Heretics

by Leonardo Padura

  Conde agreed. The panorama could be even more dismal than it appeared. Calle G with its urban tribes was, in reality, just the tip of the iceberg … But was the inability to believe directed at him? Fuck it, he told himself. He wasn’t what was important here. Because, at that pivotal moment in the conversation, he could obtain what Candito was truly capable of offering him: a confirmation to a question he’d been stuck on since visiting Judy’s room and that had driven the recently maintained conversation plagued by the teacher’s disquieting revelations.

  “Red, you talk to a lot of people in crisis who are looking for a way out, do you think that somebody like Judy could end up committing suicide? That’s what most worries me now … The teacher thinks no…”

  Candito left the glass from which he was drinking on the small wooden table.

  “I can’t tell you one way or another, absolutely, because each person is a world unto herself … But I wouldn’t find it strange if she is not showing up because she committed suicide or that, if she is alive, she would try to do so. So, if she still hasn’t done it, the best thing would be to find her, because she is capable…”

  “And if she shows up, do we perform an exorcism?” Conde couldn’t let the chance to ask go by.

  “For this girl in particular, it would be better to send her straight to a psychiatrist,” Candito said, and the other man felt how his friend exceeded him with elegance. “I already told you that her problem is not with God, or even with the devil … She’s fighting everything.”

  Conde agreed, disheartened.

  “And where does that ‘a lot of dollars’ fit into all of this?” his host asked him.

  The other man scratched his head.

  “Well, I don’t know … But it’s better if I don’t even think about that because then I’m going to suffer from loose screws in the head … Let’s see, tell me, Why do I have to find myself these messes, huh, Red?”

  Candito smiled with the most beatific and pastor-like of his expressions.

  “Because although you say and are even convinced that you don’t believe in God, at the end of the day, you are a believer. And, above all, you are a good man.”

  “I’m a good man?” Conde tried to lace the question with sarcasm.

  “Yes. And because of that, despite everything, I am still your friend…”

  “But although I’m good and a friend of yours, I’m not going to be saved, because I haven’t humbly approached God. And if another bastard humbly approaches Him, he is going to receive redemption. Do you think that makes sense?”

  “It’s divine justice.”

  “Then, with your pardon, I have to say: what shitty justice…”

  Candito smiled without any beatific expression: he truly smiled.

  “There’s nothing to be done for you, my friend … You’re going straight to hell…”

  Conde looked at Red. Ever since he had married for the second time and stopped smoking and drinking alcohol, Candito had gained about twenty pounds. Despite the gray hairs that had substituted his red corkscrew curls, in reality he seemed healthier and even fresher compared to the Candito of the past, a sinner and businessman, a troublemaker and violent man.

  “And if I married Tamara, do I have more chances for salvation?”

  The question hit a nerve of surprise in Candito. Through Skinny Carlos, he knew about the birthday party being planned and had confirmed his non-alcoholic presence. But, there was a wedding and everything…?

  “Are you serious or fucking around?”

  “I think I’m serious.” Conde regretted having to admit it, although he clarified: “But it’s only an idea…”

  Candito leaned back in the chair and, with his hand, wiped the sweat that, despite the fan, was starting to run down his face.

  “Conde, my brother, you do whatever you want. But think of just one thing: it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie, to leave well enough alone…”

  “With an exception, right?”

  Candito, at the end of the day, was still Candito.

  “Well, if you wake the right dog … But then it has to come to an end, right?”

  * * *

  From the only surviving bench (although it was already missing a board) in the Parque de Reyes, as he was hit by blasts of the foul smell coming from a pipe expelling refuse onto the street, Conde saw Yadine’s figure get larger, halfway dressed as emo, with her hair falling over her face.

  To avoid the family hearing his adult and masculine voice, half an hour before, Conde had asked Candito’s wife to telephone the girl’s house and make an appointment that, for the former policeman, had become urgent.

  “You hadn’t called me … Yesterday I went to your house and you weren’t there … Tell me, what do you know about Judy?” the girl reproached him when she was a few feet away from the presumed detective, her face without the black makeup was equally sad and anxious.

  “Come, sit down.” Conde tried to calm her down as he patted the seat that held up his own ass poorly.

  “So, what do you know?” Yadine’s anxiety was definitely greater.

  “Nothing and a lot … I don’t know where she is or what could’ve happened to her, but I know other things,” he said, and got straight to the matter. “Why didn’t you tell me what your real interest was in my looking for Judy? Don’t make things up, I already know the truth about that subject…”

  Yadine had beautiful, deep eyes. All of the intensity of her gaze was better revealed that way, without the black circles with which she made herself up.

  “The truth is terribly simple … People don’t like us lesbians. But what matters is finding out about Judy, not what I feel for her…”

  Conde had several responses to the statements, but he decided that he shouldn’t attack the young girl with his irony.

  “Did she break off her previous relationship to be with you?”

  Yadine lost her anxiety and only a sign of sadness remained on her face.

