Around nine, when we were beginning to despair, we saw the van appear. Hans and Monique handed us each an apple, a banana, and an orange, and then he told us that he'd been parleying with the natives and in his opinion it was best that we postpone for the moment the trip to Valencia we had planned. If I'm remembering right, he said, there are some fairly reasonable campsites outside of Barcelona. For a modest daily sum we can rest for a few days, swim, sunbathe. It goes without saying that we all agreed, and we begged to go there straightaway. Monique, I remember, never said a word.
It still took us three hours to work out how to get out of the city. During that time Hans told us that when he was doing his military service, at a base near Lüneburg, he got lost at the controls of a tank and his superiors almost court-martialed him. Driving a tank, he said, is a lot more complicated than driving a van, I can tell you that, kids.
At last we made it out of the city and onto a four-lane highway. The campsites are grouped together in the same area, said Hans, tell me when you see them. The road was dark and all we could see to either side of it were factories and undeveloped land, and, farther back, some very tall, dimly lit buildings, seemingly set there at random and looking as if they were falling into premature ruin. A little later, however, we were in the woods and we spotted the first campsite.
But nothing was quite to Hans's liking, and since he was the one paying, we drove on through the woods until we saw a sign with a solitary blue star jutting out from amid some pine branches. I don't remember what time it was. The only thing I know is that it was late, and that all of us, including little Udo, were awake when Hans braked in front of the bar blocking the road. Then we saw somebody, or somebody's shadow, lifting the bar, and Hans got out of the van and went into the campsite office, followed by the man who had let us in. A little while later he came out again and leaned in the driver's window. The news he had to report was that the campsite didn't have tents to rent. We made some rapid calculations. Erica, Steve, and John didn't have a tent. Hugh and I both did. We decided that Erica and I would sleep in one tent and Steve, John, and Hugh would sleep in the other. Hans, Monique, and the boy would sleep in the van. Then Hans went back into the office, signed some papers, and got behind the wheel. The man who had let us in got on a very small bicycle and led us down ghostly streets, flanked by old caravans, to a corner of the campsite. We were so tired that we all went to sleep immediately, not even showering first.
The next day we spent on the beach, and that night, after dinner, we went for a drink on the terrace of the campsite bar. When I got there, Hugh and Steve were talking to the watchman we'd seen the night before. I sat next to Monique and Erica and surveyed our surroundings. The bar, faithful reflection of the campsite, was almost empty. Three enormous pines grew out of the cement and in some places the roots had lifted the floor as if it were a rug. For an instant I wondered what I was really doing there. Nothing seemed to make sense. At some point that night Steve and the night watchman started to read poems. Where had Steve found them? Later, some Germans joined us (they bought us a round of drinks) and one did a perfect imitation of Donald Duck. Toward the end of the night, I remember seeing Hans arguing with the watchman. He was speaking in Spanish and seemed increasingly upset. I watched them for a while. At one moment I thought he was going to start crying. The night watchman seemed calm, though, or at least he wasn't waving his arms or making wild gestures.
As I was swimming the next day, still not recovered from drinking the night before, I saw him again. He was the only person on the beach, and he was sitting on the sand, fully dressed, reading the paper. As I came out of the water, I waved. He looked up and waved back. He was very pale and his hair was a mess, as if he had just woken up. That night, since we had nothing else to do, we got together at the bar again. John went to choose songs on the jukebox. Erica and Steve sat by themselves at a table some distance away. The Germans from the night before had left and we were the only ones on the terrace. Later the night watchman came. At four in the morning only Hugh, the watchman, and I were left. Then Hugh left and the night watchman and I went off to have sex.
The cabin where he spent the night was so small that anyone who wasn't a child or a dwarf couldn't lie down full-length inside it. We tried to make love on our knees, but it was too uncomfortable. Later we tried to do it sitting in a chair. Finally we ended up laughing, not having fucked. When the sun came up he walked me to my tent and then he left. I asked him where he lived. In Barcelona, he said. We have to go to Barcelona together, I said.
The next day the night watchman got to the campsite very early, long before his shift began, and we spent some time at the beach together and then we went walking to Castelldefels. That night we all got together on the terrace again, although the bar closed early, probably before ten. We looked like refugees. Hans had gone in the van to buy bread and then Monique made salami sandwiches for everyone. Before the bar closed, we bought beer. Hans gathered us around his table and said that we would move on to Valencia in a few days. I'm doing what I can for the group, he said. This campsite is dying, he added, staring at the night watchman. That night there was no jukebox, so Hans and Monique brought out a cassette player and for a while we listened to their favorite music. Then Hans and the night watchman got into an argument again. They were speaking in Spanish, but every so often Hans would translate what he was saying into German for me, adding remarks about the way the night watchman saw things. The conversation struck me as boring and I left them alone. While I was dancing with Hugh, though, I turned to look at them, and Hans was on the verge of tears again, as he had been the night before.
What do you think they're talking about? asked Hugh. Stupid things, probably, I said. Those two hate each other, Hugh said. They hardly know each other, I said, but later I thought about what he had said and I decided that he was right.
The next morning, before nine, the night watchman came to get me in my tent and we took the train from Castelldefels to Sitges. We spent the whole day in the town. As we were eating cheese sandwiches on the beach, I told him that the year before I'd written a letter to Graham Greene. He seemed surprised. Why Graham Greene? he said. I like Graham Greene, I said. I would never have thought so, he said, I still have a lot to learn. Don't you like Graham Greene? I said. I haven't read much by him, he said. What did you say to him in your letter? I told him things about my life and Oxford, I said. I haven't read many novels, he said, but I have read lots of poetry. Then he asked me whether Graham Greene had answered my letter. Yes, I said, he wrote me a very short but nice reply. A novelist from the country I'm from lives here in Sitges and I visited him once, he said. Which novelist? I asked, although I might as well have saved myself the trouble because I've read hardly any Latin American novelists. The night watchman said a name I've forgotten and then said that his novelist, like Graham Greene, had been very nice to him. So why did you go to see him? I asked. I don't know, he said, I didn't have anything to say to him and in fact I hardly opened my mouth once. You didn't say anything the whole time you were there? I didn't go alone, he said, I went with a friend, and he talked. But didn't you say anything to your novelist? Didn't you ask him any questions? No, said the night watchman, he seemed depressed and a little bit sick and I didn't want to bother him. I can't believe you didn't ask him anything, I said. He asked me something, the night watchman said, watching me curiously. What? I said. He asked me whether I had seen a film that was made in Mexico of one of his novels. And had you seen it? Actually, I had, he said, it so happened that I had seen it and liked it too. The problem was that I hadn't read the novel, and so I didn't know how faithful the film was to the text. And what did you say to him? I said. I didn't tell him I hadn't read it, he said. But you did tell him that you'd seen the movie, I said. What do you think? he said. Then I imagined him sitting opposite a novelist with Graham Greene's face and I thought he couldn't have said anything. You didn't tell him, I said. I did tell him, he said.