Alberto
He had the look not so much of a pirate but a castaway, with unkempt hair and a beard escaping his face in every direction, and youthful eyes that shone like a sunrise through an ancient ruin. His eyes aside, it was a lot to deal with. He triggered a primal sense of disgust that I couldn’t ignore.
‘I think I am in the wrong place.’ I don’t know why I said that. Fear, I suppose.
‘That makes two of you, man …’ Alberto said, sounding almost American for a moment.
‘Sorry?’
He nodded to the snake, which was now migrating to his other arm.
‘Snakes! They are great company. The most intellectual of reptiles. Their minds are full of fascinating philosophical riddles. But we are not meant to have snakes! For thousands of years, Ibiza had no serpents, no snakes.’
‘Oh.’
He clearly thought I was here for a history lesson.
‘The ancient Phoenicians first settled here because there was nothing deadly on the island. No dangerous animals. No dangerous plants. It was a blessed island. Even twenty years ago, no snakes. And now? Snakes, snakes, snakes. And it is not good. It is not good at all … You see, they may not hurt us. They have no veneno …’
‘Venom?’
‘Exactly,’ he pointed at me as if I had just cracked the Enigma code. He spoke English more fluently than I did, but he liked to decorate his sentences with bits of Spanish as much as possible to remind me where I was. ‘But they hurt the balance of life. They are destroying the lizards. We used to have lizards everywhere. Now we still do have them, but they are being finished off by this one and his friends.’
The goat had gobbled the oats and was slowly heading out of the door.
‘Hasta luego, Nostradamus,’ Alberto said, waving a cheery goodbye to the goat. ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said, as if he had expected the goat to say ‘goodbye’ right back. Then Alberto looked at me. ‘He is a misanthropic soul. Common among goats. But he will be back for supper. He always is.’
‘I think I am in the wrong place,’ I told him again. I just wanted to leave. Or to never have arrived.
He stared at me. His eyes had a force to them. ‘No. You are in the right place, I assure you. And that is why I must finish telling you about the lizards. Now they are dying. Everywhere. People do not understand how important it is. Especially the fuckers in the hills.’
There was a violence to the way he said that. He was a man with clear resentments. Sabine’s words echoed in my mind. I think he is the only person who knows what happened to her …
‘The people with the fancy gardens and the olive trees. The millionaires and billionaires with their yoga mats and infinity pools. I can say this to you because you are clearly not a rich woman.’
I did not like him, even before that sentence, but that sealed the deal.
‘Clearly,’ I said. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, could I—’
But I was distracted. I noticed that as he was talking, his thumb was massaging the area under the snake’s neck, and the reptile seemed to be slowing in its movements.
‘These snakes are Montpellier snakes. They get in with the imported trees, in the … holes … the … They lay their eggs there … Their eggs are in the trees … And now they are here, they multiply like crazy. And the whole ecological system is fucked up. Really fucking fucked. Fucked like a dolphin. And dolphins really like to fuck. Dolphins are built for pleasure.’
I thought he was trying to shock me. So, despite my anxiety in that moment, I kept my face as still and strong as an Easter Island statue and gave him not even a flicker of the prudery he was probably expecting.
‘So there are snake-catchers, and they smash their heads with rocks. But I can’t do that to him. Look at him. His mind is full of questions. You can’t hear them, but trust me, this is a very curious snake. I suppose because he is a transplant, like you. He is somewhere he is not designed to be … Don’t worry, snake. Everything is fine … So, I will put him to sleep for a little while. Look, the dude is asleep. His eyes are still open because he is a snake. But look.’ The snake slid away from his arm as he held it up. He went over to his desk and opened a drawer for it and then closed the snake away. ‘I will call my friend. He works in security for a nightclub. His little girl keeps them as pets.’
I wasn’t a connoisseur of conversations these days, but even I knew this was an abnormal one.
‘Is the snake okay?’
‘Sí, sí. It’s a technique I learned from an Argentinian general.’ He came over and held out his hand, which I tentatively shook. He spoke English with an accent that was half Spanish and half American, probably from his time at the University of California.
‘Alberto Ribas,’ he said. ‘Friend of the animals and the sea.’
‘I’m Grace. Friend of a person who died in mysterious circumstances. I am trying to find out what happened to her.’
‘Welcome to my office.’ He gestured to the futon. ‘And my home.’
‘You live here?’
‘Yes, yes. Why not? I have other options. My daughter has a lovely house in the north of the island, and she wants me to live with her, but I like it here. I get up. I bathe in the sea and dry in the sun. What could be better?’
‘Plumbing?’ I offered.
He ignored me.
‘Please,’ I tried again. ‘I would like to find out what happened to my friend.’
‘You said your name was Grace? Like Grace Kelly?’
It was frustrating. The way he could keep steering the conversation away from where I wanted it to go, but I humoured him.
‘My mum loved her. I was born the year High Noon came out.’ This was all true, but hardly what I came here to share.
‘Did you know that she had her honeymoon in Ibiza?’
‘No. And I don’t think—’
‘Well, she did. Look it up. People think celebrities have only started coming here. But they always have. Errol Flynn came here on his yacht. Laurence Olivier. Elizabeth Taylor. All before we even had an airport. Later on, Joni Mitchell came here to get inspired. A young Cormac McCarthy came to write back when he was a hippy. Bob Marley came here to go dancing. I met him. He was a hero.’
I tried to guess Alberto’s age. The beard and mahogany tan made it hard. He could have been anywhere between sixty and eighty. Yet despite the wear and tear on his body, he had a youthfulness to him. He was someone who had never learned to be a grown-up.
‘Listen,’ I said, surprisingly strict given my nerves, ‘I am here to ask about an old friend of mine.’
He ignored this completely. Maybe he hadn’t heard. No. He had heard. But he carried on, talking not quite to me but over me, as if to an imaginary but adoring crowd somehow squeezed into the shack. Maybe a lecture hall of admiring students in a universe where he still had a career. ‘You see, this is not a normal island. I know people say that all the time, but I really know it to be true. This island is not normal. There is something special here. It is everywhere you look, if you know what you are looking for. Take the goat …’
I tried to interrupt. It was like filling the gap in a number sequence that had already been filled.
‘I named him after Nostradamus because the great Frenchman originally predicted Ibiza will be the last sanctuary for life on Earth. Did you know that?’
I stared down at the empty bowl of oats, trying to imagine what any of this had to do with Christina or scuba diving or anything else.
‘There are goats on Es Vedrà too. They always want rid of them. Say they are “malos para el hábitat”! Humans! Saying goats are bad for the habitat! Imagine! Fucking humans, huh?’
He then made a strange sound—like a howling wolf. God only knows why.
I felt a little scared, I admit. He was not only an insane man but also a big one. A big, wild, hairy one. And for his age—whatever that was—probably pretty fit. Even with my revamped legs, I wouldn’t have been able to outrun him. So I was stuck in a deserted shack, quite a long distance from the beach and even the car park. Any scream would have been drowned out by the relentless mating call of cicadas.
‘It was the seagrass, wasn’t it?’ he asked me. His eyes had switched from childlike to ancient. The stare had a force to it. I felt it could knock me off my feet.
‘Sorry?’
‘It was the picture of the seagrass. That was what brought you here.’
And I had no idea what to say.
