The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  Ramirez hung up his jacket and tried to work his arms through the sleeves of the white lab coat that he was required to wear inside Apiro’s workspace. His hands shook and he kept missing the holes. Apiro, busy, didn’t notice.

  Apiro turned his head to greet him. “Good afternoon, Ricardo. My goodness, you’re pale. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “It’s nothing, Hector.” Ramirez swallowed a few times. “I’ll be fine.” But he wasn’t sure if that was true.

  “There’s a glass on the filing cabinet, if you’d like to get some water. Autopsies are unpleasant at the best of times, even for me. And if you need to get some air, please, go ahead. This body isn’t going anywhere.”

  Ramirez wasn’t so sure of that either.

  He approached Apiro tentatively, almost afraid to look in case the body moved.

  Apiro had removed the clothes from the cadaver, but it was definitely the same man who had haunted Ramirez all morning. Ramirez half expected the dead man to wink at him, but the eyes that stared at the ceiling were lifeless, waxen.

  The thing in the hallway is alive compared to this, Ramirez thought. What in God’s name is it?

  “He is dead, isn’t he?” Ramirez asked. But the proof of death lay on the table in front of him and in glass jars on the counter.

  “If he wasn’t before, he is now,” Apiro said, laughing. “I’ve removed all his organs.”

  Ramirez fumbled in his pocket for a cigar. “Tell me something, Hector. Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “As a man of science, I don’t believe in much,” said Apiro, holding his scalpel thoughtfully. “Although I am sure such illusions serve a valid social purpose. After all, Catholic priests believe in ghosts, don’t they? The consecrated Host? The Holy Ghost?”

  “You don’t believe in them yourself?”

  “In priests, Ricardo?” the pathologist asked. He pivoted his large head and cocked a bright eye at Ramirez. “You know what I think of organized religion. You can imagine what I think of any God who would make me in his image.”

  “But what if someone told you they’d seen a ghost? Someone credible,” Ramirez pressed. “Unlikely to make things up.”

  “Ah, now, Ricardo, believing in ghosts is one thing. Seeing them is another. I would suspect that person had developed a medical problem. There are certain illnesses — tumours, toxicities like lead poisoning, for example — that can cause hallucinations. As well as some mental illnesses like schizophrenia and senile dementia. Even a stroke can sometimes have that effect.”

  “What about the santeros?” asked Ramirez. He pulled a stool over and sat down to steady his legs. “They claim to communicate with the dead. My grandmother was Vodun. On my father’s side.”

  Slave traders brought Ramirez’s Yoruba ancestors from West Africa in the 1800s to harvest Cuban tobacco and sugar. The Yoruba followed their own religion, Vodun, as well as the Catholicism forced upon them by their owners.

  Or at least they pretended to. They cloaked their religion with Catholic rites, but never gave up their own practices. The resulting mix of Catholicism and Vodun — Santería, or Lukumi — included a belief in multiple gods, and regular and animated interaction with the spirit world.

  Apiro nodded doubtfully. “Superstition, I think. In that sense, Santería is no different than other religions. I agree with Castro on that point. We were both trained by Jesuits, and we both became atheists. Perhaps there is a connection.”

  Ramirez cringed as Apiro probed the neck wound with his gloved fingers, but the body didn’t twitch. Definitely dead, thought Ramirez. No doubt about it.

  “Your grandmother believed in ghosts?” asked Apiro. He leaned against the top rung of his ladder as he waited for Ramirez’s response.

  Ramirez inclined his head slightly, remembering his promise of secrecy. His grandmother had spoken to him of a gift across generations, of messengers from the other side. A gift that waited for him outside the door, the bright slash of his wound coiled around his neck like a red bandana.

  “My parents said she died from an unusual form of dementia. But she knew where she was, and who we were, right up to the end. I was there when she passed away.”

