Havana Blue

by Leonardo Padura

  “So he was in partnership with Rafael Morín?”

  “No, he was just an accomplice. He had some four thousand dollars in the bank and Rafael had hundreds of thousands. There’s something not quite right there. But Manolo and I will question him again to see if we can extract something new.”

  The major stood up and walked over to his office’s picture window. It was barely six pm and already getting dark in Havana. From up there you could see the laurel trees from a perspective that was of no interest to the Count. He preferred the view from his small window and stayed seated.

  “You’ve got to find that bastard even if he’s six feet under,” the Boss grated in his most terrible visceral tone. He hated such situations, felt cheated and annoyed that they only reached him after such dastardly things had been perpetrated. “I’ll call the industry minister. He can sort the business of the money in Spain and give it some thought, because it’s more his problem than ours. But tell me, Mario, why would a man like Rafael Morín do something like that?”

  “So visiting time again. I think we should go back to the beginning.”

  “But what do you hope I will tell you, Sergeant?” René Maciques responded, looking at the Count as he walked in and sat in a chair by the window. The lieutenant lit a cigarette and exchanged glances with the sergeant. Go on, put the boot in.

  “What did you and Morín discuss on the thirty-first?”

  “I told you, the usual work-related things, our good financial year-end and the reports we had to file.”

  “And you didn’t see him again?”

  “No, I left the party shortly before he did.”

  “And did you know anything about this fraud?”

  “Sergeant, I’ve already told you I didn’t, and could never have imagined anything of the sort. And still can hardly believe it. I don’t know why he would do such a thing.”

  “What’s your level of involvement in the matter?”

  “Mine? Mine? None whatsoever, Sergeant, I’m a mere office manager who makes no decisions.”

  The Count extinguished his cigarette and stood up. He walked over to his desk.

  “Your innocence is most moving, Maciques.”

  “But the fact is . . .”

  “Don’t strain yourself. Does this remind you of anything?”

  The Count took two photocopies from the envelope and put them on his desk, in front of Maciques. The office manager looked at the two policemen, leaned forward and stayed like that for what seemed an eternity: as if he’d suddenly forgotten how to read.

  “The lieutenant asked you a question,” said Manolo as he picked up the photocopies. “Does this remind you of anything?”

  “Where did you find these papers?”

  “As usual, you make it necessary for me to remind you that we are the ones asking the questions . . . But I’ll give you an answer. They were quite safe and sound in a strongbox in Rafael Morín’s house. What do these documents mean, Maciques?” Manolo repeated, placing himself between the man and the desk.

  René Maciques looked up at his interrogator. He was now a perplexed, gloomy old librarian. Sergeant Manuel Palacios took his time. He knew he’d reached a decisive point in the interrogation, when the man under arrest must decide to tell the truth or put his hope in deception. But Maciques didn’t have options.

  “It’s one of Rafael’s ruses,” he said nevertheless. “I know nothing about these papers. I’ve never set my eyes on them. You said he did things using my name. Well, here’s another example.”

  “So Rafael Morín wanted to put you in a spot of bother?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Maciques, what might we find in your house if we did a search?”

  “In my house . . . Nothing. The usual. One travels abroad and makes purchases.”

  “With what money? Entertainment expenses?”

  “I already explained how one can save from the daily allowances.”

  “And when you wrap up a big deal, don’t you get a bonus in kind? A car, for example?”

  “But I never wrapped up any big deals.”

  “Maciques, do you have it in you to kill a man?”

  The office manager looked up again, the glint gone from his eyes.

  “What are you inferring?”

  “Do you or don’t you?”

  “Of course I don’t.”

  And he kept shaking his head: no, no.

  “Why did you go to the enterprise on the thirty-first? And don’t say to switch off the air conditioning.”

  “What would you like me to say?”

  Then the Count walked back to his desk and stopped next to Maciques.

