Havana Red

by Leonardo Padura

  “Do you want to do the talking?”

  “Oh, so now you want me to . . . How do you decide, Mario Conde . . .?”

  “Do you or don’t you?” the Count asked dismissively, and Sergeant Manuel Palacios nodded: he’s too much of a policeman to say no, thought the lieutenant, and opened the wrought-iron gate leading to the Arayán mansion. In the garden, a sprinkler threw tenuous curtains of water over a carpet of recently mown turf, which gave off an aroma that always moved the Count: the scent of damp earth and cut grass, a telluric, simple smell, inevitably bringing back the image of his grandfather Rufino el Conde, a well-chewed, agonic cigar between his teeth, sprinkling water over the layer of sawdust in the cockfight arena, as the radio blared out poetic tirades by peasant poets. The moment he pressed the bell to the house where Alexis Arayán had lived, the Count wanted to be back inside the circular fence which defined the arena, next to Grandad Rufino, on a day when the whole world depended on a rooster’s spurs and the skill of the owner in ensuring his bird fought with an advantage. Never play if you’re evens, his grandfather had taught him, encapsulating a whole philosophy of life in one sentence.

  “Good afternoon,” said María Antonia as she opened the door.

  The policemen greeted her and the Count told her he wanted to speak to her and Alexis’s parents.

  “Why?” asked the woman, who’d switched on her alarm lights.

  “About the medallions . . .”

  “But the fact is,” she began and sirens followed lights: imminent danger, the Count registered.

  “They don’t know you found it?”

  The black woman nodded.

  “But they have to be told . . . That medallion can tell us a lot about Alexis’s death.”

  She nodded again and beckoned them in.

  “Mrs Matilde is the one at home.”

  “And comrade Faustino?”

  “He’s at the Foreign Ministry. On Monday he was to leave for Geneva, but the mistress is still so edgy . . .” she added, and the Count and Manolo saw María Antonia, the woman with wingèd feet, skim the floor as she flew into the house, after pointing them towards the big leather armchairs in the ante-room.

  “We’ll put the screws on her, Conde.”

  “Don’t you worry, this black lady knows more than me and you . . .”

  Matilde looked a very sick old woman. In the three days since the Count had informed her of her son’s death, the woman seemed to have lived twenty destructive years, devoted daily to tarnishing the veneer of vitality she’d preserved. She greeted them sleepily, and sat in another of the armchairs while María Antonia stood there, as her status as a submissive maid demanded. The Count again felt he was in the middle of a theatrical performance too much like a pre-packaged reality where everyone had their role and seat assigned. The Great Theatre of the World, what nonsense. The Tragedy of Life, yet more nonsensical. Life is a dream?

  “Now then, Matilde,” Manolo began, and it was evident he found the conversation difficult, “we’ve found out something from María Antonia that may be very important for our work, though equally it may be quite irrelevant . . . Do you follow?”

  Matilde barely moved her head. Of course she couldn’t follow, thought the Count, but he decided to wait. Manuel Palacios had canine instincts and always got back on the trail. Then the sergeant told her about María Antonia’s find and added his own conclusion: “If that medallion is yours and Alexis hid it there, well, there’s no problem. But if it’s your son’s, we think it might clear up certain things . . .”

  “Which, for example?” asked the woman, apparently awaking from hibernation.

  “Well, it’s all supposition, but if he put your medallion there, perhaps he was thinking of committing suicide and didn’t want it to be lost . . . Although there’s another possibility, which is less likely: that someone else put it there . . .”

  “When?”

  “Perhaps after Alexis’s death,” Manolo Palacios answered, and the Count looked at him. I shit on your mother, the lieutenant then said to himself, surprised by that strange possibility he hadn’t envisaged. Might the murderer have hidden the medallion there? No, of course not, the Count tried to tell himself, although he knew it was an option. But why?

  “What’s all this about, Toña?” Matilde then asked, barely turning towards the black woman. Striking a dramatic pose, María Antonia recounted her discovery, very early this morning, and her call to Alberto Marqués. Matilde turned to look at her, and finally said, “Please bring me the medallion.”

