Havana Black

by Leonardo Padura

  Although the crime may not have been that distant or remarkable, perhaps it was no less forgettable for a memory perversely trapped by the physical or moral consequences of that sin: Miguel Forcade Mier had later climbed the ladder of power via the technocratic route, under the hospitable shadow of five-year plans imported from Asian steppes littered with efficient kolkhoses and sovkhoses – neither the Count nor the Major could remember the difference – infallible German Democratic economic organization, so perfect it seemed eternal, transplanted to an underdeveloped, one-crop Caribbean island that was nevertheless ready – or so it was often said – to make the great leap into a veritable socialist economic miracle . . . That power wielded by the National Office for Planning and the Economy was no small power: there passed through the hands of the man who would become a sexless cadaver with fish-eaten eyes decisions on trade and people’s lives, on the investment of millions and possibilities for collective and individual futures, the authority to give, to move, to place, take away and defer, from almost Olympian heights. But Miguel Forcade had leaped fatally into exile from that brilliant National Office, at the peak of its glory though soon to sink to depths of infamy, for no apparent overriding motive: they never discovered what had impelled him to defect, for he was never heard to express sentiments in public, like those usually voiced by people at his level: they always fled a dictatorship, aspired to freedom and democracy, no longer wished to be accomplices, now they had seen . . . And how did he ruin the life of whoever at the time, so ruthlessly his victim never found the peace of oblivion or balm of forgiveness?

  The origins of such a perverse murder contained all the ingredients of revenge, but the most important item remained unknown: what recipe had created that stew and who had done the cooking?

  “What if it was just a matter of jealousy and cuckoldry?” asked the Count, and Major Rangel looked him in the eye from behind his Lancero’s infernal glow, before declaring: “Then best not tangle with the wife of the guy who cuts the balls off everyone else, right?”

  Whenever he travelled by bus, Mario Conde tried his best to get a window-seat. In his university student days, he would get up twenty minutes earlier than necessary to queue for an empty bus. Unhurriedly, he would randomly choose one of the two sides of the vehicle and keep close to the metal to defend the privilege of the window-seat. Far from the aisle, he enjoyed the material advantages of not having his shoulder knocked by unattractive appendages, his foot trodden on or banged by crates. But there were two much more valuable rewards, which he would alternate according to need, state of mind and interests: he either read for the thirty-five minutes the journey took from his neighbourhood to the stop nearest to the faculty (he only did that on exam days or when he had a really good book), or devoted himself (as he preferred) to studying the buildings the bus encountered on its route, enjoying the second or third floors on the old roads of Jesús del Monte and la Infanta, hidden to anyone not prepared to raise their eyes toward their elusive heights. The Count had acquired that habit from his friend Andrés – who learned it in turn from beautiful Christine, that sexual being with whom they had all fallen in love – and it became such an organic need that when he looked at the buildings he would feel body and mind separating out their most connected atoms, releasing part of his self from his seat to float several yards above the street’s dark, greasy surfaces, to penetrate forgotten mysteries, remote histories, dreams wandering behind the walls of places with which he communed, as if they were other souls in distress, also liberated from perishable, onerous matter. That was how he’d discovered the most beautiful, audacious balconies, sculpted on city façades with the most extravagant motifs, eaves decorated with wedding-cake piping, anti-neighbour wrought-iron grilles forged by blacksmiths militant in every baroque art, and he had also discovered that death hovered, nearer every minute to all those centennial wonders of iron, cement, plaster and wood, which turned their best faces to the road, filthy from neglect of historic proportions, from petrified dust and apathy immemorial, whose inhabitants crammed into houses that had lost their dignity and character, degraded by the need for living quarters bereft of water, with communal bathrooms and congenital promiscuity. And although he knew that the pleasure at car level wasn’t the same as from the dais of a bus window-seat, which favoured more spiritual outpourings, on that afternoon the Count made of Sergeant Palacios two special requests for which he would be eternally grateful to him: first, for him to keep quiet; second, for him to drive at twenty miles an hour. He wanted only silence and humane speeds in order to observe yet again those elusive landscapes he knew and loved, as he felt afraid it might be his last encounter with the most abandoned, ill-treated architecture of his city of birth: the raging hurricane that at midday was heading towards the South of Hispaniola, after it had devastated tiny Guadalupe – even uprooting some of the trees Victor Hugues himself had ordered to be planted there two centuries ago in a Place de la Victoire dedicated to revolutionary ideals – that same bastard of a cyclone might enter these streets in a few days and demolish the decrepit beauty of second and third floors, which he alone – he was convinced – contemplated, reflecting on their inevitable, regrettable demise, prepared by years of neglect. What other destiny could that city expect if not violent death forged by the protracted agony of oblivion? Or would it also die castrated, a new Atlantis submerged beneath the sea by an unforgivable yet still unknown sin? Fuck it, he told himself from the gloomy depths of such reflections: it doesn’t matter how it dies: we all die in the end. Even you will die. And to usher that transition a little nearer he lit another cigar and puffed with relish as if it were the last wish granted a man on death row.