  “No … I was the one who took advantage of that and worked so hard so I could finally be with her. The thing is, Judy drives me craaazy…” she emphasized, and drew out the loss of sanity.

  Those revelations always alarmed Conde, a heterosexual Cuban machista from a militant, although tolerant, line. But hearing two lesbian confessions on the same day, made by two young, beautiful women, exceeded his capacity for understanding. Nevertheless he had to contain himself, he thought.

  “How long had you had that more intimate relationship?”

  “Only once. The day before Judy got lost … But it was the best thing that has ever happened in my life.”

  Conde thought about asking for details, but understood that it wasn’t the most appropriate.

  “But you had been in love with her for a long time, right? Did you become emo because of her?”

  “Yes, I was kind of emo, but I became emo-emo because of Judy. And I’ve liked her ever since I met her. No, not like her, she drives me crazy, crazy…”

  Conde would have liked to know the difference between being emo and being emo-emo, but he didn’t get off track.

  “And you really don’t have any idea where she could be, or why she’s lost?”

  “Of course not … Why do you think I came looking for you? It’s not easy to go around out there telling people what you are and what you like. But I was desperate … That Monday, Judy said she would call me so we could see each other. Around seven, I was the one who called her house and Alma told me she’d gone out a while before. She thought she went to Calle G, but, on Mondays, almost no one goes there. All the same, I went to look for her, but there were few people, no emos, and she wasn’t there, either. Then I called some people…”

  “Who?”

  “First Frederic, who was at his house with another chick from school. Then Yovany, but he didn’t pick up his cell … Then … Then her old girlfriend…”

  “The teacher.”

  Yadine lifted an eyebrow, then nodded.

  “She ha
dn’t seen her, according to what she told me.”

  “And what do you know about the Italians? About Bocelli, for example?”

  “That’s one of Judy’s crazy things. She knew what those old guys wanted, but she played with them. I warned her that that could be verrry dangerous.”

  “Because of the drugs?”

  “Because of everything. Bocelli is a son-of-a-bitch drug addict who’s pretty craaazy.”

  Conde thought about it for moment.

  “Judy must have found something different in that man, don’t you think? Or are you jealous of him?”

  Yadine took a deep breath, again very sad.

  “Yes, I am very jealous … She liked to talk to Bocelli and said that one day she would go visit him in Italy. Judy was a real dreamer…”

  “Let’s see, Yadine … And tell me the truth, was Judy in love with you or did she have sex with you just because?”

  The girl smiled at last.

  “Judy didn’t do anything just because … But no, she wasn’t in love with me, at least not how I was with her. She had sex with me because she was more depressed than usual and needed someone to listen to her, and I was dying to listen to her. Judy wanted to stop being emo, she started to tell me that someday she was going to Italy with Bocelli, that her life was a disgusting mess and she had to do something to change it.”

  “Why was her life a disgusting mess?”

  “Thousands of reasons … Because of the world, because of her father…”

  “Did she tell you anything about her father in Venezuela? About a really big deal?”

  “She told me he did things … Many things. But I don’t know what things.”

  Conde thought the time had come and he let out the question: “Did she talk about suicide as a way out?”

  Yadine reacted immediately.

  “No, Judy could not have committed suicide.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  The girl smiled, this time more widely. And with conviction.

  “Because Judy wanted to change her life, but not lose it. I already told you that Judy didn’t do anything just because … She had a reason for everything. And she had more than enough reasons to keep living. She had a ton…”

  Conde nodded, satisfied. Why did the people who had talked to him about Yadine consider her a little stupid? Or was it that Yadine, besides the emo mask, also knew how to use other faces?

  “One more thing,” Conde said, lifting his ass from the torture of an incomplete bench. “How many books by Salinger have you read?”

  Yadine seemed pleasantly surprised. She smiled. Without a doubt she was very beautiful.

  “All of them, alllll.”

  “I was starting to imagine why you talk like that. It’s extremely easy to know … I’ve also devoured alllll of them. A bunch of times. With love and squalor…”

  6

  When he was under the hot tin roof of the Bar of the Hopeless, Conde, awash in juices, sodas, birthday plans, and complicated revelations (including two lesbian confessions, which he battled against heroically to not allow his imagination color in), looked with the affection of the prodigal son at the modest simplicity of the cheap bottles of rum and the packs of infamous cigarettes placed on the table. He finally felt closer to territory that was more undemanding and comprehensible, where things were what they were, even what they seemed to be, without any further complication. But that afternoon, the spell of Conde’s stable sense of self was nearly broken by a sign displayed on the table where Gandinga—the black server known as Gandi by certain customers—rested one of his flabby ass cheeks: “Esteemed customer: Pay BEFORE being served! THE ADMIN.”

  “What’s that about, Gandi?” Conde asked him, pointing at the strict administrative guidelines. “Isn’t there any trust anymore in the esteemed customers?”

  “Tell me about it, Conde … Yesterday, I gave two bottles to a guy and the real son of a bitch ran away. He really fucking fucked me up.”