  “Look, Maciques, I’m not as patient as the sergeant. I’m going to tell you straight what I think of you, and I know that one way or the other you’ll end up confessing today, tomorrow or the day after . . . You’re a piece of shit, as much a thief as your boss, more careful though less powerful. Right now the validity of these papers is being checked in Spain, and perhaps the bank will give us some information, but the car’s a clue that’s much simpler than you think. For some reason I’ve still to fathom, Rafael kept these papers under lock and key, perhaps to protect himself from you, because he knew you were quite capable of putting on his file the allowances he didn’t spend and the expenses he doubled. And Rafael will turn up, I don’t know whether dead or alive, in Spain or Greenland, but he will turn up, and you’ll talk, but even if you don’t, you’re covered in shit, Maciques. Don’t forget it. And to help you think more clearly, you’re going to spend some time on your own. From today you will start a new life at police headquarters . . . Sergeant, get the papers ready and ask the public prosecutor for an order for the temporary arrest of citizen René. One that can be extended. Be seeing you, Maciques.”

  Mario Conde looked at the other laurel trees, the ones very close to the sea that heralded the Paseo del Prado, and repeated his question. A bitter wind blew in from the mouth of the bay forcing him to keep his hands in his pockets, but he needed to think and walk, lose himself in the crowd and hide his Pyrrhic glee and the frustrations of a policeman pleased to strip bare the evil wrought by others. What had led Rafael Morín to do something like that? Why did he want more, still more and more besides? The Count contemplated the Palace of Matrimony and the shiny black ’57 Chrysler decked out in balloons and flowers waiting for the nuptial descent of the over-forties who still had it in them and still smiled for the inevitable photo at the top of the steps. He observed the ones with staying power defying the cold in the queue at the pizzeria on Prado and saw the notices, stapled to the trunk of a laurel tree, of those who needed to move. They made honest and dishonest proposals but just needed a few square feet of ceiling where they could live. He watched two dead-set, unconnected homosexuals walk by shivering with cold; their well-intentioned, ingenuous eyes looked him up and down. He spotted a peaceful mulatto, leaning against a streetlamp, looking like a lethargic Rastafarian, his perfect dreadlocks tucked under his black beret, perhaps waiting for the first foreigner to step up so he could suggest five pesos for one dollar, Mister, seven for one, bro’, and I’ve got grass, anything to get through the doors to the forbidden world of abundance armed with a passport. He switched to the lamppost on the pavement opposite: a blonde in incredibly lascivious make-up was dying of cold, though she promised to be hot, even if it snowed, with a mouth made for a blowjob; the blonde for whom a nationally produced mortal like Mario Conde was worth less than a drunk’s spittle and who wanted dollars like her friend the Rasta mulatto and would suggest thirty for one: her youthful sex, perfumed, well-trained and guaranteed against rabies and other sickness, in exchange for the dollars she yearned after; the blowjob came extra, natch. He watched a kid skating jump onto a wooden box and skate off into the dark. He reached the Parque Central and almost decided to get entangled in the eternal arguments over baseball that raged there daily, whatever the temperature, to find a reason for yet another defeat for those bastard Industriale
s; balls, balls is what they’re lacking, he’d have shouted in honour of Skinny, who was neither skinny nor nimble enough to be shouting on his own behalf. He contemplated the lights in the Hotel Inglaterra, the shadows surrounding the Teatro García Lorca, the queue in front of the Payret cinema, the dismal drab entrance to the Asturian Centre and the aggressive dilapidated ugliness of the Gómez edifice. He felt the irrepressible beat of a city that he tried to make a better place and thought of Tamara: she was expecting him and he was on his way, perhaps to ask her the same question, and nothing else.

