Havana Fever

The B side: You’ll remember me

The knocks echoed around the house as if summoning him back from the past. Mario Conde opened his eyes but had a slippery grip on the world: he didn’t know where he was or what the time was, and was surprised his head wasn’t aching and that day was only just breaking, which was what the red numbers 6:47 flashing on his luminous watch informed him in the most obvious way possible. More bangs on the door and his brain cleared: Skinny, he thought immediately, something’s happened to Skinny – his immediate response when he received unexpected calls in the night or early morning visits. Before he got up he shouted: “Coming”, and walked towards the door, then almost collapsed when he saw the figure of Manuel Palacios looming large.

“Something happened to Skinny?” he asked, his heart thudding.

“No, don’t worry, it’s not that.”

The relief brought by the knowledge his friend was still of this world immediately gave way to indignation.

“So what the fuck are you doing here at this fucking time of day?”

“I need a few words. Aren’t you going to put the coffee on?” asked Manolo, stepping inside.

“It better be important. Go on then, come in.”

The Count went into the bathroom, urinated the usual fetid, early morning quantities, washed out his mouth and wet his face. He dragged his feet into the kitchen and put the coffee on, an unlit cigarette between his lips. With or without a hangover, dawn was the worst moment of his day, and being forced to talk was the most excruciating of tortures.

“I came to see you because…” began Manolo, but Conde’s hand cut him short.

“After a coffee,” he insisted and pulled up the underpants that were threatening to slip off his lean waist.

Conde opened the door to his terrace and saw Rubbish curled up on his mat. His belly moved slowly in and out: he was breathing. He coughed and spat in the direction of his sink. Coming back in, he picked up the faded jeans he’d abandoned to their fate the previous night, and pulled them on, leaning on a wall where he scratched his back in the process.

He handed Manolo a coffee and sat down with his big cup sipping on a liquid able to power the re-establishing of contact with himself after waking. He lit his cigarette and peered into the vaguely squinting eyes of the uniformed captain of the detective squad.

“I’ve come to see you because we’ve got problems… Big ones.”

“What’s up?” asked the Count routinely, not prompted by any real curiosity. Manolo had sought his advice over the years in a wide range of cases and the Count wondered if he’d not gone too far this time waking him up at that ungodly hour.

“Dionisio Ferrero is dead. Murdered.”

The blast hit Conde smack in the chest.

“What was that?” Conde asked, now completely awake and convinced he’d not heard him right.

“Amalia got up at three to go to the bathroom, and was surprised to see the light on in the reception room. She thought it was her brother and went to see if he was OK. She found him in the library, bleeding from the neck. He was already dead.”

Mario Conde’s brain started to process what he’d just heard at an unlikely rate of knots. The policeman he’d once been surfaced in every cell of his body, like a latent gene that had suddenly been activated.

“Did they take any books?”

“We don’t know yet. That’s why I’ve come to see you. His sister needed an injection and is quite groggy.”

“We gave them loads of money yesterday.”

“Amalia says none is missing, it was under her mattress.”

“Let me have a quick wash and get dressed,” replied the Count, picking up the shoes he’d worn the day before. He took a shirt from his wardrobe and, as it fell over his shoulders, the real reason for Captain Manuel Palacios’s early morning call finally struck him. He padded back to the living room, where Manolo was smoking, deep in thought.

“Manolo… why did you come here?”

The detective stared at his former colleague his eyes more free-floating than ever. He looked at the cigarette he was puffing between his fingers and whispered: “Right now you and Yoyi are the main suspects. I hate to say it, but you do understand why, don’t you, Conde?”

The first spurts of blood, pumped by his heart, had hit the bottom right corner of the mirrored door, and the stains ran into those created by leaking mercury, trailing down and drawing elusive abstract art shapes, that joined and extended the pool still being fed by the last secretions from the body that had fallen to the ground. A blackish puddle had coagulated, forming a narrow-mouthed bay on the chessboard tiles, its shores opening out to the interior of the library. The chalk line marked out Dionisio Ferrero’s final position, and the first thing to catch the Count’s eye was that he’d died with his hands splayed open. Or had someone prised something out of them?

While Manolo argued in one corner of the room with the forensic doctor who’d ordered the body to be moved without his authorization, Mario Conde, under the scrutiny of a sergeant who’d been introduced as Atilio Estévañez, began to think the situation through. Apparently, Dionisio had been stabbed from behind by someone still in the library. If that were the case, it must have been a person Dionisio wasn’t expecting to attack him, otherwise he wouldn’t have turned round so tamely, and left his rearguard unprotected, as any manual of war would point out. He clearly knew his aggressor, a right-handed one at that, judging by the slash on that side of his neck. Whoever the murderer was, he’d been intent on killing his man. If it had been a fight that had got out of hand, he might have stabbed him in the back first, but the killer had gone straight for his neck arteries, trying to murder him at a stroke and simultaneously choke and silence him with the flow of blood. The idea that the murderer was someone familiar to Dionisio was supported by the fact that no door into the house had been forced, which meant, the ex-policeman presumed, that the man had opened the door to his own executioner. The only feasible explanation, among those the Count ran through, was that Dionisio, enticed by figures he’d heard in recent days, had started negotiating with someone behind his sister’s back, possibly the mysterious buyer who’d put in an appearance the previous day, as if out of the blue, or someone similar, who wasn’t even known to Amalia. The probable absence of particular books might clarify the motivation for the crime, although that spelt danger for the murderer: the missing items would be clues that could be easily tracked down.

Manolo came over and the Count looked him in the eye. The captain gestured to Sergeant Estévañez to move away.

“It’s the fucking last straw, these forensics have more power than us these days… They’re the scientists… Wait, before we go in,” he pointed to the library. “I wanted to say a couple of things so you understand…”

“A couple of things?” asked Conde, wanting to grab Manolo by the neck of his uniform.

“Conde, I know it’s beyond you… but try… for Christ’s sake.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Do you think if I really thought you were a suspect, you’d be here with me now? Don’t take the piss… But remember the high-ups don’t know you and you’ve been a renegade as far as they’re concerned ever since you left the force…”

“Look, I don’t give a shit what the high-ups think, or the lowdowns for that matter… Anyway, go on, say what you-”

“The murderer took his knife with him, judging by the kind of gash inflicted the forensic says it’s a normal kitchen knife, sharppointed but pretty blunt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He was killed between twelve and two this morning. That’ll be more precise after the autopsy. The murderer is right-handed-”

“Yes, I’d worked that out.”

“He was attacked from behind, and the angle of entry indicates that the murderer is about four inches shorter than Dionisio.”

Conde put the squeeze on his brain and recalled that the mysterious buyer described by Dionisio was a tall black man.

“About my height then,” the Count acknowledged.

“Another important detail: they cleaned the door handle. So far we’ve only found fresh fingerprints of five people…”

“Dionisio, Amalia, Yoyi, the buyer who came yesterday and myself…”

“Maybe. The footprint in the blood was Amalia’s doing, when she went to see if he was dead. They’re going to check Dionisio’s fingernails now, but I don’t think there was any fight. And we’ll take your prints, Yoyi’s and those two, and see if the fifth person’s on file.”

“What else?”

“That’s all… The high-ups want me to resolve this as soon as possible. Dionisio was in the military, part of the clandestine struggle against Batista and his friends are going to create a fuss any minute now.”

“Something they didn’t do when he was starving to death,” Conde recalled. “Dionisio worked in a corporation for two or three years and was booted out when he started to notice things he didn’t like. That was at the worst bloody moment of the Crisis… And nobody expressed any interest in him after that.”

“I’ll find out what happened in the corporation,” agreed Manolo. “OK, now let’s look at the books. See if any have gone astray…”

Manolo gave Conde a pair of nylon gloves and they went into the library, taking care not to step on the dried blood or the silhouette that had been marked out. Conde paused in the centre of the room to get an initial overall view: on the left, the section of shelves they’d yet to inspect; on the right, next to the door, the books Conde and Yoyi considered to be unsaleable, piled higgledy-piggledy on the bottom of the shelves; the books held back for a second phase in their deal, on the shelves either side of the window, also looking as if they’d been piled up in a rush; perching precariously on the shelves opposite, the three expanding piles where they’d put particularly valuable items the Count refused to let loose on the market. Almost unthinkingly he went over to the most coveted volumes, rubbed a finger twice over their spines and concluded that, if his memory wasn’t playing tricks, they were all present and correct, even the most valuable Cuban editions, each of which he remembered perfectly.

He went back to the centre of the room, closed his eyes, and tried to chase any preconceived notions from his mind. He looked around again and, apart from a few strange spaces between the books on the bottom shelves of the area they hadn’t yet inspected, he didn’t think he noticed any changes, although he regretted not scrutinizing the room more carefully the previous afternoon. At that precise moment Conde had a feeling that Dionisio or Amalia, in one of their conversations, had mentioned something crucial about the library, an important revelation now floating in his memory that he couldn’t pin down. What the hell was it? he wondered, before deciding to leave the self-interrogation until later.

Conde racked his memory as he moved towards the area they’d yet to explore, trying to recall whether at some moment Yoyi or Dionisio had taken a volume from that bookcase. Using the torch Manolo had given him he could see changes in dust levels indicating that six books had recently been removed and he noted that the remaining volumes concentrated in that section were old tomes to do with legislation, customs tariffs, trade regulations in the colonial era, and a long row of magazines specializing in business topics, all published between the thirties and fifties.

“I can’t swear to it, but I don’t think a single book is missing,” he told Manolo as he pointed out the jewels in the library, “and there are books worth several thousand dollars-”

“Did you say several thousands? For an old book? How many thousands?”

“This one,” he indicated the black spine of the Book of Sugar Mills, “could fetch ten or twelve thou in Cuba…”

“Twelve thousand dollars?” Manolo reacted in a state of shock.

“At least. And double that outside Cuba.”

“Shit,” exclaimed the Captain, shaken from head to toe by that statistic. “More or less what I’ll earn in my lifetime on my wages… They’d kill anyone for a book like that.”

“We hadn’t touched that part of the library, but six books have gone missing from there. The most valuable are still here… I don’t get it. It must be a sextet of very special books…”

“What about them?…”

“We’ll ask Yoyi and Amalia, I certainly didn’t take any from there. Perhaps Dionisio… They might be somewhere else in the library or perhaps were stolen.”

“But could they be worth even more than the others?” Manolo ventured. “If there are books that could fetch twelve thousand dollars…”

“Could be, though I doubt it. The books on that side are legal and commercial, and I don’t think any would be worth that much. I reckon that’s the case because if anyone was in it to steal books and knew the trade, they’d have removed some of those we’d put aside. If you can carry six, you can carry ten… So if six were taken, it wasn’t because they’ll fetch a lot of money, but because they were valuable to someone in particular, and that could only be because of the story they told and not because they were antiques or very rare… Unless they weren’t books but manuscripts that were important for other reasons,” he concluded, thinking that cold logic threw out of court the idea that any items in the legal and commercial section should have been in a safe: although what about the extremely slim, much coveted General Tariff for the Price of Medicines believed to be the first text printed on the island?

“So what do you reckon?”

“I expect Dionisio was so excited by the cash flow from the books that he took six he thought were very valuable and put them somewhere else or sold them behind our back and his sister’s… But that’s pure supposition. If he did do something like that, the money can’t be far away.”

“Despite what you say, perhaps those six books were valuable and the murderer settled for them, knowing you hadn’t looked at the books concerned?”

“All very plausible… Can I tell you something?” Conde observed the library silently. “When I entered this room four days ago, I had a hunch there was or is something very special here. Then when I started looking at the books, I thought it might just be that some were priceless items. I even thought there might be a manuscript or some missing piece to an unsolved puzzle… When I found the photo of the bolerista, I decided it must be that and her forgotten story… Now I’m sure it wasn’t those books or manuscript or the photo. But something that’s probably not here.”

“And what the hell might that be?”

“If I had a sixth sense… What’s more, Dionisio or his sister said something important about this library, but I can’t for the goddamn life of me remember what…”

“I’ll ask these genius scientists to tell me when those books disappeared yesterday. They can probably say if they went before or after you were working here.”

“Right you are.”

Manolo stretched his hand out and took the gloves the Count had just slipped off. The men looked each other in the eye until Manolo averted his gaze.

“It’s not right so many valuable books are kicking around here, Conde… You realize you’ve got to come with me to Headquarters? For fingerprinting and-”

“Don’t worry, Manolo. I’ll only make one request: that you’re not the one to interrogate me… Right now, as calm as I am, I’d like to take you by the neck and throttle you. You know what I’m like when I go crazy.”

Mario Conde looked round, trying to escape from Yoyi Pigeon’s imploring eyes. His temples were pounding at the degradation he was being professionally and efficiently subjected to: the forensic put each of his fingers on the inky pad in turn and lifted them, like inert fishes, on to the card set out with ten greedy spaces, where he imprinted those personal marks, prints of a man now on file, by the name of Mario Conde, alias “the Count”, born in… son of… inhabitant of… Till that precise moment, the ex-policeman had never really grasped the levels of harassment a human being suffered when experiencing that humiliating treatment, which appeared painless but was in fact similar to what cattle must feel when metal tags are attached to their ears: now, despite his obvious innocence, he’d become one more name on the handy list of people registered in police files and, with each case, his details would be run through the cold memory of a computer, in the malign hope they’d coincide with some incriminating prints.

As he used a dirty cloth to bring the colour back to his fingers, Mario Conde tortured himself thinking about the hundreds of times he’d put other men, guilty and innocent, through that same humiliating process. He suddenly grasped the reasons behind the evil, hate-filled looks he received from men he’d subjected to that ritual, because his own discoloured skin had now suffered that degradation, and he thought how he’d plied a destructive trade for far too many years. Although he’d always known the police are a necessary social evil, charged to protect and to serve – as one motto said, one of the most euphemistic ever coined – more often to repress and so protect the rights of the powerful, was their real mission in life, though it was never stated so brutally. Working hard to get his fingers spotlessly clean, Mario Conde scanned the horizons of his conscience, hoping to find some comforting evidence there that he’d been an honest cop, unable to be violent towards other men, averse to arrogance, romantically sure he was performing tasks that would help the world to become a better place, however minimally. But no such assurance came to his rescue, and he was left to sink in the mire of evidence that he had been a policeman after all – perhaps a too cerebral, if not bland example of the species – and had formed part of that uncompromising fraternity now stripped naked before him and exposing its distinctive features.

With no strength to offer resistance, he let himself be led by Sergeant Atilio Estévañez down the corridors of Central Headquarters, whose walls still echoed with stories of his miraculous solutions to complex cases he was always assigned by a mythical boss. A boss suspended for perpetuity in an underhand manner by the Internal Investigations Committee, and who went by the still unutterable name of Antonio Rangel. Had he really always been even-handed? He tried to persuade himself he had, to salvage some of his devastated self-esteem, because the Count knew they were heading to one of the rooms used for interrogations and that he was going to need massive amounts of that in there.

When he entered the oppressive cubicle, Sergeant Estévañez pointed him to a chair, behind a small formica table. Conde looked at his place, opposite where he sat when he was the interrogator, and at the mirror across the room. He imagined Manolo must have put off his conversation with Yoyi in order to sit, perhaps next to a big boss, behind that glass panel that separated the interrogation room from the room for officers and witnesses, drawing an iron line between the powerful and those stripped of all power.

“I’m sorry,” said Sergeant Estévañez, as if that were really possible, “but we have… just a few questions, more routine than anything else… Captain Palacios told me to say you’re making a statement rather than being questioned… You say that last night you were by yourself at home? Did anyone see you or ring you?…”

At that last word the sergeant was shocked to see Conde stand up, as if jet-propelled, knock his chair over, and walk towards the mirror, which he banged twice with the palm of his hand.

“Manolo, come in here.”

Conde returned to his place but, before he got there, the door opened and his former colleague came in.

“Couldn’t they talk to me elsewhere? Does it have to be in this interrogation room, like some fucking murderer?” his voice was angry and staccato. “Is he taking a statement? Don’t try to mess me around…”

“Listen, Conde, it’s different now from when we…”

“Different, my ass, my friend, my ass,” a wave of indignation restored his lost energy, sent feelings of harassment packing, and he flopped down.

“Go out for a moment, Atilio,” Manolo instructed Estévanez, then added, glancing at the mirror. “Leave me alone and switch the equipment off, right?”

Manolo waited a few seconds and rested one buttock on the edge of the table, as he used to in the old days.

“Calm down, for fuck’s sake…”

“No, I won’t. I’ve spent too much time in a state of calm. Now I’m going to defend myself.”

Manolo sighed, clicked his tongue and shook his head.

“Will you let me say how much I regret this?”

‘No,” the Count answered, not looking at him. “You must be kidding.”

“It’s a formality, Conde. We have to find things out… Do you think I ever thought you?… Don’t you realize I’ve got bosses who wouldn’t believe their own mothers?”

“I’ve never felt so humiliated…”

“I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t, you can’t. And if you can, it’s worse, because you know what you’ve done to me.”

“That’s why I’m saying I’m sorry, for hell’s sake,” Manolo lamented.

“You’ve burnt your bridges, you’ve really fucked it up…”

“Hell, Conde, it’s not that bad. Don’t start playing the victim… Does all this mean you’re not going to help me?” there was a familiar imploring tone to the captain’s voice.

“Don’t imagine I will for one minute,” replied the Count, driven by indignation, and making the most of the advantage he’d just established. “I’m going to fuck you up good and proper… because I’m going to find out who killed Dionisio Ferrero before you do. And I’m going to show all the hotshots like you and your current bosses who’s the best detective in town.”

Manolo smiled, slightly relieved. The Count was fighting back, as was to be expected.

“All right, OK. Is that what you want? We’ll see who gets there first… But I warn you: it will be a pleasure rubbing this who’s best shit in your face. Because now we’re playing hardball, I’ll remind you of something: when we worked together, on the pretext that you were my boss and my friend, you always gave me the shit: you took over our cases, and got me to check the files, like an asshole, because you didn’t think I-”

“That’s a lie,” the Count protested.

“It’s true, and you know it. But we’ll soon see who’s really who when it comes to being a detective.”

“Are you being serious?”

“What do you think? I’ll tell you one thing: I’m a policeman and I’m going to do my job, whichever heads have to fall. I don’t like bastards doing things and getting away with it… Remember that?

… So if your partner Yoyi is involved in this…”

Conde lit a cigarette and looked at Manolo. He had a sudden thought: that they might work together again, but he gave the idea short shrift.

“You still think it’s about stealing a few books?”

“I don’t know,” Manolo admitted. “I’m going to have to investigate. I’m going to find out who killed Dionisio Ferrero before you. That much I do know…”

The midday sun seemed about to melt the pavement when Yoyi Pigeon came out of Headquarters. Mario Conde threw his cigarette on the ground and bid farewell to the stone where he’d been sitting for more than two hours, in the shade of the weeping figs planted in the street that ran along one side of the building.

“What a bloody mess we’ve got ourselves into, man… These police are like crabs; they want to crawl into everything. Even the car, your gold chains… And your friend Manolo is the worst: when he gets his teeth in, he won’t let go without a struggle. I thought they were going to keep me inside I swear.”

“What’s new: they don’t have anything and are looking for scraps to help them,” pronounced the Count as they walked up the avenue. “They’re at their most dangerous when they’re flailing around. If they let you go, it means they don’t have a thing to go on.”

“Oh yes they do,” whispered Yoyi and the Count looked at him quizzically. “Dionisio had a piece of paper with my telephone number in one of his pockets. I’d written it down…”

“I don’t get you,” hissed the Count.

“I gave him my telephone number, just in case…”

“Were you going to do business behind my back?”

“No, Conde, I swear I wasn’t… It was just in case.”

“So it was just in case… You’ve fucked up, Yoyi.”

“They say I’ve got to be reachable.”

“Don’t worry about that. So have I.”

“Who might have done it, Conde?”

“So far there are four likely candidates… and you and I are two of them. Amalia and the man who paid them a visit are the others… But it might have been someone else… In any case it was someone Dionisio knew.”

“But why the fuck should we want to kill him? It would only make doing business more difficult… You know that, don’t you?”

“They know that too. They realize we didn’t need to kill Dionisio for a few books we could buy for three or four dollars a time… But we police know odd things happen. For example, a future murderer and would-be corpse agree to do business and-”

“Don’t fuck on about that: all I did was give him my telephone number… But I get you. And look what you just said: we police know…” “Did I say that?”

Yoyi nodded.

“If there was a bit of policeman left in me, they killed it off today.”

“I think they’re really riled because we earn in one day what they get in a month, and we don’t have bosses or union meetings…”

“That’s true. But there are police who like to work properly. Like Manolo…”

“So what about the lame black guy who wanted to buy their books?”

“We’re going to find out who he is,” said the Count. “That’s the only lead we have, because apparently six books were removed from the section we’d not checked out, and that’s probably what Dionisio’s murderer was after… What I can’t get off my fucking brain is that hunch I’ve had from the moment I entered the Ferreros’ library. It’s one hell of a feeling. It’s stuck right there,” and he pointed to the exact spot in his chest where the hunch was burning him, “There was something strange in there and, I don’t know why, but I still think it’s all got to do with Violeta del Río…”

“That same old tune. What the hell’s the connection between Violeta del Río and all this?”

“I don’t know, but hunches are like that sometimes you can’t make head nor tail of them, but when you try to dig deeper, all hell breaks loose.”

“I told you you were crazy, man, didn’t I?”

