The Last Resort (30 page)

This was an especially promising morning in terms of the number of people. Rarely does everyone converge on the dining room at the same time, but yesterday (yesterday? Of course, October 21 is now over and another day will soon begin) I found a select group of guests parading in and out of the dining room, much to my surprise and delight. There they all were, either loitering by the garden door or the vestibule. And then, when the garden door opened again, I found the blond Bea and Bernardo Salat advancing toward me.

“Good morning, good morning,
Mr. Moulinex
!” she cried out as she strode past my table. Even more irritating than that, however, was the cloud of smoke that descended upon me half a second later. That woman really does smoke too much. I had grown slightly fond of her since our conversation out on the balcony—it had been so lovely to chat out in the open air—but there in the dining room, the smoke was just too much, and on such a lovely morning at that. I didn’t want her anywhere near me. Luckily, they found a table by the door with a nice view of the garden, well enough away from my own. The window was open, the birds were singing, and the rosy early-morning light created the sharpest, clearest silhouettes of everyone, leaving me discreetly in the background. Perfect. As they served me my tea with milk, I took a moment to study Bernardo Salat. Like every morning, he was dressed for golf: a green polo shirt and a pair of stone-colored pants. What little hair he had was slightly mussed, which made me think that perhaps he had already stepped outside for a quick, routine inspection of the weather, the typical golfer’s weather check. Golfers always stick their heads outside before embarking on a round so they can sniff at the breeze, lick their expert finger, and hold it up in the air to test the direction or the intensity of the morning wind.

I surmised that Bernardo Salat had already performed this ritual before breakfast. A bit unnecessary, I thought—it wasn’t even eight forty-five, and I know for a fact that neither he nor Antonio Sánchez has ever started playing golf before ten. Impossible: The great radio announcer always uses that early hour to take advantage of the winter pool, to swim a few laps at his leisure and warm up his muscles. I exhaled deeply. I had ordered fried eggs with bacon, which no doubt would have horrified a more fastidious group of waiters than the friendly team at L’Hirondelle d’Or, and I made a mental toast to Sánchez as I savored the glorious scent of crispy bacon, the smooth delicacy of my perfectly fried egg—not too dry, not too raw. And as I looked over at the garden door where Sánchez usually entered the dining room after his morning exercise, I thought about how exhausting life must be for people who are so concerned about maintaining their youth and elasticity. For the moment, however, he was nowhere in sight and I envisioned him intently plowing through the waters with all the discipline and energy he could muster: twenty laps of crawl, another thirty, say, of backstroke, ten laps of butterfly—good Lord, what hell! Followed by, perhaps, a healthy spell underwater, and finished off by a series of water calisthenics for strengthening pectorals, abductors, and groin muscles.
That poor soul, what useless nonsense,
I thought, almost laughing out loud—not unlike the little boy watching one of his bluebottles very foolishly try to fly from one end of the jar to the other.
Exhausting,
I thought. Not to mention stupid, unnecessary, and useless—because by tomorrow, he would be dead.

In this silent paradise,
Le Monde
is the only newspaper that we receive at the breakfast hour, and its format offers the perfect cover for hiding. It isn’t too large like some papers, or too small, like the tabloids—not that I ever would have allowed myself to flip through such trash, of course, not even to disguise my surveillance of Bea and Bernardo. As I was saying,
Le Monde
has the ideal dimensions for this sort of spying, and so I killed some time waiting for Sánchez to arrive—oh, how I would enjoy watching the biggest and bluest of my bluebottles up close! Perhaps by spying on him I would hit on some brilliant idea for sending him into the great beyond.

