by Philip Kerr
I favored would no longer be free. Besides, Yara was asleep in my bed, and while she would never have questioned my leaving the apartment in the small hours of the morning, the ten dollars payable to Doña Marina would probably have been money wasted, since I was no longer equal to the task of making love twice in as many days, let alone in the space of one evening. So I sat down and finished the book I was reading instead. It was a book in English. For some time now I’d been learning English, in an effort to persuade an Englishman named Robert Freeman to give me a job. Freeman worked for the British tobacco giant Gallaher, running a subsidiary company called J. Frankau, which had been the UK distributor for all Havana cigars since 1790. I had been cultivating Freeman in the hope that I might talk him into sending me back to Germany—at my own expense, I might add—to see if I couldn’t open up the new West German market. A covering letter of introduction and several boxes of samples would, I supposed, be enough to smooth the arrival of Carlos Hausner, an Argentine of German descent, back to Germany and enable me to blend in. It wasn’t that I disliked Cuba. Far from it. I had left Argentina with a hundred thousand American dollars, and I lived very comfortably in Havana. But I yearned for somewhere without biting insects, and where people went to bed at a sensible time of night, and where none of the drinks was made of ice: I was tired of getting a freezing headache every time I went into a bar. Another reason I wanted to return to Germany was that my Argentine passport would not last forever. But once I was safely back in Germany, I could disappear. Again. Going back to Berlin was out of the question, of course. For one thing, it was now landlocked in the communist-controlled German Democratic Republic; and, for another, the Berlin police were probably looking for me in connection with the murders of two women in Vienna, in 1949. Not that I had
murdered them. I’ve done a lot of things in my life of which I’m less than proud, but I haven’t ever murdered a woman. Not unless you counted the Soviet woman I’d shot during the long, hot summer of 1941—one of an NKVD death squad who’d just murdered several thousand unarmed prisoners in their cells. I expect the Russians would have counted that as murder, which was another good reason to stay out of Berlin. Hamburg looked like a better bet. Hamburg was in the Federal Republic, and I didn’t know anyone in Hamburg. More important, no one there knew me. Meanwhile, my life was good. I had what most Habaneros wanted: a large apartment on Malecón, a big American car, a woman to provide sex, and a woman to cook my meals. Sometimes it was the same woman who cooked the food and also provided the sex. But my Vedado apartment was only a few tantalizing blocks from the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, and long before Yara became my devoted housekeeper, I’d got into the habit of paying regular visits to Havana’s most famous and luxurious casa de putas
. I liked Yara, but it wasn’t anything more than that. She stayed when she felt like staying, not because I asked her but because she wanted to. I think Yara was a Negress, but it’s a little hard to be sure about things like that in Cuba. She was tall and slim and about twenty years younger than I with a face like a much-loved pony. She wasn’t a whore, because she didn’t take money for it. She only looked like a whore. Most of the women in Havana looked like whores. Most of the whores looked like your little sister. Yara wasn’t a whore, because she made a better living as a thief stealing from me. I didn’t mind that. It saved me from having to pay her. Besides, she stole only what she thought I could afford to lose, which, as it happened, was a lot less than guilt would have obliged me to pay her. Yara didn’t spit and she didn’t smoke cigars and she was a devotee of the Santería religion, which, it seemed to me, was a bit like voodoo. I liked that she prayed about me to some African gods. They had to work better than the ones I’d been praying to. As soon as the rest of Havana was awake, I drove along to the Prado in my Chevrolet Styline. The Styline was probably the commonest car in Cuba and very possibly one of the largest. It took more metal to make a Styline than there was in Bethlehem Steel. I parked in front of the Gran Teatro. It was a neo-Baroque building with so many angels crowded onto its lavish exterior it was clear the architect must have thought being a playwright or an actor was more important than being an apostle. These days, anything is more important than being an apostle. Especially in Cuba. I had arranged to meet Freeman in the smoking room at the nearby Partagas cigar factory, but I was early, so I went to the Hotel Inglaterra and ordered some breakfast on the terrace. There I encountered the usual cast of Havana characters, minus the prostitutes: it was still a little early for the prostitutes. There were American naval officers on furlough from the warship in the harbor, some matronly tourists, a few Chinese businessmen from the nearby Barrio Chino, a couple of underworld types wearing sharkskin suits and small Stetson hats, and a trio of government officials in pin-striped jackets, with faces as dark as tobacco leaves and even darker glasses. I ate an English breakfast and then crossed the busy, palm-shrouded Parque Central to visit my favorite shop in Havana. Hobby Center, on the corner of Obispo and Berniz, sold model ships, toy cars, and, most important for my purposes, electric train sets. My own layout was a tabletop three-rail Dublo. It