  María Antonia glided into the house, while Matilde looked at the two policemen.

  “They weren’t exactly the same. I differentiated mine from Alexis’s. The man on mine had a line etched under his left arm,” she said, and sank back into a silence which extended anxiously in the minutes before María Antonia returned. “Give it me,” Matilde then told her; she peered at the shiny figure trapped in the circle and said: “This is Alexis’s.” There wasn’t a trace of doubt in her voice.

  “Just as well,” sighed Sergeant Manuel Palacios, betrayed by the intensity of his desires, and the Count rushed to harness Matilde’s burst of vitality.

  “We also want to ask if you are sure this is Alexis’s writing.” And he showed her the page from the Bible.

  The woman stretched out her hand mechanically to reach her glasses on the corner table, and María Antonia moved to place them in her hand.

  “Yes, I think so. You look, María Antonia.”

  “It’s his,” said the servant, without recourse to spectacles, as confident, the Count supposed, as she would be in the art of identifying the creators of renowned Italian Madonnas . . . The lieutenant noted the empty ashtray, and this time held back. He spoke, looking at both women.

  “Madame, the medallion, this page Alexis tore out and wrote on, and the dress he wore on the night are very peculiar items. Did Alexis ever mention the word suicide in your presence?”

  You cannot imagine what a mother feels when she discovers her son is homosexual . . . You think everything’s been in vain, life’s come to a halt, it’s a trap, but then one begins to think it isn’t, it’s a passing phase, everything will return to normal, and the son you dreamt of as married and with children of his own will be a man like any other, and then you begin to look at every man, wanting to swap them for your son, that son you think still has time to become what you wanted him to be. But the illusion was short-lived. Alexis was never going to change, and more than once I even wanted him to die, before seeing him transformed into a homosexual, pointed at, execrated, belittled . . . I know if there’s a God in heaven he won’t forgive me. That’s why I’m telling you now, quite calmly. Moreover, I got used to the inevitable and realized that above all, he was my son. But his father didn’t. Faustino would never accept him, and converted his disappointment into contempt for Alexis. Then he preferred to stay longer outside Cuba, and leave him here with María Antonia and my mother. And that was very hard on Alexis: can you imagine what it’s like to feel different and scorned at school and at home with your own father rejecting and denying you? One day, after the theatre, Faustino and I were chatting to friends, and Alexis left in the company of a boy like himself, a thirteen-year-old, and Faustino averted his gaze to show he didn’t even want to acknowledge him. It was all too cruel. It was giving Alexis a guilt complex, and worst of all I persisted in wanting to cure him, as if it were possible to cure either that or his preference for men. I took him to several psychiatrists, and I now know that that was a mistake. It made him feel unhappier, more scorned, more different, I don’t know, as if he were the leper in the family. It was then he began to go to church and apparently nobody humiliated him there, and he also began to chat to Alberto Marqués, when he was working in the library in Marianao, and his life developed in those directions, far from me, from his family . . . He became a stranger. After he had his last row with his father and Faustino kicked him out of the house, he came barely once a week, to speak to h
is grandmother and María Antonia, and sometimes he would chat to me, but he never gave me space in his world. My son was no longer my son, do you understand now? And I was very much to blame. I helped him to be an unloved person, and he began to say perhaps it would have been better if he had not been born or had even killed himself: he said that to me one day. Is that what you wanted to know? Well, he did say that . . . And now would you be very surprised if I told you I also wish I were dead? If I told you these two hands created Alexis’s death? Tell me, can there be a worse punishment than this?

  “Well, fuck me, just as well, it looks like rain. Come on, you up there, the one who doesn’t want to be the great policeman. Tell me, where are we at now?”

  “Well, Conde . . .”

  “We now know the medallion is Alexis’s and that opens up two possibilities: he put it there or someone did who must be the murderer. Well, who could have put it there?”