At that moment, a very distinct feeling suddenly came over me, reminding me of the days when I was more of a participant in life, caught in the throes of some love affair or fling. It hit me right when I turned to observe Bea and Bernardo at their table by the window. Occasionally—perhaps more frequently than occasionally—it can be a painful anticlimax to eat breakfast in the company of someone with whom we have just slept. Sometimes my eyes would grow suspicious, and then I would suddenly ask myself how those hands could have possibly caressed me, good God, just a few hours earlier. It’s interesting how our fingers seem to have been tailor-made for lovemaking: fingers so tender as they travel across our willing flesh, so skillful at discovering hidden pleasure spots, wet fingers that embark on consummately intimate explorations; divine fingers that elicit such infinite joy . . . And then all of a sudden, with the very same appetite, we find our fingers dedicating their efforts to . . . a piece of rye toast! They are still the same fingers, no doubt, but they betray us now as they brazenly stalk their way across the tablecloth in search of the salt shaker or as they ruthlessly smear that pat of butter on the toast. Such disingenuous hands and fingers. Like the mouth. Every bit as deceitful. Look at it, look at the mouth curling into the form of a kiss as it preys upon a straw stuck in some beverage. Even more humiliating is the sight of those same lips, just as wet as they were before, suddenly coming together to suck away lasciviously at a teaspoon. Everything is demystified at breakfast.

There are, however, far lovelier breakfast scenes to be had, the kind that inspire genuine, spontaneous smiles instead of frozen facial masks, smiles that emerge unconsciously after a night of love in its earliest phase. Such was the case, for example, at the breakfast table to my right, occupied by a couple I find consummately fascinating. Mercedes Algorta and Santiago Arce had chosen a table by the door, a fair distance from the other guests. Their tender gazes as they passed the coffeepot or creamer and the slow caresses that slid back and forth across a teacup spoke volumes about what was happening between them. And just as in the case of Bernardo and Bea, the fingers now preoccupied with breakfast were the same fingers that had caressed the most intimate contours and stroked the ruffled folds of love. The only difference between the two couples was that the fingers and lips of Mercedes and Arce seemed to continue to lavish one another with caresses. When they licked their teaspoons, they appeared to be actually licking something else, perhaps the soft nape of their respective necks. And the marmalade recalled something else, too—something sweet, like a kiss. Lovers need not touch or even devour each other with their eyes, because the coffeepot, the cups, and even the forks and knives are all there for them, for their pleasure, as are the sausages, the smooth butter, and the honey, too: “Ooh, ooh—drink this, drink a bit of this. It’s about to overflow . . .”

Ever since I made my decision to kill Sánchez, Mercedes Algorta and Santiago Arce have become my most intriguing subjects of observation. Especially Mercedes. I have watched her move around the hotel, and I have admired the very well educated way she avoids all contact with the other Spanish guests. I have always been fascinated by the kind of women who know how to be present without actively drawing attention to themselves. It is an intelligent and, I believe, exclusively feminine virtue—after all, have you ever come across a single male who would ever
choose
to go unnoticed? Of course not.

Mercedes, on the other hand, is both here and not here. I have observed her steadily over the past few days, and have watched how she so discreetly began her affair with Arce, without a single external gesture, all of it so private. And when I say private I don’t mean to suggest that they are trying to hide anything—not at all, because they are not hiding from anyone.

Three days,
I thought.
It has been three days since their romance began. They are in the most marvelous phase of their relationship, and if all goes well . . .

If all goes well, they can thank me for it.
That is what I thought, still feeling like that little boy with his glass jar full of bluebottles. And I was very satisfied with myself. What an odd position to be in, but what sublime delight this position provided. To be the master of that glass jar, to be there and not fully there at the same time. Would you believe me if I told you that I have not exchanged a single word with that woman beyond the terse greetings we all murmur so many times a day here at L’Hirondelle d’Or? It is true, my friends, and it is something I am extremely proud of. Mercedes is my creation. I don’t know who this woman is; all I know is that her story is too similar to that of my mother, and for that reason I believe her to be innocent of all the nonsense they say about her. As I say this I watch her pour a second cup of tea with a firm hand, and I gaze at her shapely, strong arms, bare to just above her elbow. She is a vision, a true lady serving her tea, a ritual that Mama performed with equal elegance.

That was when I remembered the bracelet. Yes: that thick, ostentatious bracelet Mercedes Algorta had been wearing regularly, even to go to the swimming pool, before the throng of Madrileños arrived on the scene at L’Hirondelle d’Or. She hadn’t put it back on since their arrival, a detail which troubled me somewhat for a time—specifically, just after I received that fax from Fernanda with the fuzzy photograph of Isabella wearing a very similar bracelet. To keep a piece of jewelry as a token of vengeance while one’s own husband is on his deathbed is . . . All of this came rushing uncontrollably into my head right then. And at that very moment, two tables away from me, Mercedes’s bare arms rapidly flew up to her face to banish an annoying fly that had suddenly started buzzing around her.