“You tell me three times a day,” the Count calculated and pointed to a stall selling coffee. “Are you going to help me find out who killed Dionisio, and get to the bottom of what was in that library that we didn’t see?”

Yoyi ordered two coffees and stared at the Count, feverishly stroking the bony protuberance on his chest.

“You mean we can play cops and robbers?”

“Stop pissing around, Yoyi. You’re a fucking idiot sometimes. Don’t you get it? You and I have been let out but there’s still a guilty party out there. Don’t you realize the bit of paper with your telephone number puts you in danger?”

“But I didn’t do anything. Do I have to swear that to you?”

“Don’t fucking swear anything: start helping me. You’re going to find out where the tall black guy interested in buying books came from and I’m going to see Silvano. Isn’t your talent getting good deals? Well, the best deal now is to play to our strengths, because we know things they don’t. We two are going to find out what went on last night at the Ferreros’ place. Fucking hell, this coffee tastes of shit…”

24 December

My love:

What else can I wish you, on such a day as this, than for you to be as happy as can be, and to enjoy being with your children, wherever you now live. What else could I desire (it is what I long for most) than for you to share that happiness with me, with all your children, unburdened by secrets that now weigh far too heavily, and with eyes on the future, that no longer stare into the past.

The Christmas and New Year holidays always make me more vulnerable, and this year I’ve felt more fragile than ever. Some thing strange is happening, I don’t know if it is the time of year or a backlog of sorrow, but at night I hear voices that speak of guilt, sin, betrayal, sometimes so vividly that I am forced to switch on my reading lamp and look around me but then I only find the same loneliness.

I think all this began to stir after the visit from that persistent policeman, just over a week ago, do you remember? the one leading the investigation. The damned fellow came to see me to tell me exactly what you think: he is convinced something happened that he cannot get to the bottom of, but he is prepared to swear that she didn’t commit suicide, even when he hasn’t the slightest proof to back his idea. After saying that, he explained that in fact he had come to tell me the case was going to be closed on orders from his superiors, or, in other words, the investigation will not continue, in spite of his doubts. Nonetheless, while he was drinking his cup of coffee, he asked me ever so many questions, almost all the ones he’d asked before, about that woman’s friendships, possible enemies, unfinished business, drug addiction and, naturally, possible suicide motives. I told him yet again what I know, as sincerely as I knew how but not mentioning other matters I still think are unrelated to her death: you know what I’m referring to.

But that man’s suspicions, your doubts and the voices that speak of guilt, are undermining my convictions. Although there is something I am totally clear about (my innocence and, I hardly need to say this, yours as well), I have begun to think about what happened over that period of days, looking for a black spot, a detail that does not fit the usual patterns, to try to find, if one existed, an indication that her death might have been provoked by an individual who desired it.

I have thought, naturally, that someone like her, in spite of the unhappy past as an orphan girl she told you about, as a decent girl desperate to sing and be successful, must have left behind her enemies and hatred. So, the change you brought into her life might have sparked resentment in somebody determined to make her pay for a happiness she thought was undeserved.

What is terrible, given everything you and I know, is how the portrait of this individual keeps evoking my own face. The knowledge I am innocent allows me dismiss that false image, but does not help me find another, if one exists. Could one of her girlfriends have been the guilty one? Perhaps that good-for-nothing who used to visit her and even accompany her on her trips to spoil herself with your money, who even dared to pass herself off as a respectable lady when everyone knew what she did in life… But why should she want to? Was she really her friend? Could envy at your lover’s good fortune be sufficient to push her into preparing that road to death? She had opportunities enough: she went in and out of that woman’s house whenever she wanted, even used to spend afternoons at the flat with your friend Louis. But I don’t think envy is motive enough, because if you work through it in logical fashion, by killing her, she would have killed the goose laying the golden eggs, since when that woman became your wife, as you had decided, the other ne’er-do-well could continue to profit from her old friendship, thanks to which she’d succeed in gaining God knows what benefits, apart from the ones she already enjoyed because you were grateful to her for introducing you to that woman in the first place.

28 December

My love:

The voices pursue me, obsessed as I am by finding out. I put this letter to one side a few days ago because a frightful headache prevented me from writing. Today, I feel calmer and I will try to finish it, but only to say that a voice woke me up last night and told me it’s my fault because I don’t know what I ought to, what I would never wish to have known. What was it referring to? I don’t know, but I swear to you that, with or without those voices, with or without your agreement, I will continue to search for my only solution: the truth. Although it may be the most terrible of truths.

I hope you enjoy a lovely end to the year. We’ve experienced twelve wretched months, with all manner of misfortune, exacerbated by your being so far away for more than three months now. I hope these festivities and holy celebrations bring a little peace to your soul and that you have a happy respite. In my solitude, I console myself as ever with the idea that we will soon be into another year, and that it will be a year to favour us all.

I really hope you are very happy, as happy as one can be, because I love you…

Your Nena

One of the blessings Mario Conde never ceased to be thankful for was the fact he had three or four good friends. The almost fifty years spent in this world had taught him, sometimes perversely, that few states are as fragile as the state of friendship, and hence he fiercely protected his many layered camaraderie with Skinny Carlos, Candito and Rabbit, because he considered it to be one of his most precious gifts from life. Several years earlier, Andrés’s departure to the United States had provoked a sense of desertion among the remaining friends, but, at the same time, it had had the beneficial secondary effect of bringing them closer together, welding their connections, making them more tolerant of each other and transforming them into life members of the party of eternal friendship.

The permanent threat represented by Carlos’s physical deterioration meant the Count never failed to safeguard the time he spent near his old friend, dedicating all the hours he could to him, aware it was the best way to act in preparation for a future emptiness, the arrival of which drew nearer by the day.

In spite of Carlos’s insistence that his friend should set time aside to write the stories he invented and frequently promised to put on paper, the Count felt strangely fulfilled when he spent his evenings and nights in lethargic conversations meandering through the unpredictable labyrinths of memory, obstinately chasing a no doubt imaginary state of grace they dredged up from a rosetinted past, spurred on by dreams, projects and desires reality had crushed long ago. In these repetitive exchanges, refusing to discover anything new, they allowed themselves to be swept along by the illusion they’d once been really happy, and while they spoke, drank and reminisced, put despair to one side and resurrected the happiest moments from their sad lives.

That night the Count lamented Rabbit’s absence, then started to tell Carlos and Candito about the recent events he’d been implicated in and his corrosive reflections on the duties of a policeman that had come to him when he was being put on file. He concluded by telling them of the decision he’d taken that afternoon after the conversation with Silvano Quintero: to start searching for the once famous Lotus Flower, real name Elsa Contreras, about whose existence the journalist had received some vague but reliable information about ten years ago.

“So, after all that, you’re back to being a policeman, but on false pretences?” smiled Carlos as he poured himself a shot of the genuine rum they could now drink thanks to the Count’s economic good health.

“Ironies of destiny, as a good bolero might say. Although you said it: on false pretences.”

“Do you want me to help you look for her?” Candito ventured, and the Count shook his head.

“No, not now. I might need you to give me a hand later, but I’d rather start off by myself. I don’t want to kick up any fuss and frighten her off.”

“And do you really think that business is connected to what’s just happened?” enquired Carlos.

“How the hell should I know, Skinny? I’d certainly like to find out what happened to Violeta del Río. Yesterday I promised to forget her, but now she won’t budge from here…” and he hit his forehead with the palm of his hand, “at least until I know why the fuck she committed suicide. Or had it committed for her…”

“You’ve got it bad,” said Candito and the Count nodded vigorously, weighing up if that was the moment to relate the strange story of his father’s platonic love affair. But he opted to keep that under wraps.

“From the minute I first saw that picture something strange happened: it was as if I’d once known something about her and had forgotten whatever it was. I don’t know where the idea came from, but if I find out what happened to her, I’ll probably discover why I had that feeling… Later on, when I heard the record, she really did start to complicate things.”

“I’d liked to have seen her sing as well. Nobody sings like that nowadays, do they?” asked Carlos.

“Maybe it’s because we’ve spent the last twenty years listening to the same old singers?” asked Candito.

“Twenty?” reflected the Count. “You mean thirty plus… Fuck, you know, we’re just a bunch of old farts.”

“Do you remember, Conde, when they shut the clubs and cabarets because they said they were dens of vice and relics of the past?” recalled Carlos.

“And as a reward they sent us to cut cane in the harvest in 1970. All that sugar that was going to save us from underdevelopment at a stroke,” Candito remembered. “I was cutting cane for four months, every single day God brought.”

“I sometimes think… How many things did they take away, ban, refuse us for years in order to catapult us into the future and make us better?”

“A hell of a lot,” declared Carlos.

“And are we any better for it?” enquired Red Candito.

“We’re different: are we three-legged or one-legged? I’m not exactly sure… The worse thing was we weren’t allowed the chance to live to the rhythms people were enjoying on the rest of the planet. To protect us…”

“Do you know what most pisses me off?” Rabbit interrupted, sticking his teeth round the door. “They killed dead our dream of going to Paris at the age of twenty, which is the right time to go to Paris… Now they can stick Paris up their asses and Brussels too, if there’s room.”

“What kept you, Rabbit?” the Count welcomed him, handing him the bottle of rum, after he’d helped himself.

“All the time, day in, day out we’ve been living out our responsibility for this moment in history. They were bent on forcing us to be better,” said Rabbit, but the Count shook his head, hardly able to restrain himself.

“And why do so many young people now want to be rastas, rockers, rappers and even Muslims, and dress up like clowns, abuse themselves putting rings everywhere and even tattooing their eyelids? Why do so many do the hardest drugs, why do so many become whores, pimps, and transvestites, and wear crucifixes and voodoo necklaces though they don’t even believe in their own fucking mothers? Why do so many cynics swear one thing and believe another, and why do so many live by thinking up what they can steal to get money so they don’t work themselves to death? Why do so many just want to leave the island?”

“I have a name for that,” the group’s historian picked up the baton: “historical exhaustion. After being so exceptional, so historical and so transcendent, people get tired and want a bit of normality. As they can’t do that, they decide to be abnormal. They want to be like other people, not like themselves, that’s why they are rastas, rappers or whatever, and drug themselves up to the eyeballs… They don’t want to belong, don’t want to be forced to be good. Above all they don’t want to be like us, their fathers, a load of failed shits…”

“These aren’t the ones that piss me off most,” the Count reflected. “The ones who make me want to vomit are those who look perfect and trustworthy but are in fact a bunch of opportunists.”

Rabbit nodded and sipped on his rum. Something prickly and sour refused to go down his throat.

“Have you ever considered what kind of place we were lucky enough to be born in? Have you or haven’t you?” he waited for an answer that never came and spelt it out. “Well, you should. This is a country pre-destined to exaggeration. Christopher Columbus started the rot, when he said that this was the most beautiful land ever seen by man and all that jazz. Then we had the geographical, historical misfortune, to be where we were when we were, and the bliss or bad luck to be like we are. And you see, there was even a time when we produced more wealth than this island needed and we thought we were wealthy. Aside from that considerable misconception, we have produced more geniuses per inhabitant and square yard than we had a right to and long thought we were better, more intelligent, stronger… This exaggeration is also our greatest burden: it threw us into the midst of history. Remember how Martí wanted to put the whole world to rights from here, the whole world mind you, the entire planet as if he’d got his hands on the blasted lever Archimedes was after. And you can see the consequences… A decent sense of history and shocking memory, lethargy and predestination, grandeur and frivolity, idealism and pragmatism, as if balancing out virtues and defects, right? But exhaustion follows all that. Exhaustion at being so historic and so predestined.”

“Historical exhaustion,” the Count savoured Rabbit’s definition, downed his rum and looked at his friends, model sufferers from acquired historical exhaustion syndrome: Skinny who was no longer skinny, his spine destroyed in a war, that was of course historic, but about which nobody now spoke; a gawky Rabbit, his increasingly long teeth sticking our from a skull much in evidence, still able to theorize on insular exaggeration but who’d never written any of the history books he’d dreamt of writing; Red Candito, historically anchored in the noisy tenement where he’d been born, going hungry ever since he gave up his countless illicit endeavours and insisted on looking for transcendental answers in a chronicle written 2,000 years ago, and which spoke of an apocalypse bristling with terrible punishments for all those who didn’t deliver their soul up to the Saviour. And finally, how could the absent presence, Andrés, possibly have concluded that to erase his nostalgia and mock his historic fatigue, it was best never to return to the island? Or even see another baseball game in the Havana stadium? Or even come to a drinks, music and conversation session with those friends, who, in spite of their mutilations, frustrations, beliefs and disbeliefs, historic exhaustion and physical and intellectual hunger, never said no to a night of shared evocations, vaguely but latently aware that if they had given up that friendship they’d perhaps have forgotten what living was a long time ago?

“Life was passing us by on all sides,” said Rabbit, “and to protect us they gave us blinkers. Like mules. We should only look ahead and stride towards the shining future awaiting us at the end of history and, obviously, we weren’t allowed to get tired on that road. Our only problem was that the future was very far off and the path went uphill and was full of sacrifices, prohibitions, denials and privations. The more we advanced, the steeper the slope and more distant the shining future, which was fading quickly anyway. The bastard had run out of petrol. I sometimes think they dazzled us with all that glare and we walked past the future and didn’t even see it… Now we’re halfway round the track and are going blind, as well as bald and cirrhotic, and there’s not even all that much we want to see anymore.”

Listening to Rabbit, the Count felt the bittersweet taste of immeasurable sadness congeal in his mouth.

“You can always seek out God,” Candito pronounced.

“Nobody’s up there looking after us, Red. We’re completely on our own,” the Count contradicted him.

“Don’t you believe in miracles?”

“Not any more. But I do trust in my hunches. And that’s why I won’t fail to find out what happened to Violeta del Río,” concluded the Count, whose mouth was then overwhelmed by the feeling he still lacked a really plausible motive, and so he spelt out the first that came to his lips. “I want to find out why history swallowed her up.”

Not worried why he was doing so – and not really interested in finding out – perhaps driven by a mixture of alcohol and the persistent allure of certain phantoms and fascinations, Conde hailed a taxi going in the opposite direction to his house and asked the driver to take him to the corner of Twenty-Third and L, or any other street corner that might encompass the same evocative ciphers. He was pleased to see that even at that late, late hour of the night, the fast-beating heart of the city was still packed with spaced-out youths and adults trawling for illicit offerings. In the doorway and vicinity of the cinema, and on the other side of the street, next to the iron rails protecting the ice creamery, an insomniac crowd slipped past under the sleepy gaze of various pairs of policemen. Gays of every tendency and category, rockers with no stage or music, savage hunters and huntresses of foreigners and dollars, bored birds of the night with one, two and even three hidden agendas seemed anchored to that spot, not fearing the imminent dawn, as if hoping something out of the blue might drag them down the street, perhaps out to sea, or maybe up into the sky.

The new life re-surfacing in the city, after the deep lethargy it was plunged into by the Crisis’s darkest years, had a pace and density the ex-policeman couldn’t pin down. Rappers and rastas, prostitutes and drug addicts, the newly rich and newly poor were redrawing the geography of the city, now stratified according to the number of dollars possessed and which was beginning to seem more normal, although it always made him wonder which was for real, the life he’d known in his youth, or the one he was now contemplating in his mature, illusion-free years

Conde wasn’t particularly looking for a right answer, and moved away from the night-time bustle, taking to the slope of La Rampa. The chronological boundaries of nostalgia were set way beyond his most distant memory, and so he tried to find the still visible traces of a dazzling, perverted city, a distant planet, familiar from hearsay, heard on forgotten records, discovered in infinite reading, always appearing, peopled with lights, clubs, cabarets, tunes and characters he now knew Violeta del Río must have been familiar with almost fifty years ago, her hopes soaring, in search of her place in the sun.

He walked non-stop past the revitalized luminous sign of The Vixen and the Crow, where she’d once sung, and which was now off limits to anyone not carrying the five US dollars necessary to guarantee a seat; he contemplated the barred and bolted entrance to The Grotto, which didn’t betray the slightest echo of the late night chords that echoed in that musical cave when the sun was about to rise; he looked with no particular emotion at the charred ruins of the old Montmartre, proletarianly re-christened Moscow and prophetically devoured by fire years before that empire disintegrated; he passed by the soulless entrance to the Las Vegas cabaret, where a man, around his own age, caught his attention, looking distinctly nostalgically at the place that was now boarded up where for so many years you could drink your last cup of coffee in the early hours; he walked without a glimmer of hope past the garlanded mansion of the White Peak, no longer enticing passersby with graceful guitar arpeggios; he walked up towards the now darkened Red Room at the Capri, its doors shut and chained, and finally entered the gardens at the National Hotel, under the gaze of grumpy security guards equipped with walkie-talkies, who let him off and through without asking a single question, although they visually arrested him on charges of being Cuban, not possessing dollars or belonging to that scene; he lingered for a few minutes in front of the luxurious, equally dollarized portico of the Parisién, the cabaret where the immortal Frank Sinatra once performed – to an audience of Luciano, Lansky and Trafficante – as well as a young, now forgotten woman who went by the name of Violeta del Río and sang for the supreme pleasure of singing.

In front of the door to this cabaret, reserved for the tropical pleasuring of ephemeral foreign visitors, accompanied by their willing, nationally produced and tariffed escorts, Conde felt, for the first time in his almost forty-eight years, that he was wandering through an unknown city, one that didn’t belong to him, and one moving him on, shutting him out. That cabaret wasn’t his; nothing about its visible decor enticed him or induced nostalgia. The night air, the long walk and feeling of alienation had freed him from the spell of alcohol, but an annoying lucidity had commandeered his battered feelings, set on making him understand that, except for the odd almost faded memory, Violeta del Río and her world of lights and shadows no longer lived at that address, and had departed leaving no other signs of life beyond the physical remains of those boarded up, burnt-out or inaccessible scenarios, even in the memory of a man stubbornly opposed to ultimate oblivion. The Count’s fascination with that world had received the kiss of death, and he realized that the only way he could revive it was by giving himself the satisfaction of finding out the final truths about Violeta del Río and the reasons why she’d turned up inside a book of impossible recipes he’d found in an equally impossible library.

With sadness spreading through his soul, the Count returned to the street and contemplated the vista of buildings that were once pretentiously modern and were now bent double by premature senility. He observed, almost loathed the young woman with the permanent smile who, back to the wall, was letting an old, Nordic-looking guy whom she called “mi amor” slaver all over her. He listened to the din created by young lads coming up O Street as they let out cries of potentially drug-inspired glee and kicked at sacks of rubbish they encountered en route. He was alarmed by a gleaming Lada that sped past, its sound system blasting out at top volume, keen to show off its ostentatious, prefabricated happiness. He went down towards Twenty-Third and watched two well-equipped policemen walk by, as jumpy as their gigantic Alsatians. He looked around, not having the slightest idea and hadn’t the slightest idea what direction he should take to exit the labyrinth his city had become and realized that he too was a ghost from the past, a member of a species galloping towards extinction, witnessing, on this night, lost in the city, the evidence for genetic failure as embodied by himself and his brutal dislocation between one world that had faded and another that was fast disintegrating. All in all, thought Mario Conde, Yoyi wasn’t wrong, though he hadn’t got it quite right: it wasn’t that he seemed so incredible he was like a lie, but rather that he was a living lie, and his whole life had been one stubborn, if unsuccessful, manipulation of reality.

The Calzada de Monte and the only in name hopeful calle Esperanza form an inverted wedge, ready to gouge the most flaccid urban flesh, opening up the entrails of what was once the old walled town of Havana. The Calzada and calle Esperanza almost create a vortex in the barrio of the Single Market neighbourhood, until they peter out on the bustling calle del Egido, a perpetually run-down triangle that still throbs on the city map. Over the centuries its guts have accumulated the human, architectural and historic debris generated by a bullying capital always marching westwards, and moving away from that bastion of poorly paid proletarians, lumpens of every stripe, whores, drug traffickers and emigrants from other regions of the island and the world, all eager for a slice of the action that will almost always elude them. The Calzada, its shops run by Lebanese, Syrians and Polish Jews selling remnants, second-hand clothes and a selection of trinkets, marked out the frontier between the palaces, luxurygoods shops, parks, fountains, theatres, dance halls and hotels of Havana’s splendid commercial centre, and that other down-atheel area, the adjacent Atarés and Jesús María barrios, home to poor blacks and whites, in cheap buildings with no pretence of style, on narrow streets, their inhabitants crammed together and ground down by poverty and marginalization. In the memories of Havanans that neighbourhood of the city, frequently invaded by black exhalations from the Tallapiedra power station, poisoned by leaking butane gas and besieged by effluvia from the bay’s most polluted streams, was like territory conceded to infidels they never expected or intended to reconquer. History seemed to have passed down its winding streets and never stopped, while generation after generation hoarded pain, oblivion, rage and a spirit of resistance that expressed itself in illicit, sinful, violent acts, ruthlessly seeking to survive, at any cost and by any means.

In his years in the force, Mario Conde suffered immensely when an investigation led him to that Havana backwater where nobody had ever known, seen or heard anything, where people poured their hatred into scornful looks they directed at the representatives of a distant establishment that always repressed them. Violence, the means to vent chronic frustration, was the everyday currency used to repay debts or insults and lawlessness had long ruled that ravaged territory, where to be frail was the worst illness imaginable.

