Havana Fever

by Leonardo Padura

  When I regained consciousness I was in my car, reeking of piss and shit, with an excruciating pain all down my right arm. I made an effort to lift my hand. When I saw it I realized why I was in such pain: the hole in my palm was so big you could see right to the other side and I don’t know if it was the shock or pain but I fainted again. I don’t know how long I was there. It was a wasteland, with no trace of human life as far as the eye could see. Somehow or other, I used my teeth to tie a handkerchief round my hand and started the car. I drove round and round until I met a man on horseback who indicated the way out and finally found a track, somewhere between Bauta and San Antonio. It was a real struggle to drive on to the highway, and eventually I had to get out of the car and get someone to bring me to Havana, because I could feel my life slipping away from me.

  They kicked up a terrific fuss in the hospital, because they thought I was a revolutionary and that a bomb had exploded in my hand. They refused to look at me, but I screamed I was a journalist and had been assaulted, by God knows who, until they took me to the operating theatre. When I woke up a police lieutenant was in the room who asked me a thousand questions, and I trotted out my assault story a thousand times, but revealed nothing new, and although he didn’t seem that convinced, he finally left me alone. The doctor who’d operated on me came to see me and explained it was very strange because I’d been shot in the hand, not once, but twice, with a big calibre revolver, maybe a 45, and that’s why it was such a big wound. They’d done all they could, but what with the shattered bones and tendons, it probably wasn’t enough and I’d lose the movement in that hand. The police interrogated me again. I suppose they were prepared to hunt down the people who’d assaulted me. I told them almost the whole truth: I said I’d been hit on the head and only regained consciousness when I was in the wasteland, with my hand smashed to smithereens . . . After a warning like that, who’d dare say any more?

  When I left the hospital, I also left the newspaper: I wasn’t my old self, I was even afraid to go out in the street, I didn’t want to be involved in anything that might lead me to Violeta del Río and even less arouse the suspicion of the police, who still didn’t believe my story and in those days the police didn’t use kid gloves: they’d drop you on any street corner as your first stop to the cemetery. I shut myself in my flat and the truth is the next I heard of Violeta was when I read that article where she announced her decision to give up singing, just after she’d recorded her first record . . . I just had to go to a music shop and buy that single. When I heard it, I started to cry; for myself and her; for my crippled hand and her wasted voice; for the life we might have had together and that was killed stone dead when someone put those shots through my hand, whether I was to blame or Violeta’s voice was . . .

  I had no further news of her until I heard of her death shortly afterwards. They said she’d used cyanide to commit suicide, although a journalist told me the police weren’t at all sure and were still investigating. But the truth was Violeta was dead and what did anything else matter? The little that was left of my world collapsed, because when I heard that news I felt that her salvation could have been in my hands, in these hands . . . Because I knew right away that suicide explanation was a nonsense. The writing on the wall was clear enough: if they’d shot my hand twice just for knocking on a door, what wouldn’t they do to her for knowing what she must have known?

  1 December

  My dear:

  Today is the first day in the final month of this miserable year and I am full of hope, letting my mind wander and dream that in thirty-one days a new year will dawn that can bring us a really new and better life, the life we’ve had to defer so long: full of love, quiet and family peace, oblivious to everything around us. Don’t we perhaps deserve that? Don’t I deserve that?

  If anyone understands my life, you are that person. You know only too well how I threw everything onto the bonfire of oblivion and denial to be near to you, to belong to you: I closed my eyes and ears to other possible loves; I renounced regular family contact with my poor, very naïve parents (I was ashamed of their poverty and naivety) so I would feel I was climbing to your heights; I abandoned my future as an individual, gave up study, a job that could have sustained me, so I could always be in your shadow, in that moisture where I felt I could grow, even blossom, as your wife. You also know how zealously I kept your most secret secrets, shared your riskiest plans, and always gave you the same support. And never asked for anything in return: only for you to give me opportunities to show you I was the woman who had the right to your love.

