events section. As poorly paid as it was, I was making enough to get by, pay the bills of the apartment where I lived, and afford the weekend vice.

  We listened to a competing network on the radio because it opposed the editorial line of the newspaper, which pleased the bosses, fifty-year-old posers of compromised principles. I did not give a shit, but I was sick of listening to the commentators because besides being full-blown jerks, they belonged to another era.

  Ortiz was a tall, gaunt, and balding old man with a yellowish mustache from smoking black tobacco and always wore check shirts. He was the director back then, a poor lout who led a happy life. Actually, we all were — poor louts with happy lives. But that was what the profession was about. Otherwise, it would lose its charm. It sufficed to pick up the phone to encounter some smart ass on the other side, who would either shout or speak in a soporific voice.

  That was the result of trying to appear cultivated. The truth is that none of us were. Anyone with the slightest glimpse of brilliancy would have realized that that newsroom was but a gate to hell itself.

  So, what was I doing there if I thought I was so smart? my parents used to ask me when I called them once a month. I could not say they were particularly proud of me, but they were certainly tired of the fact that I lived in the apartment that my father had inherited from his aunt when she passed away. It was but an abandoned dump that smelled of elderly and post-war, though it was conveniently located next to the bullring. They intended to sell it and kill two birds with one stone by getting rid of me as well. My mother had taken pity of me and could not tell me to find another place to live. While that happened, I bought time by telling them that Margarita — the girl I was sleeping with — and I were looking for an apartment, but that is a different story.

  Sweating like pigs and with a broken air conditioning, one noon, we were looking at the girls wearing shorts that showed half their butts, two-euro sandals, cheesy sunglasses, and a tower on their shoulders, conforming part of a notorious but peculiar style.

  I was about to stand up and get out of there — kicking the board, so to speak — light up a cigarette, blow it in Ortiz’s face, and tell him that I had had enough when the phone in the newsroom rang one more time that summer morning.

  “Hello?” I picked up.

  “Mr. Gabriel Caballero, please?” said a voice.

  He sounded scared.

  “Who is this?” I said.

  “Are you Mr. Caballero?” the voice asked.

  “Call me Gabriel,” I replied. “They don’t call me Mr. Caballero since school.”

  “I need to meet with you” said the stranger, “tonight.”

  “Look, if you don’t tell me who you are, I can’t help you.”

  “It’s urgent,” he said.

  “Listen, I have a lot of work,” I interrupted him. It was not true, but it should force him to open up. “Tell me who you are. I don’t have all day.”

  “I can’t on the phone,” he said. “It’s not safe.”

  Ortiz walked out of his office. He had noticed me on the phone longer than usual, and that caught his attention.

  “Who is it?” Ortiz asked. “Pass me the call.”

  “It is not important,” I replied, covering the microphone. “It’s the people from the crematorium.”

  Ortiz got back into his office and locked himself. He avoided those people at all costs.

  “Listen, I don’t have the whole day. Tell me what you want.”

  “Hidalgo told me that I can trust you,” he said. “Can I?”

  His words made me hesitate. Hidalgo was the rector of the University of Alicante. He had been my college professor and our friendship was beyond the bond between a student and a teacher. However, I had not heard from him since he had been appointed. For some reason unbeknownst to me, he decided to bury our friendship.

  “Yes.”

  “So, let’s meet in person,” he said and gave me an address. He added several references and directions and hung up.

  I grabbed a pen and a notepad and left the office without greeting anyone.

  The sun stung my spine and burned the back of my head. I walked along the seaport and got to my car, a red Seat Ibiza GTI, a racing machine, but a poor choice of a place for making out.

  I started the car, and the tape in the cassette player started playing automatically. Led Zeppelin began to sing I’m gonna leave you, and the first thing that came to my mind was Patricia and her new boyfriend kissing days before at a trendy bar. Patricia was my ex-girlfriend, another failed relationship in a long streak of disappointments.

  I pulled out the tape and threw it out the window.

  “Get fucked, whore!”
I said and laughed while a woman who walked with her children called me a lout.

  That was life, and this was me.

  I put on some black sunglasses and pulled off.