Since the day he’d entered the book trade, the Count hadn’t been back to that rough corner of the city: he knew in advance he’d have been wasting his time – and would perhaps have lost his wallet, shoes and other bodily possessions – if he’d dared to meander down its streets, searching suspiciously for something as exotic as a book for sale. Consequently, although he’d assumed the darkest days of the Crisis must have decimated that Bermuda triangle, he hadn’t imagined how hard the degeneration from the years of the worst shortages – bad times the country had now supposedly overcome – had hit.

Conde abandoned his taxi at the miserable, downtrodden crossroads of Cuatro Caminos – that once mythical location, where a restaurant stood on each corner, competing in quality and prices with its equidistant colleagues – and walked down a couple of alleyways in search of calle Esperanza. He immediately began to understand Yoyi Pigeon’s claim that Chinatown was only the first circle in the urban hell, because a first glance made it clear he was penetrating the heart of a world of darkness, a shadowy bottomless pit that was barely held in check by any wall. Breathing that atmosphere of hidden danger, he progressed through a labyrinth of impassable streets, like a city ravaged by war, strewn with potholes and debris, tottering buildings, cracked beyond repair, propped up by wooden supports rotted by sun and rain, containers overflowing with putrefying mountains of rubbish, where two men, still in their youth, sniffed after any recyclable bounty. Packs of mangy dogs wandered about, with nothing in their stomachs to shit on the street, alongside raucous sellers of avocados, brooms, clothes pegs, piles of torches, second-hand lavatories and wood for cooking; next to hard-faced women, sharp as knives, all geared up in lycra Bermudas that got tighter and tighter, ideal garments for emphasizing the quality of the nipples and sex on proud display. The feeling that he was crossing the borders a land of chaos warned him he was witnessing a world on the brink of an Apocalypse that it would be difficult to escape.

No sooner was he past those borders than Conde realized he’d set himself an almost impossible mission. None of the ploys he’d considered – introducing himself as a journalist, a distant relation of someone, a public health officer looking for an AIDS victim, or a desperate hunter after rented rooms – was going to help once he’d asked his initial questions and revealed his real concerns. So, his only chance of finding the faint trail of Elsa Contreras, Lotus Flower the dancer, resident in the area as Silvano Quintero had recalled – was the hope that his old informant Juan Serrano Ballester, alias Juan the African, was around in the barrio and not in prison – his normal location.

When he was in front of the tenement in the dead-end callejón Alambique where Juan the African had been born and lived the few years of freedom he’d enjoyed in his lamentable existence, Conde was pleased to see nobody in the entrance. He immediately wondered why that man had bothered to spend his life stealing, defrauding and looting if it’d never got him beyond that elemental state: it was a three-storey building from the beginning of the twentieth century and its sombre, balcony-less façade strongly resembled that of a prison. Where there’d once been a front door supposedly separating the street from the passage and stairs leading to the higher flats, only a gaping hole now remained, and the Count imagined how, in the direst days of the Crisis, the wooden frame and door must been sacrificed to a wood-burning stove. Steam from pig shit and urine rose from the floor, while equally fetid water dripped down the stairs, no doubt leaking from dilapidated sewage pipes. Juan lived on the third floor of that phalanstery, in a half room he managed to retain after ceding the remainder of an already oppressive flat to the country girl from Guantanamo who’d borne him twins. As the room was at the back of the building, you had to negotiate a narrow door-lined passage, one part of which had collapsed in some remote prehistoric era and been replaced by two planks that gave access to the back rooms. The Count filled his lungs to avoid taking a breath on his journey across the planks, arms spread like an intrepid tightrope walker. When he was finally opposite the door the African had added to the passage, Conde wondered whether his stubborn quest for the truth about the fate of a lost songstress made any sense at all, and again logic said it didn’t, though something inexplicable compelled him to knock on the door.

When Juan recognized him he almost fainted. He was only two months out from his last stay behind bars, after a three-year sentence for repeated fraud. Seeing that policeman from a dark corner of his past in his house could only signal impending disaster.

“Don’t be scared, for fuck’s sake, I’m not in the police any more,” the Count quickly explained, while the other man shook a jet-black head profiled like a Dahomey sculpture. “I swear, man, I’ve been out more than ten years…”

“You swear on your mother?” the African said threateningly, sure nobody would take his mother’s name in vain unless it was a very last resort.

“I swear on my mother,” the Count replied, reminded of Yoyi and his oaths. “I need your help: I can pay cash,” he added, tapping his pocket.

“Did they kick you out of the police?”

“No, I left because I wanted out.”

The African half shut his eyes to process that information.

“I get it: now you work for foreigners and run one of those so-called corporations, right? You getting lots of the green’uns?”

“I don’t run a thing. Can I come in?”

“Swear again you’re not a policeman. Come on, swear on your children, who you’ll find dead when you get home if you’re lying…”

“I swear.”

In his peculiar situation, the Count had decided it was better to tell the African the truth, or at least part of the truth related to his search for the lost past of Violeta del Río, however incredible it might seem to a rational ear. While he told the story, he tried to imagine how his ex-informant could help him, but he’d only just started to say why he was so interested, when the man dashed his hopes of a quick fix by stating he knew the names of every stray dog in the barrio, but had never heard of Elsa Contreras, let alone any Lotus Flower.

“You’re fucked. I can’t help you,” Juan concluded, a happy smile in his bloodshot eyes, no doubt pleased to think that, now he could be no help, the Count would beat a quick retreat back the way he’d come.

“I need to be sure that woman doesn’t live around here. I’ve got to talk to someone who really knows this barrio. Or don’t you want to earn yourself a few pesos? Look, can’t you introduce me as your ex’s cousin who’s going to spend a few days with you… I don’t know, because I’ve just got out of the clink, OK?”

The African laughed, almost roared.

“You gone mad? Conde, everybody here’s just out of the cage. What prison do I say you were in if nobody saw you, whichever one you were in?”

Conde agreed it wasn’t a good idea, and then the African suggested: “I know, we’ll say you’re a cousin of the girl from Guantanamo, but have come from Matanzas… Your business was killing cows and the police were after you and you came here to let things cool down. What do you reckon?”

“I’d buy that.”

“But you can’t stay here. There’s no room…” He opened his arms wide and almost touched the walls of the two and a half by four-yard hole.

“I can leave at night and come back in the morning.”

“And as soon as you find the woman, you disappear…”

“I’ll disappear,” the Count agreed

“If that’s it, then OK. Now down to the serious stuff: how much is the job worth?”

“A thousand pesos,” said the Count, sure such a figure would clinch it.

“I don’t put my life on the line for a thousand.” The African yawned and stroked one of the three scars on his face, that were blacker and shinier than the rest of his skin. “Two thousand, and you pay for food and everything else.”

“OK,” replied the Count without flinching.

“Right then, to get a feel for the place, let’s have a few drinks down the street, then we’ll eat in Veneto’s underground chop shop. He knows about everything that moves around here. I’ll make sure he sits down with us and you find a way to find out about that woman without him realizing you’re really after something else. But be warned: if they smell a rat, we’ll both be done for…”

“It’s not such a big deal,” replied the Count, and the African shrugged his shoulders.

“Give me the money. I need it right now.”

Conde looked at the ex-convict and shook his head.

“I might seem crazy or an asshole, but I’m not…”

“All right, give me half,” the African almost pleaded. “Look, just so you know: people here want my guts. I did a bit of business, it went bad and I owe them. If I can give them something on account, they’ll calm down a bit. If not, I can’t set foot in the street… Those guys don’t believe anything…”

Conde pondered for a moment and realized he didn’t have much choice.

“All right, I’ll give you half. And the rest when the woman puts in an appearance.”

When they went out into the street, the raging midday sun had dispersed the crowds. Music now filled the spot once occupied by people, flooding the space, melodies criss-crossing, competing in volume to blast the minds of anyone who risked entering that atmosphere steeped in sones, boleros, meringues, ballads, mambos, guarachas, hard and soft rock, danzones, bachatas and rumbas. The houses with entrances onto the street, open windows and doors, tried to take in a little of the warm air, while men and women of all ages rocked on their chairs, enjoying the artificial breeze from fans and the deafening music, while, resigned to their lot, they watched dead midday hours pass by.

They walked into a tenement and in the inside yard several men were drinking beer, equally gripped by the music. A mulatta in her forties, with coloured beaded plaits and sheathed in lycra pants straining to contain the excessive poundage of her buttocks, seemed to own the establishment and she stared straight at the African when she saw him come in with a stranger.

“Two lagers and don’t piss around. This guy’s my buddy.”

“I couldn’t care fucking less if he’s your buddy: I just don’t like strangers around here…” the mulatta shouted, looking defiantly at the Count.

“Africa, let’s go fucking elsewhere, she can stick her beers up her ass,” reacted the Count, half-turning round to leave, when a voice from behind stopped him in his tracks.

“Hey, friend, not so fast.” The Count looked round. Michael Jordan was now standing next to the African, or at least his double was: a huge, brawny black guy, with a shaved head, wearing the uniform of the Chicago Bulls. “This woman talks a lot of shit.”

“Why all the secrecy, if the whole barrio knows you sell beer?” asked the Count, accepting the freezing beer on offer from Michael Jordan, whose other hand held one for the African.

“I’ll have that lager please,” Juan demanded, smiling.

“So you’re safe to walk the streets?” enquired Michael Jordan, handing it over.

“Next stop is Veneno’s. I’m getting there.”

“Pleased to hear it,” said Michael Jordan, smiling in turn, “you’re ugly enough when alive, dead you’d scare the living daylights…” and he flashed the whitest of smiles at the Count.

Three beers on, Mario Conde had explained how rustling and slaughtering cattle worked in the increasingly scalped plains of Matanzas and was himself informed about the spots in the barrio where they sold basketball kit, baseball and football shirts, powdered milk, cooking oil and the site of the best supplied stock of electrical goods in the city, all sourced directly from nearby warehouses in the port. By his fifth he had a pretty accurate idea where and when in the barrio you could get marijuana or pills to pop, and discovered it was possible to buy crack and coke, and what the going rates were for: head-downers specializing in fellatio, slags, who came the cheapest but highly unrecommended, the Juanitas-of-all-trades, ready for anything and down-on-their-luck whores, easy goers who could be hunted down, in the late early hours, sometimes at very reasonable price (though always in dollars), if they were desperate after a night of wasted incursions into city hotels and tourist spots… They lived a life that was at once frantic and slow, with time to drift along and time to struggle by, in that ghetto, the streets of which were periodically visited by a couple of police on the beat or a patrol car, as a reminder that the cage doors were always open.

“Let’s eat. I’m ravenous,” suggested the African, and they went back into the noise and the sun.

They crossed filthy streets, each as filthy as the next, until they clambered through a hole in a ramshackle wood and zinc wall that barely hid the ruins of a three-storey building. It now had neither roof nor mezzanine, only a skeletal frame, where small zinc and canvas panels hung, held in place by wire and wooden props, attempting to shelter a few shapeless objects and some huge cardboard boxes.

“The people living there don’t have homes. Most have just arrived from Oriente. They nearly all drive taxi-bikes. They sleep on their bikes, shit on bits of card they throw into the rubbish, and wash when they can,” explained the African.

“And they’re allowed to live there?” the Count ingenuously tried to bring a little logic to bear.

“Every now and then they pull their roofs down and chuck them out, but they’re back within a week. Them or others… It’s all about not starving to death…”

They walked through the ruins and the African pushed a wooden door and poked his head inside. A few minutes later a mulatto swathed in gold chains appeared astride the doorstep.

“This is my mate, Veneno,” said Juan, turning towards the Count. “And this is my buddy, the Count,” he told Veneno, who looked critically at the stranger and without uttering a word moved a few steps away to the back of the demolished building. Conde couldn’t overhear the conversation between the two men, but he did see Juan take out the wad of banknotes he’d only just handed him and give it to Veneno, who took it but hardly jumped for joy.

Sitting in that clandestine open-air eatery ruled over by Veneno, bent on extracting from the Count every last cent he could, the African ordered the most expensive dishes on offer: lobster enchilado and steak in bread crumbs. When they were on their post-coffee beers, Juan invited Veneno to chat with them for a while and, casually, mentioned a cousin of the Count’s mother who, according to his friend, lived in the barrio.

“Elsa Contreras?” asked Veneno, gulping his beer down. Veneno was a light-skinned, almost white mulatto, keen to show off his prosperity by displaying numerous teeth crowned in eighteen carat metal, three chains with medallions (living in harmony with a couple of coloured bead necklaces), bejewelled rings, two bracelets and a Rolex of similar golden purity that all told must have weighed in at a good four pounds. Such a load of precious metal couldn’t be the fruit of earnings from the culinary delights of that down-atheel eatery and the Count imagined that was only the most visible illicit business Veneno engaged in, intuitions he put to one side to light a cigarette and drink his beer.

“She was a real character. Nobody mentioned her much at home though, because she was a whore and danced naked at the Shanghai…”

“The girl must be older than an Egyptian mummy, right?” Veneno asked.

“Must be eighty, I reckon, if she’s…”

“I really haven’t a clue. If you’re in the barrio a few days, I’ll find out.”

“Great. I’d like to pay her a visit…” said the Count, pointing a hand and three erect fingers at the waiter.

That night, while he scrubbed himself in the shower, trying to wash off the filth, infamy and sordidity in which he’d spent one of the strangest days of his life, Mario Conde again wondered how a perverted universe like that could possibly exist in the heart of Havana: a place where people lived who’d been born at the same time, in the same city, as he, but who seemed alien, almost unreal in their level of degeneracy. The experiences he’d suffered in a few hours surpassed his wildest predictions and he now wondered if he’d have it in him to continue his nauseating quest.

After eating and drinking several beers at Veneno’s, the African demanded a second advance of 300 pesos that, so he said, were indispensable if the search was to go on. Trapped in a net of his own making, the Count separated out a couple of twenty notes and handed his material and spiritual guide the three hundred pesos he had left.

“Let me tell you something,” he said, looking him in the eye, and flourishing the money in one hand. “I’m no longer police, but I’ve got lots of friends in the force. So I don’t think it would be a good idea to try to trick me. I can still fry you alive, right?”

“Hell, Conde, I wouldn’t ever…”

“So make sure you don’t ever,” he warned, handing over the notes. “Remember I’ll always track you down.”

Cheered up by the beers drunk and the sum received, Juan asked him to wait on a street corner and went into an even gloomier tenement than the one with Michael Jordan’s clandestine bar. He emerged five minutes later, smiling cheerfully, and suggested the Count accompany him to the roof terrace, so he could show him a panoramic view of the barrio.

Between two uncovered water tanks and sad clotheslines full of patched up clothes, Conde peered out over the eaves to get a prime view of the twilight hustle and bustle in the barrio. He calculated the sea was in front, behind various dark concrete blocks, past the blackened towers of the power station, so near, yet so alien to that place. Lost in geographical and philosophical musings, he snapped back to reality summoned by the sweetish smell of burning grass, and turned round to find Juan the African, leaning back on one of the tanks inhaling from a spindly joint.

“Now I’ll see if you really are police. Go one, have a drag,” Juan threatened, holding out a roll of paper.

“I don’t care a fuck what you think. I’m not going to smoke.”

“And if I get in a mess, are you going to put the police on to me?”

“They already are, and have been from the day you were born. I’m the one they’ll piss on if they see me with you…”

“You never smoked?” the African asked, looking happy, waving the joint, and broadening his smile when he saw the Count shake his head. “I’ve smoked from the age of thirteen. And whenever I can I smoke here, by myself, so I really enjoy my drag… Look, this is my little hidey hole. I’ve hid things here ever since I was a kid,” he said, showing the Count how he put two other joints in a little nylon bag, that he lowered down an air vent protruding by the side of one of the water tanks.

“Who you hiding them from?” enquired the Count, flopping down against the other tank.

The African took a heavy drag.

“I owe five thousand pesos. I’m a loser, right? I always get bad luck. I got involved in a spot of business, took out an advance and gave it my best…”

“A five thou advance?” the Count thought aloud. “That was drugs or a contract killing… Right?”

“Don’t get too nosy,” and the African started smoking again, almost burning his fingers.

“Was the business with Veneno?”

Juan smiled and shook his head.

“No, Veneno was the middleman. The business was with other guys. Not from the barrio. Real hard guys who don’t get their hands dirty for four pesos. They handle quantities of loot that would make you shit your pants.”

“Did you meet them?”

“Negative. You can’t get to see them just like that. They’re people who’ve got it here,” and he tapped his temple, indicating intelligence. “They’re whites who are OK, well set up and only doing the big stuff.”

“Sounds like mafia?”

“Well, what do you think?” Juan took a last drag and ditched his tiny fag end.

“Were you told to kill someone, Juan?” the Count asked again, afraid he’d say yes.

“I told you not to ask so many questions. End of interrogation… Now let me enjoy the moment, man.”

Conde got up and looked for the best angle from which to survey calle Esperanza. On a neighbouring terrace he spotted a hut probably built for pigeon-rearing, behind which some fifteen-year olds were noisily taking turns with binoculars, masturbating all the time, watching a scene the Count also wanted an eyeful of.

When night started to fall, the African, now very high and uninhibited, suggested going for a walk, to see what was on, and the Count, not imagining what he was letting himself in for, accepted his invitation. They went up Esperanza, towards the edge of the barrio, and along one of the alleys that cut across, its name hidden under tons of historic grime, where his companion suggested they wait a minute, ostensibly, to test the temperature. Several people greeted the African, two stopped to have a chat, and walked off seemingly convinced the Count was an expert cattle slaughterer, a cousin of the African’s ex from the countryside and a friend even of Veneno and Michael Jordan. Just after eight, the African bought a pack of cigarettes from a street-seller and offered the Count one.

“You’ll smoke one of these, won’t you? Now you see how I share my money around,” he said, smiling, and added: “and I’ll now invite you to lay some whores.”

Taken aback, Conde was at a loss for what to reply. In an existence entirely spent between the island’s four walls, he’d joined in the most diverse moral and physical adventures, some in, others out of the police, some drunk and others horribly sober. He’d never before been invited to have sex you paid for and he was shocked to feel doubt impishly coursing through his veins and wondered whether he might not like to try that for once.

“If you really want to be part of this scene, and nobody to suspect you, then you’ve got to go on, right to the bottom,” said Juan, as he took the first step.

“No, forget it,” he protested feebly.

“Hey,” the African threatened him, “I can see you’re a bit delicate. You won’t smoke pot and don’t want to shaft a little lady… You’re not queer by any chance, my friend?”

The knocking-shop, as his ex-confidant described it, was half way along the block. An old married couple, owners of a threebedroom house, rented them out by the hour to couples with nowhere to make love and to local whores and their customers. The best strategy to get a lay, according to the African, was to linger in the vicinity of the knocking shop and wait to be picked up by an available woman on the job. Suffering an attack of butterflies, the Count leaned expectantly on the wall, a virgin in terms of such experience. He lit a cigarette on his previous butt and looked at both sides of the street, where several people were wandering. Two women appeared ten minutes later. One was a mulatta, dyed blonde, and the other white, very thin, with bright red hair; the Count reckoned, with some difficulty, that they must be in their twenties, although they shifted from seeming older to being almost adolescent. The African immediately chose the white woman, and, with a yellow smile, casually asked how much she charged for the works.

“A hundred pesos,” came the reply, and Juan recoiled like a shocked punter. “You think that’s dear? Look, you big black, it’s twenty to be rubbed off, forty to be sucked off, sixty if you put it in but don’t kiss, eighty with a kiss and for a hundred you can stick it up my ass… And that’s not counting the fact you’re a black monkey and are getting to shaft a white woman with a pink cunt…”

“Can I give your cunt a feel?”

“Five pesos,” the girl responded, adroitly halting the advancing, simian hand.

The Count had begun to feel the first symptoms of asphyxia as he listened to the terms of the agreement between the African and this Juanita-of-all-trades and was about to faint when the mulatta flashed a smile that showed off two gold molars at the corner of her huge mouth, and whispered: “And does, papi, want general servicing?”

Conde did his best to smile, knowing he’d be unable to bed that woman, or even kiss her, and glanced at the African, who was relishing the situation. He then understood that all his moral openness was just a childish game in that insane world where sex acquired other values and uses, and became a source of sustenance, a way to put the miseries and tensions of life out of mind.

“No more arguing,” said Juan. “In we go.”

Conde felt the situation, so everyday for the African and the girls, was forcing him into his most stressful decisions ever: either he ran for it, found his way out of the barrio and salvation for his battered ethics, or followed the impulses of his morbid curiosity and participated in a purely commercial act, to the extent his stomach would allow. Refusing to think further, almost about to hurl himself into the pit of degradation, he got as far as the living room, where Juan was already caressing the small, firm buttocks of the white girl, agreeing terms with a respectable looking old man and paying the agreed amount, though hardly haggling over the hire terms: no drugs, no beating up, no shouting; only beer and rum sold by the establishment; paid for in advance; at an hourly rate…

Without looking at the house-owners – their eyes now glued back on the television, as if their lives depended on the news reports – the Count, in a kind of hypnotic trance, crossed the passage and followed the mulatta into the first bedroom, only to be rescued by an attack of nerves when he saw the African and his girl follow him in.

“But what?…”

“They’ve only got one free,” replied the African who took his first swig of rum from the bottle and began to wildly shower his companion with kisses.

For the rest of his life, however much he tried, Mario Conde could never remember what the room was like or what was in it, apart from a bed and the washbasin attached to the wall. However, he could never forget the precise, rapid gesture with which, once inside, the mulatta for hire dropped a packet of condoms on the bed and lifted up her skimpy blouse to present him with two breasts and two black aureolas, which she pointed at his chest as if he’d been sentenced to execution by firing squad.