  When he got back to Headquarters and told Colonel Molina: I’ll take the case on, his new boss patted him gleefully on the back and agreed to another request: Sergeant Palacios could work with him. But now the Colonel began to name his conditions: he had a maximum of three days to solve the mystery of the castrated death of Miguel Forcade; he must act with the utmost discretion, because he already appreciated the new political implications of what would be a juicy item for the international press, always keen to discredit the government; he should report to him personally twice a day – though he could talk to Major Rangel to his heart’s content – because every evening he had to phone Somebody who in turn had to phone Someone charged by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs with speaking to the American consul to report on how investigations were progressing; and he should try to be as orthodox as possible in his methods, though he had carte blanche to do whatever was necessary: everything on the condition that within the three prescribed days he should get to the truth, whatever that truth might be: the affair could become another international scandal, which the yellow press would feast on, the Colonel emphasized, apparently obsessed by the taste and colour of the mass media, and the only way to cut it dead was by coming up with the truth. And he repeated his organic military salute.

  Standing in front of the Vedado mansion from which the currently American, now deceased Miguel Forcade had set out to an unforeseen fate and whither he had returned eleven years later, Mario Conde wondered what might be the price for finding the truth required by his boss . . . First of all, why did they kill Miguel Forcade like an animal?

  “What’s our way in going to be, Conde?” Sergeant Manuel Palacios asked eventually, after slotting away the aerial and locking the car under the irritated gaze of his superior.

  “The dead man’s parents live here and his wife must be here as well, as she came on the trip to visit . . . For the moment let’s just try to find out a bit about Miguel Forcade the man.”

  “Who was a bastard?”

  “We can take that as read, but we need to know the brand and type,” the Count emphasized as he opened the gate leading to the ’20s mansion, equally a victim of neglect and apathy, crying out for a new lick of paint.

  The surrounding garden was a damp, bushy arbour, with a peculiar mixture of shrubs, flowers, creepers, exub
erant trees and grasses, although all that floral disorder seemed exquisitely cared for, as witnessed by the tracery of clearly marked paths through the undergrowth that spread across the whole plot. The work of a hand both rigorous and tolerant in relation to the desires of plants was evident in that small tropical forest, where the Count registered the majestic crest of a silk-cotton tree, the dark, gnarled fruits of a mamey and the prehistoric miracle of two anonales, still laden with their violently green pomegranates, owners of delicate, white hearts divided into a hundred black seeds. As he walked along the path to the house, the Count came across an overgrown picuala and, as he passed by, he dared pick up one of its tiny flowers, which existed in a strange melding of colours, between red and white.

  “Josefina loves the scent of the picuala,” he said, knocking on the door after he’d put the flower in his pocket.