  “She probably had a disease called DLB, then,” said Apiro. “Dementia with Lewy bodies. It can cause extremely compelling hallucinations. Quite often those who have it know their visions are not real; they may even find them amusing. Socks that turn into kittens, for example. Although in Cuba, kittens that turned into socks would be more useful. I personally think it’s more difficult to deal with than Alzheimer’s because of that self-awareness. It’s a terrible illness, Ricardo. I’m sorry to hear she suffered from it.”

  “Is that the only symptom of the disease, Hector?” asked Ramirez, his hands shaking as he lit the cigar. “Delusions?”

  “Hallucinations and delusions are not quite the same, Ricardo. Hallucinations occur when one sees things that don’t exist. A delusion is when one believes them. But no, there are certainly others as the illness progresses,” said Apiro, turning back to the corpse. “Insomnia is quite common in the early stages. Then tremors in the extremities. The cognitive deterioration comes much later on. Unfortunately, it is impossible to diagnose the illness with certainty until one autopsies the brain, although CT scans and MRIs can be useful if there is a reason to suspect it. She did well to live so long, your grandmother. The disease can be of quite early onset. It often strikes people in their forties and fifties.”

  “My God,” said Ramirez. His heart sank. He had suffered from insomnia for months, ever since his promotion. And now apparently from hallucinations, too. “What’s the prognosis?” Ramirez was almost afraid to ask.

  “Fatal. Usually within five or six years.”

  “Is there no treatment?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid.” Apiro looked up and searched his friend’s eyes carefully. “Are you worried that your father may have it? It is not usually considered hereditary, but I could try to arrange an MRI. It could take months, maybe a year, to get an appointment. There are only two machines in Havana and limited supplies. And like most things, the tourists come first.”

  Ramirez shook his head. His father was old but healthy. He didn’t know how to tell Apiro that he was the one seeing ghosts, not his father. And what was the point of an MRI if there was no way to conclusively diagnose the illness, and nothing Apiro, nothing anyone, could do about it anyway?

  Ramirez breathed in and out rapidly, deeply stunned. Francesca was four months pregnant with their second child. What should he do? He couldn’t tell his wife that he would probably die before their unborn baby started school. Francesca would kill him herself.

  Apiro stepped down and snapped off his gloves. “If you give me your grandmother’s name and her date of birth, I can check our records to see what the autopsy revealed. When did she die?”

  “In 1973, when I was nine. She must have been in her nineties by then. But I don’t know her exact birthday, Hector,” Ramirez answered slowly, his thoughts heavy as cement. “She was Yoruba. Born a slave.”

  Until the late 1800s, slaves were considered property, and birth certificates were never issued for them. But his grandmother was a free woman when she died. A person, no longer a thing, under Cuban law. “Would they have done an autopsy that far back?”

  Apiro nodded. “If they suspected Lewy body dementia, yes. It’s been a matter of medical interest for at least a hundred years. It may take me some time, Ricardo, but I’ll find out, I promise.”

  Those old records were Ramirez’s only hope.

  But they weren’t computerized, and Apiro called him later that day to say that until they were, he had no way to find a pathology report for a former slave who died more than three decades earlier.

  The dead man disappeared a few days later, after Ramirez found his killer, and Ramirez never saw that particular vision again.

  But a month or so later, another dead man appeared in the hallway outside his apartment. Like the
first ghost, this one was silent. He communicated with Ramirez through shrugs, raised eyebrows, and somewhat clumsier charades. He, too, vanished after Ramirez solved his case.

  With increasing frequency as his disease progressed, Lewy body hallucinations popped up in Ramirez’s office, his car, and his apartment. The dead people he conjured never spoke, only gestured or made motions in the air. They always disappeared once their killers were identified.

  To his surprise, Ramirez managed to get used to them. He even found the products of his dying synapses occasionally amusing, as Apiro said they might be.

  His hallucinations looked over his shoulder, grimaced slightly at his mistakes. They were unfailingly polite. They stayed out of the bathroom and the bedroom, and if Ramirez suggested they leave, they left. All it took was a meaningful glance.

  Eventually, Ramirez convinced himself that they were simply manifestations of his overworked subconscious. Images manufactured by his tired brain to help him process clues he might otherwise miss. Sometimes he talked to them about his investigations, and they always listened attentively, either nodding in agreement or shaking their heads if they had other ideas.