wasn’t anything on the scale of the train set I’d once seen in Hermann Goering’s house, but it gave me a lot of pleasure. In the shop I collected a new locomotive and tender I’d ordered from England. I got a lot of models from England, but there were several things on my layout I’d made myself in the workshop at home. Yara disliked the workshop almost as much as she feared the train set. To her there was something devilish about it. Nothing to do with the movement of the actual trains. She wasn’t entirely primitive. No, it was the fascination a train set held for a grown man that she held to be somehow hypnotic and devilish. The shop was only a few meters from La Moderna Poesia. This was Havana’s largest bookstore, only it looked more like a concrete air-raid shelter. Safely inside, I chose a book of Montaigne’s essays in English, not because I had a burning desire to read Montaigne, whom I’d only vaguely heard of, but because I thought it looked improving. And almost anyone at the Casa Marina could have told me that I needed a bit of improving. At the very least, I thought I needed to start wearing my glasses more often. For a moment, I was convinced I was seeing things. There, in the bookshop, was someone I had last seen in another life, twenty years before. It was Noreen Charalambides. Except that she wasn’t Noreen Charalambides. Not any longer. No more than I was Bernhard Gunther. A long time ago she’d left her husband, Nick, and gone back to being Noreen Eisner, and as the author of more than ten successful novels and several celebrated plays, this was how the reading world now knew her. Under the fawning gaze of some oleaginous American tourist, Noreen was signing a book at the till where I was about to pay for Montaigne, which meant that she and I saw each other simultaneously. But for that I would probably have crept away. I would have crept away because I was living in Cuba under a false name, and the fewer people who knew about that, the better. Another reason was that I was hardly looking my best. I hadn’t looked my best since the spring of 1945. Noreen, on the other hand, looked much the same. There were a few flecks of gray in her brown hair and a line or two on her forehead, but she was still a beauty. She wore a nice sapphire brooch and a gold wristwatch. In her hand was a silver fountain pen, and over her arm was an expensive crocodile handbag. When Noreen saw me she put her hand over her mouth, as if she’d seen a ghost. Maybe she had at that. The older I get, the easier it is to believe that my own past is someone else’s life and that I’m just a soul in limbo, or some kind of flying Dutchman figure doomed to sail the seas for all eternity. I touched the brim of my hat just to check that my head was still working, and said, “Hello.” I spoke in English, too, which probably left her even more confused. Thinking she must have forgotten my name, I was on the point of removing my hat and thought better of it. Perhaps after all it was better she didn’t remember my name. Not until I’d told her the new one. “Is it really you?” she whispered. “Yes.” I had a lump in my throat as big as my fist. “I thought you were probably dead. In fact,
I was sure of it. I can’t believe it’s really you.” “I have the same problem when I get up in the morning and limp toward the bathroom. It always feels like someone must have stolen my real body in the night and replaced it with my father’s.” Noreen shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. She opened her handbag and took out a handkerchief that wouldn’t have dried the eyes of a mouse. “Perhaps you’re the answer to my prayer,” she said. “Then it must have been a Santería prayer,” I said. “A prayer to a Catholic saint who’s really just a disguise for some kind of voodoo spirit. Or something worse.” For a moment I held my tongue, wondering what ancient demons, what infernal powers would have claimed Bernie Gunther as one of theirs, and nominated him as the dark, mischievous answer to someone’s idle prayer. I glanced around awkwardly. The fawning American tourist was an overweight lady of around sixty, wearing thin gloves and a summer hat with a veil that made her look like a beekeeper. She was watching Noreen and me carefully, like we were all in a theater. And when she wasn’t watching Noreen and me perform our touching little reunion scene, she was glancing at the signature in her book, as if she couldn’t quite believe that the author had inscribed it. “Look,” I said, “we can’t talk here. The bar on the corner.” “The Floridita?” “Meet me there in five minutes.” Then I looked at the book clerk and said, “I’d like to charge this to my account. The name is Hausner. Carlos Hausner.” I spoke in Spanish, but I was sure Noreen understood. She always had been quick to understand what was going on. I shot her a look and nodded. She nodded back, as if to reassure me that my secret was safe. For now. “Actually, I’m done here,” said Noreen. She looked at the tourist and smiled. And the tourist smiled back and thanked Noreen profusely, as if she’d been given not an inscribed book but a signed check for a thousand dollars. “So why don’t I just come with you now?” Noreen said, and threaded her arm through mine. She escorted me to the door of the bookshop. “After all, I wouldn’t want you to disappear now that I’ve found you again.” “Why would I do that?” “Oh, I can think of any number of reasons,” she said. “Señor Hausner
. I am an author, after all.” We came out of the shop and walked up a gentle slope toward the Floridita Bar. “I know. I even read one of your books. The one about the Spanish Civil War: The Worst Turns the Best to the Brave.