An expert of sorts, the girl saw the scared look on Conde’s face and with a lascivious flourish of her tongue drew him near and bathed him in sickly-sweet breath.

“Don’ wan’ me titties, papi? Gimme a lickle suck and gimme the hots?”

Right then Conde realized he’d exhausted his curiosity and that if he went any further he wouldn’t live long enough to cope with his repentance. He grasped the only dignified exit on offer.

“This isn’t my way. I can’t carry on with them in here,” and turned round to point at the African and white girl, only to find them completely naked already, not the least inhibited by the presence of others, and going at it hell for leather. And though he’d have preferred not to, he did see it: Juan the African’s knob, a huge black sausage, veins bulging, topped by a slavering, purple head, over bull’s balls entwined by curly black hair. Rationality restored, his mind fleetingly considered the spatial issue of whether the girl with scant breasts and protruding ribs could host that piece of firm meat whose back and belly she’d begun to lick with great relish, before her mouth swallowed it whole. He felt an emptiness between his own legs and concluded that his decision had been made.

“Wat’s the madder, mi amor?” the girl yelped, afraid she’d lose the money that was in her grasp.

“This isn’t my way,” the Count repeated, clinging to these words of salvation.

Conde stayed under the shower, trying to clean that mindcurdling scene from his brain: the African’s cudgel-like prick, the white girl’s ribs, the mulatta’s nipples and reptilian tongue, her faked voice of passion and, above all, the sight of himself opening the door and taking a step backwards, the first in his noisy retreat into filthy streets where he finally recovered his ability to breathe.

The Count left his bathroom, wrapping a towel round his body, shaken by an awareness that he was upset by his own nakedness. Not sure why, he looked for his record player in a corner of the room. He placed it on the useless television stand, put Violeta del Río’s record on the turntable and activated it by moving the arm. He carefully dropped the needle into the first groove and sat on the distant sofa, as if he required that space in between. Resting his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands, trapped in a feeling of vertigo, he tried to clean his mind of the fetid traces of the experiment he’d let himself be dragged into and just listened to Violeta del Río’s voice, imploring, demanding, ordering: “Be gone from me”. He soon felt the melody change his skin, his hair and his nails, and realized he was recovering his sense of urgency to find out the real fate of that woman whose ghost had apparently returned to end an artificial silence, who had spent too long in a precarious vacuum. Like a man possessed, and powerless to resist, Conde sensed the latent spirit of that woman reduced to her voice, to her voice alone, slowly becoming blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh, transforming him into a living extension of the dead, as if Violeta del Río herself was beating at his temples, unexpectedly convinced that her voice was summoning him to reveal more than a single truth.

“But, fuck, it can’t? It can’t,” he told himself and ran to the old cupboard in his bedroom where he kept the souvenirs and flotsam from his previous lives. In the process he lost his towel and, stark naked, flung its doors wide open. On his knees, he extracted the wooden container in the bottom left-hand side, provoking an avalanche of objects he’d pushed out of his way.

There were things belonging to his father inside the box he’d decided to keep; things that he’d not revisited since the long distant day when his dad died. A pre-historic baseball glove, two photograph albums, an envelope containing merit certificates from work, a pair of black and white winkle-pickers, a dog-eared telephone book, two packets of rusted Gillette blades, and his busdriver’s hat and identification tag emerged from the trunk, and then Conde saw what his memory had finally dredged up from the depths of his murkiest reminiscences. The original sleeve seemed washed out by damp and old age, but it was unmistakable: he took out the small record, lit up by a yellow circle, the shiny gem of the recording company. Conde stroked the vinyl and saw it was warped and unusable. He finally remembered his father, sitting in the living room in that same house, wrapped in a gloom that seemed mysterious to his childish gaze, listening, enthralled, to that record, perhaps experiencing sensations similar to those that were now disturbing his son, forty years on. Retrieving the image of that solitary man, sat listening to a woman sing on an electric appliance, finally seemed to account for his visceral empathy with a voice he’d met for the first time so long ago and that had been slumbering, had not died, at the back of his mind. How much had his father really loved that woman he listened to in darkness? Why had he kept that record that had probably been unusable long before it made its way into the Count’s junk? What had he said to his son on that night which had disappeared in a succession of yesterdays? Why had he, the man who remembered, forgotten that strange episode which should have floated quickly to the surface of his memories? Mario Conde again stroked the vinyl surface, as undulating as the night-time sea, and thought how his father had been just one more man to succumb to Violeta del Río’s seductive powers and how, like Silvano Quintero, he must have wept when he heard the news of her death and realized that the only testimony to her voice was pressed into the grooves of that little record. Or were his memory and hitherto untarnished image of his own father playing yet more tricks on him, concealing truths that might be truly horrific?

8 January

Dear love:

I had decided to wait several days before writing to you again, to allow the spirit of Christmas that passed by without giving me a glance to vanish, but the events of the last few days changed my mind, because they have snatched away my few remaining hopes. What will become of our lives now? Will you ever come back? What will happen here? Although I have tried to shut my ears to the noise in the street, the decision to break off relations just announced by the United States fills me with new fears, because the doors to possible homecomings have now shut, and yours, the one you so longed for, now becomes practically impossible.

Hence, more than ever, these letters are my only consolation, and my greatest reward would be to receive a reply. You cannot imagine what I would give to know if you thought of me if only for a second at Christmas or New Year. I would give my life to know whether you remembered the years of love and prosperity we shared together (although they sometimes seem so distant) as the chimes of the clock reached the final second of the old year and we swallowed our grapes, in time-honoured tradition. How can I tell if this end to a year of separations and resentments was better than those when we shared an expectation of happiness, in necessary silence?

What I cannot understand in the slightest is why you’ve not even sent me a card with gleaming snow or the twinkling star of Bethlehem, pre-printed thoughts and space for a couple of personal words. Is my punishment to be eternal? I suppose it is, since I must sadly assume that your resentment is more than a passing irritation, a suspicion that may fade when other ideas and soothing thoughts… Your resentment is like a life-sentence, and my only salvation is to be able to persuade you of my innocence, with irrefutable proof. That’s why I have decided to go in search of that proof. I intend to overcome the terrible fear I feel when walking in a strange world, that is no longer mine, that I don’t understand and that becomes daily more radical and dangerous. I will overcome the echoes from voices that pursue me in the night destroying the peace of solitude, and will reach out to the greater good of your forgiveness.

Today, when I decided to write to you and begin my search, I felt that I regained a different attitude of mind, an energy I thought lost, and I devoted almost all day to cleaning your library. It is the first time in months that I have returned to this sacred place in the family memory, because it is too painful, it recalls the happy times in our lives and the lives of the whole family. I have looked again at the books your grandfather bought in his youth, with that passion that made him never hesitate for a second when it was a choice between a book or a pair of shoes; those gathered by your father on the days he worked at the office, in the university, in the period he had political commitments; and above all those that you, driven by the family fervour, bought in every corner of the city and hoarded like treasure, books that aroused so much envy in those privileged to see them. I saw your private collection of books on legal matters and customs regulations and your business magazines and, I can’t deny I felt my heart crushed by the thought that you will perhaps never again touch their leather covers, grainy pages or read the words that meant so much to you. Consequently, when I finished cleaning I reminded your daughter that whatever happens, whoever dies, everything in this sanctuary is absolutely and eternally sacred: not a page may leave, not a single volume put in a different place, so that the day you return – because against all the odds I know it will come – you will be able to walk with your eyes shut to the bookcase of your choice and take out, as was your habit, the book you want. I have arranged for the bookcase doors to be opened once a month, for a few hours and always on a hot day, when no rain threatens, to allow the books to breath and gather strength, as you would say. Once every six months, a cloth and feather duster will pass along the spines and tops of the books, which will never be moved, to avoid the slightest disorder entering your personal order. But above all I wanted these decisions to ensure that if anything should happen to me, that no hand, not even your children’s, can penetrate the most hidden secrets of your life and mine, that from today await you between the pages of these books.

Dear love: I will say farewell for a time. I won’t write until I have news from you or have my hands on the truth. And no matter if that truth, as the voices persecuting me say, is my worst punishment. Because I cannot stand you despising me and blaming me for a crime I have not committed. But rest assured that I will go on loving you as now, even more deeply, ever more longing for you to return…

Your Nena

23 January

Dear Love:

A few days ago I swore not to write again, at least not until I had news from you, or could tell you what we are desperate to know. I was so disappointed by your silence and blinded by my own situation and the accursed voices speaking to me in the night, intent on driving me crazy, that I forgot the importance of this date: happy birthday, my love!

As soon as I remembered your birthday I decided I should celebrate it, even without you. Sadly, because it will be like a party without a host, where I will be privileged to be the main guest, the only one in fact, because your children are ever busier and more remote, swept up in the whirlwind of changes being brought in from day to day. Then I made a mistake, another mistake. Exhilarated by feelings of joy, I went to the library and looked for that cookbook you were so fond of, do you remember?, the one you often used to select the dishes you suggested for our meals at home. As I leafed through, I remembered how you liked ox-tongue in sherry, cod in parsley sauce following Juanito Saizarbitoria’s Basque recipe, those Creolestyle prawns that were so tasty, or the stuffed turkey à la Rosa María that in recent years you preferred as the main dish for Christmas Eve dinner (forgetting, naturally, all those jams you thought a Yankee aberration…) How surprised I was as I flicked over a few pages looking for the recipe for your favourite dish (kidneys in red wine) to come face to face with a photo of the dead woman and the news that she had given up singing. Can you imagine what I felt? No, you cannot. Can you imagine how much I hated her, how pleased I was by her death? Yes, I am sure you can, because your silence tells me daily, ever more insistently, you think I provoked her death, though you know I would be unable to contemplate any such thing.

That was when my party ended. My solitary celebrations fell flat and I was strengthened in my conviction that my life will only regain meaning if I succeed in discovering the truth you demand to exonerate me from those unfounded accusations. And I will find a way to that truth, because I love you always,

Your Nena

The smell of recently watered soil, the morning scent of flowers, the blue sky untainted by a single cloud and the mockingbird’s song from a fruit-laden avocado tree represented for Mario Conde extraordinary evidence of life, gifts of nature without which life was impossible. What if one had to pass through this world without the chance to enjoy those simple miracles? – if one awoke each dawn to a magma of ugliness and filth, trapped in quicksands dragging you into theft, violence, the daily sauve-qui-peut and most diverse forms of moral and physical prostitution? And does the mockingbird really trill alike for everyone, the same melody and harmonies? Mario Conde looked at his apparently clean hands, and then back up at the yard, certain that, despite the shortages and frustrations over the years, he could still think himself a fortunate human being, because neither he nor his nearest and dearest had ever been forced to cross the final frontiers of debasement in the struggle to survive.

The aroma of coffee hit home and, anticipating its delicious taste, he lifted a cigarette to his lips, preparing to perform the fusion of those two wonderful sensations so lambasted by medical hype. But the grief and doubt clawing at his brain almost stifled his smile when Pigeon, tray in hand, offered him a china cup threaded with gold.

“Go on then, how’d you get on?” he asked after drinking the infusion and lighting up.

“I started with Pancho Carmona, as always. While I was at it, I sold him fifteen books, at a much better price than we were expecting. I’ll settle with you in a tick.” As promised, Pigeon went on to tell him the results of his investigations which had thrown up a negative, if revealing result: nobody in the old book trade knew of the tall black man, with a lame right foot and an evangelical gift of the gab, who’d appeared in such untimely fashion at the Ferrero’s.

“That man has some features you can’t change,” the Count thought aloud: “he’s tall and black. But lameness can be faked and so can a particular way of speaking.”

“I swear I’d never have thought of that,” Yoyi had to admit.

“So you’re not the brain-box you think you are… And the other thing you can’t change is familiarity or unfamiliarity with the book trade. If that man homed in on six specific books it’s because he’s familiar…”

“Like the blind musicologist… Do you know what Pancho told me? They’re selling the book Rafael Giró chose, the first edition of the book by Borges, dedicated to one Victoria Ocampo, for twenty thousand dollars in a bookshop in Boston… So the item you swapped for that poxy record is worth a fortune… So you’re not the brain-box you think you are either, man.”

“I’ve always said I’ve got a diploma and various postgrad certificates in shit stupidity. And yesterday I got my masters and tomorrow I’m up for my doctorate.”

“Why? What happened?”

With a fresh cigarette between his lips and holding a second cup of coffee, Conde gave his business partner a short report on his walk in the valley of shadows, carefully leaving out his at best dubious escapades and confirmation of his father’s murky loves.

“Didn’t you know what that barrio was like?” smiled Pigeon as soon as he’d finished. “You only scratched the surface. There’s worse underneath. I swear.”

“I can imagine… You know what? I reckon this city is changing too quickly and I’ve lost my grip. Pretty soon I’ll have to start taking a damned map with me… Well, I’m off to Police Headquarters. I want to find out if they’ve got anywhere. We could do with knowing if that mysterious black guy’s fingerprints are on file and they know who he is. I’ll also see if they can help me find something on Lotus Flower. I’ve got to think how to persuade Manolo to give up that information…”

“And what do I do?” enquired Yoyi, stroking the prow of his sternum.

“I’ll ring and let you know whether I get anything on the black guy. If not, do what you did yesterday, but bear in mind the suspect is probably not lame and doesn’t talk like a preacher.”

“More of the same, man?” the young man protested.

“C’est la vie, Yoyi.”

‘Yes, but we’re up shit creek what with not being able to get more of the Ferreros’ books and wasting two days on this wild goose chase. Time is money, remember, and I’ve got business to attend to.”

“But remember we’ve also got a corpse hanging over our heads… And as you know well enough, the police don’t like people like you who make money they don’t have any control over. They’d love to pin this murder on you-”

“A murder I didn’t commit! That’s obvious enough, man! I’m clean and finding the one who did him in is their problem, not mine. They get paid to do that and I fight for my bread on the street. But if you fancy playing the detective and wandering around in pursuit of an old whore and a singer of boleros, that’s your call. I’m opting out of this drama, I swear.”

Conde gazed anew at the yard, at its flowers, tried to hear the mockingbird’s song and waited for the inevitable rebuff.

“Don’t you see, Yoyi? The sooner we find Dionisio Ferrero’s killer, the sooner we get our hands on the rest of the books… and I’m going to offer you a deal. Look: if six books that have already disappeared were probably very valuable, it makes no odds if another five, six, seven go… We’ll buy the six you want…”

“The ones I want?” The expression on Yoyi’s face changed.

“The ones you want,” reiterated the Count.

“Like the Book of Sugar Mills or the Gothenburg Bible if a copy turns up?”

“The ones you want,” repeated the Count.

“Don’t worry, man, I’ll find that black guy. I swear I will,” and Yoyi kissed the cross he’d made with his fingers.

Elsa Contreras Villafaña, alias Lotus Flower, alias the Blonde, ceased being of interest to the police in the year 1965, when she underwent revolutionary regeneration from brothel-mongering to heading a shift in a seamstresses’ workshop in El Cerro, and declared her abode to be 195, Apodaca, in Old Havana. Her police file, recovered by the new authorities created in 1959, had recorded its first entry in 1948, when she was put on file for practising prostitution in areas not authorized for such activities. Then, up to 1954, Elsa Contreras Villafaña, now known as Lotus Flower to the habitués of the Shanghai Theatre, was arrested twice on counts of causing a public outrage, once for a knife attack and once for possessing drugs – marijuana – and did a short spell inside the women’s prison in Havana. However, from 1954 the woman apparently opted for an honest life, since no fresh criminal acts appeared on her police record. She resurfaced in 1962, when she was again arrested for procuring and pimping in a bar in the port of Nuevitas, in Camagüey, as the result of an uproar prompted by a peculiar attack launched by a local pimp and hard man, who bit off part of a breast that belonged to one of the whores from her knocking-shop. As a result, Elsa was confined to a reeducation centre for eight months, at the end of which she began a new life as a seamstress in a workshop, where a year later she was given the position of head of shift.

“There’s something fishy here,” commented the Count, and Sergeant Atilio Esteváñez, under orders from Captain Palacios to supervise the Count’s searches, looked at him intrigued. To persuade his ex-colleague who was reluctant to open up the doors to the police files to him – “You’re no longer police,” Manolo had insisted, “You know the superiors don’t like this kind of thing” – Conde had resorted to his subtlest arts of persuasion and to the obvious fact that finding out extra things about Elsa Contreras would in no way obstruct the official murder investigation. Manolo reluctantly agreed, repeating that he didn’t like what he was doing, and only on condition that Sergeant Estévañez continued to supervise his searches.

The information he then found confirmed the police silence initiated in 1954, indicating that Lotus Flower must have made a qualitative leap around the time enabling her to immunize herself against – at least visible – harassment, that was the fate of defenceless street walkers who were always at the mercy of pimps and police alike. To make that leap, coveted by the hundreds of whores swarming through the streets of fifties Havana, she’d have needed a special boost, more so – according to Silvano Quintero – if the business she would soon head dealt in exclusive escorts and not bog-standard brothels in the barrios of Pajarito and Colón. And that kind of trade, in the Cuba of the time, usually had one visible face, the famous Madame known as Marina, who lorded it over twenty whorehouses, and an owner concealed in the shadows of his new respectability: the Jewish Meyer Lansky.

Driven by a hunch, Conde asked the sergeant to track down the file on Alcides Montes de Oca, and wasn’t too surprised by the negative response he received: nobody with that name appeared on the police books. He wondered if it might be useful to check the Lansky dossier, but decided it would be a wasted effort, because the Jew didn’t appear in Cuba as the legal owner of very many concerns, which he put in the care of his Cuban acolytes or rogues recently imported from the United States, where they were no longer smiled upon.

They telephoned the Office for the Registration of Addresses and requested the names of the occupants of the house at Apodaca 195, and the reply couldn’t have been more final: the building had collapsed during a storm in 1971, and its occupants moved to temporary accommodation. But nobody by the name of Elsa Contreras Villafaña figured on the list of those who received compensation as a result of the demolition. His curiosity aroused, Estévañez, called the identification department at the Central Office for Identity Cards and Population Registration, and requested information on the woman. They gave her permanent address as being Apodaca, 195, flat 6, according to data obtained in 1972.

Conde smiled at the shocked expression on the face of Sergeant Estévañez who couldn’t explain how Elsa Contreras had managed to perpetrate such a blatant deception. How could she have fooled the police and Registry for Addresses and Consumers, who constantly collaborated in respect of deaths, house-moves or any other physical shift made by the island’s eleven million Cuban residents easily monitored by the beds they slept in and the food they received? For the Count this gave the mystery a more disturbing dimension: why had she done it?

“We must find out if she is dead first of all,” said the Count. “Have you any men available to check cemetery records?”

“Every single cemetery?” asked the terrified sergeant.

‘At least those in Havana. Two men could sort that in a day.’

“Let me see what I can do,” agreed Estévañez, “but I still don’t see how one thing relates to the other.”

“Nor do I, but there may be a connection with the Catalina who was known as Violeta del Rio, and she’s the person I’m really interested in… And what did you find out about this mysterious black guy?” the Count now enquired. Estévanez shook his head: “I can’t say…”

“Hey, it’s not that important. I only wanted to know whether you’d identified him.”

The sergeant grumbled, too loudly.

“The prints found in the library aren’t on file.”

“And what did the autopsy reveal about Dionisio Ferrero?”

“He was killed around 1 a.m. There are no other signs of violence, nothing on his nails, so he was caught by surprise and killed by a single blow.”

“And what about the books missing from that last bookcase?”

“They walked the same day as they killed Dionisio. The only other thing we know is that Amalia can’t find the knife that Dionisio used in the garden. We think that may be the murder weapon…”

“Too many mysteries all told,” whispered the Count. “It’s like it’s a put-up job.”

“Just what Captain Palacios says. He thinks it was all set up by someone who knows only too well how to make life difficult for detectives.”

Conde smiled, imagining what Manolo might be imagining.

“When you see your captain, remind him on my behalf that what’s most hidden is always visible. And also tell him from me not to be such an asshole. If he starts hiding things from me, you can bet he’s only making it harder for himself to get to the bottom of this heap of shit.”

The Count tired of banging on Juan the African’s door and quickly concluded he’d scarpered from callejón Alambique with net earnings of thirteen hundred pesos and a sarcastic smile of satisfaction on his yellowy teeth. The risks implicit in the situation, that sooner or later the identity of that supposed cousin of his ex would get out, must have persuaded the African that his best option was to extract money from the former policeman – revenge is sweet – placate his creditors and disappear from the barrio or hide in its deepest catacombs.

To help weigh up his options, the Count walked the shaky planks again and reached the bright light and less fetid air on the roof terrace. The African’s absence put him in a delicate situation, because it was more than likely that, before vanishing into thin air, his old informant had explained, in the appropriate quarters, how he’d acted under pressure from a policeman. If that were the case, the Count was completely exposed, in real physical danger, transformed into a pale-face in Apache territory, with all the connotations such intrusions brought. Leaning back on one of the water tanks, where the African had smoked his joint the previous evening, the Count decided the most rational option would be to leave the barrio immediately. He wouldn’t be very welcome in Michael Jordan’s beer shop or Veneno’s chop shop, and it now seemed obvious that his stroll through the barrio and chats on various street corners might have been part of the African’s plan to show him to all those who ought to register him in their mental files, in a more subtle, no less efficient way than the police grilling his former colleagues had subjected him to. If his speculations were at all on target, that venture had shut off any avenue to the possible whereabouts of the volatile Lotus Flower, and right now he couldn’t see any practical way to make a breakthrough. His investigative foray had just set him up to be blatantly doublecrossed.