  The face of the old lady who opened the door was as exhausted from lack of sleep as the Count’s: the wrinkles around her eyes were a deep brown and her gaze was veiled by a grey mist from prolonged insomnia or several hours of sobbing. There were remains of white magnesia at the corners of her mouth, fit to turn Mario Conde’s stomach. The policemen introduced themselves, apologized for coming without prior warning and explained why they were there: to speak to the family of Miguel Forcade.

  “I am his mother,” responded the old lady, whose voice seemed younger than her face. Much to the Count’s relief, the woman’s tongue executed a precise cleaning exercise and the white cream disappeared. “Come in and sit down, I’ll get his wife. My husband is the one who can’t come down, he’s feeling very poorly today. He is very sick, you know. And this has made him feel much worse, poor man,” she concluded, as her voice faded away, but without losing that youthful spark that so surprised the Count.

  “And which of you is the gardener?”

  The old lady smiled, as if some of her lost energy was flowing back. “He is . . . Alfonso is a botanist and that garden is his. Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “A poet I know would say it is the place to be really happy,” said the Count, recalling his friend Eligio Riego.

  “Alfonso would be delighted to hear you . . .” conceded the old lady, her eyes moistening.

  “Who is it, Caruca?”

  A voice emerged from the passage that must lead to the bedrooms and was soon joined by the figure of its owner.

  “Oh, forgive me,” said the newcomer, in whose wake came a ruddy, frowning man, coughing slightly, with the dry, uncontrollable persistence of a smoker.

  “This is Miriam, my daughter-in-law,” noted the old lady. “And this is an old friend of hers . . .”

  “Adrian Riverón, at your service,” said the man, his cough erupting again.

  Even before he said hello and introduced himself, the Count’s first reaction was to start counting on his fingers, but he restrained himself from a sense of arithmetic politeness: according to the report he’d read, Miguel Forcade was forty-two years when he left Cuba, so he must have been fifty-three when he died, right? But now he was looking at a blonde woman, perhaps with an excess of blonde, which he suspected might be the result of vigorous bleaching, with sturdy thighs barely hidden by shorts and prominent breasts under a thin top, poked by nipples set on perforating the material. But the Count also had to look at her decidedly youthful face, where (grey, green, or were they blue?) eyes glinted from between her curly black eyelashes: thirty at a pinch, estimated the policeman, now able to think straight again, swallowing, counting on mental fingers and calculating that in his forties before he left Cuba Forcade had married a woman not yet in her twenties. Basically, he shouldn’t give up hope, he started to speculate, before he called himself to order.

  “I was telling your mother-in-law how we have come to ask a few questions about Miguel . . . I know it’s a bad moment for you, but we are very keen to solve this case as soon we can.”

  “You are really very keen?” said Miriam, distilling irony, as she sat down in one of the armchairs.

  Her friend, coughing again, swung round like a bewildered seagull trying to find his bearings and found respite against the high back of the chair Miriam had chosen, as if he felt a need to guard the young woman’s back. The Count’s gaze, inhibited by protectionist Adrian, drifted from those handsome legs, and it was only then the policeman realized he hadn’t carried out his customary detailed study of the scene and discovered, unusually, that the room merited the same scientific attentions he’d devoted to the woman. Because it contained the clearest proof of Miguel Forcade’s past as the deputy provincial director of Expropriated Property: furniture in different historical styles, mirrors in carved frames, porcelain from various eras, locations and schools, two enormous grandfather clocks, alive and kicking, a number of canvases with hunting and mythological scenes, still lives and nineteenth-century nudes – which could be dated by the area of flesh exposed – as well as a couple of – Persian? flying? – carpets and lamps that only had to cry Tiffany to prove that was exactly what they were: particularly one on a metal stand, in the guise of a tree trunk supporting a glass frond that was open and weary, perhaps from a visible surfeit of warm fruit ripening from red to purple. Impressed by the accumulation of so many undoubtedly valuable relics, the Count surmised their source to be the expropriation of treasures abandoned by the Cuban bourgeoisie and then abandoned again by Miguel Forcade when he inexplicably defected. A man who knew how to take his chances, he thought, corroborating this conclusion with another glance at Miriam’s handsome flesh, to whom he decided to return the ball soaked in irony: “It’s good to see how a family can bring together so many nice, valuable things, isn’t it?” And his hand described a circle that ended on the woman.