” “And what did you think?” “Honestly?” “You can give it a try, I suppose, Carlos
.” “I enjoyed it.” “So it’s not just your name that’s false.” “No, really, I did.” We were outside the bar. A man jackknifed off the hood of an Oldsmobile and bowed into our path. “Taxi, señor?
Taxi?” I waved the man away and let Noreen go into the bar first. “I’ve time for a quick one, and then I have to go. I have an appointment in fifteen minutes. At the cigar factory. It’s business. A job, maybe, so I can’t break it.” “If that’s the way you want it. After all, it’s only been half a lifetime.”
2 T
HERE WAS A MAHOGANY BAR the size of a velodrome and, behind it, a dingy-looking mural of an old sailing ship entering the port of Havana. It might have been a slave ship, but another cargo of tourists or American sailors seemed a more likely bet. The Floridita was full of Americans, most of them fresh off the cruise ship parked next to the destroyer in Havana Harbor. Inside the door, a trio of musicians was setting up to play. We found a table, and I quickly ordered some drinks while the waiter could still hear me. Noreen was busy checking out my shopping. “Montaigne, huh? I’m impressed.” She was speaking German now, probably getting ready to ask me some awkward questions without our being overheard and understood. “Don’t be. I haven’t read it yet.” “What’s this? Hobby Center? Do you have children?” “No, that’s for me.” Seeing her smile, I shrugged. “I like train sets. I like the way they just keep on going around and around, like one single, simple, innocent thought in my head. That way I can ignore all the other thoughts that are in there.” “I know. You’re like the governess in The Turn of the Screw
.” “Am I?” “It’s a novel by Henry James.” “I wouldn’t know. So. Any kids yourself?” “I have a daughter. Dinah. She’s just finished school.” The waiter arrived and neatly set out the drinks in front of us like a chess grand master castling a king and a rook. When he was gone, Noreen said, “What’s the story, Carlos? Are you wanted or something?” “It’s a long story.” We toasted each other silently. “I’ll bet.” I glanced at my watch. “Too long to tell now. Another time. What about you? What are you doing in Cuba? Last I heard, you were up before that stupid kangaroo court. The House Committee on Un-American Activities. The HUAC. When was that?” “May 1952. I was accused of being a communist. And blacklisted by several Hollywood movie studios.” She stirred her drink with a cocktail stick. “That’s why I’m here. A good friend of mine who lives in Cuba read about the HUAC hearings and invited me to come and live in his house for a while.” “That’s a good friend to have.” “He’s Ernest Hemingway.” “Now, that’s a friend I have heard of.” “As a matter of fact, this is one of his favorite bars.” “Are you and he . . . ?” “No. Ernest is married. Anyway, he’s away right now. In Africa. Killing things. Himself mostly.” “Is he a communist, too?” “Good grief no. Ernest isn’t political at all. It’s people that interest him. Not ideologies.” “Wise man.” “Not so you’d notice.” The band started to play, and I groaned. It was the kind of band that made you feel seasick as they swayed one way and then the other. One of the men played a witch doctor’s flute, and another tapped a monotonous cowbell that left you feeling sorry for cows. Their sung harmonies were like a freight locomotive’s horn. The girl yelled solos and played guitar. I never yet saw a guitar that I didn’t want to use to drive a nail into a piece of wood. Or into the head of the idiot strumming it. “Now I really do have to go,” I said. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like music?” “Not since I came to Cuba.” I finished my drink and glanced at my watch again. “Look,” I said, “my meeting’s only going to take an hour or so. Why don’t we meet for lunch?” “I can’t. I have to get back. I have people coming to dinner tonight and there are things I have to get for the cook. I’d love you to come if you could.” “All right. I will.” “It’s the Finca Vigía in San Francisco de Paula.” Noreen opened her bag, took out a notepad, and scribbled down an address and telephone number. “Why don’t you come early—say, around five o’clock. Before the rest of my guests arrive. We’ll catch up then.” “I’d like that.” I took the notepad and wrote out my own address and phone number. “Here,” I said. “Just in case you think I’m going to run out on you.” “It’s good to see you again, Gunther.” “You too, Noreen.” I went to the door and glanced back at the people in the Floridita Bar. No one was listening to the band or even intending to listen. Not while there was drinking to be done. The barman was making daiquiris like they were on special offer, about a dozen at a time. From everything I’d heard and read about Ernest Hemingway, that was the way he liked drinking them, too.