  What did I receive in return? Oblivion, silence, distance . . . The years I lived with you sapped the strength I once had and now I am unable to make another life, because I can’t imagine and don’t want to live my life without you, because I am your creation. I have thought long about what to do with my future, and in the end always come up with the same response: I will continue to wait, like a cloistered nun awaiting definitive grace from her Lord upon death.

  What I most miss now is the festive atmosphere we used to breathe in the house. The new month would begin and joy would be in the air, with dinners to prepare, wine cellars to restock, presents to buy, visitors to enjoy, to wish happiness and prosperity to. All that has disappeared today, at least from this household. What about your new household? Do your children see to the decoration of the Christmas tree and crèche in Bethlehem? What do you feel far away? What does a man like you think, suddenly shocked by his exiled status, living far away, just one more in the crowd? Do you feel sorry for yourself or hatred towards those who forced you to leave and abandon what was yours?

  It is incredible how everything is so topsy-turvy, how so many things have been ruined. Politics and an absurd death ended that happiness, that was incomplete for me, but at the end of the day it was my happiness, one I enjoyed with you close by. Today I see how life and what has happened have shown you were right, my love; if only we had had the time to change our story and this history by simply killing the person who did deserve to die, for if I can see the guilty party in all this it is that man, dripping in medals, drunk on ambition, who refused to go when he should have and whom we so often wanted to see out of the way: better still in hell, which is where his crimes and sins should have sent him.

  But history overtook us. Nothing from that past remains today: a few happy memories perhaps, regrettably blotted out by your suspicions about my guilt. For God’s sake: how can I demonstrate my innocence to you? I think by the minute about what happened, look for some detail to release you from the doubt tormenting you, and in the end I can only think that some very secret reason must have led that accursed woman to take her fatal decision which we shall never explain without that missing clue. Or could it be true she had a second life you were unaware of? I know this will sound sacrilegious, but I have to think this if I am ever to reach truth and redemption. Could someone, in that other life, have been interested in seeing her dead? Did someone, seeing her so happy, with the world at her feet, decide to make her pay dramatically for her happiness and possession of things that weren’t hers by right?. . . This is madness, but thinking and searching is all that is left to me, particularly on days like today, when so many people want to hold parties and I can only let the hours drag by to see if a new year, this time for real, will bring me a new life, and not put dead bodies in my path. And at your side, my love.

  I love you always . . .

  Your Nena

  As long as he’d lived, Mario Conde had become adept at coexisting with the most diverse idealizations or demonizations of the past, with convenient rewritings, pure imaginings and impenetrable silences, sometimes perpetrated with dramatic finesse or the utmost arrogance. Such co-existence had taught him that, in spite of themselves, every individual, every generation, every country had to drag behind them, like a ball and chain, a past that is inevitably theirs, even with a glossy varnish or black spots conveniently highlighted. But he’d also learnt, slowly, even painfully, th
rough experience that the truth about the past can be buried in the most hermetically sealed trunks and the keys cast out to sea, but that’s no guarantee you’ll be spared its frantic clawing to get out, because neither the deepest nor the angriest self-inflicted oblivion can silence forever the onslaught of memory, which naturally can only feed on the past.

  Silvano Quintero’s macabre story had swept away the last remnants of his hangover, sucked dry by a narrative able to crack the pleasant plinth where he’d been erecting a romantic statue of Violeta del Río, swathed in the Count’s dreams of the colourful musical backcloth of dodgy Havana nights in the fifties, as full of glitter and gaiety as of death and terror. With all his alarm bells now ringing like mad, he felt the need to pursue the hunt, to search out the elusive clue to the hidden truth about the life of that woman who’d faded from almost all memory.