  “I expect you’d be interested to know where it all came from?” she riposted, and the Count then realized she would be a difficult mouthful to swallow.

  “Of course I would. It may help us find out that truth, an interest in which so much excites your suspicion.”

  “I’m not suspicious, Lieutenant. I only know they mutilated Miguel and killed him, here in Cuba. And that’s a fact.”

  The Count observed Miriam’s hardened face and the tears beginning to run down the old lady’s rotund cheeks. The silent maternal lament might disarm him so he concentrated on the beautiful widow.

  “That’s precisely why we are here . . . And because this deed reeks of revenge we need to know more about your husband’s past . . . My colleague and I have a responsibility to find out the truth, and I think if you help us it will be much easier, don’t you?”

  Miriam gave a long, tired sigh. She seemingly accepted the truce, but didn’t grant the Count the benefit of a momentary hesitation.

  “What I think is hardly the issue now. Just tell me, what would you like to know?”

  “Where did Miguel say he was going and why did he go alone?” asked the Count, looking into the young woman’s eyes, though it was the old lady who replied.

  “From the moment he got here, he hardly went out into the street, because . . . well, you know the story: he was afraid they’d keep him here, or something similar, because of the way he left . . . But that Thursday he said he wanted to go for a drive, to see a bit of Havana, and that he preferred to do so alone, because Miriam was going to be at her sister’s, in Miramar. And he left here around five.”

  Manolo looked at the Count, as if seeking permission and the lieutenant’s eyes acceded. He knew his colleague was more skilful in that kind of verbal enquiry and besides if he were silent he could study at leisure the riches gathered in that room: that’s why he looked at the Tiffany lamps again and then at Miriam’s eyes, breasts and legs, all hot and anxious because it was now he could best evaluate the woman: Miriam was surely a ripe fruit, her shiny, smooth skin, like a beautiful peel protecting all those fleshly assets fashioned over time: and now she was ready to be eaten, her flavours, scents and textures at their zenith, beyond which it was impossible to scale higher. Her disturbing, full ripeness risked
possible degeneration into flab as soon as the climactic moment passed: in the meantime it could be a banquet for the gods. A pity the fruit wouldn’t fall into his hands, the Count concluded, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation, driven by the insistent gaze of Adrian Riverón.

  “Could there be someone who wanted to take revenge because of something that happened in Cuba before Miguel left?”

  “That is very difficult to know, comrade,” replied the old lady, and she looked to her daughter-in-law for support. “He worked in important areas here, but as you know he took nothing from Cuba, and didn’t create a fuss over there . . .”

  “He didn’t want to come,” interjected Miriam, uncrossing her legs: a vampirish Count studied the red circle of blood visible on the thigh that had borne the weight of the other leg. “He came because his father is very ill and Miguel always loved him deeply. But he came fearing they’d get at him. He knew only too well he hadn’t been forgotten. And he was right, wasn’t he? That’s why what happened to him makes one think – ”

  “Please, Miriam,” hesitantly interjected the man called Adrian Riverón, not coughing on this occasion, though he remained on his feet, efficiently protecting the woman’s possibly vulnerable rearguard.

  “Let me say what I want to say . . .” she demanded, keeping her eyes on the Count.

  “Please, forgive her,” intervened Adrian, rushing to her defence again, smiling at the policemen. “She’s upset and she’s always been strong-willed.” And he cleared his throat a couple of times.

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” said the Count, smiling, his gaze captivated by Miriam’s eyes: dry, magnetic eyes. “Señora, since you suspect so much, I want you to be frank and tell me something: whom did your husband go to visit that Thursday afternoon? And why did he prefer to go by himself, if he was really so afraid to venture out into the street?”