Oh, the ridiculous things a person thinks of at this hour of the morning,
I thought.
Here I am thinking about nonexistent bracelets when I really should be thinking about the cleanest way to finish off old Sánchez. Sánchez the gossipmonger, the author of that malicious article about Mercedes Algorta that he plans to publish when he returns to Madrid so that he can illustrate “the vices of modern society,” as he puts it. People can be so capricious when they decide to put someone else’s life in jeopardy.

My widow had such lovely hands. I was able to admire them up close as she and Arce walked past my table after finishing their breakfast.

“Bye-bye. Lovely morning, isn’t it?”

My lovely couple smiled as they walked away—even their backs smiled, despite the fact that we all know backs can’t very well smile, nor can intertwined arms or two bodies that are slowly growing accustomed to each other’s contours. Arce and Mercedes, Mercedes and Arce . . . what would they do on this sunny morning? Frolic in the indoor pool, perhaps, play a game of tennis . . . My day, on the other hand, was sure to be grim: I had twenty-four hours to come up with an imaginative way of killing Antonio Sánchez.

To make a long story short regarding my various failures in this endeavor, allow me to summarize my activities as follows: I wasted the rest of the day inspecting the hotel and the surrounding area from top to bottom in search of . . . well, I don’t know what I was searching for, exactly. And I found the afternoon upon me.

Hmmm,
I thought during the quiet serenity inspired by the afternoon siesta.
There must be some way to locate a bit of rat poison in this elegant hotel. For that, I will have to explore the kitchen, or perhaps the boiler room . . .
By nightfall, I was racked by the most complete sense of failure. Dinner was a sterile affair, and then I retired to my room.

At the present moment I find myself counting pills in my pine-needle room, not allowing myself to waste a single tablet on my own insomnia even though it is five in the morning. Now I know for sure that I will have no choice but to use the pills as my lethal weapon. In the next few hours, I will somehow have to make Sánchez swallow them, because he and his companions are planning to leave the day after tomorrow.

What is the proper moment for such a thing?

Perhaps breakfast, or during the period when everyone lays out by the mud baths . . . Who knows? There must be some way to get him to ingest twenty-five (twenty-five?
Ciel, quelle besogne
) pills dissolved in . . . what? That repulsive carrot juice that seems to be L’Hirondelle’s specialty cocktail? So much pureed vegetable must taste repulsive—and that might be just the trick for disguising my little green pills. Yes, why not? It is certainly a viable method for disposing of Sánchez—perhaps not the most brilliant method, I admit, but it is certainly plausible and easy enough to carry out. Very well. Decision made. That is how it will be done.

The first light of this tremulous daybreak emerges on the horizon, gaining intensity bit by bit, but for the moment it is still just a thin red line far away in the distance. Every time Bertie Molinet spied a horizon line like that one, he always said the same thing, in his magnificent Oxonian accent,
bien sûr:
“Red in the morning, traveler’s warning; red in the night, traveler’s delight.”

And I repeat the refrain, suppressing a cackle. Red in the morning is dangerous for the traveler, true enough. And red in the night promises only good things for those very same travelers. Hmm . . . I know of one traveler in particular who would do well to heed the warning of such an ominous dawn, but for the moment he is dreaming away in what will be his last night of sleep.

I, on the other hand, have not slept a wink, and at about five forty-five I get up to stretch my legs. Except for the glow of the horizon line, it is still dark outside, even darker than it was a few moments ago, with the moon now hidden behind the hills on the golf course. Perhaps because the darkness is so intense, I am startled to discover a bright beam of light that briefly but very clearly illuminates the hotel before bending its way across the garden and then shining down through the glass house that protects the winter pool. I am all but blind without my glasses, but I could swear that I see someone down there, carrying a very bulky object. Just a moment, just a moment . . . I reach out toward my night table in search of my glasses, and when the light from what appears to be a flashlight ricochets off the glass walls, I am able to make out the figure of the very attractive hotel gardener I have seen tending to the pool, making sure it is immaculate, free of leaves or any stray insect that may have drowned in the water. He is such a conscientious worker.