  I was determined to follow life where it took me.

  2

  I followed his directions and left the city, taking the road he had pointed out, and drove down the service road that led to the south. A contrast of hues, torrid but nuanced by the Mediterranean in the coast of Alicante. Coltrane was playing on Radio 3, my favorite station. The radio was one of the few things left for those of us who lived without embracing the new technology trends.

  The world had turned into a despicable place full of hypocrites absorbed by buzzwords, 5G, and social media. It was a world where no longer would one go to the theater, for it was more convenient to watch movies at home. And not without reason. The big screen was no longer that interesting after the nineties. I only went to the theater when I got free tickets, or a girl invited me. I could not afford that kind of expense, basically because I was broke, and in my particular understanding of life, I would rather have a bottle of gin over a movie with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. I read only the classics that I could get out of the Municipal Library and locked myself in my room between cans of beer and blue-stamped books. Having said this, it becomes evident why women chose other men over me, and by other men I mean literally anyone else but me. I did not judge them, in fact, I loved women, all of them.

  Patricia had betrayed me, and that was something that I could never forget, especially considering that she does not care whether I forgive her or not. I always respected their wishes, and if they preferred someone else, that was understandable. I had done the same thing myself. In life, sometimes you win, but others you lose, and I had lost so many times that my heart had formed a bullet-proof shell.

  Coltrane played the trumpet at full blast, the way that only he knew how to, I enjoyed his music with the window down while I lost sight of Urbanova seaside. That man’s music always made me feel good, and I had always looked up to him, no matter how trendy Miles Davis and jazz in general were becoming, transcending the realm of music for love-making or getting drunk at a bar. Unlike those people who avoid certain types of music when they become popular, I liked it because, that way, I could listen to it more often. Jazz was everywhere but none of us cared. I hardly had any records myself, and I was not planning on buying more. A radio at home and another in the car was plenty. And, if I happened to be somewhere else, I would hum like a demented hobo on the bus.

  After several minutes driving about, I realized I had gotten lost. Nothing around me looked familiar. Wherever I laid my eyes, I only saw desert. My old mobile phone began to ring. It was Ortiz, my boss. I turned off the phone and tossed it to the back of the car. I found myself on an unknown paved road far from the highway that led beyond the top of a hill. In the distance, a two-story building and a small parking lot. The fan screeched, and I was sweating like a pig.

  “It must be there,” I told myself because listening to my own voice was a way to perform a reality check. I drove until the end of the road. As I got closer to that building, the silhouette of a man standing at the entrance became larger and clearer. He was fat and bald, sweating like a wet beach ball on the verge of melting under the sun, and wore a jacket and white shirt that covered his gut. He wiped his forehead and double chin with a handkerchief that doubled as a pocket square.

  I parked in the lot, leaving a dusty cloud behind. The bleak landscape reminded me of the ending of a western.

  I walked to him, who seemed distressed.

  “Gabriel Caballero?” he asked.

  “Just call me Gabriel.” I reached out to him; his hand was wet and slippery like a recently caught fish. “Let’s keep it informal.”

  “As you wish,” the fat man responded.

  “So, what is it that you want?” I asked. The heat was unbearable. “I am risking my job here.”

  “Let’s go inside,” he said. “The sun will roast us here.”

  I looked up and saw a small sign. We were in an old sausage factory. The smell of rancid and putrid meat impregnated the air. A powerful stench scourged our noses. My bowels contracted in a whipping stabbing pain that extended to my head. Blood was my weakness. I could not see it, let alone think of it. We all have one, and blood happens to be mine.

  My grandmother always wanted me to be a physician. In her deathbed, with her head lying on the pillow, she asked me if I would ever become a doctor. I failed my grandmother and everybody else. It was not a matter of aesthetics because I did not react whatsoever to seeing blood on a screen. It was because of its smell, the metallic taste, the atmosphere at a hospital, seeing it splashed on the floor, on somebody else’s body. It represented the presence of death. Even though I was well aware that it is a vital fluid, I could not disassociate it from demise. The animal smell permeated my lungs. I started seeing visual snow. I took a deep breath; I did not want to appear weak before that bloke, so I held my breath and continued walking.