  “It wasn’t María Antonia, because she wouldn’t have rung, or Matilde, because she was the only one who knew the difference between the two.”

  “Faustino?”

  “No, Conde, for fuck’s sake. He’s his father. They had their problems, but you’re prejudiced against the guy. Hey, give me a cigarette.”

  “Then we must assume the murderer is a stranger who entered the house to put the medallion there.”

  “Well, that must be it, I guess. The day of the wake and burial the house was left empty.”

  “Don’t be crazy, Manolo. What would be the point?”

  “To put us off track. What about that cigarette?”

  “Here you are . . . But the murderer didn’t know the medallions were different, or even that there were two of them, right?”

  “No, I suspect he didn’t. But if it wasn’t Alexis who put it there, it must have been an acquaintance of his.”

  “And where does that leave your theory that the murderer didn’t throw the corpse into the river because nobody would ever connect him with Alexis?”

  “Sure, it doesn’t square . . . But what if Alexis, who certainly knew they were different, told Salvador, or another of his lovers? . . . Just as well it’s raining, perhaps it will cool down . . . Over the last few days several people have visited the house: the gardener, yesterday; the gas fitter, on Thursday; Matilde’s doctor, three times after Alexis died; five, seven, eight people from Matilde and Faustino’s families before and after the funeral; Alexis’s two poofy friends, Jorge Arcos and Abilio Arango, right . . .? Some thirteen people all told.”

  “Too many. But a good crew, don’t you reckon!”

  “Yes, though the doctor had more opportunities than the others, don’t you think?”

  “Of course, one day he stayed with Matilde until she fell asleep. But why did Salvador K. go into hiding?”

  “Yes, he’s the jackpot winner so far, don’t you think?”

  “Conde, the fitter guy was new. Could it have been Salvador?”

  “Don’t be crazy, Manolo, don’t get too far-fetched. Just imagine all the coincidences necessary for Salvador to hear the oven needs fixing, to decide to substitute for the fitter, put the medallion in place, and fix the cooker while he’s about it!”

  “Conde, you’ve seen greater coincidences . . . Anyway, if he’s scarpered, it’s because he’s got dirt on his hands.”

  “Sure enough. And we’ve got the page of the Bible Alexis annotated and hid in the Piñera book . . . ‘God the Father, why do you force him to suffer so much?’ . . . What does that mean?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Don’t be crazy, Manolo, it’s easy: Alexis is suffering and feels solidarity with a fellow sufferer, right?”

  “Yes, very touching, but just tell me one thing: why did he put the page in that book?”

  “Because he’d already decided to dress up in Electra’s gear . . . He wanted to set up his own tragedy . . . That sounds queer enough, doesn’t it?”

  “If you who know about these things say so . . . And what about the coins? Have you forgotten them?”

  “Of course not, but I’ve not got the slightest fucking clue about them. What say you, Mr Genius?”

  “I told you: they were paying him something back.”

  “But what was it all about . . . Fuck, was it blackmail?”

  “How the hell do I know? While you’re at it, what do you reckon about María Antonia?”

  “Toña, black and swift . . . I don’t know what to think: that black woman knows much more than she gives away. Why do you think she called the Marquess and set up this complication over the medallion?”

  “So we’d find out.”

  “OK. Then it’s because she knows something . . .”

  “Shall we bring her in?”

  “Don’t be crazy, Manolo, your idea is to solve everything by putting the screws on people. If it were that easy, she’d have called us. I think it’s going to rain all afternoon, don’t you?”

  “Yes, look at the sky over your place . . . Well, what are we going to do till Salvador appears and tells us he left home because he couldn’t stand his wife any more?”

  “What are we going to do? Well think on it, what else can we do? Think like the couple of thinkers we are . . . Now drop me off at home, sharpish!”