“You fucking idiot…”

A cigarette on his lips, the Count smiled, laughing at himself and his incredible naivety that had included an invitation to beers and a lobster and beefsteak lunch. He gazed up at the cloudless sky and felt oppressed by the relentless midday sun: he’d been left empty-handed, devoid of hope, and even more burdened by the mysteries harassing him. He coughed, cleared his throat and spat to his right. He puffed twice on his butt and dropped it down the air vent next to him and only then recalled it was the African’s little hidey hole. Kneeling down, taking care not to burn himself on his still-glowing cigarette butt, he put his arm down the cast-iron pipe and felt in a bend a smooth surface his touch recognized as a piece of plastic. A two-finger pincer-like movement enabled him to extract a small transparent envelope containing a poorly rolled joint and a scrap of paper, where round, unsteady writing, allergic to apostrophes and commas, informed him: Her names Carmen and she lives in the tenement at Factoria 58. Leave what you owe me and lets call it a day. Fella you don’t know what you missed and I boned the mulatta on behalf of us both. Watch it.

Almost elated by the African’s demonstration of ethics which restored his faith in the human race, the Count put his lighter on top of the note. A breach had been opened and a feeling of joy restored to his body. With no second thoughts he placed the remaining 700 pesos in the envelope as payment for information received. He shut the envelope and, as he was about to put it back in its hidey hole, realized that the presence of the joint was no coincidence either: it seemed like a gift or invitation from the African, intent on reducing the distance between an ex-cop and an ex-convict. Intrigued, Conde extracted the spliff and returned the plastic bag to its place. He took another look around and checked that he was completely alone. Did he dare? He then remembered his demeaning experience in the knocking-shop the night before, and muttered that some of his wholesome values were obviously being eroded if he’d got as far as the bedroom of a real whore on set rates. And now an open invitation to try out the wonders of marijuana pulsated there, another real temptation. What the fuck’s got into me? He wondered whether it wouldn’t be best to take the joint home and decide what to do with it in the privacy of his own home, though he was dissuaded by the risk entailed in walking the streets of that barrio with drugs on his person, particularly when he was under investigation for murder. As he went to put his hand in the vent and return the marijuana, he recalled his conversation with Yoyi on the subject of his one hundred per cent virginity in narcotics, and hesitantly put his lighter’s flame to the end of the joint between his lips. He inhaled and held the sweet, light smoke from the mythical Indian cannabis leaf in his lungs. A force greater than any desire immediately rebounded across his brain, blocking off all other options and leaving him with no choice but to crush his smoke on the tiles of the terrace roof, frenziedly rubbing it into the scorched clay with his shoe. A sense of relief spread through his body and, giving himself no time to think, he stood up, determined to cross the barrio and find the answers only a reformed prostitute, in flight from her past, could supply.

After he left the building he took almost a minute to locate the whereabouts of calle Factoría, which he concluded must be several blocks to his left. As in his days as a policeman, he began to prepare for what might be a trying interview. He walked along the pavement, his mind in ferment, hardly hearing the music that switched and changed from house to house, or noticing the hectic activity in the barrio.

Stripped of his capacity to react, Mario Conde only realized something was amiss when they’d pushed him violently through the open door of a tenement. Propelled by a violent shove, his feet twisted like slack ropes and, in a free, seemingly endless fall downwards, Conde’s retina registered electric cables dangling next to a staircase, plastic sacks full of rubbish, a bicycle’s deflated tyre, and even a dirty, bare concrete floor inexorably approaching his face, as his nose was hit by the horrifically acidic stench of stale urine, and he felt them pull his head back and put out the light.

His throat felt on fire, as if he’d swallowed a cup of boiling sand… He would die for a drop of water, would give his kingdom for a mouthful of water… A remote instinct made him put his hand in his pocket and dig around, until his fingers touched a small metal pot and he thought: an oasis, I’m saved. Trying to keep his movements to a minimum to avoid setting off more pain, he forced open the tiny container and dabbed Chinese pomade on his forehead. It was a shock to find his head in its usual place, not entirely centred maybe, although it was clear the afflicted mass was not the same head he’d had that afternoon: it felt as if it had grown, overflowed its bone structure and that its swollen version was about to explode. With the edge of his nail he placed a dab of pomade on the tip of his tongue: the heat from the Asiatic ointment was soothing and reminded him vaguely but unmistakably, that in some murky, not too distant place and time, he’d talked to a pale, slow-moving man, who’d emerged from the deepest shadows in an absurd orange tunic that had almost made him roar with laughter. Why did the images from that hallucination seem so real? Could it be the memory of a real experience? He remembered how the man who was perhaps too tall to be true, had walked over to him, his silhouette swathed by a thick luminous halo – could he be God himself? he’d wondered at the time – and immediately, without even introducing himself, he’d begun to talk, in a deliberate, guttural tone, of noble truths and suffering. Although he still couldn’t decide where he’d met him before, when he saw him close-up and heard him hold forth, he was quite sure he already knew who he was, even felt he was very familiar and struggled to follow his argument on pain as an intrinsic element of the human condition, from birth to death, because life is only a cycle that’s renewed with each reincarnation. Reincarnation? So I’m dead, am I? wondered the Count, thinking that state would better explain the presence of the Enlightened One – I know this bastard – but the man shook his head and he told him: “You’re wrong on every front, you are always wrong, you are wrong too often… And you’re stubborn: you want to find an explanation for everything, that’s your problem, and you refuse to understand that nature cannot be explained by any single or fixed system of definition,” he embarked on a protracted pause. “The world, Conde, is as it is, independent of any specific thought one may have about it. And you’re full of terribly specific thoughts, you even want your thoughts to change the world, and forget that all your mind can change is yourself. Get rid of your prejudices and meditate…” “Where do I know you from, how come you know me and are able to speak of my thoughts and prejudices” the Count remembered asking, and felt those words were sounding increasingly familiar when uttered by this spectre hovering between this world and another. “Suffering comes from the desire for possession. Our mind and feelings malfunction when they cling to the prejudices of experience. Don’t prevaricate any more: meditate and ascend, meditate and set yourself free. You will then understand that nothing is random: everything that has happened wanted to happen…” These words suddenly assumed their full meaning in the Count’s mind and unleashed tremors in his brain: “wanted to happen”. “No, that’s impossible,” he told the Enlightened One, “is it really you? I don’t believe it…” “Do you understand what I was saying?” his pale interlocutor reproached him: “You only dare believe in what you think you should believe in and never open your mind…” “Don’t tell me it’s you?” the Count persisted, overjoyed, ignoring his interlocutor’s reproaches: of course, wanted to happen, and for many years the Count had wanted it, even when he knew it was impossible. The slow, pale man was one of his unmovable gods, right, an Enlightened Being, almost a mukta, a man who knows God – or at least someone who’d got very, very close to him, along the way to perfection – and to have him there, at his side, and hear him, was a priceless privilege. “I’ve always wanted to speak to you,” he finally whispered, his voice overcome by emotion, “though not to speak of death and suffering, or even of reincarnation, which, if truth be told, I couldn’t give a fig for. This shit life is hard enough to cope with, and I don’t hanker after another. I want to talk to you about something much trickier, more intangible, as you say… Tell me please, what do you do to write stories that are really squalid and moving? What’s the secret? Why does Seymour commit suicide on his honeymoon night? And what about Buddy, what happened to Buddy Glass after he moved to that cabin outside New York? And did Esmé ever find happiness? Did she get the story the soldier wrote for her? Tell me that and also tell me: is it true you wrote nothing in all these years?…” Reeling from this flood of questions, the Enlightened One looked uncomfortable in his orangey tunic, frowned severely, and shook his head refusing to spill forth, but was unable to repress a brief smile, when the Count renewed his onslaught: “I can’t believe it’s true you’ve not written again. You do know that’s a crime? It’s all very well meditating, enlightening yourself – you must see really well with all that light you radiate, to be sure – and distancing yourself from the world, hell, but you can’t stop writing, you can’t. I can’t accept you’ve given up writing in order to meditate, you of all people. That’s more than criminal… What’s your name?” “Call me J.D.,” conceded the man. “Uh-huh, J.D., J.D.,’ the Count repeated, happy to have done the necessary reading and meditation to merit that trust that enabled him to call him J.D., and went on: “Yes, it’s a crime, J.D., because you had lots more to write and we had lots more to read.” “How do you know?” the Enlightened One interjected, and Conde began to feel several hidden sorrows surface again, as the light emanating from J.D. faded into the darkness, his pallor deepened, and his tunic melted away. But Conde shouted: “I know because when I read you I want to go on reading you. I love reading you… Do you know what else? Yes, you do: what I most cherish, when I’m feeling totally exhausted after I’ve read a book, is my wish to be the author’s friend and be able to ring him at any time. I would have rung you lots of times. It’s that simple, you see?” J.D. nodded and his blurred face reflected invincible pride in the fact someone could quote a character of his from memory. But he shook off the hint of earthly vanity and looked pitifully at his interrogator: “Never meet a writer if you like his book, dixit Chandler. And he was right: writers are a strange breed. Better read than meet them, that’s for sure,” and he straightened his orange tunic before fading into the Havana night, although the Count thought he heard, or at least thought he recalled hearing the increasingly ethereal voice of the Enlightened One telling him, before he vanished completely: I must leave myself things to do in my other lives… and besides, too many books have already been written. Remember what the Buddha taught: there is only one essential time to wake up; and that time is now. So wake up now, you bastard… Darkness returned, as if obeying an order, and, now totally conscious, Conde became painfully aware of his body and the thirst burning his throat. He quickly tasted a little more Chinese pomade, wondering if that was the magic formula to bring J.D. back, but J.D. didn’t return and he felt sorrow rather than pain, because J.D. hadn’t given him a little telephone number so he could ring him after he’d read one of his squalid and moving stories for the hundredth time.

Lying on the grass, wracked by the pain issuing from his battered anatomy, Mario Conde realized he couldn’t pinpoint how long he’d needed before finally daring to open his eyes, because in spite of his wishes, only one eye raised its lid, the bare minimum necessary to see that night had fallen and he was alone. He closed his working eye and felt the other, only to find a moist, latent swelling extending from his eyebrow to his cheek. Had they knocked an eye out? he wondered, momentarily forgetting his conversation with the Enlightened One, because thirst and pain were pummelling him, and he felt a desperate desire to cry from his surviving eye. He fought off the pains shooting up his back, knee, stomach, face, the nape of his neck and, especially, from inside his head, pulled himself up and, hands against the ground, rode out a dizzy spell that was regrettably non-alcoholic. From the heart of darkness he saw he was on empty wasteland and a few minutes later glimpsed, 200 metres away, a poorly lit street along which the odd car sped. He wondered if it would be best to crawl to the street, but was afraid he might cut his hands on the broken glass that was no doubt scattered among the grass. He summoned all his energy, pulled himself up on his knees and, holding his battered head, made the supreme effort necessary to totter to his feet as if in one of his most drunken moments. He then realized that he was barefoot and, when he touched his chest, that he was bare-chested too. And what about that eye? Had they really knocked it out?

Twelve falls later, burnt by the thirst searing his throat, with a new sharp pain in the sole of his left foot, the remnants of Mario Conde finally made it to the road, and he saw he was near the silent, rusting power station that cast its gloomy, geometrical shadows over the wasteland. He thought his best option would be to cross the street to the service station and try to locate Yoyi or Manolo from there, but doubted he had the strength to make it that far. Before attempting such a risky crossing he’d have to recoup energy; he flopped to his knees in the grass, and was unable to stop his body from collapsing in the direction of the pavement. He probably lost consciousness as he fell because he felt no pain when his face hit the concrete.

The hand swabbing his sore eyebrow and cheek brought him back into the land of the suffering. The stabbing pains were so severe that the Count struck out.

“Hey, easy does it, Bobby,” said a voice. “They gave you enough to eat and take away… Let me clean you up a bit, then they’ll X-ray you up to your ears.”

Conde realized the voice wasn’t his enlightened friend’s and, imagining he must be in a place as mundane and nasty as a hospital he asked: “Did they knock one of my eyes out?”

“No, it’s still there but in a mess.”

“Who are you?”

“A nurse. The doctor gave you a painkiller and we’re going to stitch you up now.”

“With a needle?” asked the Count, appalled.

“Yes, of course, though you’ve got so many holes we could use a sewing machine… Up you get… now faint again, I’ll start on the eyebrow…”

“Wait a minute… Let me weep a few tears first…”

“All right, but make it quick.”

“Hey, by the way, you ever seen a big guy around here in an orange tunic?”

“Yes, he was round and about, but went off to the carnival. Come on, faint, then I can get on with it.”

Five minutes or hours later the Count moved his eyelids and suspected he really was dead – definitively, unequivocally dead, as if someone had ignored all his sins and he was ascending to heaven, where an angelical voice said: “It’s him, it’s him.”

When he opened his working eye, he could see, from his supine position, Tamara, Candito, Rabbit and Yoyi’s faces: his blurred brain worked out that the voice he’d heard belonged to none of those archangels. He dropped his head to one side and found himself level with the face of Skinny Carlos, leaning forward in his wheel chair.

“Hey, brother, you got one hell of a pasting.”

“You’re kidding, Skinny, they didn’t even take an eye out.”

Mario Conde refused to report the incident. He thought it would be absurd, a sign of softness in the head, to start telling a policeman that some bad guys had kicked him to pulp because he’d poked his nose somewhere he wasn’t invited. Besides, who could he blame for his drubbing apart from himself, his own naivety and stupidity? The unlikely names of Veneno and Michael Jordan were the ones that came to mind as possibly being behind the attack, but lack of proof and his conviction that both would have set up good alibis were grounds enough to see that making a statement would be futile. To cap it all, in the depths of his battered self he felt grateful: they were only telling him he was unwelcome in the barrio and bidding him farewell in their time-honoured manner.

The doctor insisted on keeping him under observation in hospital for a day, but when he discovered nothing was broken, that he’d only severe bruising, soreness and a couple of wounds they’d already stitched on his left eyebrow and behind his right ear, Conde asked to leave and swore an oath – which he conveniently faked by raising his fingers – that he’d inject himself with the prescribed antibiotics. Taking full advantage of his situation, he pretended to turn down Tamara’s suggestion that she could put him up for a few days: why should she bother, he said, if it’s nothing serious, but yielded tamely the first time she insisted.

When he finally saw himself in the mirror, Conde confronted a budding monster he only vaguely recognized. Although the swellings on his eyebrow and cheek had gone down thanks to an intake of anti-inflammatory pills and bags of ice, and he could half-open the eyelid, his eyeball was completely bloodshot and its vision mediated by an opaque film bent on changing his view of the world by painting it pink.

After he’d swallowed a couple of pills, suffered a sharp jab in the buttock and begun to reconcile himself with the world after drinking fresh coffee made by Tamara, Conde slipped into a warm bath and soaked there until it went cold. The peace and elegance, the feeling he was safe and the centre of attention of the woman he’d loved the most and longest, restored his sense of well-being, and he wondered if the whole of his life shouldn’t be like that. However, some difficulty was always lurking ready to divert him from the peace he so desired, as if he were fated to hover between the edge and centre of a whirlpool of doubt.

Keen to make the most of a bad situation, his friends converted his convalescence into a party, rolling up at Tamara’s at ten a.m. Candito and Rabbit had taken turns to push Skinny’s wheelchair fifteen blocks, and when Yoyi arrived he lambasted them for not giving him a call: he’d have driven them all the way in his Chevrolet, listening to his birthday gift from the Count, that selection of hits by Credence Clearwater Revival.

Sheltering under the foliage of the flowering ceiba that dominated Tamara’s patio, they drank cold lemonade out of militant solidarity with their battered friend, Conde, who reeled off possible reasons why he’d been chased so forcefully out of the old barrio of Atarés. Skirting round his flirtation with drugs and his encounter with the pale J.D., he announced he was going back the following day to find the elusive woman whose address he’d finally tracked down.

“You think they beat you up to stop you talking to her?” asked Candito, who, after more than ten years of Christian clean living, still maintained his streetwise knowledge from his time as an urban warrior in the most diverse fields of battle.

“No, I don’t,” the Count replied thoughtfully. “They can’t know the African left me that lead. They drove me out so I wouldn’t fuck up their trade. They’re cooking up big deals with guys from abroad who move lots of cash and I bet they thought I was police.”

“You reckon they’d dare take on the police?” wondered Carlos.

“Down there, man,” interjected Yoyi, waving a finger at hidden depths under the soil, “they don’t believe in anything or anybody. And the guys not from the barrio work like the mafia. But they didn’t do you over for being police, that’s too dangerous. It was because you were being a nosey parker.”

“My problem is I need to talk to that woman soon. The world is the way it is, independent of any specific thought you might formulate about it. What that woman says will decide if I’m on the wrong path or not. I’ve meditated long and hard and I think enlightenment may be just around the corner.”

“You got a temperature?’ asked Carlos, alarmed by Conde’s florid language.

“Why the hell should she tell you something she probably doesn’t want to tell anyone?” Rabbit’s merciless logic brought the Count’s desires back to the real world.

“Because if what I think is true,” the Count went on, “Lotus Flower has lived in fear for the last forty years. And that’s too long, right?”

“True enough. But she even changed her name…” Rabbit continued to doubt.

“And when do you say you’re going?” Skinny Carlos sat back in his chair.

“Tomorrow,” asserted the Count, his vehement tone sparking off pain and bewilderment.

“I’ll go with you,” said Candito, “and don’t argue.”

“What the hell, so will I,” joined in Rabbit.

“How many pistols should I hire out?” asked Yoyi, enthused. “The rate’s dropped recently…”

“No, we’ve got to go clean,” rasped the Count,

“A couple of truncheons might come in handy,” concluded Candito, before adding: “May Jesus My Lord and Saviour forgive me.”

They left the Bel Air Chevrolet under the watchful eye of a vigilante on an hourly rate, opposite Fraternity Park, and, still limping, with one very sore eye and a bruised eyebrow covered in sticking plaster, the Count led his troops towards the Calzada de Monte and the barrio of Atarés. Candito and Pigeon, in loose fitting shirts, hid steel bars in their waistbands, which they’d use in self-defence if necessary, while Rabbit, in trembling tones, insisted on recounting the history of that eternally marginal barrio famous for its rabid inhabitants, and where it was always perilous to put a foot wrong.

When they were on the doorstep of 58, Factoría, Conde asked his friends to wait on the pavement and keep out of trouble. He apologized for the sewage flowing down the street opposite which infected the air with its stench. He overcame his lameness and walked through the door to an inner patio which opened out like a small square, where two women were trying to wash clothes white in concrete washtubs. Conde looked around for signs of danger, but imagined that at this time of the morning a necessary truce must rule after a night of non-stop hustle and bustle. Forcing a smile, he advanced on the washtubs where the women stopped wringing and turned to challenge the intruder. The Count thought his appearance could arouse curiosity rather than seem threatening. He broadened his smile as he greeted them, and asked which was the room where an elderly lady called Carmen lived. The women glanced instinctively at each other.

“No Carmen lives here,” replied the bigger of the two, a black woman with arms like soft hams.

“Yes, a Carmen does live here,” the Count insisted as a light flashed in his brain. “My friend Veneno gave me her address.”

The women exchanged more glances, but said nothing, and the Count added: “I’m not a policeman, I just want to speak to her about a relative of mine we lost track of a long time ago.”

“It’s right at the back, at the end,” said the stouter black woman, making it obvious how much she disliked giving information to a stranger.

Conde waved gratefully at them and headed to the back of the ruin, dodging wooden supports that, miraculously rather than from any feat of engineering, propped up the second-floor passageway, and poked his head round the open door of the last room. The room was four by six yards, littered with grimy, battered objects, the most noteworthy being a small, narrow bed, a flaking fridge from the fifties that coughed asthmatically, and an altar covered in various plaster images, as well as a wooden chair where, a thin, elderly, balding woman was dozing. Her skin was all cracked.

He tapped softly on the door and the elderly woman opened her eyes and looked up. She didn’t move.

“Carmen?” he asked, bending in her direction, but not going through the door.

“Who are you?” The question surprised Conde who didn’t have a good reply ready: a second-hand bookseller who’d found a photo and listened to a record?…

“It’s quite a long story. Can I come in?”

The elderly woman looked him up and down and nodded him in. When he was inside, she pointed her chin to a small wooden bench. Conde saw that Carmen was sparing in her movements and the awkward way she was holding her left arm against her chest suggested she’d suffered some kind of paralysis. It pained him to see how life and time combined so cruelly to ravage a human being. Had that eyesore once been a beautiful, thrusting, depraved and hot-blooded woman, the sexy number in Havana because of rumbas she danced naked on stage. Or might it just be, he wondered, all a tremble, a false trail dreamt up by the African or one of his mates, to send him after an old woman who really was called Carmen, and had nothing to do with Elsa Contreras, alias Lotus Flower?

Conde sat on the bench and leant towards her.

“I apologize, I’ve probably got it all wrong… The person I’m hunting for was called Elsa Contreras… lots of people knew her as Lotus Flower.”

“Why are you after her?”

Conde jumped in at the deep end.

“I was told she was the best friend of a singer. Violeta del Río.”

“And who might you be?” the elderly woman asked again, not changing her expression, and the Count realized he’d no choice but to tell the truth.