  Several months later, when the Rafael Morín case had been truly laid to rest, and René Maciques was rotting in jail and Tamara was as beautiful as ever and looked at him with eyes that were always glistening, he’d still ask the same question and imagine a sad Rafael Morín, a petty potentate in Miami with his five-hundred-thousand-dollar fortune that was a mere lottery prize that would never buy him the things he acquired with his power as a trustworthy brilliant cadre, always on the up. But that night he just stopped next to a group of fans and lit a cigarette. They all thought and shouted out loud in an act of group therapy: the team manager was an idiot, the star pitcher a dud and the guys from way back really good, if only Chávez and Urbano, La Guagua and Lazo would come back, they fantasized, and then he stuck the shoulder of his imagination between two enormous frightening blacks who eyed him suspiciously, where does this asshole come from, and shouted into the centre of the group: “They don’t have balls,” and he’d leave the professional gripers to their gripes, as he crossed the street and entered the haze of fumes, dry piss and pre-Colombian vomit in the doorway to the Asturian Centre, where a couple were trying to consummate their ardour behind a pillar, and finally ran into the barred doors to the Floridita, SHUT FOR REPAIRS, and abandoned there all hope of a double shot of neat vintage rum, sitting in the corner that was Hemingway’s exclusive property, leaning on the bar where Papa and Ava Gardner kissed scandalously and where he’d set his store, many years ago, on writing a novel about squalor and where he’d have asked himself the same question and supplied the only answer that allowed him to live in peace: because he always was a bastard. What else?

  “Can I put some music on?”

  “No, not now,” she said as she leaned her head on the back of the plush sofa, looked up at the ceiling and felt freezing again and folded her arms after she’d pulled down her jersey sleeves. He lit a cigarette and dropped the match in the Murano ashtray.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, also sinking back on the sofa. “A ceiling is a ceiling.”

  “About what’s happening, everything you’ve told me, what else do you expect?”

  “You really had no idea? None whatsoever?”

  “What can I say, Mario?”

  “But you might have seen or suspected something.”

  “What was there to suspect? The fact he bought that hi-fi system or brought us whisky or a bicycle for our son? Is a dress worth a hundred and fifty dollars cause for suspicion?”

  He thought: it’s all so normal. All that has always been normal for her: she was born in this house and lived that normality that makes you see life differently; and he wondered whether it wasn’t Tamara’s world that had driven Rafael mad. But knew it wasn’t so.

  “What will happen now, Mario?” she now asked the question, had had enough of ceilings and silence and leaned her shoulder on the back of the sofa, tucked a foot under a thigh and chased her imperturbable wavy lock away. She wanted to gaze at him.

  “Two things still need to happen. First, Rafael has to show up, dead or alive, in Cuba, or wherever. And second, Maciques must tell us what he knows. Perhaps that might help us find Rafael’s whereabouts.”

  “It’s like an earthquake.”

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed, “everything that’s not secure is collapsing, and I imagine you feel the same way. But I think we’ve seen the best. Can you imagine Rafael arriving in Barcelona, accessing all that money and defecting?”

  “There’s an idea. We’d go to live in Geneva, in a house on a hill with a slate roof.”

  She said that, got up and disappeared into the dining room. He could never not: he looked at her as he always had, only he’d already observed that rump, traced the shape of her body, one ill-equipped to pirouette; his hands and mouth had travelled its length and breadth, but the memory hurt like a sharp thorn left to fester. A house in Geneva, why Geneva? And he ran his fingertips through his hair and thought how he’d started to go bald. I’d forgotten my bald patch, and he too abandoned the sofa, the house in Geneva and Tamara’s rump, and looked for a record with which to cheer himself up. Got it, he told himself when he spotted the Sarah Vaughan LP, Walkman Jazz, put it on the turntable and turned the volume down low, and the wonderful black woman sang “Cheek to Cheek” for him. She came back to Sarah Vaughan’s warm dark voice, carrying two glasses.

  “Let’s finish off our stocks: the whisky in Rafael Morín’s cellar is on its last legs,” she said, offering him a glass. She went back to the sofa and swigged her first mouthful like a hard-boiled matelot.

  “I know how you must feel. This isn’t easy for you or anyone, but you’re not to blame and I even less so. If only it hadn’t happened and Rafael had been what everybody imagined him to be and I wasn’t mixed up in all this.”

  “You regretting something?” she rasped. She’d regained normal temperature and rolled her sleeves back to her elbows. Took another swig.

