He was talking about someone who had disappeared and he was laughing and making jokes that no one understood. When the last houses were behind us, I thought it was time to go back, that if I didn't go back I wouldn't be able to get up the next day. I went over to the night watchman and gave him a kiss. A good-night kiss.
When I got back to the house all the lights were out and it was completely silent. I went over to a window and opened it. No one made a sound. Then I went up to my room, undressed, and got into bed.
When I woke up, the night watchman was sleeping beside me. I said goodbye and went to work with everyone else. He didn't respond, lying there as if he were dead. A smell of vomit floated in the room. By the time we got back, at noon, he was gone. I found a note on my bed, in which he apologized for his behavior the night before and said that I should come to Barcelona whenever I wanted, that he would be there waiting for me.
That morning Hugh told me what had happened the night before. According to him, after I left, the night watchman went crazy. They were close to the river and he kept saying someone was calling him, a voice on the other side of the river. And no matter how many times Hugh told him no one was there, that the only sound was the noise of the water, and even that was faint, he kept insisting there was someone down below, on the other side of the river, waiting for him. I thought he was joking, said Hugh, but when I wasn't paying attention he went running downhill, in the pitch darkness, toward what he thought was the river, plunging blindly through scrub and brambles. According to Hugh, by then only he and the two Spaniards we had invited to our party were left from the original group. And when he took off downhill all three went after him, but much more slowly, because it was very dark and the slope was so steep that stumbling would have meant a fall and broken bones, so he soon disappeared from sight.
Hugh thought he intended to throw himself into the river. But the likeliest thing, he said, was that he would pitch headfirst onto a stone, plentiful as they were, or trip over a fallen branch, or end up tangled in a thornbush. When they reached the bottom they found him sitting in the grass, waiting for them. And here comes the strangest part, said Hugh, as I came up behind him he whirled around and in less than a second I was on the ground, he was on top of me and his hands were around my throat. According to him, it all happened so fast that he didn't even have time to be afraid, but the night watchman really was strangling him and the two Spaniards had gone off somewhere and couldn't see or hear him and anyway, with his hands around his neck (hands so unlike our hands at the time, which were all full of cuts), Hugh couldn't make a sound, wasn't even able to shout for help, was struck dumb.
He could've killed me, said Hugh, but the night watchman suddenly realized what he was doing and let him go, saying he was sorry. Hugh could see his face (the moon had come out again) and he realized that it was, in his words, bathed in tears. And here comes the strangest part of his story: when the night watchman let him go and said he was sorry, Hugh started to cry too, because, according to him, he suddenly remembered the girl who had left him, the Scottish girl; he suddenly realized that no one was waiting for him in England (except for his parents); he suddenly understood something he wasn't able to explain to me, or could only explain poorly.
Then the Spaniards turned up, smoking a joint, and they asked Hugh and the night watchman why they were crying, and they both started to laugh, and the Spaniards, such decent, normal people, said Hugh, understood everything without having to be told and passed them the joint and then the four of them headed back together.
And how do you feel now? I asked him. I feel fine, he said, ready for the harvest to be over and to go home. And what do you think about the night watchman? I asked. I don't know, he said, that's your problem, you're the one who has to think about that.
When the work ended, a week later, I went back to England with Hugh. My original idea was to travel south again, to Barcelona, but when the harvest was over I was too tired, too ill, and I decided that the best thing would be to go back to my parents' house in London and maybe visit the doctor.
I spent two weeks at home with my parents, two empty weeks, not seeing any of my friends. The doctor said I was "physically exhausted," prescribed some vitamins, and sent me to the optician. He said I needed glasses. A little while later I moved to 25 Cowley Road, Oxford, and I wrote the night watchman several letters. I told him all about everything: how I felt, what the doctor had said, how I wore glasses now, how as soon as I had made some money I was planning to come to Barcelona to visit him, that I loved him. I must have sent six or seven letters in a relatively short period of time. Then term started, I met someone else, and I stopped thinking about him.
Alain Lebert, Bar Chez Raoul, Port-Vendres, France, December 1978. Back then I was living like I was in the Resistance. I had my cave and I read Libération in Raoul's bar. I wasn't alone. There were others like me and we hardly ever got bored. At night we talked politics and shot pool. Or we talked about the tourist season that had just ended. Each of us remembered the stupid things the others had done, the holes we'd dug ourselves into, and we laughed our heads off on the terrace of Raoul's bar, watching the sailboats or the stars, very bright stars that announced the arrival of the bad months, the months of hard work and cold. Then, drunk, we each headed off on our own, or in pairs. Me: to my cave outside of town, near the rocks of El Borrado. I have no idea why it's called that I never bothered to ask. Lately I've noticed a disturbing tendency in myself to accept things the way they are. Anyway, as I was saying, each night I'd go back alone to my cave, walking like I was already asleep, and when I got there I'd light a candle, in case I'd gotten turned around. There are more than ten caves at El Borrado and half had people in them, but I never ended up in the wrong one. Then I'd climb into my Canadian Impetuous Extraprotector sleeping bag and start to think about life, about the things you see happen right in front of you, things that sometimes you understand and other times (most of the time) you don't, and then that thought would lead to another, and that other thought would lead to one more, and then, without realizing it, I'd be asleep and flying along or crawling, whatever.
In the morning, El Borrado was like a commuter town. Especially in the summer. Every cave had people in it, sometimes four or more, and around ten o'clock everyone would start to come out, saying good morning, Juliette, good morning, Pierrot, and if you stayed in your cave, tucked away in your sleeping bag, you could hear them talking about the sea, the brightness of the sea, and then a noise like the clanking of pans, like somebody boiling water on a camp stove, and you could even hear the click of lighters and a wrinkled pack of Gauloises being passed from hand to hand, and you could hear the ah-ahs and the oh-ohs and the oh-la-las, and of course there was always some idiot talking about the weather. But over it all what you really heard was the noise of the sea, the sound of the waves breaking against the rocks of El Borrado. Then, as summer ended, the caves emptied, and there were only five of us left, then four, and then just three, the Pirate, Mahmoud, and me. And by then the Pirate and I had found work on the Isobel and the skipper told us we could bring our gear and move into the crew's quarters. It was nice of him to offer, but we didn't want to take him up on it right away, since we had privacy in the caves and our own space, while belowdecks it was like sleeping in a coffin and the Pirate and I had gotten used to the comforts of sleeping in the open air.