The seagull spread its wings and let out a squawk. He tossed a handful of sand at it, and the bird took flight indignantly.
He lit the cigarette, no mean feat in the wind, took out his notebook, and started to search for his pen when he remembered that he no longer had it. He looked at the notebook again.
In his head, he was re-creating the whole experience, and the more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed. All Elvira Couto needed was a wart on her nose, a black cat, and a bubbling cauldron to turn her into a character out of the Brothers Grimm. At the same time, the woman’s smell, the grime, the poverty, the collection of old junk and garbage told another story that was far sadder and also, undoubtedly, far more real—the story of someone suffering from some kind of mental illness.
He didn’t believe a word about the dead man’s kiss, of course, but he had no doubt that, whoever had performed the ritual—the mysteriousTangarañoperhaps—the aim was to frighten him. The question was why? However much he worried away at it, he couldn’t think of a reason, other than the possibility that his presence on the island might have been an unforeseen inconvenience for somebody. And that opened up such a wide range of possibilities that just thinking about it made his head hurt.
He stubbed out the cigarette in the sand, put the butt in his pocket, and took out the pack to light another one. It was a bad habit he hadgiven up a while ago but which he had slipped back into. He didn’t feel proud of himself, but right now he urgently needed to smoke. He gave up after a couple of tries. The rain had become heavier, and the little cylinder of soggy paper was falling to pieces in his hands.
The change in the weather appeared to have frightened away even the seagulls, which were no longer gliding overhead with their raucous cries. Only the monotonous sound of the rain and the roar of the waves crashing against the barnacle-and-mussel-encrusted rocks accompanied him, lulling him into a stupor.
He was startled out of it by a sudden ringing sound. It took him a moment to realize that the noise was coming from his jacket. He struggled with his zipper until he managed to take out his phone. His agent’s name flashed up on the screen.
Carmen Gavín had been his literary agent ever since, with very little preamble, he had submitted his first manuscript. Back then, Roberto had already decided to abandon the hazardous and reckless life he had led until that moment, and he had seen her as somebody he could trust. Carmen was nearing retirement, although she had every intention of dying in the saddle or at least at the desk of her agency in Barcelona. She was pragmatic, as caring as a grandmother when required, and as tough as a sergeant major when the circumstances called for it.
The Fleeting Glanceshould have been one of those novels that languished on the shelves at the back of bookstores, far from the tables groaning with titles put out by major publishers that always occupied the space near the front. It was the literary debut of a war reporter who had seen enough death, misery, and destruction to fill three lifetimes, a simple novel of curious detectives who resolve crimes thanks to their mental acuity and ingenuity. The truth was that he had no great hopes for that manuscript when he signed the contract with a small publishing house.
But things had turned out quite differently.
Everything had gone crazy.
Two weeks after its launch,The Fleeting Glancehad topped the bestseller list, to his surprise and to that of his publishers. Word of mouth did the rest, and the book’s popularity spread like the ripples on the surface of a pond. Things got completely out of hand when a well-known presenter recommended it on primetime TV. Sales went through the roof, and with the speed of a hurricane, the book became “the publishing phenomenon of the year,” as the media put it.
But then the source of ideas inside his head, the one that had enabled him to writeThe Fleeting Glance, dried up. And that was how things had stood until a solution had presented itself a few weeks ago.
As he was pouring a second gin and tonic in front of the TV, images of a green island surrounded by cliffs battered by a raging sea had appeared on the screen: a few scattered houses, beaches of white sand, low vegetation whipped by the wind, and standing guard over it all, a huge, lonely lighthouse on the highest point of the island. A wild paradise in the mouth of the Pontevedra estuary, the Isle of Ons was a patch of land barely two square miles in total, which could be reached only by boat.
In his head, the ideas had started to flow. He had spent the rest of the night in an almost fevered state, scribbling down notes: a tale of shipwrecks, sailors washed up by the waves, a torrid and moving love story. All the pieces fitted together perfectly.
There was only one problem.
He didn’t know anything about the place.
He needed to visit it, to allow his reporter’s instinct to fill the missing gaps in the story.
And that was why he was here, in the middle of winter ... although things weren’t going quite as he had imagined.
Roberto took a couple of deep breaths before accepting the call.
“Hi, Carmen.”
“Hi, Roberto!” Carmen’s energetic, singsong voice was clearly audible at the other end of the line. “How’s your island retreat going? Productive?”
“Well, it’s certainly been an interesting experience so far,” he replied, without answering her question.
“Are you all settled in? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, it’s all good. I’m hoping to make some decent progress with the novel over the next few days.”
“That’s great news!” enthused Carmen at the other end of the line.
In the background were the noise of Barcelona’s downtown traffic and the buzz of the human beehive of a large city. She must be calling from the street, on her way to a meeting—just like Carmen.
He had a sudden pang of nostalgia. Even though he was here, trapped in the time bubble that was the Isle of Ons, the world continued turning at full speed. Suddenly, in the middle of a lonely beach, he felt an irrational need to be in Barcelona, London, Paris, or any other great metropolis, strolling down a busy sidewalk, on his way to a restaurant or a bar. The desire to be surrounded by people caught up in their own affairs, at once solitary and accompanied, was intense. He wanted to return to a modern world, one in which ritually sacrificed bunny rabbits, electricity rationing, witchcraft, and illicit fishing were nothing more than picturesque details in a movie you watched from the couch at the end of a long, hard day.
But Carmen was nearly a thousand miles away, and, as far as Roberto was concerned, she might as well be in another galaxy because he had no way of leaving this accursed island for another four weeks, when thePunta Suidowas due to return for him.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Roberto? You seem a little ... distant.”