  “No, I regret nothing, I was referring to you.”

  “Better not speak on my behalf. If Rafael stole that money, let him pay for it. Nobody ordered him to. I never asked him for anything, and you know that only too well, Mario Conde. I thought you knew me better. I don’t feel guilty on any count, and what I enjoyed I enjoyed like anyone else would have. Don’t expect me to confess and do penance.”

  “I see I know you less well than I thought.”

  Sarah Vaughan was singing “Lullaby of Birdland”, the best song he knew for escaping into the magical world of Oz, but it seemed as if she couldn’t shut up and he knew it was best if she just talked, and talked and talked . . .

  “Yeah, and you think I’m ungrateful, and I don’t know what else, and that I should say it’s supposition, that my husband is incapable of such things and then burst into tears, don’t you? It’s what one does in such situations, isn’t it? But I don’t have a tragic vocation, and I’m not a long-suffering egotist like you . . . I’d have preferred none of this to happen, it’s true, but do you know what it is to have a clear conscience?”

  “I really don’t remember anymore.”

  “Well I do, in case you didn’t know or were imagining something else. I told you the other day: Rafael had what they let him have or what was his due or whatever, and everyone knew that when he was travelling he would bring things back and it was all quite normal and he was an excellent comrade. Everyone knew and . . . Ah, I won’t say anymore on the subject unless you want to question me and, if that’s the case, I won’t say another word, least of all to you.”

  He smiled and returned to the sofa. He sat down very close to her, touched her knee with his, thought for a moment, then dared: slowly put his hand on her thigh, afraid it might run away, but her thigh stayed under his hand, and he gripped her live firm flesh and met a slight tremor, well hidden under the skin. Looked into her eyes and saw the shiny dampness transform into a tear that welled up, hung on an eyelash and rolled down Tamara’s nose, and he knew he was ready for anything, except to see her cry. She rested her head on the Count’s shoulder, and he knew she was still crying: a tired silent lament. She then said quite matter-of-factly:

  “The fact is I saw this coming. This or something similar. He was never satisfied. He was always dreaming of more and liked to play the powerful executive. I think he imagined he was the first Cuban yuppie or something of the sort . . . But I also got used to the easy life, to having everything all the time, to him speaking to a friend so I didn’t have to do c
ommunity service in Las Tunas and for us to have holidays in Varadero and so on. In the end I was afraid of changing my style of life, although I think I’d not loved him for a long time. When he went on his travels I liked being by myself at home with my son, not having to worry he’d be back late, that he’d say he was tired and would get into bed and go to sleep or shut himself up in the library to write reports or tell me how difficult it was all getting. I’d also known for some time he’d been going with other women. He couldn’t deceive me on that front, but as I said, I was afraid to lose a tranquillity I really enjoyed. And what I did with you I’d not done with anyone else, please do believe me.”

  He couldn’t see her eyes, hidden as they were behind her impertinent lock, but he knew she’d stopped crying. He watched her gulp down her whisky and followed suit. She got up, said, for God’s sake, went back into the kitchen, and the palm of his hand felt the warmth he’d stolen from Tamara. He now knew he could go to bed with that woman who’d been driving him crazy for the last seventeen years, and he put his tumbler down on the glass table, forgot the cigarette burning in the Murano and abandoned his pistol on the sofa cushion. He felt ready for it and walked into the kitchen behind her. Began to caress her hips – hips of a would-be rumba dancer – her belly he was already familiar with, and reached for the most discussed breasts in La Víbora High School, and she let him caress her until she couldn’t stand it anymore and turned round and offered him her lips, her tongue, her teeth and saliva smelling of single malt scotch, and he pulled at her jersey zip – she no longer wore bras – and lowered his head to nibble her dark nipples until she gave a start from the pain, then pulled down his trousers, fumbled taking her knickers off and kneeled like a repentant sinner to breathe in Tamara’s femininity, to kiss and consume her, ravaged by an ancient, never satisfied hunger.