As he’d run through who he was and why he was looking for Elsa Contreras, the Count began to see how ridiculous his story was: he was trying to erect an impossible structure without foundations or supports, that would collapse under its own weight. Even so, apart from Dionisio Ferrero’s murder, he told all, including his father’s silent infatuation, still not knowing if that elderly lady was the person he was after and without the slightest hope that, if she were Elsa Contreras, he had aroused her interest and could perhaps extract the missing links from her memory to bring together the disconnected parts of that incredible story that was lost in the past. The Count saw a first flicker of light when he related the beating he’d received and glimpsed a sign of life: the woman’s cracked lips puckered into a smile.

“You’re crazy,” she said when she assumed he’d finished his tale. “You have to be crazy to get mixed up in a shitty barrio like this…”

“So you are?…”

“What was it you said about your father?”

“I think he once saw Violeta, probably heard her sing and fell in love. He’d listen to her record at night, by himself, in the dark. I think he even mentioned her name to me…”

“Violeta was like that,” she said, slowly lifting her right arm to point to a ramshackle sideboard. “The first drawer. A cardboard box.”

Conde obeyed and, under a mountain of pills encapsulated in plastic, phials, syringes and tubes of cream, he saw an eight by twelve-inch cardboard box.

“Take it out and look inside,” she ordered.

Conde took the box out, rested it on the sideboard and lifted the lid. A sheet of stiff white paper filled the box. When Conde extracted the paper, he realized it was a sheet of photographic paper folded in half. Not looking at the elderly lady he unfolded the huge photo and beheld a woman in her twenties, as blonde as blonde could be, a supple, smiling beauty, saved from complete nudity by garlands of gorgeous lotus flowers draped over her pubes and the nipples of her prodigious breasts.

“You’re now looking at Elsa Contreras when she was Havana’s Lotus Flower,” she said, adding, “Look this way: you’re now looking at a half dead crone by the name of Carmen Argüelles.”

16 February

Dear love:

Since I last wrote I have hardly made any headway in my search for a truth I need so badly for my own sake but I keep finding other truths to torment me.

Several days ago I went to see the wretched nosey-parker journalist your friends almost took a hand off. I found an alcoholized human wreck, in a state of permanent fear that he can only throw off by swigging hard liquor. The man refused to tell me anything, but thanks to him I did track down that bolerista who once rowed with that woman, and we talked at length about what happened and, though she was a tart from the world of singers and cabaret girls, I would almost say she was genuine. As far as she was concerned, as she said at the outset, her problem with the deceased ended the day they had the row, because she realized she was on to a loser in that war when she knew who the powerful people backing her foe were. But she assured me she got satisfaction from the four things she did say to her hypocritical face about her role as the little innocent. She never went near her again and heard next to nothing about her until she found out about her death several weeks after it happened, on her return from the performances she gave in Mexico. We spoke at length and, when she felt like confiding more, she told me almost casually something I refuse to believe, that only you can deny or endorse. According to her, she backed off from that woman forever because, a few days after they rowed, you went to her house with the black chauffeur you employed towards the end, and told her to keep well away and not to speak to her ever again if she wanted to go on singing and eating. At that moment a friend of hers (as she described him) came out of her bedroom, heard your threats and started to protest, but the black chauffeur, without saying a word, took out a pistol, put it between his eyebrows and, almost immediately, brought the pistol down on his mouth and split his lips. Then, still according to her, you said she was lucky you had come on a peaceful footing, but that they might imagine what a second visit would be like if they decided to declare war or started to talk openly about the fact you’d paid them a visit… The singer burst into tears as soon as she’d finished telling that horrible story, and do you know what I told her? I said it was all lies, and left.

Nonetheless, that woman seemed so sincere I am compelled to ask you: did something like that happen? Please tell me it didn’t, and also please tell me that the disappearance of the poor chauffeur you used to conceal our secret wasn’t also the result of actions I’d rather not imagine. Tell me, did you declare war on him when he was foolish enough to blackmail you?

I assume one often pays a very high price to find out a truth. While looking for one that still eludes me, I have come up against something else I would have preferred not to know and it showed me how much I was struggling against the current where you’d put your life after you went crazy over that woman, the cause of my unhappiness…

22 February

Dear love:

I was so saddened by my exchange with the singer that I felt I had to speak to your daughter about it and everything else I’d been thinking over recent months. We hadn’t had a conversation of any significance for several weeks, only exchanges on everyday matters, because what with my obsession and increasingly depressed state of mind, and the new responsibilities she had taken on at work, there are days when we only see each other for a few moments, if at all, over breakfast or when she’s swallowing a couple of mouthfuls of something at night.

To my surprise, your daughter seemed delighted to hear the story. She said she wasn’t surprised, she wouldn’t expect any other attitude from you, because you were always selfish, thought only about yourself and used those around you for your own ends: your parents, for their name and prestige, your wife for her money, me for my fidelity… On the other hand, you treated her and her brother like strangers despite them being of your blood, as much your children as your others, who you also used to get favours from your parents-in- law with their money and influences. And she added, as if wanting to drive me mad, given I was already a total wreck, that she’d been wondering for some time, and my story was confirmation you had eliminated or ordered that woman be eliminated because of something she asked you for, something you didn’t want to give her or simply because her presence was inconvenient and didn’t fit with your new life; she knew too many things that you preferred to bury, next to her body… Your daughter only shut up when I slapped her… But she’d already spat her poison out.

If I’d once suspected she might feel spitefully towards you, I now realize how much she hates you because of the way you denied her everything that belonged to her. It was very unpleasant to face that terrible truth, and I felt guilty that I had been so weak and told her about where she really came from. But you must realize I did so hoping she’d feel proud and confident, although in the end, as you see, I only generated more resentment. A resentment that makes her feel happy, because she possesses one more proof of your real character and, with that proof, the certainty you were the one who ordered that woman be silenced forever.

Do you know what is most painful, most cruel about this terrible revelation? That I now understand that even when I always loved you and dared defy all conventions, even gave you two children, I too was afraid of you and perhaps that’s why I was never determined enough to rebel against the role and fate you moulded for me, while you broke every promise you’d made over the years… And even now, I dare write all this only because I know this letter will never reach your hands. In fact, I would never dare to have sent it for two reasons you are well aware of: fear and love. I prefer to think out of love. Out of a love able to forgive everything.

Your Nena

Here you have me now, a human mess, living in this shitty slum, and still thinking life has been generous. Very generous. I’ve been whiplashed, like everyone else, at times viciously, but I’ve seen and enjoyed what others could never dream of, even if they lived two hundred years and didn’t sleep a single night.

Look, when I celebrated my thirteenth birthday, I discovered something that would be my salvation: I had something special, and I told myself: I’m going to use this gift of nature to survive. Go on, take a second look at that photo, a good look… Can you feel it? That something’s in my face, my hair, in my firm tits, which were like two apples when I was twelve, and above all down here, between my legs. When I was thirteen, my father died: he fell from a building where he was cleaning windows, and as he didn’t belong to a union and we didn’t have money to hire a lawyer, we didn’t get a single peso in compensation. Not even funeral expenses. My mother, little sister and I lived in a tenement three blocks from here on Indio, and were left totally skint, were almost starving to death, really starving, had nothing to eat: that hunger forced me to stop being a young girl, like that, over night. When I went into the street, men stared at me and some said things, and I thought: If God’s given me this body, the biggest sin I could commit would be to let it die, and let my mum and my sister die… I started to lay the Spaniard who owned the room where we lived so he didn’t throw us out, and then it was the turn of the butcher, the owner of the corner store and the baker, and, as it seemed to work well, I went on to the tailor and the furrier. I really never saw or felt it was at all dirty or immoral, because when I did it I felt good: I liked giving men a good time, and thought it was wonderful when they gave me one too. So, as easy as pie and without guilty feelings or any shit like that, because as the wise man said, the one who seemed to know what he was talking about: the best thing about being a whore is that you work on your back in bed and in the worst scenario, if you don’t earn much, at least you get something hot in your belly…

By the age of fifteen I knew all there was to know about men, what they need and what you must do to soften them up, what they like and sometimes don’t dare ask for, and most important of all: I learned how to make them think they fuck better than anyone else and make them feel happy when they give you money and things for one little fuck… That’s why I told myself, right, you can get more than your food and clothing out of this, you could turn professional and earn real money if you could get to people who pay for a good night between the sheets without protesting. I say this quite brazenly: the least of it was my fantastic body; what decided it was the fact I was more intelligent than most whores. I had a wild animal’s natural intelligence, and realized there were two very dangerous things in this trade: one is to fall in love with a bastard who’ll pimp you for all the money you’ve earned and the other is not to know your limitations, because you need to know that however well you look after yourself, by the age of thirty you’ll be in decline, and what you don’t get by that age you’ll never get. Like most things in life. That was why I started to look for a way to be more than a common whore: I decided to speak to the impresarios who ran the Shanghai and told them I wanted to dance in their shows. The Shanghai had a bad reputation as a clip joint, people said, but the key thing was that every night guys with money went there, high society guys, some on a binge, others who liked to get their thrills looking at naked girls, and I felt I’d catch a good fish there if I worked on it. When the theatre people saw me dance naked, they saw I’d be a star and for a few pesos bought me a birth certificate in the name of Elsa Contreras, that said I was twenty-one, and not just sweet seventeen.

I was dancing within a fortnight and men went crazy: they packed out the theatre to see me, and I met Louis Mallet, a fortyyear old Frenchman, the representative of Panama Pacific, a big shipping line in New Orleans, who also ran a business in Cuba importing wood from Honduras and Guatemala, in partnership with a Cuban, Alcides Montes de Oca. And my life changed, just as my name had changed. Louis and I started seeing each other and within the month he’d rented me a flat near the university, so we had a nice place together. Louis was a good man, affectionate even and never banned me from dancing at the Shanghai. He’d say: you’re an artiste. As he spent three or four months in Cuba and the rest of the time in New Orleans or Guatemala, I used that time and worked extra, but only with people who paid over the odds, and I started to save money, wear expensive clothes, use classy perfumes and my customers got even classier.

But my life really changed in 1955 and I was able to give up the theatre and all that. Louis was in Havana around that time and told me to ask for a week off from the Shanghai, we were going to go to Varadero, because he wanted a rest and to introduce me to some friends who were going to make me a really profitable offer. When we reached Varadero we checked in at a beautiful sea-front hotel, a wooden building straight out of an American movie. During the day we swam on the beach, like a honeymoon couple, and swanned around in a convertible. That night we went for dinner in a big house on the banks of the canal, near the spot where they built the Hotel Kawama, soon after. Alcides Montes de Oca, Louis’s partner, was there, who I’d seen a couple of times before, and a very elegant man with a clown’s face who spoke softly although he never laughed, and turned out to be Meyer Lansky. When it was time to eat, another man, Joe Stasi came along. It was a really boring dinner, because Louis, Alcides, Stasi and Lansky spent the whole time talking about imports and exports, and as Lansky only drank a couple of glasses of Pernod and hated drunks, we hardly saw a drop of wine. Then, when they offered us cognac and coffee on the terrace, opposite the canal, Alcides Montes de Oca finally told me what they wanted me for. They were organizing a scheme to attract millions of American tourists to Cuba and these tourists required four essential items: good hotels, casinos, readily available high quality drugs and young, healthy, elegant, dissolute women. If I accepted, my responsibility would be to work with those women. They were planning special journeys to Havana for extremely wealthy people, celebrities, artists, journalists, and so on, and would treat them all so they felt they’d been to paradise, so they’d spread the good news about holidays in Havana. I had to create the kind of agency with only top-notch girls – none of your average, unsophisticated whores. I’d to choose the best and create a quality service. Sometimes these women wouldn’t only go to bed with their men, they’d also have to accompany them in Havana and needed to know how to behave in a restaurant, cabaret, casino or even at the theatre. The women would be paid a fixed wage, a high wage, whether they had lots or little work, so they weren’t soliciting all over the place. If I accepted, one of Stasi’s men would set up the whole structure: he’d be a kind of accountant-administrator, working with hotels and casinos, and I’d look for the women and be responsible for training them, together with an etiquette expert who’d teach them to behave and dress well. Then I’d deal directly with the girls, be like a manager and get a three per cent cut of whatever the rich and famous lost gambling in casinos, which might be quite a lot… Initially, in the three or four months necessary to get the agency up and running, I’d be paid a salary of 500 pesos. 500 pesos! Do you know what 500 pesos meant back then! A small fortune.

I immediately dropped the dancing in the Shanghai and started on my new role. By the beginning of ’56 the elite agency, as Bruno Arpaia dubbed it, was up and running. He was Stasi’s man who was working alongside me. We recruited sixteen women, almost all from outside the brothel districts. I inspected cabarets and clubs in Havana and went on expeditions into the interior, as we described it, and to big cities like Cienfuegos, Camagüey and Matanzas. We selected girls to fit our business needs and taught them to eat, dress, speak softly, and I taught them how to behave with men and how they should let themselves be treated…

By the end of that year the agency worked so well we had to find more women. On one of our expeditions, I came across a girl who sang there three or four nights a week in a little cabaret in Cienfuegos, and apart from being one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, she had a special voice: I say it was a woman’s voice because that was the only way to describe it. Her only drawbacks were the what she was wearing and her name, Catalina Basterrechea, although people called her Lina or Lina Beautiful Eyes, to get round that.

As soon as I met her I realized Lina was a Cinderella: singing was her life and she spent the whole time dreaming someone would appear and give her the opportunity to put her glass slippers on, show off her talent and become famous into the bargain. The usual old story! Only as far as she was concerned singing was a pleasure, not just a means to an end. So, though Lina wasn’t a whore and had no such inclinations, she might be ready to do the necessary to attain her goal. I was delighted by the idea of signing her up, because the minute I saw her I knew I’d found a diamond in the mud and that with a little polishing she’d become the star of the agency, but after I’d talked to her for a while, I felt she had something different, something that moved me, and the fact is I was never usually one to be moved by stories of dead parents, lousy aunts and cousins that rape you at the age of ten, like the ones she told me. No… But I explained quite clearly what I was about and – I still don’t quite know why – offered her a special deal: if she wanted, she could come with me to Havana and help me in some way with my business, without having to whore, and I’d use my contacts to find her someone to help her find a place where she could sing. And, of course, she packed her cheap little suitcase and left with me, and didn’t say goodbye to the bastard of an aunt who’d made her life impossible… I’ve always thought that destiny meant for Lina and I to meet, for her life story to touch what remained of my heart, and for me to like whatever she sang. Lina and I were good friends from the start, and if I’d ever thought of suggesting she worked with my girls if she didn’t make it as a singer, I quickly gave up on that and decided to protect and help her any way I could. Was it a kind of maternal feeling? As if I could see myself in her and wanted to give myself a second chance? You tell me… but that’s how it turned out.

Within a month or month and a half of Lina being in Havana, Louis returned from New Orleans and told me we must go back to Varadero and meet Lansky, Alcides and two American entrepreneurs who were going to build hotels in there. I don’t know why but I persuaded Louis it would be a good idea to take Lina, because I thought she’d sing for his friends and make dinner a little less boring… That was how Alcides Montes de Oca and Lina Beautiful Eyes met up: he was almost fifty and she was under twenty, but when the business talk ended and Lina started to sing, Alcides fell madly in love with the girl, her looks and her voice.

Alcides Montes de Oca was a character with some strange baggage, I should tell you. He came from a high society family and was very wealthy, even more so since he’d inherited the fortune belonging to his wife who’d just died. He liked talking politics and was very proud to be a grandson of a general in the Army of Liberation; he loathed Batista. According to him, Batista was the worst disaster that had ever hit this country, and I’m sure that at the time he supported the rebels, because many had belonged to the Orthodox Party which Alcides had been a member of when Batista struck with his coup d’état and suspended the elections the Orthodoxers were about to win. He was also a very cultured man who read a lot, and Louis told me he had books galore in his house. But at the same time he had a nose for business and although he didn’t appear to own anything, because he didn’t need to, he owned shares in all the big companies in Cuba. Through his business concerns he got on with Lansky like a house on fire, though this friendship was never reported in the newspapers, because everyone knew the Jew had been a drug-trafficker in the States, although here he only operated legal business and behaved, well, as I said, like a gentleman.

So Alcides and Lina became infatuated; they were crazy about each other, and, to please her, he got her a singing spot in the second show at the Las Vegas and quickly moved her from my place to a flat in Miramar, in a building that had just received its finishing touches. The only problem complicating their romance were Don Alcides’s political aspirations and his social situation. He’d been widowed only recently and couldn’t enter a formal relationship with a poor country-girl, who was thirty years his junior… If it had been nowadays! But in those days a scandal like that could have damaged Alcides’s position considerably and so they decided to keep things quiet: he kept her, saw to all her wants, paid for the flat and gave her a car, although Louis appeared as the legal owner of everything in order to avoid nasty gossip.

The person responsible for looking after Lina’s needs and expenses was Alcides’s personal secretary, an awesome woman by the name of Nemesia Moré. She saw to all his commercial and political paperwork, as well as being something like the administrator of his household, but with more power, because since Alcides became a widower, Nemesia had assumed the role of lady of the house. She was in her forties, had retained her good figure, and had a real gift: she was always able to anticipate Alcides’s thoughts and satisfy them before he’d even asked for anything. Consequently Alcides would say, half jokingly, half seriously, that the most important woman in his life was Nemesia Moré: he couldn’t live without her.

In the meantime, Lina had started singing and the owner of the Las Vegas only imposed one condition before contracting her: a change of name. Just imagine a compère announcing: “And now ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Catalina Basterrrrrechea!” After a moment’s thought Alcides said: “Violeta del Río”, as if he’d already got the name in his head, and so Catalina Basterrechea, Lina Beautiful Eyes died, and Violeta del Río the bolerista was born. She immediately got a big reputation and sang in the best places, even made the Parisién, by which time Havana knew her as the Lady of the Night, and she had countless men chasing after her to hear her sing and, naturally, trying to seduce her, because the country-girl had transformed herself into a spectacular woman, wearing clothes from New York, perfumes from France and with her hair styled by the best hairdressers in Havana… Was this the woman your father fell in love with? Poor man, how he must have suffered…

As far as I know, Lina saw life through Alcides’s eyes, and the only thing she refused was classes from a singing teacher he’d insisted on hiring for her; she wanted to sing from her soul, and if someone taught her, she said, they’d damage the desire she’d had naturally from childhood and that had saved her from going crazy. And I think she was right. She needed a microphone, not classes. On stage she was a fantastic act, I’d never seen or heard anything like her – and I’d seen plenty in my lifetime – she turned everything into magic. Even today, after all these years, I shut my eyes and see her holding the microphone, throwing her hair back that fell like a mantle over her beautiful eyes, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, and I can hear her sing those songs that came straight from her soul… Poor girl…

Violeta was a happy woman, the happiest woman in the world while her dream lasted. It sounds like a radio soap, but that’s how it was. And she was still happy when 1959 came and everything suddenly changed: for Lansky and Alcides, for Louis and me, and for the girls who worked for the agency. Because the country changed… The rebels won the war and Batista left Cuba, which was what everybody wanted. Although people only spoke about Revolution to begin with, some people were already mentioning the word communism and Lansky was the first to grasp what might happen: he immediately started to pack his bags. Louis also thought it would be better to be on the other side of the sea and he persuaded Alcides to take whatever he could out of Cuba and forget about politics now his moment had come and gone. Initially Alcides refused, but within a few months, deeply upset, he saw Louis and Lansky were right. Even so, when he decided to leave he did so thinking he’d be back in a few months, a few years at most, and only took the money he’d already taken out and what was most important to him: his children and his wife-to-be, Violeta del Río.

I wasn’t very surprised when Violeta accepted Alcides’s suggestion that she should stop singing and go the States. She was probably persuaded by Alcides’s promise that they’d be able to marry and lead a normal life where nobody knew them. Or maybe he convinced her by saying she’d be able to take up singing later on. Or perhaps she agreed because she thought the most important thing was to safeguard her relationship with a man who idolized her and whom she loved deeply. Whatever the reason, Violeta announced she was retiring from the stage at the end of 1959 and Alcides began to prepare his departure from Cuba, trying to salvage what he could, although he lost an enormous amount of money when they started to take over sugar plantations and nationalize American companies in which he held shares.

Violeta and I saw lots of each other over those months. Lansky had returned to Cuba for the last time in March or April 1959, shut his business ventures down and returned to the States. Obviously, one of the ventures that died the death was the escort agency, so I was soon unemployed, with lots of time on my hands and money in the bank. Louis, for his part, promised he’d still come to Cuba whenever he could, but it was clear he couldn’t take me to New Orleans because that’s where his wife and children were, a life where I didn’t fit. Anyway I wasn’t too concerned by all that: several girls wanted to carry on working with me and I told myself: this revolution may be a big deal, but if one line of business will never close, it’s whoring. So, while this or that did or didn’t happen, I had lots of time to decide what to do. You know, sometimes you do fucking stupid things, however clever you are…

Poor Violeta was desperate to leave. After she’d announced her retirement she was adrift here and just wanted out, but Alcides kept delaying his departure, waiting to see if something might change so he wouldn’t be forced to leave and lose so much. Six or seven months went by, and everything suddenly got hectic when the government declared it was nationalizing American businesses in Cuba… The following day Violeta told me about their travel plans. They were off within a month, and now it was for real, because the next Sunday Alcides was intending a crucial step: he was going to take her home and introduce her formally to his children, who were now adolescents, and tell them of his decision to marry her.