  While Yoyi Pigeon, struck dumb by the story they’d just heard, drove his gleaming Bel Air Chevrolet to the Ferreros’ house, a flood of unanswered questions began to torment the Count who had finally no option but to conclude that the hunch he’d had a few days before was just another dirty trick played on him by a destiny which seemed to like throwing him into bottomless pits of uncertainty. After all, Silvano was right: if they’d shot his hand up for daring to kick on a singer’s door, what mightn’t they have done if he’d got to the bottom of something dreadful. Something now tarnishing the murky image of Mr Alcides Montes de Oca and fate of Violeta del Río the bolerista, both parties to an obscure deal with capo Meyer Lansky and an elusive figure by the name of Louis Mallet? What might they have done to the singer if she’d become a potential threat simply because she knew things she should never have known? Could someone like Violeta del Río have been so cruel to herself or have felt so trapped she’d have committed suicide by swallowing cyanide?

  Conde felt a real satisfaction when he saw how the Ferrero brother and sister welcomed them with the broadest smiles, as if they were real-life ambassadors from the Land of Milk and Honey. Their faces were visibly beginning to freshen up with the injection of protein they’d received thanks to the books sold, and even Amalia’s sad, watery eyes had recovered a sparkle they’d thought buried forever. A tiny but significant detail alerted the Count to extent they were now welcome: they’d placed a small glass ashtray on the shabby table in the centre of the room, the cheapest, simplest variety, but quite ready to play its role.

  Amalia disappeared between the marble columns, promising to be back in a minute with the coffee, and the men settled down on the rickety armchairs in the reception room.

  “Isn’t life full of coincidences?” asked Dionisio, almost smiling. “This morning a man knocked on our door asking if we had any books to sell . . .”

  Conde and Yoyi’s steely glances clashed.

  “And?” asked the Count.

  “I said we had, but we’d already got buyers, naturally . . .”

  “How did he come to call by?”

  “Like you, I expect?” responded Dionisio, confident his explanation sounded convincing, although he saw immediately where the Count was coming from. “Or do you think he knew?. . .”

  “We’ve not said anything to anyone about where we got these books from,” said Pigeon.

  “Did the man leave any contact details?”

  “No, he didn’t, he didn’t even tell me what his name was, which is odd, isn’t it? But he did ask me if he could take a quick look at the library. As I wasn’t going to sell him anything, I let him in.”

  “What did he look like, Dionisio?”

  “Black, tall, thirty to thirty-five years old. He seemed to know something about books but they came as a real shock to him. You know? He was like one of those pastors who give sermons in Seven Day Adventist churches, the way he spoke, and his polite manner. Oh, and he had a slight limp.”

  Conde and Yoyi toyed with various possibilities.

  “Perhaps he was one of Pancho Carmona’s buyers?” the young man asked.

  “Could be,” agreed Conde, watching Amalia return triumphantly, carrying a tray with three cups, one of which had lost its handle. “Pancho could quite easily have got someone to trail us. Which was the guy’s gammy leg, Dionisio?”

  Dionisio selected the forlorn cup and looked at it thoughtfully.

  “Don’t you remember?” the Count persisted and got a reaction.

  “His right one,” Dionisio responded, looking quite sure, as he lifted the cup to his lips.

  Conde sipped his coffee and felt pleased with himself – it was real coffee, coffee – and prepared to test drive the ashtray.

  “Right then . . . shall we begin?” smiled Dionisio in a hurry.

  “Yes, let’s get to the library,” nodded the Count, although he remained in his chair, “but before we do I want to ask you something, and I apologize for being so insistent . . . have you really never heard of a Violeta del Río? It seems her name was Catalina, and she might well have been called Lina, but that’s not for sure . . .’

  The siblings glanced at each other, as if wanting to agree a possible answer. They seemed surprised by the buyer’s persistent interest, but the response from both was simple and to the point: no.

  “It seems that this woman, apart from singing boleros,” the Count continued, trying to open up channels of information and disturb a dormant cranny in the memories of their hosts, “had a relationship with Alcides Montes de Oca. An amorous relationship, that is. It’s definite they knew each other, so that explains why this cutting turned up in one of the books . . .”