  “This is hellish,” I commented.

  “You get used to it in the end,” the man said, chuckling. “The smell becomes part of you. It is like absorbing the soul of each dead animal.”

  “Gross,” I responded, imagining a ghostly flock hovering over our heads there inside. “May I smoke?”

  “Are you kidding?” said the man, apparently offended.

  “No, I genuinely don’t know,” I responded. “It’s because of the smell. May I or may I not?”

  “Of course you may not!” he answered. “You can’t. No one can know that we were here.”

  I looked around. In several corners, I spotted surveillance cameras pointed at us.

  “Of course,” I said, confused.

  “Let’s go to my office,” the man said harshly. He climbed a flight of iron stairs that led to the first floor. From above, I had a panoramic view of the premises. It was quite impressive. To my feet, I saw an aluminum funnel the size of a swimming pool. It took up a large space of the factory. Inside, there were two metal blades and a roller.

  “What is that?” I asked him.

  “It’s the best in the market,” the stranger said, proud. “This meat grinder could turn a bull into ground beef in a matter of seconds.”

  I pictured the poor animal falling into the void, being torn to pieces by the grinder.

  “So, what is it that you want?” I asked.

  “Come in, please,” he said, and we walked into his office. It was a small room with a window, decorated with a Spanish pennant and a calendar with tractor pictures that hung from the wall. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  “I want to confess a crime,” said the man. “I killed someone. The wrong person.”

  For one second, I thought he was taking me for a fool.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I was made to. Hidalgo told me I could tell you.”

  “Me?” I asked. “Why? How do you know Hidalgo?”

  “You work at a paper, don’t you?”

  “Listen, if what you are telling me is true, you should talk to the police,” I said. “I already have plenty on my plate — ”

  “I was made to... you have to help me!”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Hidalgo said you would.”

  “Hidalgo, Hidalgo,” I repeated. I was getting angry. “What the hell did he say to you?”

  “He’s a good friend of mine, a good man,” he said, evidently choosing his words carefully. “That is why I cannot get him in more trouble than I already have. And that’s the reason you have to help me! You are his friend too, aren’t you, Mr. Caballero?”

  “Who made you kill the person?” I asked. The man was just rambling about. If I wanted to get something out of him, I had to insist. “What is all this about?”

  “They’re listening to us,” he said and pointed to the ceiling. I looked up but saw nothing. That man
was making me nervous. I was about to walk out of there when he opened a drawer from his desk and pulled out a yellow envelope. “Here, take it. Help me. This is what you need.”

  He handed me the envelope, and I opened it.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “All you need.”

  I looked inside. The envelope was full of Euro notes.

  “Are you bribing me?” I asked. “I think you got the wrong person.”

  “Just take it!”

  I obeyed, folded the envelope, and put it in my back pocket.

  The man began to laugh and wiped his sweat once again.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Hidalgo was right,” he answered. “You’re an idiot, a true idiot!”

  “I am starting to get really mad,” I said. “Do you want trouble?”

  He ignored me, walked out of the office, and pushed a red button on a panel next to a concrete pillar.

  I heard a motor getting started. The blades of the grinder began to spin faster and faster. A noise from hell pierced my eardrums.

  The man, despite his overweight, climbed the metal handrail nimbly, and balanced himself with his arms.

  “I wish you luck,” he said, looking me in the eye. “And remember, I never meant to kill that girl.”

  The moment he finished his sentence, he plummeted into the void, dressed like a human line of sausages, wearing a sweaty shirt and his shoes still on. The spectacle had been so gruesome and surrealistic to watch that I froze on the chair and did not try to stop him. That sequence was forever engraved on my retina — the fat man falling to the void like a sack of flour; the machine tearing him to pieces like a chicken as easily as he was made of lard.

  First, a slight grunt, and then like a sprinkler, a gush of blood splattered the walls in crimson red. I vomited and unloaded all my breakfast there — the coffee and the toast. I threw up several times. Dizzy from nausea and distressed, I pressed the button, the machine stopped, and I walked down the stairs, leaving what remained of that thick man stuck between the blades of the grinder.