  He didn’t tell Francesca about his illness. He didn’t know where to begin. After all, he felt fine physically, although tired from lack of sleep. If anything, his police work was better, more focused, despite the nights he tossed and turned.

  His little Estella was almost five years old, no longer a baby, when Ramirez’s hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

  Ramirez knew then that his time was running out.

  FOUR

  As evening approached, the sky deepened to the same shade of azure as the ocean. Wispy clouds floated above the cooling air.

  Cuba was mostly closed to the outside world, a once-vibrant country slowly strangling under an American embargo. Even now, just before the dinner hour, no foreign fishing boats disrupted the radiant surface of the water, only the lazy line of a single tug far off in the distance. It hauled a dark shape that Mike Ellis couldn’t quite make out.

  It was the end of another gorgeous day. No portents of disaster, no looming storm clouds, nothing to warn Ellis that the fiction he had struggled to maintain — his marriage — would end right there on the seawall.

  The distance between sky and sea slowly disappeared. Only a thin edge of light hinted at the boundary between air and water. Fishermen bobbed in truck tires on the ocean waves, casting night lines from their rubber boats.

  A few toughened men with callused hands and bait cans at their feet stood along the seawall holding fishing lines. Hazy rings of cigarette smoke curled around their heads in the light dusk. People laughed, enjoying the fresh ocean breeze. Cars honked hellos to each other along the Malecón. Ellis felt completely out of place: guilty, wounded, and alone.

  A young black Cuban man wearing a T-shirt and shorts, with a striped shirt tied around his waist and his baseball cap on sideways, stood in front of Ellis, blocking his path.

  “Hey, where you from, mister?” the man said, smiling widely. “You from Canada? Got some soap?”

  “Not now.” Ellis forced his way past the man. “Leave me alone.” “What’s wrong, Señor? It’s a beautiful day; you should be smiling.”

  The Cuban looked at him with concern, or perhaps pity. He put his hand on Ellis’s shoulder. Ellis knocked it off. The man took a step or two backwards. He put his hands out in front of him to ward off Ellis’s anger before he turned to follow another tourist.

  I need a drink before I lose it, thought Ellis. More than one. A tankful. What the hell; I’m not driving.

  He decided to head over to Hemingway’s favourite bar, El Bar mi Media Naranja. It made him feel a little better somehow, knowing that even a macho guy like Hemingway had problems with women.

  FIVE

  The bartender was burly, with thick ropy arms and a flattened nose. Mike Ellis had finished his second añejo, straight, no ice, and the man was generous with the bottle.

  The seven-year-old rum tasted like sweet hot water. Ellis downed the next one quickly, tapped the counter again. He took his jacket off and laid it on the stool next to him, felt the warm flush of alcohol begin to calm him down.

  So she’s finally done it. She’s really gone. Ellis had tried hard to rebuild a marriage that was, at its heart, as beyond repair as the collapsed shells of buildings all around him. Damn her. Every Christmas from now on would remind him of the way his soonto-be-ex-wife abandoned him in Old Havana.

  Ellis could still hear Steve Sloan’s voice, could feel the big arm Sloan threw around his shoulder the night before he died. He could almost taste the cold beer Sloan shoved in his hand in the smoky, noisy bar when Ellis said he didn’t know what to do.

  “We’ve all been there, buddy. I’m a serial offender.” Sloan was only thirty but already married and divorced twice. “I shouldn’t have married either of them. Just be glad you two never had children.”

  But Sloan didn’t know then that Hillary was pregnant.

  Even in a short-sleeved shirt, Ellis was hot. A mahogany ceiling fan gently moved the air above the bar. A row of framed photographs hung on the wall. Beneath it, a large mirror ran the length of the counter. He looked at his reflection, watched the other patrons pretend not to stare at his thick scars.

  “What’s your name?” Ellis asked the bartender.

