Now we have only a few children, but they demand Santa Claus and a Christmas party."
In the photograph two girls with bows in their hair sat on the lap of a bearded man in a plush red suit, a round figure with cheeks rouged to a cheery glow. Presents ringed a tinsel tree. Behind the children spread a buffet line of adults balancing plates of cheeses and Christmas cakes and glasses of sweet champagne. At the far end someone who might have been Sergei Pribluda shoved his whole hand into his mouth.
"The heat in that suit was unbelievable."
"You wore it?" Arkady took a closer look at the picture.» You don't look well."
"Congestive heart failure. A bad valve." Kneading his arm, Bugai went around his desk and rooted through drawers.» Pictures. I'll make a list of possible names and addresses. Mostovoi is the embassy photographer, then there is Olga."
"You should be in Moscow."
"No, I angled for Cuba. They may not have enough drugs here but they have excellent doctors, more doctors per person than anywhere else in the world, and they'll operate on anyone, a general, a farmer, some little man who rolls cigars, it doesn't matter. Moscow? Unless you're a millionaire you wait two years at least. I'd be dead." Bugai blinked through a film of sweat.» I can't leave Cuba."
Elmar Mostovoi had a monkey's round mug and curved fingernails and a hairpiece of frizzled orange that sat on his head like a souvenir. He was in his mid-fifties, Arkady guessed, but still in good shape, the sort who did push-ups on his fingertips, wore his shirt open and rolled up his pants to show off a shaved chest and shins as smooth as tubes. He lived in Miramar, the same area as the embassy, in an oceanfront hotel named the Sierra Maestra, which offered many of the features of a sinking freighter: listing balconies, rusted railings, a view of the water. The furnishings of Mostovoi's apartment were quite plush, however, with a sofa and chairs covered in vanilla leather sitting on a deep shag rug.
"They put Poles, Germans and Russians here. They call it the Sierra Maestra, I call it Central Europe." Mostovoi inserted a Marlboro into an ivory cigarette holder.» Did you see the popcorn machine in the lobby? Very Hollywood."
Mostovoi's apartment was decorated with movie posters (Lolita, East of Eden), the photographs of an expatriate (Paris bistro, sailing, someone waving at the Tower of London), books (Graham Greene, Lewis Carroll, Nabokov), souvenirs (dusty campaign cap, bronze bells, ivory phalluses in ascending size).
"Are you interested in photographs?" Mostovoi asked.
"Yes."
"An appreciator?"
"In my way."
"Do you like nature?" It was very natural. Mostovoi had boxes of eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs of young female nudes half hidden by fronds, romping through waves, peeking through bamboo.» A cross between Lewis Carroll and Helmut Newton."
"Do you have any photographs of your colleagues at the embassy?"
"Bugai is always after me to take pictures of his so-called cultural events. I can't be bothered. You can't get Russians to pose like this. You can't even get them to take their clothes off."
"The climate, perhaps."
"No, even here." Mostovoi pondered the photograph of a Cuban girl lightly breaded in sand.» Somehow, the people here manage to balance socialism with naivete. And by mixing with the Cubans I don't live with the paranoia that has gripped the rest of our dwindling community."
"What paranoia is that?"
"Ignorant paranoia. When an intelligence agent like Pribluda floats around the harbor in the middle of the night, what is he doing but spying? We never change. It's disgusting. It's what happens to Europeans in Paradise, we kill ourselves and blame the natives. I hoped Pribluda had more sense. You know, the KGB used to produce very civilized people. I said something in French to Pribluda once and he looked at me as if I were speaking Chinese."
Mostovoi opened another box. On top, a girl squeezed a volleyball.» My sports series."
"More of that dramatic angle."
The next shot was of a light-colored nude cradling a skull on her lap. The girl directed a sultry glower through a mane of curls that only half covered her breasts. Around her were molten candles, drums, bottles of rum.
"Wrong box," Mostovoi said.» My rainy-day series. We shot in here and I had to use the props at hand."
The skull was a rough facsimile, lacking detail around the nasal orifice and teeth, although Arkady was impressed by the number of artifacts a serious photographer had to have ready for a rainy day. In the next picture another girl wore a beret to model clay.