  He wanted to believe the rain cleaning his windowpanes also cleaned his mind and helped him think. That’s why he was thinking, with the blurred, slippery image from his dream at the forefront of his mind, trying to get mentally exercised so he could pull away the mask behind which the truth was hiding. It was always truth. Irksome truth always hidden or transfigured: sometimes behind words, at others behind attitudes and sometimes even behind an entire life simulated and redesigned merely to hide or transfigure the truth. But he now knew it was there and he only needed an idea, a light like a spotlight able to illuminate his mind and get at the fucking truth. Truth is, he told himself, as he thought more and more, I’d like to see Polly Sparrow-bun again, God, how horrible, he remembered, and though he felt a desire to masturbate he rigorously denied himself that individualist, self-sufficient solution, now that little butt was real and tangible, not tonight, but on Sunday, she’d agreed, because on Saturday I’m going to the ballet, you know, and if it cleared up he’d take the opportunity to go to Eligio Riego’s poetry reading, and could perhaps talk to the reader, and he also thought it was a long, long time since he’d seen Skinny and that he must tell him about his first-rate encounter with the mad item who’d extracted all the semen stored in his body, as she said: “God, how horrible!” as if it were all a big mistake. What would Dulcita be like after living so long in Miami? Perhaps she’d put on weight and look like a housewife, or wear those shiny clothes all Miami people wore, or perhaps she wouldn’t, and she’d still have those beautiful legs whose distant reaches he’d tried to observe – he knew she had the tightest of butts, Skinny had told him – when his friend wasn’t looking. If she was still pretty, perfect and nice, was it right she should see poor Carlos like that? If only everything could be like it was then and Skinny were thin again! If God existed, where the hell had he been the day Skinny was wounded, why Skinny? . . . Who was it? Salvador? The doctor? Faustino? The kitchen fitter? Or perhaps one of the other ten people in the house that day? And why do I never think the Marquess might be implicated? A debt collector hired by the dramatist? Don’t get fanciful, Conde, he told himself. I could almost see him, for fuck’s sake, but he was all right there, after eating two fried fish and a piece of bread and downing more coffee, not thinking how if he didn’t buy some more he wouldn’t have any left on Monday, because everything improved with the cool brought on by rain that didn’t look as if it would stop. What would Fatman Contreras be thinking as he watched the rain? Poor Fatman, if I could consult him, he’d surely say he could help. That bastard was a good policeman. Now without Fatman and old Captain Jorrín, whose death the Count still lamented, a policeman’s job would be more difficult. Who could he consult when he had doubts? And where had they hidde
n Maruchi? What can have happened afterwards between the Marquess and the Other Boy with the unmentionable name, deported to Havana for being such a queer? He needed the Marquess to tell him the end of that adventure in which each chapter became more personal and less transvestite. Would he tell me who the Other Boy was and if he’d really peeped the day he peed in his house? What he really needed to know, he thought as he watched the water running down the panes of glass, drank a drop more coffee, lit another cigarette and looked at his watch concluding he had plenty of time to go and ingest a few of Eligio Riego’s poems that night, what he really needed to know was the end of the story of Alexis Arayán, so masked and dead in the dirty grass of the Havana Woods, pursuing a death he didn’t dare prosecute with his own hands, faking divine retribution, crossing his own Calvary without fame or heaven, a sacrifice made to measure for his sinful homosexuality, wrapped tragically in the clothing of a Havanan Electra. What a good fucker you are, darling . . .! Was it true? Nobody had ever said that before, at least not like that. And how much truth was there in what the Marquess said? In this world only Skinny told the truth, and even he didn’t always tell his friend the truth. Would Faustino Arayán tell the truth? And black María Antonia? And could it be true that he, Mario Conde, was befriending pansied, theatrical Alberto Marqués? The truth might be the bus driver with a bus-driver’s face he’d seen that morning, hitting the steering wheel with his ring, deciding whether or not to open the door to that girl begging, leaping up and down in front of the bus. What might happen later between those two people who were strangers and perhaps would never have met if the red light hadn’t stopped the bus at that exact moment? Was it a chance coincidence? The rain was still falling, streaming softly down the panes like ideas through the Count’s mind, as he looked at his hands and thought, after so much thinking, that the only truth was there and in the river sweeping everything along.