Never for one moment did I think that that afternoon I was talking to my friend Catalina Basterrechea, Lina Beautiful Eyes for the last time… Apart from the political complications, which she didn’t understand, there wasn’t a cloud on her horizon; on the contrary, it was all light and promises of bliss. What fucking shit, right? I’ve wondered a thousand times why they didn’t just say to hell with all this and leave Cuba two or three months earlier, happy, in love, with the best of their lives ahead of them…

I found out what happened the following Monday, when I went to Violeta’s flat to see how she’d got on in what we’d dubbed her opening night in the big world of the Montes de Ocas. When I got there, I was surprised to see strange things going on and found myself face to face with Nemesia Moré, Alcides’s secretary. She received me as if I were a total stranger and asked me to leave immediately. “Who the fuck do you think you are? This is my friend’s house,” I started to reply, and the bitch blurted out, as hard as nails: “Your friend’s dead and you’re not welcome here…” I was in a state of shock and barely managed to ask her what had happened. “She’s committed suicide,” she said, and told me: “Don’t ring Mr Alcides, he’s very upset and it would be best to leave him in peace.”

As Alcides Montes de Oca was still Alcides Montes de Oca in Cuba, and had kept Lina’s private life out of the public eye, there was only a brief mention of her suicide in a couple of newspapers and the whole matter was shelved. I was desperate to find out what had happened, but the people in the know sealed their lips. Eventually, thanks to a lad I knew who lived near my place and was in the police I did find out a bit more: Lina had used cyanide to commit suicide. But why? Why kill herself when she was at her happiest? Because she’d given up singing? That was impossible, it must have been hard, but she did so of her own free will. Because she had to leave Cuba? No, she wanted to leave, was leaving with her man and the promise of marriage… The only explanation was that something had gone wrong between her and Alcides. I couldn’t imagine what that might be, if he was now preparing to take her on publicly as his new wife.

I was desperate and started following Alcides. I needed to speak to him, to know what he knew, and find out why Lina had dared do something so terrible. I called several times but he’d never come to the phone, I sent him messages via a couple of friends but he didn’t reply and in the end I started trailing him. One day I saw him leave home, in his Chrysler, driven by his chauffeur and I followed him in my car as far as Old Havana where I saw him enter the Western Union offices and followed him in. When he saw me next to him, he barely seemed surprised, but looked grim. I thought for a moment that he was going to cry. He’d delivered a few messages, picked up others and we left. As he was opening his car door, he said: “Lina broke my heart. I was going to give her everything, why did she have to do that?”

Without a second glance, he got into his car, which turned the corner and disappeared from sight. It was the last time I saw Alcides Montes de Oca and the last time I tried to find out why the girl we all thought so happy ended it all, as if she were living out one of those boleros she so liked to sing.

A primitive jungle instinct urged the Count to ask the questions he’d been stifling as he went further into the tragedy of frustrated love recounted by that elderly woman. But when he saw the tears flooding the deep wrinkles on Carmen Argüelles’s face, he held back, restrained by the sorrow brought by death: he decided to live with his doubts. Although the woman’s confession rounded out a story that still lacked clinching detail, he finally had something firm in place and a first mystery he’d definitively cleared up. In effect, Violeta del Río had died more than forty years ago, as he already knew, but had done so under her real name of Catalina Basterrechea, and that circumstance helped by the last ripples from Don Alcides Montes de Oca’s muscle, explained the strict oblivion into which her other ego, Violeta del Río the singer, had been relegated a few months before.

Mario Conde promised to be back in a few days and said goodbye to the old woman, who now seemed even more feeble and shrunken, as if that descent into her past had worn her out physically. He stopped on the doorstep, then went back inside. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a few notes: one hundred and forty pesos, all he was carrying on him. He placed them gently in her lap.

“It’s not much, Carmen. Today’s pesos, but it all helps,” he said and, unable to contain himself, caressed the woman’s sparse, dank hair.

His team of bodyguards on Factoría slouched like troops defeated by boredom and the stench. They sat on the jamb of a staircase, surrounded by a cemetery of peanut shells, cans of soft drink and even two abandoned newspapers, remnants of the strategies they adopted to resist attacks of hunger and the long wait.

“Fuck, man, how long did that old woman witter on for,” protested Yoyi, and the Count imagined he was reckoning up the time invested in economic terms. “I suppose you know everything there is to know now?”

“What did she tell you, Conde, what did she tell you?” repeated Rabbit, and Conde promised to tell, but first wanted to rid himself of a thorn in his side.

“You lot coming with me into the barrio?” he asked, looking at his friends.

“Hey, Conde, what are you after now?” asked Rabbit, in the tone of someone already familiar with all the potential answers.

“Nothing really, just a walk across the barrio to show them I’ve not surrendered. Yoyi, do you agree with Juan that the guys in charge here are mafiosi? Well, they’ll see killing is the only way they’ll get rid of me. You coming?”

“Why the strongman tactics, Conde?” Rabbit smiled anxiously, displaying all his dentures. “You’ve never been the strongman type.”

“Well, must say I do like the idea. Let’s see if anyone wants a bundle and a round of grievous bodily harm from me,” spoke up Yoyi, touching the side where he’d got his steel bar. “Fancy daring to lay a finger on this guy who is blood of-”

“Cut it out, Yoyi. I want to go because I’ve got a hunch…”

“Not another?” quipped Rabbit, hurrying to keep up with the crowd.

With his left eyebrow bandaged, a black eye and slight limp in one foot Conde strode off towards calle Esperanza. A group of evil-looking black and white youths on the next corner watched the strange retinue advance: their keen sense of self-preservation warned them of approaching danger and they scattered swiftly like insects, much to the relief of the invasion party.

Conde stopped his friends in front of the slum where he thought he’d been beaten up. They looked inside the building, down both sides of the street, and he looked for a cigarette and lit up, as if to say, here I am. But only two uniformed police, a few cyclists, and a hard-pressed taxi-cyclist came along the street and, along the pavement, a couple of tarts, including one the Count identified as the mulatta from his frustrated whoring episode.

“Let’s go for a beer,” he suggested without thinking, turning his back on the woman, who carried on, apparently not recognizing him with his new look.

“Conde, watch it,” warned Rabbit.

“It’s OK, man, the guys in this barrio are all dicks anyway…” shouted Yoyi and Candito smiled.

“Forget it, kid,” said Red, “being born and living around here is a schooling you never had. You see how it’s all ugly, filthy and stinks? Well, that’s how people’s hearts are and they do ugly, filthy, stinking things as if it’s what comes naturally. God’s the only power that can change them… But hurry up, the Count’s turning into a hard man.”

Conde got his bearings and pointed towards the next block, certain it was the one with Michael Jordan’s alcohol shop. As he walked, he noticed something had changed in the barrio over the last two days, but couldn’t pin down where that feeling, more atmospheric than physical, came from. When he peered into the lot, before going in, he discovered the transformations were more drastic than he’d imagined: the inside patio, where three days ago several men had been drinking, blasted by music, was now completely deserted, as if the crowded, illicit bar run by Michael Jordan’s double had never existed. Conde worried about his sense of direction, perhaps he’d got the wrong place, and he looked for the African’s building to make sure that this was where they’d drunk those beers.

“They’ve shifted the bar,” he said, immediately suggesting an alternative. “Let’s go to Veneno’s chop shop.”

They walked back two blocks, turned left in pursuit of Veneno’s, and on their way Conde finally sussed out of one of the mutations suffered by the barrio: there were as many people as ever in the street, but music now only came from a few houses, unlike on previous occasions when he’d had to advance through a thick curtain of sound. As on his last visit to Veneno’s, Conde clambered though the hole in the wall separating the ruined building from the street and, followed by his friends, headed over past the precarious canvas and zinc roofs where newly arrived pariahs resided. He went on, searching for the yard with the improvized restaurant tables, and behind the big entrance found a panorama of desolation similar to what he’d found on the lot which once housed the illicit bar.

“Something big’s happened, Conde,” was Candito’s verdict when he saw his friend’s amazement.

“They took fright after the beating they gave the Count. Perhaps they thought they’d killed him,” ventured Pigeon.

“That’s right, and as they thought he was police…” concluded Rabbit.

“No, they knew I wasn’t in the force anymore, and that was why they did me over. Perhaps they thought they’d killed me,” surmised the Count.

“They didn’t think anything at all… If they’d wanted to clean you out of the way they’d have done it by now.” Candito looked at the closed doors of the houses opening on to the patio. “There’s something weird going on here. We’d better beat it.”

“Yes, Red’s right. Let’s go. Look at the sky, it’s going to rain.”

“I wanted to see a guy I know,” said the Count.

“Leave it,” insisted Candito. “We’re out of here.”

“So what did that woman tell you, Conde?”. Relieved by the prospect of leaving this barrio, Rabbit had recovered his perpetual curiosity.

“That Violeta del Río was really Catalina Basterrechea, that she had beautiful eyes and that singing love songs was what she most liked to do on this earth,” said the Count, beginning to tell the whole story.

“So you mean when you were in the force, you didn’t have computers?”

“Of course we did. A big brute of one… We called her Felicia. Hey, if I look old, it’s because I’ve worn badly.”

“Did you work with it?”

“No, I’ve always felt computers were a bit of a headfuck. I haven’t a clue when it comes to all that technology, I’m not joking.”

“But they’re easy enough.”

“I didn’t think they were easy or difficult. We don’t get on and I don’t have a clue… How many computers does Headquarters have now?”

“Two… but one’s broken.”

“I bet it’s more stupid than I am. What do you bet we find nothing at all?”

Sergeant Estévañez smiled and shook his head: this guy’s a joker. His mind couldn’t tolerate the image of a detective too thick to find a simple piece of data on a computer and be sure, in advance, whether it existed or not.

“What’s the name?”

“Catalina Basterrechea,” repeated the Count, agreeing with Lotus Flower that nobody could come on stage and sing a bolero after being introduced by such a mouthful.

The search was more arduous than the sergeant had imagined, and the Count felt happy when, after several attempts, the presumptuous cybernetic policeman was forced to use the phone and consult a specialist over locating certain files from the past.

Estévañez gave the machine new instructions, as it had refused to reply to his questions, and Conde went into the passage, and saw the tremendous downpour that had started outside. He rushed to a lavatory and, while urinating, realized he’d held on to it for too long. He sighed with relief as he felt himself unloading as powerfully as the summer clouds. Simultaneously a voice made him start.

“They say great friendships are forged in lavatories. Or that old ones have been patched up…”

Conde didn’t turn round: he was conscientiously shaking his penis, flicking it as if it were of slightly higher calibre than the one he actually wielded.

“But I’m not going to introduce you…” he said, putting his member away.

Captain Palacios preferred a stall, rather than one of the urinals where the Count emptied his bladder. When he’d finished, he twisted round and was shocked to see his ex-colleague’s bruised face.

“What the fuck’s happened to you?”

“They almost killed me, but evil weevils never die. And if they die, they re-incarnate, as a friend told me who knows about such things. It’s the risk you take prowling around when you’re not a policeman.”

“Well, they really had it in for you… Did you find anything?” asked the captain.

“A few things about the previous owner of the library and the girl who sang boleros. There are people who think she didn’t commit suicide… But don’t you worry, nothing that had anything to do with Dionisio. How about you?”

“I’ve hardly had time to do anything. This gets worse by the

day. There’s no trace of that bloody tall, lame black guy who was at the Ferreros’ the day before Dionisio died. The people trading in old books don’t know him…”

“I know,” said the Count. “I suspect Dionisio and his sister were fibbing about the tall black guy, and after what’s happened, Amalia doesn’t know how to wriggle out of the lie.”

“Do you reckon?” Manolo looked at the Count, intrigued by his suggestion. “Why would they want to do that?”

“The answer to what happened is in the Ferrero household, in the library, to be precise. The other day Dionisio or his sister said something to me about that library that I think holds the key to everything.”

“And you still don’t remember what?”

“I don’t remember who said it or what was said, but it’s buzzing around my head… For some reason I think it’s also connected to the bolero singer.”

“You still on that tack?… You know, Conde, my way’s much simpler: Dionisio refused to do a deal over some of those books, the person with him got upset, they rowed and he lost his temper and killed him. When he saw what he’d done, he took six books, because, whatever you say, they must be some of the most valuable ones…”

“Very neat,” said the Count, “and, best of all, neither Yoyi nor I fit that version. We didn’t need to kill anyone or steal books that Dionisio could sell us at a bargain price…”

“And what if Yoyi tried to reach a deal and leave you out? There were books you didn’t want to sell because they were so rare… You told me some manuscripts might be worth a fortune… And the person who entered the house was someone Dionisio was acquainted with. He even knew where to find his knife.”

Conde looked at Manolo’s vague expression, eyeing him as suspiciously as if he held the trump card.

“Yoyi may be many things but he’s not a murderer.”

“How can you be so sure? Yoyi is in business and crazy about money…’

“Yoyi is also my friend,” concluded Conde and Manolo smiled: he knew what such a status meant in the ex-lieutenant’s ethics. “Forget him and look elsewhere.”

“I’m looking everywhere, but it’s like being a magnet: you turn it round, and when you let go, things turn by themselves and join up again…”

‘If you’d listened to me like you used to… Tell me, do you know why Dionisio left the corporation where he was working after he left the army?”

“More or less, though you can’t get a straight answer from anyone. It seems Dionisio was too strict and didn’t like the way he saw things being done there. You can imagine what. It seems he started getting difficult and they made his life impossible. He was the only one who had to leave.”

“I’d imagined something of the sort. He was a man of rock-solid principles. He almost starved to death as a result.”

“Conde, Conde!” Sergeant Estévañez’s summons interrupted the Count’s disquisition. “Oh, Captain, I didn’t know…”

“What’s the matter?” enquired Manolo.

“I found something odd: the case on that woman isn’t open but it’s not closed either…”

“This is looking good. But we’d better leave the toilets,” the Count suggested, “otherwise they’ll start suspecting I’m some policemen’s favourite piece of ass…”

The evening rain cleared away the grey haze that had wreathed the city since midday, as if releasing it from an oppressive burden, capable of driving it back into its weary foundations. The newly washed sky recovered its summery cheerfulness and a cool breeze rustled through the trees, painted by the impressionist light of dusk.

Muscular and spare in spite of his age, the man rocked gently in his wooden chair. He was looking dreamily into the garden, and every twenty-five to thirty seconds lifted his cigar to his lips. His face was momentarily hidden in a cloud of languorous smoke that began the perfumed ascent from his mouth to paradise, where the spirits of well-made and even better smoked havanas lived on eternally.

The Count observed him from his car window and was struck by an unmistakable wave of nostalgia. Seeing him smoking in the peaceful solitude of his porch, relaxed, apparently content, was a spectacle he never dreamt he’d be privileged to enjoy. In the ten years he’d worked to orders from that robust, gifted leader, the then detective lieutenant Mario Conde had felt a special fondness, a rich blend of differences and affinities, grow for the man with the cigar who, quite unselfishly, had given him the benefit of his massive experience in the police, the keys to his uncorruptible ethics and the more elusive benefits of his trust and jealous friendship. Consequently, when an Internal Investigations team had used their unlimited police powers and policies to decree that the man’s abilities were dwindling and decided to remove him from the force via the procedure of early retirement, the Count rushed into the void after him, in an act of blatant solidarity. He handed in his resignation, risked being suspected of acts of corruption, indolence and prevarication that had already cost several detectives their posts and even prison sentences and, by simple hierarchical fiat, had put an end to the mandate of the hitherto spotless Major Antonio Rangel.

“Is the chief you’ve got now better than the Boss?” the Count finally broke the silence, turning towards Manolo, seated behind the wheel.

“He was one in a million. Especially as far as you were concerned.”

“True enough,” replied the Count, opening the car door, ready to go to meet his past yet again.

When Rangel saw them approaching he stood up. At seventy he still retained his impressive chest, flat belly and brawny arms that he proudly nurtured and kept on display.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, smiling, a cigar between his lips.

Conde realized old age and separation from commander status had changed Rangel’s attitudes when he came over preparing to give them a hug. Could that man of iron have gone soft?

“Your cigar smells great. Where did you get it?” enquired the Count.

“When my wife brings out the coffee I’ll give you one… I’ve got two boxes of León Jimenes that have just arrived from Santo Domingo. You know, my friend Fredy Ginebra. And he sent a bottle of Brugal rum that’s…”

“That’s what good friends are for,” commented the Count. ‘What are your daughters are up to?”

A lightning flash of expectation lit up his former chief’s eyes.

“They’re planning to come over on holiday to see the New Year in. The one who married the Austrian is still living in Vienna, and giving Spanish classes. The one who went to Barcelona works for an insurance company… They’re both doing well. But I can’t stop worrying about them and my grand-children…”

“You got over your resentment then?” asked the Count. He remembered the Major’s foul mood provoked by his daughters’ decision to leave Cuba and lead their lives in a different hemisphere.

“I think so. I spend my time reckoning up how long it is since I last saw them… You know what the best of it is? My wife and I live on the money they keep sending us. The pension goes nowhere fast. Can you imagine me living on dollars I receive from my daughters?”

“Your daughters were always kind,” the Count opined, unsure how to leave that minefield. “I’d have married either…”

Antonio Rangel gave him that peculiarly profound stare that still made the Count shake in his shoes.

“It might not have been such a bad idea. I’d have had to put up with you as a son-in-law, I wouldn’t have the dollars that save my bacon now, but you’d have tied one of them to this bitch of a country… Why don’t we change the subject?”

“Of course,” agreed the Count. “Did you see what I brought you?” he said, pointing at Manolo.

“So you’re a captain now,” said Rangel, pointing at Manolo’s stripes and trying to haul himself out of his well of sadness.

“He’s turned out to be a bit of a bastard,” the Count interjected.

“Don’t take any notice, major, this guy’s always coming out with shit,” Manolo protested.

“Don’t worry. I never did take any notice of him. But don’t call me major… So what happened to you?” he asked, pointing at the Count’s face, “you look like you’ve been hit by a train.”

“You could say that.”

“The eyepatch is most becoming. When did you last have a shave?”

“I won’t answer that one. You’re not my boss any more…”

“True enough. Can you tell me what the fuck I owe the pleasure of this visit to?”

While they drank the coffee poured by their ex-chief’s wife and Conde lit a pale, silky smooth León Jimenes, Manolo gave Rangel the police version of the murder of Dionisio Ferrero’s death and the reasons why Mario Conde was involved in the investigation, without letting on that the former policeman was still on the suspects’ hot list.

“But the Count’s gone off on another tack,” concluded the captain.

“And I’m more certain than ever that something out of the ordinary happened forty-three years ago,” the Count announced.

“Forty-three years ago?” Rangel enthused in policeman style, and puffed on his cheroot.

“Do remember you once talked to me about a lieutenant called Aragón?”

“Of course I do, he was my first boss. He was something special.”

“Well Lieutenant Aragón left a case open forty-three years ago…”

“The case of the woman who used cyanide to kill herself?” asked Rangel, taken aback.

“How did you guess?” the Count was even more taken aback than his ex-boss.

“Because Aragón said it was the only one he never solved. After several months of investigations, his boss ordered him to call it a day. There was a lot of evidence pointing to suicide, but Aragón insisted something strange had happened and wanted to keep on the case…”

“Something really strange did happen,” the Count agreed with Aragón.

“Go on then, tell me what happened, and see if I get it.”

“Aragón followed orders and shelved the investigation, but had the forethought not to close the case,” the Count went on. “That’s why it took us so long to find the dossier, because we thought it must have been closed. They’re looking out the rest of the paperwork, and the autopsy report, but in the précis we’ve got it says the woman died from a lethal intake of cyanide, although there were remains of antibiotics in her stomach… Aragón reckoned someone who’s about to commit suicide doesn’t bother taking antibiotics to cure a throat infection. He was sure it was murder, but had no way of proving it, and needed time to investigate… From what I’ve found out, I agree the woman was murdered, perhaps because she was privy to some serious inside information. Just imagine, her lover and Meyer Lansky were as thick as thieves… So we came to see you. I wanted to set you thinking, you must remember something Aragón told you about that case…”

The ex-major put his cigar on the ashtray and looked into the garden. The Count knew Rangel’s memory stored a huge amount of information, and his neurones must now be digging deep into memories of years of conversations with a prehistoric policeman whose infallibility was legendary.

“The woman was young and very beautiful. She was a singer…” said Rangel, returning the Count’s glance. “And Aragón couldn’t find any motives for suicide or murder for that matter. Those most under suspicion had no incriminating motives and there were fingerprints belonging to several people in the house, but all had watertight alibis… The deceased had everything ready to leave the country, even a visa in her passport, and was leaving with a man who’d been her lover for several years. Lansky’s partner?”

“Uh-huh, that’s him. You’re on the right track,” the Count encouraged him.

“Aragón told me a couple of things had surprised him: that the girl didn’t seem to have any friends and that her lover left Cuba three weeks after her suicide. It also struck him as odd she put her own record on the turntable before committing suicide… Wait a minute, I remember what was most suspicious of all was that she diluted the cyanide in cough syrup… He reckoned if you’re set on killing yourself, you swallow the poison, and don’t bother diluting it in medicine.”

“She was murdered. I’ve been sure of that for some time,” declared the Count triumphantly.

“Aragón was sure, if he’d had more time, he’d have found more leads, but we’re talking 1959, no, it was 1960 by then, when the acts of sabotage started and there weren’t enough detectives to go round. That’s why he was told to forget the singer and get on with other cases. Apart from that, there were no relatives or anyone demanding to know what really happened, and he had no suspects… But I don’t understand why you’re so keen connect that death with the murder of the man who was into books.”