"Very artistic."
"That's kind of you. There's talk of a show at the embassy. Bugai strings me along. I don't care. I only hope I'm there with my camera when he has his heart attack."
She was buxom with fine hair fading from blond to gray and an oval face with small eyes a little damp with recollection. Although her air-conditioning had failed, Olga Petrovna's flat was a little corner of Russia with an Oriental rug on the wall, geraniums thriving in pots and a canary bright as a lemon trilling in a cage. Brown bread, bean salad, sardines, coleslaw with pomegranate seeds and three types of pickle were laid on the table. By an electric samovar sat a pot of jam and tea glasses in silver holders. She sorted through photograph albums for Arkady and, in a ladylike fashion, plucked at her dress where it adhered.
"They go back twenty-five years. It was such a life. Our own schools with the best teachers, good Russian food. It was a real community. No one spoke Spanish. The children had their Pioneer camps, all in Russian, with archery and mountain climbing and volleyball. None of this baseball idiocy of the Cubans. Our own beaches, our own clubs and, of course, there were always birthdays and weddings, real family events. It made you proud to be Russian, to know you were here protecting socialism on this island far from home in the teeth of the Americans. It seems hard to believe we were so strong, so sure."
"You are an unofficial historian of the embassy?"
"The embassy mother. I've been there longer than anyone else. I came very young. My husband is dead and my daughter married a Cuban. The truth is, I'm hostage to a granddaughter. If it weren't for me she wouldn't speak Russian at all. Who can imagine such a thing? Her name is Carmen. This is a name for a Russian girl?" She poured tea and added jam with a conspiratorial smile.» Who needs sugar?"
"Thank you. Did your granddaughter go to the embassy Christmas party?"
"Here she is." Olga Petrovna opened to the first picture of what appeared to be the most recent album and pointed to a curly-haired girl in a white dress that made her look like a walking wedding cake.
"Very cute."
"Do you think so?"
"Completely."
"Actually, it's an interesting mix, Russian and Cuban. Very precocious, a little of the exhibitionist. Carmen insisted-all the children insisted-on an American Santa Glaus. That comes from watching television."
From snapshot to snapshot Arkady followed the little girl's progress to Santa's lap, a whisper in his ear and her retreat along the buffet. He pointed to a broad back at the table.» Isn't that Sergei Pribluda?"
"How could you tell? It was Carmen who dragged him to the party. He is such a hard worker."
Olga Petrovna had the highest esteem for Pribluda, a strong individual with a real worker's background, patriotic, never drunk though never shy, quiet but profound, obviously an agent but not the sort to act mysterious. Certainly not a weakling like Vice Consul Bugai.
"Remember the word 'comrade'?" asked Olga Petrovna.
"All too well."
"That's what I would call Sergei Sergeevich in the best sense of the word. And cultured."
"Really?" That was such a new perception of Pribluda that Arkady wondered whether they were speaking of the same person. Unfortunately, despite her respect for the colonel, she had no other pictures of him. Then, with great delight, "Oh, here she is." A girl of about eight in an outgrown school jumper of dull maroon stood at the threshold of the room. She glowered at Arkady from under a vee of brows.» Carme
n, this is our friend Citizen Renko."
The girl advanced in three deliberate steps, shouted "Hai!" and delivered a kick a millimeter short of contact with his chest.» Uncle Sergei knows karate."
"He does?" Arkady had always thought of Pribluda as more a kidney-punch devotee.
"He carries a black belt in his briefcase."
"Did you ever see it?"
"No, but I'm sure." She administered a karate chop to the air and Arkady stepped back.» Did you see? Fists of fear."
"That's quite enough," Olga Petrovna said.» I know you have homework."
"If he's a friend of Uncle Sergei's he'll want to see it."
"That is enough, young lady."
"Stupid coat." Carmen looked Arkady up and down.
Olga Petrovna clapped her hands until the girl tucked in her chin and marched to the next room.» I'm sorry, that's children now."
"When was the last time you saw Sergei Sergeevich?"