3 I
BOUGHT SOME PETIT ROBUSTOS in the cigar factory shop and took them into the smoking room, where a number of men, including Robert Freeman, inhabited an almost infernal world of swirling smoke and igniting matches and glowing tobacco embers. Every time I went into that room, the smell reminded me of the library at the Adlon Hotel, and for a moment I could almost see poor Louis Adlon standing in front of me with a favorite Upmann in his white gloved fingers. Freeman was a large, bluff man who looked more South American than British. He spoke good Spanish for an Englishman—about as good as my own—which perhaps was hardly surprising given his family history: his great-grandfather, James Freeman, had started selling Cuban cigars as long ago as 1839. He listened politely to the details of my proposal and then told me of his own plans to expand the family business: “Until recently I owned a cigar factory in Jamaica. But, like the Jamaicans themselves, the product is inconsistent, so I’ve sold that and decided to concentrate on selling Cuban cigars in Britain. I have plans to buy a couple of other comp
anies that will give me about twenty percent of the British market. But the German market. I don’t know. Is there such a thing? You tell me, old boy.” I told him about Germany’s membership in the European Coal and Steel Community and how the country, benefiting from the currency reform of 1948, had seen the fastest growth of any nation in European history. I told him how industrial production had increased by thirty-five percent and how agricultural production had already surpassed prewar levels. It’s amazing these days how much real information you can get from a German newspaper. “The question is not,” I said, “can
you afford to try to gain a share of the West German market, but can you afford not
to try.” Freeman looked impressed. I was impressed myself. It made a pleasant change to be discussing an export market instead of a pathologist’s report. And yet all I could think about was Noreen Eisner and seeing her again after such a long time. Twenty years! It seemed almost miraculous after all that we had been through—she, driving an ambulance in the Spanish Civil War, and me in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In truth, I had no romantic intentions toward her. Twenty years was too long for any feelings to have survived. Besides, our affair had lasted only a few weeks. But I did hope that she and I might become friends again. I didn’t have many friends in Havana, and I was looking forward to sharing a few memories with someone in whose company I might be myself again. My real self, instead of the person I was supposed to be. It was four years since I’d done anything as straightforward as that. And I wondered what a man like Robert Freeman would have said if I’d told him about Bernie Gunther’s life. Probably he’d have swallowed his cigar. As it was, we parted amicably with his declaring that we should meet again, just as soon as he had bought the two competing companies, which would give him the rights to sell the brands Montecristo and Ramon Allones. “Do you know something, Carlos?” he said as we went out of the smoking room. “You’re the first German I’ve spoken to since before the war.” “Argentine-German,” I said, correcting him. “Yes, of course. Not that I’ve anything against the Germans, you understand. We’re all on the same side now, aren’t we? Against the communists, and all that. You know, sometimes I wonder what to make of it all. What happened between our two countries. The war, I mean. The Nazis and Hitler. What do you think about it?” “I try not to think about it at all,” I said. “But when I do, I think this: that for a short period of time the German language was a series of very large German words, formed from very small German thinking.” Freeman chuckled and puffed his cigar at the same time. “Quite,” he said. “Oh, quite.” “It’s the fate of every race to think itself chosen by God,” I added. “But it’s the fate of only a very few races that they’re sufficiently stupid as to try to put that into practice.” In the sales hall I passed a photograph of the British prime minister with a cigar in his mouth, and nodded. “I’ll tell you another thing. Hitler didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke, and he was healthy right up until the day he shot himself.” “Quite,” said Freeman. “Oh, quite.”