Conde smiled and took a drag on his cigar.

“Now I know they murdered her. First it was just a hunch…”

“I don’t believe it, Conde, are you still banging on about your hunches?”

“Well what do you expect, Boss: when I really have a hunch… That woman’s lover owned the library the Ferreros inherited.”

“And he?-”

“He died in 1961,” interjected Manolo, to show how crazy the Count was. “A car accident, in the United States.”

“So?” rasped Rangel.

“So?” mimicked the Count. “Well, I’ll continue with investigations, because I agree with Aragón: Violeta del Río didn’t commit suicide and I’m sure that someone connected to that mystery murdered Dionisio Ferrero. What do you reckon? If they hadn’t killed Dionisio, nobody else would have taken a blind bit of interest in Violeta del Río.”

Rangel and Manolo looked at each other. They’d have liked to crack a joke, but experience urged caution: the Count’s hunches usually had surprising links to reality. Old Rangel contemplated his cigar and smiled.

“Conde, it’s ten years since I asked you this… and I won’t die without getting a proper answer from you. Why the hell did a fellow like you join the police?”

Conde smoked his cigar, with a slightly sarcastic smile, prompted by cherished memories.

“Truly, truly, I didn’t know why for a long time,” he said, no longer smiling. “Although I sometimes liked what I was doing, I hardly ever felt happy as a policeman. Then I decided it was the fault of those bastards who do things and usually get away with it… But then, when I saw what was happening in the big, wide world, I think I imagined I’d sort it out a bit so it wasn’t so fucked up, and I swallowed the story about police being able to do that. A romantic dream, right? I know I was swimming against the tide, but I don’t regret what I did, although I’d never do it again. I’d not enlist again, even at gunpoint. Not even with a chief like you. I used to be agnostic, but I’m a total disbeliever now… Boss, I don’t even believe in the four noble truths a friend of mine talks about… At most, in friendship, memories and a few books. It may sound cynical, but it’s the truth. I don’t like what I see every day and couldn’t cope with it if I was in the force. I feel happier selling old books, wielding no power over others and being at ease with myself. At forty-eight I’ve learned that’s important too. When I can, I enjoy the small pleasures in life, as faraway as I can possibly be from any whiff of power and the idea I have a right to think on behalf of other people and having to obey orders I sometimes didn’t want to obey. You see? I’m much clearer about why I don’t want to be a policeman than why I was one for ten years.”

He abandoned his bed feeling as if he’d had another encounter with his friend J.D., though this time he didn’t remember the essence of their dialogue: meditation and reincarnation. I expect, the bastard’s into all that and doesn’t want to write, he thought, while trying to get up as surreptitiously as his aches and pains would allow so as not to wake up Tamara. Back on his feet, he turned round and fleetingly observed the sleeping woman, her mouth slightly open, her nightdress rucked up, baring thighs as firm as ever as they climbed to the promising mound of her buttocks. Conde bent over, breathed in and filled his lungs with the smell of hot sheets and sweet saliva, ruffled hair and female vapours from that almost inert body and was surprised by the thought that he’d now crossed every frontier of self-preservation because he unreservedly loved a woman he felt to be his own, with whom he’d exchanged the most intimate secrets. He recalled the almost inaudible splash of Tamara’s tongue in the well of her mouth and the seemingly pitiful purr she’d emit seconds before passing from wakefulness to sleep, and, when she lapsed definitively into unconsciousness, the way her body juddered and alarmed the Count. For her part, she was familiar with and suffered from the night-time snoring of a smoker with one nostril blocked from when a baseball hit him long ago, from the anxiety pursuing him in his deepest dreams, which, so she said, made him assume strange postures like sleeping face down, leaning on his elbows his forehead against the pillow, as if enduring a Muslim form of penitence. The quota of secrets they shared from years of passionate encounters encompassed knowledge of phobias and fears, of things admired and held in contempt, and the vital possession of the most subtle, efficient keys to release the springs of sexual pleasure. The Count recalled how she liked his tongue to lick her clitoris in quick violent movements, letting his saliva run down to her vaginal and anal orifices, as the palms of his hands rubbed her erect nipples and he finally felt the tension in her belly, the changes in her breathing, the build up to the silent eruption of her orgasm. Then he felt his scrotum recede and a lascivious tingle run down his urethra, and pleasurably recalled the arts applied by Tamara to give him maximum enjoyment, licking his nipples, caressing his anal sphincter, revisiting his penis and testicles with her tongue and, opening her legs so that, when he knelt and penetrated her, he could eye her pink fleshy parts wet with saliva and tasty secretions, and watch his honourable member drill the hot insides of a body surrendering wholeheartedly to love and pleasure.

When the Count saw the hard on his imaginings had prompted, he wondered if the years hadn’t transformed them into something more than two lovers: theirs was a well-established blend of knowledge and tolerance that, at some moment, they would have to accept was a definitive bond, but both liked to procrastinate, selfishly defending the last remains of a freedom reduced to the enjoyment of periods of solitude, a solitude that was too pleasurable because it was quickly ended by a short ride from one district of Havana to another, where they always found the life-saving sense of security, solidarity and belonging they gave each other.

When he entered her bathroom, after discarding the idea of masturbation which had been his goal, Conde stood in front of the mirror and told himself he was fed up of looking like a badly packaged mummy; he ripped the bandages from his eyebrow and the back of his ear. The sight of the three stitches on his bruised skin produced a slight queasiness and he looked away, horrified by his own scars.

After a coffee and his first cigarette of the day, he ran over a possible agenda: he decided he’d try to talk to Amalia Ferrero, now that Dionisio’s funeral rites had been performed, and concluded he should go back to Elsa Contreras, the once famous Lotus Flower, now sheltering behind the name and terrifyingly real skin of the ravaged Carmen Argüelles.

Tamara took him by surprise as he was lighting his second cigarette, after a second cup of coffee.

“How do you feel?” she asked, lifting his chin to get a better view of the state of his injuries.

“Like shit, but ready for battle,” he said. “The coffee’s still hot.”

She went to get the coffeepot and Conde, still with the morning hunger provoked by his musings, watched her well-endowed buttocks move under the flimsiest of nightdresses. Unable to hold back, he jettisoned his cigarette, went in hot pursuit, kissed her neck, and put his hands on her buttocks that he opened like the pages of a beautiful book.

“So you woke up with love on your mind?” she smiled.

“Seeing you makes me feel like love,” he replied, rocking her gently against the small table.

“Can I drink my coffee?” she asked.

“Only if I can do other things afterwards…”

“You’re ill.”

“It’s not catching. And we’ve been sleeping together for three days like brother and sister. I can’t stand it any more. It’s your fault I was about to jerk off and break my fast…”

“Mario, I’ve got to go to work.”

“I’ll give you a day’s pay.”

“Like a whore!”

Conde’s memory flashed back. He glimpsed the mercenary mulatta’s lascivious tongue, her pert nipples, and even heard her would-be temptress’s voice. He felt his parts rapidly recede, like a timorous animal running into a cave.

“All right, off you go to work,” he replied, picking up his cigarette that was still smoking and almost smoked out.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, alarmed by his reaction.

“Nothing much really, I’m worried,” he whispered and went off to get the telephone. He came back to the kitchen and, as if making his first ever confession, asked: “Haven’t you ever seriously thought we should tie the knot?” and, seeing the startled look on Tamara’s face, added: “Only joking, don’t worry…” and left.

Still surprised by his question, Tamara looked ecstatic, almost not crediting what she’d heard and, telephone in hand, the Count smiled as he heard her say: “Is that what a knock on the head does for you?”

Yoyi Pigeon honked his Chevrolet’s horn insistently and a pensive Count bid farewell to the concrete shapes by Tamara’s house.

“What do you hope to get from the dead man’s sister?” Yoyi asked, after shaking the Count’s hand and shifting the gear lever.

“I’d like the truth, but I’ll settle for any lead…”

“And the old dear in Atarés?”

“I want her to fill in the gaps. She didn’t tell me a number of things. And I don’t think it was out of fear. Too many years have gone by…”

“Are we going by ourselves? I’ve not come prepared. I’ve only got the chain and handcuffs…”

“Don’t worry. I don’t think they’ll dare do it again. That’s something I’d like to get to the bottom of… Anyway we’ll take steel bars…”

When they were opposite Amalia Ferrero, Conde once again saw the exhausted, transparent woman he’d met several days ago. The food cure brought by the books seemed eaten away by grief and her sad eyes were hidden from sight by constant blinking. Her fingers were raw, about to bleed, and had suffered from a bout of frantic chewing.

“The police have told me to stop selling books until they finish their investigation,” she said, when she saw her visitors, skipping any polite chitchat.

“We’ve come about something else. Can we talk for a few minutes?”

Amalia’s lids started blinking again, uncontrollably, as she ushered them into the reception room. Conde inspected the closed mirrored doors of the library, and looked in vain for the glass ashtray. What the fuck had one of those two told him about that library? Which one was it? He tried to poke in his memory: the reply wasn’t forthcoming.

“Amalia, I’m really sorry to bother you, but we need your help. The man who came to buy books still hasn’t shown up, although we’ve found other things out and perhaps…”

“What other things?” the woman’s eyes sparked.

“The singer I told you about, Violeta del Río, was really Catalina Basterrechea. She was Alcides Montes de Oca’s lover.”

“It’s news to me… I didn’t know. Didn’t have the slightest…” she answered emphatically.

“It’s strange you didn’t know. She was going to leave Cuba with Alcides. And if you’d made your mind up, you’d have gone together.”

“But I didn’t know… I didn’t want to leave…”

The Count decided it was time to apply a little pressure.

“Your Mummy knew. She knew everything… She sorted out all the red-tape to bury that woman when she committed suicide.”

“Mummy did whatever Mr Alcides told her to do. I told you: she was his trusted help. But I didn’t know…”

“There was a lot of doubt as to whether Catalina Basterrechea committed suicide or was murdered.”

When he said that last word Conde knew he’d touched a sensitive spot. An almost imperceptible physical reaction rippled though her. She was on tenterhooks. Conde hesitated, although his instinct told him to stick the scalpel in and gouge out the dead tissue.

“I still think it odd that you were living in this house, so close to your mother and Alcides, and knew nothing about that tragedy. How old were you in 1960?”

“I don’t know,” stammered Amalia, who blinked frantically, put a finger to her mouth, and tried to restrain herself. “I was twenty. It was decades ago… and I was just a young girl.”

“From what I gathered, you’d started working, joined the union, and accepted a post in a bank, a position in the Federation…”

“That’s true enough, but I knew nothing about any Catalina, or what Mr Alcides did with his life. And what my mother once knew has gone with her madness… Satisfied? Why don’t you go and leave me in peace? I feel very upset,” her voice pleaded; she was close to collapse. “Dionisio was my brother, can’t you understand? He was almost all I had left in this world… My nieces and nephews went. My mother’s dying. Today or tomorrow… And that bloody hole of a library…”

A shaft of light rent the shadows in Conde’s mind and lit up his memory. Amalia had struck a very personal note about the library which might just have opened a way to the truth.

“What’s your problem with the library, Amalia? A few days ago you said something about the library rejecting you and you rejecting the library. Why did you say that?”

Amalia looked at the two men and blinked and blinked. Her voice sounded like an exhausted sigh.

“Will you leave me in peace?”

Conde nodded and accepted their conversation was at an end, convinced more than ever that that house, and in particular the coveted library of the Montes de Ocas, hid the secrets that couldn’t be revealed, that Amalia perhaps thought had been swallowed by her mother’s dementia and the occasionally merciful passage of time.

Yoyi insisted on being present at the conversation with Elsa Contreras – or would it be with Carmen Argüelles? – and the Count thought he had the right: after all, the police still reckoned he was a murder suspect in the present mess the ex-detective was intent on using the past to solve.

“You like the beautiful, expensive things in life, so I can tell you now: you’re not about to see anything pleasant,” said the Count as they drove into the barrio.

“Don’t give me that shit, man, it’s not as if the sight of an ugly old woman is anything out of the ordinary… You know what? I agree with you. The person who killed Dionisio didn’t do it to steal. This isn’t very charitable of me, but I think Amalia knows something, I’d swear to it.”

The Count smiled, when they turned into Factoría.

“No need to swear… I’m going to ask a favour of you now: let me do the talking. Whatever bright thoughts you might have, keep your nose out of it, right?”

“You like being the boss?”

“Yeah, sometimes, man,” replied the Count, when they peered into the yard and found that the place seemed to have recovered its usual rhythm. At the back, the two women from the day before were washing huge piles of clothes, and the Count assumed it was how they earned their living. The music people had chosen blared from doorways, in counterpoint, in open warfare, competing to burst unaccustomed eardrums. One doorstep was home to three men worshipping a bottle of rum on the dirty floor, while a young boy under the stairs was busy washing a pig with water stored in a petrol tank. A black woman, all dressed in parchment white, necklaces dangling from her neck, was smoking a big cigar on the balcony of the upstairs flat, behind a washing line of patched sheets and almost see-through towels. Next to her, a young mulatta, her curly hair fanning out like a peacock’s tail, rubbed her eyes swollen by sleep and scratched under her breasts with mangy pleasure. All the gazes, including the pig’s, followed the steps of these strangers, who, without a word of greeting for anyone, trooped to the back of the lot.

Carmen Argüelles sat in the same chair, in the same position as the previous day, but that morning she had company and Conde presumed this must be the niece who lived with her, as the elderly woman had mentioned. She was fat, coarse, with ballooning breasts and fifty tough years behind her, and was now busily arranging small packets in a bag on the bed.

Conde greeted them and apologized for interrupting; he then introduced his companion and asked Carmen if they could continue their chat.

“I said all I had to say yesterday.”

“But there are other things-”

“What are you after?” blurted out the fat woman.

“This is my niece Matilde,” Carmen confirmed, turning to speak to her. “Don’t worry, you go, or you’ll be late…” and she looked at her visitors. “She sells peanut nougat and this is the best time…”

Conde stayed silent, waiting for Matilde to reply, and glanced at Yoyi to tell him to keep quiet.

“All right then,” Matilde finally said, putting the last packets in the bag and hanging it over her shoulder: “I’ll be back soon.”

When she left, Conde and Yoyi walked into the middle of the room and saw the smile on Carmen’s face.

“I didn’t say anything to Matilde about the money you gave me yesterday. If I tell her, it’ll disappear like that. You know, there’s never…”

“That money was for you,” replied the Count, giving approval of Carmen’s precaution and raising her hopes of another little sum at the end of today’s conversation.

“What else do you want to know?” the elderly woman asked and Conde congratulated himself on the way he’d played it. “I told you all there is to know yesterday…”

“There are two or three things… Did you know the children of Nemesia, Alcides’s secretary?”

“She had two, boy and girl, but I never saw them. They lived in Alcides’s house and, obviously I never got an invite there.”

“What was Alcides and Nemesia’s relationship like?”

“I told you… She saw to his paperwork and the house, particularly after he was widowed. She was a highly intelligent woman, very cultured, but rather harsh on everybody, except Alcides, naturally…”

“And that’s all?” the Count persisted.

“What else do you know then?” Carmen responded, somewhat taken aback.

“Nothing really,” Conde admitted. “I don’t know anything…”

The elderly woman hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment.

“Lina told me that Alcides was the father of Nemesia’s son. They were very young when it happened. The family decided the best thing was to marry Nemesia Moré off to Alcides’s chauffeur, so he’d have his surname. Then the daughter was born, but Alcides swore she wasn’t his, although Lina didn’t believe him. According to her, she was his spitting image. They paid the chauffeur a hundred pesos a month on top of his wage to keep his mouth shut. The strange thing is that the chauffeur disappeared one fine day, as if the earth had swallowed him up, and nothing was heard of him again…”

Conde weighed up Carmen’s words and glanced at Yoyi.

“What do you reckon happened?”

“I can’t imagine, you know, but it was strange, wasn’t it?”

“People don’t vanish like that, particularly when they have a job that pays double the rate… unless Lansky?…” exclaimed the Count, in a flash of inspiration.

“What about Lansky?”

“When did Lansky and Alcides become friends?”

“When Lansky started to come to Cuba in the early thirties. But they started doing business together later, during the war.”

“What kind of business?”

“Alcides’s family was very influential and he knew everybody. Lansky had money he wanted to invest. That was what it was about. When the world war started, Alcides made a fortune importing lard from the United States. Lansky used his connections over there so that Alcides had a monopoly… Luciano helped them. At the time he controlled the port of New York. Alcides paid Lansky back by introducing him to the people in charge over here. The politicians and so on…”

“And what was the line of business they were pursuing in 1958, when they met in Lina’s flat? If Alcides didn’t have the same clout under Batista and Lansky wasn’t exactly popular in the United States…”

“I wouldn’t know about-”

“Oh, yes, you would… It was fifty years ago, Carmen. They’re all dead and can’t get you now. I’m sure it was something important… They shattered a man’s hand because they thought he was trying to find out what they were up to.”

“The journalist?”

“That’s right. What was it?”

“I don’t know, but they were hatching something.”

“As well as hotels and gambling?”

“Yes, as well.”

“Drugs?”

The elderly woman shook her head vigorously.

“Carmen,” said the Count, playing his last card, “it’s probably why they killed your friend Violeta… They staged the suicide, but that fooled no one. Not even the police… Not even you… But Violeta was your friend and you kept your head down…”

The elderly woman looked down at her withered arm. “Is it her arm or her conscience that’s giving her pain?” wondered Conde. When she looked up her expression had changed.

“No, Alcides wouldn’t have let them. He was a son of a bitch, but he loved Violeta. Nobody killed her because of what she knew…”

“You sure Alcides wasn’t involved in trafficking drugs?”

“Alcides wouldn’t have got into that, and Lansky, who was boss of everything the mafia did here, got a percentage, but wasn’t personally involved. Drugs were Santo Trafficante’s preserve, the son; Lansky was intent on becoming a businessman, and wanted to live without the police on his back, like his friend Luciano, who had a taste of prison, was booted out of the United States and had to leave for Sicily, where his life was worth next to nothing. The Jew cultivated his image in Cuba as if it were sacred and avoided anything that might tarnish it. Besides, with all the plans he had for building hotels and casinos that were going to make millions and millions, all above board, he couldn’t take risks with anything dicey. But he let others get on with it and raked in his commission…”

“So what were they both hatching that was so secret? If all their business was above board…”

“I can’t help you there, though it might have something to do with politics.”

Conde glanced at Yoyi, as if looking for support. Such an idea fell outside all the scenarios they’d dreamt up so far: it lit up the void at the centre of that drama.

“Yes, that’s possible… that’s why they were acting so furtively. But what exactly?”

“They talked a lot about Batista, and never had a kind word for him. They thought he was going to fuck up. Alcides loathed him, and Lansky said he was a shark, a bottomless pit as far as money went, the country was slipping out of his hands and he was going to fuck up their big plans.”

“Right, which is what he did,” the Count thought aloud, adrift in a sea of ideas and possibilities.

“He was intent on winning the war and lost,” commented Yoyi, unable to maintain his enforced silence any longer. “Lansky and Alcides had to leave and lost a fortune… In the end Batista messed it all up for them.”

Conde looked at Yoyi, remembering he was like a tiger out on the street but that he tended to forget he’d been to university and that something must have rubbed off on the way.

“While we’re at it, Carmen,” said Conde, more gently. “Why did you change your name and disappear from the register of addresses?”

The elderly woman looked at the Count and then at Yoyi. She smiled mischievously.

“There are things best left forgotten… Did you realize I met your father?”

Surprised by this change of subject from Carmen, Conde tried to stop her predictable drift.

“My father’s not the subject of this conversation,” he tried to fob her off.

“Don’t worry, there’s nothing to get so upset about… Your father was always going to hear Violeta sing and started to knock it back, until he fell off his chair. I twice saw him being dragged out of the club. He was a coward and never had the courage to approach Violeta. I talked to him two or three times, I felt sorry for him. The poor wretch was like a lovesick puppy… He kept hovering around Violeta until someone told him if he wanted to keep walking on two legs he’d better not show up again when she was singing. I never saw him again after that…”

Conde felt each word score his skin, but decided it wasn’t the moment to let himself be bowled over by discoveries he couldn’t cope with.

“I’m sorry for my father’s sake… But you’ve not told me why you changed your name…”

The elderly woman looked back at her withered arm.

‘Louis Mallet never returned to Cuba. I decided not to leave in 1960, or in 1961… and by the time I saw what was happening here, I was boxed in. My money was all gone and I had to go back to work, but was the wrong side of thirty-five and set up a brothel in Nuevitas, when that was still possible. It went pear-shaped in no time and I was put in a kind of school, to be reformed. They even taught me how to sew. I was still branded a whore though, so I made the best of my one chance to get rid of the label. I started to use my real name and lodged Carmen the seamstress here in Atarés, and let Elsa Contreras whore on a few more years, using her reputation as the Lotus Flower of old at the Shanghai in Havana. But being a whore at forty was shit. You had to fuck what came along, for next to nothing, because competition got really fierce: women were emancipated, just like men, and fucked for the fun of it, young girls started jumping into bed with anyone, anywhere, after all, we were all equal so had a right to equal pleasure, right? In the midst of this madness I met a man… a good man… and decided to bury Elsa Contreras for good and keep Lotus Flower in that drawer… By the way, the lad’s not seen the photo,” she went on, as if referring to someone else, who was dead and gone. “Go on, show it to him and leave today’s money under the box, so Matilde doesn’t see it when she comes back… That fat pile of shit scoffs the lot…”