"A Friday after work. I had taken Carmen for an ice cream on the Malecon when we ran into him talking to a Cuban. I remember Carmen said that she heard something roar, and Sergei Sergeevich said his neighbor kept a lion that ate little girls. She became so irritable we had to hurry home. Usually they did get on wonderfully." When Arkady had her show him on a map she pointed to the Malec6n in front of Pribluda's flat.» Sergei Sergeevich wore a captain's cap and the Cuban was carrying one of those enormous inner tubes they fish from. A black man is all I remember."
"Did you hear a roar?"
"Something, maybe." As she put the albums away she asked, "Do you think there's any truth to this story that Sergei Sergeevich is dead?"
"I'm afraid there might be. Some of the Cuban investigators are very competent."
"Dead of what?"
"A heart attack, they say."
"But you have some doubts?"
"I just like to be sure."
Olga Petrovna sighed. Even in her time in Havana the city had become another Haiti. And Moscow was overrun by Chechens and gangs. Where could a person go?
He thought for a moment he had caught sight of a man keeping pace behind him in the dark of the arcade. Was he being followed? He couldn't tell. It was hard to single out a shadow when everyone knew which way the streets ran except you, when everyone looked in place but you, with the sea on one side and on the other a maze of demolition piles, cars hauled onto sidewalks, lines of people waiting for ice cream, a bus, bread, water.
So he plunged on in his coat, drawing glances as if he were a monk wandered off the Via Dolorosa.
Arkady took a taxi back to the Malecon and walked the last few blocks to Pribluda's apartment past boys demanding Chiclets and men offering mulatas, and beyond conversation starters of "Amiga, que hora es? De que pais? Momentico, amigo." Overhead hung balconies, arabesques of wrought-iron spikes and potted plants, women in housedresses and men stripped to their underwear and cigars, music shifting from window to window. Decay everywhere, heat everywhere, faded colors trying to hold together disintegrating plaster and salt-eaten beams.
Chapter Six
Ofelia was Arkady and Dr. Bias played Rufo. They positioned the tables and taped the floor of the IML conference room to indicate the perimeters of the walls, bookshelves and doors of the embassy flat so that they could-for their own information-"reconstruct the facts" of Rufo Pinero's death.
"Reconstruction of the facts" distinguished Cuban forensic medicine from the American, Russian, German. In Cuban laboratories, in Nicaraguan rain forests, in the dusty fields of Angola, Bias had re-created homicides to the amazement not only of judges but of the criminals themselves. A reconstruction of the facts surrounding the death of the Russian neumatico might be impossible because of the drifting and deterioration of the body. Rufo's death, however, took place in an apartment, not open water, and left certain irrefutable facts: Rufo's body with an oversized arterial syringe in hand, a knife with Rufo's prints stuck into a bookcase, no bruises on the dead man's body, no disheveled clothes, no signs that pointed to anything but a swift, fatal confrontation.
Nevertheless, the doctor was stymied and breathing hard. They took into account that Rufo Pinero was a former athlete, taller and heavier than Renko by twenty kilos, maybe more. The Russian was exhausted by travel, confused, clearly not athletic, though not totally obtuse. Bias thought that described Renko well enough.
They staged the attack in various ways. Rufo rising from a chair, waiting in the room, entering the door. No matter, wielding scissors and a pencil as a knife and syringe, Bias didn't come close to efficiently or rapidly dispatching Ofelia. Part of the problem was that she was so fast afoot. Ofelia had run the hundred-meter dash at school and hardly gained a kilo since then. She had a habit of shifting her weight from foot to foot that Bias found annoying.
Another problem was that the attack spoke of surprise. Yet using both a "knife" and a "syringe" made Bias slow and unwieldy. The simple act of bringing out not one but two weapons gave a victim time to react. Rufo would have been led laps around the room and table and chairs would have flown in all directions had Ofelia been the intended victim.
"Maybe it was a spontaneous attack," Bias said.
"Rufo wore a body-length jumpsuit of waterproof material over his shirt and pants. There's nothing spontaneous about that. He knew what he was going to do."
"Renko does not look quite so elusive."
"Maybe if he was threatened with a weapon."
"Two weapons."