  Conde showed them the page from Vanidades. Amalia needed only a few moments to repeat her negative, but Dionisio looked at it for a few drawn out seconds before confessing that even so he didn’t recognize her.

  “Do you think if your mother saw the photo?. . .” The Count was afraid he’d seem impertinent asking such a question, but took a chance, taking advantage of his current economic pre-eminence in that household. “If she was Alcides Montes de Oca’s trusted confidante . . .”

  “I told you Mummy can’t . . .” whispered Amalia before Dionisio interrupted her.

  “Look here, Conde, Amalia’s problem is she always gives half the picture, uses euphemisms . . . right, euphemisms, because she finds it hard to spell things out: mummy has been completely mad for the last forty years. And when I say mad, I mean really mad, incurably so . . .”

  “Well, forget it then . . .” the Count lamented. “Let’s get on with the books.”

  Amalia apologized; she had to get back to work – off to the market again – and the men went into the library.

  “Which books did that buyer look at?” the Count enquired.

  “He started by looking at the ones you say are very valuable. Then he crouched down over there, by the bookcase, the lower shelves,” pointed Dionisio. Yoyi went over to the area in the library he’d indicated, strangely enough, on the left-hand side they’d not yet inspected, and immediately called to his partner.

  “Come here, Conde, come here . . . Look at this . . .”

  Pigeon’s index finger ran over the spines of several books and the Count crouched down to get a better view.

  “God! No, that’s not possible . . .”

  The ex-policeman’s exclamations and negatives alarmed Dionisio Ferrero, who walked over to the bookcase, from which the Count, who’d opened the glass doors, now extracted two very large, leather-bound tomes.

  “What do you mean?” asked Dionisio.

  “How could the guy know, man?. . . Did he walk straight towards these books?... I don’t get it, man, I swear I don’t,” Yoyi confessed. “It can’t be true . . .”

  Conde felt his heart racing, opened the first of the books read the motto that advised “Labore et Constantia”, ran his eyes over the hand-tinted etchings that reproduced the appearance of some fish so exactly it was as if they’d been photographed still dripping wet after they’d been fished from tropical seas. But anxiety spurred him on and he immediately began to leaf through
the other volume, a heavy album, some seventeen by twelve inches. The buyers’ dazzled eyes viewed a succession of lithographs: a port where several sailing boats were moored, a valley planted with sugar cane, a country landscape captured in all its detail and various views of sugar refineries in action. As delicately as he knew how, Conde caressed the heavy paper with the engraving of the proud, idyllic image of La Flor de Cuba sugar mill, then closed the volume, got up and leaned awkwardly against the shelves, pressing the two books against his chest, as if wanting to protect them against the endless dangers out there in the big, wide world.

  “These are two jewels. They’re priceless. They’re unique,” he muttered, feeling that his language was inadequate, wondering what adjectives he should use to describe those invaluable wonders of Cuban publishing . . . “Everybody calls this one ‘The Book of Fishes’, but its proper title is” – he opened the cover and read the frontispiece – “Description of different items of natural history mostly from the maritime branch and illustrated with 75 plates. It’s the first important book printed in Cuba . . . in 1787 . . . And the other one, you can see, is The Sugar Mills, printed in 1857, that should have twenty-eight plates by Eduardo Laplante and is one of the most beautiful books ever made in the world. Needless to say they are two of the most valuable books ever published in Cuba.”

  “What do you mean by ‘valuable’?” nerves betrayed Dionisio, his martial voice cracking as he asked the question.

  “Well, I mean they’re worth a fortune . . .” Conde’s emotions didn’t subside, his mouth got drier, as if he’d been struck down by a raging fever. “If all the engravings are in place, I think the National Library might even be capable of unearthing enough money to buy them . . . We’re talking about more than ten thousand dollars a piece, more even . . .”