  “Fidel,” the man answered, smiling. “Like him. Castro.” The bartender put another drink in front of Ellis and inclined his head to a faded brown-and-white photograph of the young Castro. Bearded, tall, craggy, almost handsome in his flat-billed hat and khaki jacket. The heroic populist had vanquished a dictator, thought Ellis, only to become one. Castro had either saved Cuba or destroyed it, depending on your perspective.

  “Gracias, Fidel.” Ellis toasted the bartender and emptied the glass.

  Fidel pointed with his shoulder to the row of bottles behind him. He raised his eyebrow. Ellis nodded.

  Fidel brought over a dark-brown bottle of Havana Club. The bartender hadn’t asked him about his injuries, but he could see the man eyeing him discreetly from time to time, wondering what happened to his face.

  Fidel busied himself washing glasses behind the bar, lining them up beside the ones he’d already prepared with lime juice and sugar. Waiting for the tourist onslaught.

  Six o’clock. Lots of time to get drunk. Ellis had in mind shitfaced, as Sloan would say. He wanted to obliterate the past, erase it from his memory. Forget about the shooting, and how badly he’d screwed things up. Fuck Steve.

  The departmental shrink said he suffered from survivor’s guilt. The psychiatrist had no idea what it was like that night in that hallway, what really happened.

  Anxiety. Well, that was one word for it. Just not the one Ellis would choose. He stared at his empty glass and ordered another bottle.

  “I’ll have a mojito, please, Fidel,” the woman said.

  The bartender smiled, admiring her looks, her streaked blonde hair and her low-cut blue top. She wore a tight beige skirt that accentuated her long, shapely legs. Ellis watched her skirt ride up as she pulled herself on the stool next to his. She wore silver strappy sandals with very high heels.

  The bartender wiped down the bar in front of her. The woman was tall and slim, dressed a little like his wife, Ellis realized. The resemblance depressed him.

  Fidel crushed some fresh mint leaves into a glass full of ice and lime juice, added more sugar, poured in the rum, and passed the drink to Ellis’s lovely neighbour across the wide brass rail. She put it on a cork coaster that said “Home of the Famous Hemingway Mojito,” where it left a ring of condensation.

  “Gracias, Fidel.” The woman turned to smile at Ellis. She hadn’t seen the scars, couldn’t see them, sitting as she was, on his good side, where everything looked normal.

  Ellis glanced at himself in the mirror. His mouth was pulled to the side, perpetually sardonic, the scar on his forehead a fine white slash below the hairline where the knife had caugh
t. He remembered the warm blood running down his chin, how it mingled with his tears. He drained his glass.

  Black-and-white photographs of Hemingway hung above his reflection, along with the iconic photographs of Castro. In the early shots, Hemingway was still handsome, not yet bloated with booze. Later on, he had a trim white beard. He often stood beside a younger, thinner Castro.

  Nothing in the photographs gave away Hemingway’s lost battle with depression or the voices he’d already started to hear by the time those pictures were taken. Hemingway’s scars were inside, where no one could see them. Ellis wasn’t sure if that worked better.

  Fidel refilled his empty glass: the amber liquid glowed in the light. Ellis looked in the mirror again. Sometimes women told Ellis he looked sexy, that the injuries added character to his face. But he knew better. He saw the fear in his wife’s eyes whenever she looked at him. Hillary was scared of him. He felt it that morning when they finally, reluctantly, made love. She was afraid he knew about the affair.

  But he was the one who got away with murder.

  SIX

  The woman sipped her drink, then rested the glass on the counter. She wiped her hands dry on her skirt. The deep mahogany wood of the bar displayed her reflection. She had pink nails that matched the sunglasses pushed on top of her thick hair.

  Outside, it must have been close to thirty degrees. The sun was an orange tennis ball rolling slowly into the ocean.

  “Are you alright, Señor?” she asked with what seemed like genuine concern. She had a deep, husky voice. A whisky voice. There was a faint sheen to her skin.

  Ellis took a closer look at her. Early to mid-twenties, he guessed. Astonishingly pretty, with her clear skin and large brown eyes. His type of woman, or at least had been once, long ago.