"No," Ofelia decided, "Rufo had one weapon, the knife. The needle was the surprise for him." She hurried because she was a mere detective and Bias was a pathologist renowned for the rigor of his methodology. However, she could almost see the fight take place.
"You know how the Russian always wears that ridiculous coat. I believe the knife pinned the coat to the bookcase. There is a tear in the lapel of the coat and there was a coat fiber on the knife. I think that was when Rufo was killed."
"With the syringe?"
"In self-defense."
Bias took Ofelia's hand, which was slim on the soap-scented meat of his palm.» What is wonderful about you is your sympathy for the most unlikely people. Only, this is not an investigation. You and I are merely satisfying our professional curiosity about the physical facts of a death."
"But don't you wonder?"
"No." Bias's expression said he wasn't a sexist, but that women often lost focus.» You're concerned about the syringe. Very well, we lost one in the lab. Either Renko or Rufo could have stolen it. But why would Renko? For drugs? I found no drugs in the syringe. He stole it as a weapon? If he had any fear for his life he wouldn't have come to Havana. We must be more sophisticated. For example, consider character. Rufo was a hustler, an opportunist. He saw the syringe and took it. Renko is a phlegmatic Russian. Everything for him is a mental debate, I guarantee you. And there is the matter of physical force. Ask yourself if Renko thought he could subdue someone as strong as Rufo. Even in self-defense."
"Maybe he didn't think, maybe he reacted."
"With a syringe already in his hand? A syringe for which he had no use? A syringe that ended in Rufo's grip?"
She withdrew her hand.» Rufo pulled it out of his head. I would."
"Maybe? Would? You are speculating. Truth reveals itself more to logic than to inspiration." Bias had caught his breath.» We'll try the reconstruction again. Only, this time move a little slower. You forget that Renko is a smoker, probably a drinker, certainly out of condition. You, on the other hand, are most definitely in shape, younger, more alert. I don't see how he could start to defend himself. Maybe Rufo slipped. Ready?"
Rufo was not the sort who slipped, Ofelia thought.
She had had a good friend named Maria at the university. Some years later, Maria married a poet who declared himself an observer for human rights in Havana.
Soon Ofelia saw on television that he had been sentenced to twenty years for assault and that Maria had been arrested for prostitution. When Ofelia visited her in ja
il Maria told a different story. She said that she had just come out of her house in the morning when a man grabbed her and started to pull her clothes off at her own front door. When her husband ran out to protect her, the man knocked him to the ground and kicked in his teeth. Only then did a police car appear, driven by a single officer who took only a statement from the man, who claimed that Maria had propositioned him and, when he turned her down, that her husband had assaulted him. Maria remembered two other items: that the backseat of the car was already covered in a plastic sheet and that when the man who beat her husband got into the front of the patrol car he picked up two aluminum cigar tubes from the seat and slipped them into his shirt pocket. The cigars were his, laid aside for safekeeping. The poet and Maria hanged themselves in different prisons on the same day. Out of sheer curiosity Ofelia went back and read their arrest report, which declared that the good citizen who had come wandering by their door was Rufo Pinero.
Rufo hardly needed one weapon, let alone two.
If the issue of the syringe bothered her and the death of Maria upset her, the Russian infuriated her. The arrogance to steal Rufo's key, as if he would even know what he was looking at in a Cuban's room. To think that he could stand in front of a map of Havana in Pribluda's office and see more than a piece of paper.
For Ofelia every street, every corner on the map was a memory. For example, her first school trip to Havana when she was running hurdles at what used to be the greyhound track in Miramar, where she returned at night with Tolomeo Duran and lost her virginity on the high-jump mat. That was Miramar to her. Or the theater in Chinatown where her uncle Cucho was knifed to death in the middle of a pornographic movie. Or the Coppelia ice-cream parlor on La Rampa where she met her first husband, Humberto, while they waited three hours for a spoonful to eat. Or the Floridita bar in Havana Vieja where she caught Humberto with a Mexican woman. More than one marriage had ended because tourists came prowling for Cuban men. Divorce was easy in Cuba. She had friends who had been divorced four or five times. What would a Russian know about that?
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