Island Has Ghosts

Chapter 13

"We haven't looked at these yet," Elvira threw a stack of ledgers on the table, raising a cloud of dust, and sneezed loudly. Valery rubbed the tip of his nose with his finger, an old habit from the time when he wore glasses, and opened the first page.

For half the morning they had been studying the damp, yellowed and dusty ledgers in the hope of finding the missing data. Valery had written three pages of one of the notebooks in small, even handwriting. For the first time in his life, he had to analyze abnormal events, not summaries, not data confirmed by statistical studies and scientific facts. Maybe that's why the numbers turned away from him, pretended to be unknown hieroglyphs? Only, no matter how hard he tried to isolate the important and discard the superfluous, the picture did not add up. There was not enough information! That's what he and Elvira were doing - looking for links that could tie everything into a strong chain.

The empty barracks was quiet, except for their negotiations, dusty, stuffy, but bright. Everything was seen differently in the daytime. Details unnoticed during the night came to the fore - like, for example, the cap with the inscription 'Barcelona - 2007' dropped by someone. 2007? How could it be, if everything in this barracks is frozen in the distant 1998? And Elvira found another piece of evidence that confirmed that there were visitors from the recent past in this place: rolled under the bed, a woman's lipstick from the collection of a brand that has recently entered the world market. Elvira recognized the tube, because she herself used this cosmetics. And where would a woman's lipstick come from in a soldier's barracks?

"This suggests that there were other people on the island before us - and recently. What became of them, where they went - is still unknown," summarized Valery and made a new entry in his register of conclusions.

After a detailed examination of closets, nightstands, and desk drawers, they moved on to the ledgers. Only in none of them did they find the answers they were looking for.

"Nothing, Elvira," said Valery, putting aside the last notebook, "maybe these are some coordinates used by the military. It doesn't tell me anything. And, I suspect, these numbers have no meaning for us."

"But they could be the coordinates of the island we're on!"

"The numbers are all different."

He was discouraged by defeat, and Elvira understood it without words. Valery, indecisive, too correct and seemed to her once boring, in an extreme situation opened himself from a different side.

"Valery, you are so smart. And I'm proud of you," she said affectionately, coming up behind him and putting her arm around his shoulders. Valery put his palms on top of her hands, and from the warmth coming from his skin, Elvira was flooded with memories of those evenings when her husband worked at the computer at home. On the screen, incomprehensible for Elvira lines of numbers and words, Valery carefully looked into the monitor and made some notes on a sheet of paper. Engrossed in his work, he seemed to pay no attention to anything. But when Elvira came up behind him to remind him of the cooling dinner, and put her hands on his shoulders, he covered her hands with his broad palms. She, soothed, warmed, stood behind his back for a long time, admiring both his light-colored nape and the no longer so hostile lines of numbers.

"I'm clever, but I didn't understand anything in these records," Valery grinned sadly. "So I'm a fool, not a smart one!"

"No, Valery. Fool - it's me," Elvira sighed heavily, released his hands, walked around him and stood in front of him. "I'm sorry. I really am a fool."

"You're smart, Elvira. Such a case opened!"

"And what's the use?" she said with undisguised bitterness. "If I find myself on the verge of bankruptcy..."