  “Dammmmmn! The hopeless break out of their chains” was the first thing to come out of his mouth. “Well, give me a double and a pack of cigarettes,” Conde requested.

  “Do you know how to read or not…? Come on, fifteen big ones, pay first,” the barkeeper said, and without moving his heavy ass cheek, he waited for his esteemed customer to put his money on the counter. Only after taking it, counting it, and distributing the bills in the old cash register did he throw him a pack of cigarettes and start to serve the drink in a glass whose cleanliness Conde doubted more than a committed Marxist, who theoretically doubted everything, or rather, everyone.

  When he was ready to taste the rum that his soul asked for so vehemently, he felt a foul-smelling presence to his right. He turned his head and found one eye watching him and, very close to the alert eye, a fallen lid, defeated beyond any help. The man hadn’t shaved for several days and, incidentally, seemed to be on bad terms with the shower. His sleepless eye, reddened, was studying Conde, until he seemed to find what he was looking for.

  “Did you see this, Gandi?” the man said to the barkeep. “A clean guy … That deserves a drink. I mean, two.” And he raised his voice toward the barkeep: “Gandinga, one for the clean guy and another for me.”

  Conde thought that, even though he showered every day, he would never have classified himself as an especially clean guy. And less still after having spent the whole day on the streets, suffering the sweltering June heat.

  “And who’s paying?” Gandinga asked, per his trade.

  “The clean guy, of course…”

  “No, my friend, thank you,” Conde said. He didn’t want to talk, only to drink. And not to drink to think, but rather, to forget.

  “Don’t fuck around. You’re not gonna buy me a shot?” And he not only looked at him with his good eye, but his fallen lid also shook, as if carrying out a major effort to revive itself. The Cyclops had the breath of a vulture.

  “Okay, okay, but on one, no two conditions…”

  “Come on, shoot, here I am.”

  “If I pay for your drink, will you then leave me alone?”

  “Done. Go on…”

  “Right, the second one: just one drink…”

  “Done, done … Come on, Gandi, pour one out generously,” One Eye ordered.

  Conde placed the money on the bar and Gandinga, after taking it, served the man a drink. One Eye took it right away and had a small sip, with a heightened sense of economy, and only then did he turn toward Conde. Where had that scarecrow come from?

  “Meh, I don’t want to talk to you, either … You look like you’re a real asshole … Because you are a policeman.”

  When he heard One Eye’s first reason, Conde felt the desire to kick his ass, but he received his final conclusion like an electric shock. Once on alert, he again looked at the man and tried to place what could be left of that semblance in the archive of faces he had met over the course of the now-distant ten years in which he had worked as a policeman and rolled around in shit. With difficulty—not only due to his memory—he discovered that those human remains were none other than Lieutenant Fabricio, dismissed for corruption, and with whom he had had all possible differences, including a fistfight right in the middle of the street.

  Regretting his fate, Conde threw the portion of his rum still in the glass on the street, intent on leaving the place. Fabricio, or what survived of him, was still repellent. “Listen, Gandi,” Conde said as he gave the glass back to the barkeeper. “Don’t have mercy on this guy. He was, is, and will be a real son of a bitch. And there’s no salvation for this one, no matter what he does.” And he went out into what was, for him, a benevolent and same old dog day of June.

  * * *

  The meeting with Fabricio did not end up being a favorable prologue to the scene that Conde needed to prepare for at that moment: a conversation with Alcides Torres, Judy’s father. Speaking with two sons of bitches of that caliber in the same day—worse still, on the same afternoon—seemed like an abuse of
his stomach’s fortitude. And, more so since Ana María the teacher had mentioned a certain business involving millions and, to top it off, Candito informing him about the potential for redemption of that type of character. But the urgency enveloping him to find some clue capable of leading him to Judy and, in passing, to be able to distance himself as soon as possible from any connection with that overly murky and simultaneously intriguing episode, was stronger and he decided to face the risk of an overdose of dialogues with certified sons of bitches.

  They had agreed to meet at seven, in Alcides’s palazzo, but when Conde arrived, the man had not shown up yet. Alma Turró was the one who greeted him, offered him a seat, good ventilation, coffee, and conversation.

  “Please, tell me something about my granddaughter,” the woman asked after placing the tray with coffee within reach of the recently arrived man.

  As he drank the beverage, Conde thought about his response, since there wasn’t much he could say to the woman. Even in what he could reveal, there existed a part that was too alarming, and he preferred not to touch upon that with her.

  “Alma … I still don’t have the faintest idea of where she could be or what could have happened to her. The police feel the same. They don’t even have a clue, a suspicion, nothing. Neither they nor I know what to do … When someone gets lost like this, there are generally two possibilities: either something very serious has happened or she herself has done everything possible to disappear without a trace…”

  Alma listened to him silently. She had her hands on her lap and was rubbing them as if they burned.

  “Are you going to stop looking for her?”