It Begins with A
I had a small tartan suitcase and an address and an envelope with a key inside. That was it. That was everything. A world condensed.
‘What hotel?’ the taxi driver asked me, smiling, as he placed my case in the boot of the gleaming white car, with a whole row of identical vehicles lined behind him. His aftershave evoked a sylvan glade and he was impressively groomed. Neat beard. Sunglasses. As much Formula 1 as taxi rank. Strong. Arms that could wrestle an ox. He slid his glasses onto the top of his head and made eye contact. His English was heavily accented but very good. I am terrible for judging people on their faces, and he had an honest face and a mother’s-boy smile. I liked him. But still, I felt very abroad. The throbbing heat, the signs in Spanish and Catalan, the exotically blue sky, the number plates, the slick camel-coloured modern architecture of the airport. I stood staring up at dizzying palm trees like a baby at tall strangers. Stranded. Confused. I had no idea what I was doing. The furthest I had travelled in the last four years had been to the Tesco on Canwick Road, so being in a taxi rank amid frantic crowds and rolling luggage and beside these giant palm trees made me feel like an explorer. A Don Quixote dressed in Marks & Spencer.
‘Hello. Hola. Oh, it is not a hotel. It’s a house … casa … casa … casa …’ I had that terrible English habit of believing the only barrier to linguistic comprehension was not repeating things enough. I handed him the address. He stared at it like it was difficult. Or as if it disturbed him a little. I told him the road even though he could read it. ‘Carretera Santa Eulalia.’ I was clearly pronouncing it wrong, but he was polite about it. Or at least, ignored it completely.
He kept staring at it. At the writing. A look of concern still haunted his face.
‘My handwriting is awful,’ I said, apologetically. But that wasn’t it.
‘I know this place …’ he said, quietly, his smile completely gone now. ‘I have been here before …’
‘Oh. Have you?’
He nodded and looked at the next taxi driver in the rank. An older, balder man leaning against his vehicle as he smoked a cigarette who gave us a frustrated get-a-move-on kind of look. So we got inside the vehicle.
‘Is everything okay?’ I asked.
There was a little pause. Then he pulled away and seemed to snap out of it.
‘Sí. I think so. That house … It is the one a little way past the go-kart track, yes?’
‘I don’t know, actually. I am new here.’
‘Are you visiting family?’
Family. Such a friendly but painful word. ‘No. No. I’m not visiting anyone. I am just here to stay in the house. I used to know the woman who lived there.’
He seemed to have something to say about this. But decided against it.
As we drove, we passed palm trees and roadside taverns and giant sunbleached billboards advertising nightclubs, and a cockerel walked nonchalantly onto the main road. Two old men laughed as they played chess in the heat outside a basic-looking bar with a battered ancient vending machine advertising Fanta Limón. We passed a couple of high-end designer garden centres with lots of large pots of cacti and olive trees sitting in the dazzling light of the forecourt.
The driver had his window open a little. I caught the scent of juniper and pine and faint citrus. A sweet Mediterranean perfume.
The island was greener than I expected. I don’t know why but I had been imagining more arid than lush, and it was certainly hot and dry, with buildings rendered a blinding white under the sun, but as we got further away from the airport, I saw dense pine-covered hills. Nestled away from the road, situated among those trees, were beautiful villas. One was closer to us. Bright pink and magenta clusters of bougainvillea flowers spilled over walls in a proud display of beauty. I observed the twisting trunk of a carob tree.
‘I know this house …’ the driver told me again. But this time he seemed to get closer to the thing he had wanted to tell me. ‘It is all on its own on the road. People went there. They went there a lot.’
‘People?’
‘Yes. People.’
‘Ah. What kind of people?’
‘All kinds. There was a man with a beard, wearing nothing but swimming trunks. An old man he was, with a beard. He was a diver. You know … scuba.’
‘Did he know her?’
‘I think so. I have taken him twice. The last time he had a woman with him. A much younger woman.’
‘Were they friends with her?’
‘I don’t know. She must have a lot of friends. There have been whole families who came to see her. Tourists too. British, German, Spanish. A rich man – well-dressed – I picked him up from the restaurant near the Hard Rock Hotel. He had been there to eat. He told me the restaurant. It is the most expensive restaurant in the world. Do you know that? The most expensive restaurant in the world is right here in Ibiza. Not Paris. Not New York. Not Dubai. Right here.’ The driver said this with a strange cocktail of pride and scorn. ‘He owns hotels … I forget his name … It begins with A … Most recently there was a woman who was crying.’
‘Crying?’
‘I asked her if she was okay and she told me she would know soon, after her visit. But anyway, that wasn’t the strangest thing.’
‘What was that?’
‘One night I saw something … crazy there.’
‘Crazy?’
He nodded in the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes. A light. A massive light. Coming from the house. From the windows … I was driving past … It … how do you say this? It nearly makes me not see. I nearly drove off the road …’
I was going to reply, but then his two-way radio went, and someone asked him something in Spanish and he answered and I didn’t understand a word.
It was definitely not a desert island, nor a deserted one, but I could already see it was an alluring place despite my prejudices. There was something in the air. I wondered what Christina’s house would be like. My house, I mean, though it is hard to feel like you own something you have never seen. And something you feel you don’t deserve. Like you won a prize by mistake.
I was feeling something, though. Something fleeting but pleasant. Which was unusual. I had a faint sense of something I used to have when I travelled when I was younger. It’s a silly feeling but I will share it in case you have ever had it too. The feeling is that of the whole world happening. It squares – no, cubes – no, quartics – the now. What I mean is that travel tesseracts experience. It explodes it to the fourth dimension. And it becomes dizzying to realise how many nows are happening all at once. To think of how many taxi drivers in every continent are talking into their radios right now. How many people are giving birth. Or eating a sandwich. Or writing a poem. Or holding the hand of someone they love. Or staring out of a window. Or talking to the dead.
‘You mentioned a light …’ I said. My voice was faint and distracted because just at that moment we passed a shop called Sal de Ibiza alone on the road. It was painted a pretty turquoise colour. But then something broke my calm. I felt a sensory heightening, like an animal that suddenly realises they could be eaten. There was a red bicycle lying on the dusty ground outside. One of the main problems of the world was the continued existence of red bicycles. Anyway, I did what I always did when I saw one, or saw anything else that so keenly reminded me of Daniel: I turned to mathematics. A road sign said Santa Eulalia 3, Sant Joan 21, Portinatx 25. So in my head I worked out percentages: 25 per cent of 3 is 0.75, 3 per cent of 21 is 0.63, 21 per cent of 25 is 5.25. Some people had deep breathing. Those three women on the plane had yoga. But I had mathematics. It helped distract me. It helped me forget, for a moment, there were some things that couldn’t be broken down or subtracted away.
