On the Edge Read Free Page B

from the slopes of the distant mountains. He suspects that this morning, as he was walking along by the main road, he became an object of interest to passing drivers, to the prostitutes who saw him setting off along the path to the marsh, to the children who were playing by the shacks he passed at the end of Avenida de La Marina, and at that moment, wishing he could erase himself from their memories, he remembers that, in his haste, he has left behind his fishing rod secured between two boulders, his net in the water and his basket on the shore, on the grass. He can’t just abandon his belongings there, it would be so easy for a detective to identify both rod and net; especially the fishing rod, which probably still bears the tag from the sports shop in Misent where he bought it seven or eight months ago when he first started coming with Esteban to go fishing, and so he runs back to the place he has just left (now he really is frightened, his whole body trembling), the reeds cut his face, his cheeks, his eyelids. When he pushes them aside, he feels their sharp edges cutting the palm of his hand. As soon as he has retrieved his fishing rod, he must return to the point on the road where he arranged to meet his friend, but it would be stupid to stay there sitting by the curb, waiting as he usually does where the path meets the road—he’d be leaving all kinds of clues, because that’s already the way his mind is working, as if he were one of the guilty parties. No, he can’t possibly wait there, but neither can he just leave and have his friend set off down the path looking for him, because when the inevitable investigations begin (no, no, calm down, he tells himself, months and months could pass before anyone else goes to that hidden corner) someone might recognize the car and identify Rachid’s clunker, that rusty fifteen-year-old Ford Mondeo, with its dented doors and its back bumper held on with wire. Besides, there’s that burnt-out car in the dunes, and someone is sure to report the disappearances; they’ll start dredging the lagoon, although who knows who those bodies might be. Probably immigrants like him, people just passing through, or maybe mafiosi fallen victim to some settling of scores: Moroccans, Colombians, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians. Perhaps a couple of prostitutes, their throats cut by their pimps, women nobody will take the trouble to look for.
    He decides to start walking along the main road, back to La Marina, and trust that Rachid will spot him from his car. Much as he would like to, he can’t stay still. He sets off toward Misent, then immediately retraces his steps, watching the passing cars, waiting anxiously for Rachid to appear, as if getting into his friend’s car would be like entering a refuge where he could disappear as soon as he sits down, arms hanging loose, breathing under control, head against the headrest, one cheek pressed against the cold glass of the window, relaxing and vanishing completely: the same psychological mechanism that allows children to believe they’re invisible when they cover their eyes with their hands: if you can’t see, then you can’t be seen. Sitting beside the driver of the Mondeo would be proof that he had nothing to do with that putrefying hand, with the stinking shapes buried in the mud, with that burnt-out car; once he has relaxed enough to disappear into the passenger seat of Rachid’s Mondeo, when they reach the intersection at the Avenida de La Marina a few miles further on, he will roll down the window and lean out to feel the cool evening air on his face, convincing himself that he saw nothing. He will be just another passenger among the thousands of others who travel along Route 332 every day, people filling that over-populated area for a few seconds and then lost again along the capillaries of the traffic heading for one of the small towns nearby or continuing on to some other part of Europe. At that point, his only thought is that he must