Havana Blue

by Leonardo Padura

  “Jose, for heaven’s sake, what have we got here?” asked the Count as he bit into a fried plantain and spoiled the beautiful salad by plundering a slice of tomato. “A plague on anyone who mentions work,” he warned and began to pile a mountain of food on his plate, determined to down at one sitting breakfast, lunch and dinner on a day that looked to be never-ending – or whatever – and then he gorged himself.

  Mario Conde was born in a bustling dusty barrio that, according to family lore, was founded by his paternal great-great grandfather, a madcap islander who preferred to set up home, create a family and await death on barren land far from the sea and rivers and far from the arm of the law which was still pursuing him in Madrid, Las Palmas and Seville. The barrio where the Condes lived had never been elegant or prosperous, yet it expanded exponentially with the offspring of that crooked, absolutely plebeian Canary Islander who was so infatuated with his new name and his Cuban wife that he fathered eighteen children and forced them all to swear, each at the appropriate moment, to beget at least ten children and compelled the females to give their whelps the first surname of Conde as their badge of distinction in the barrio. When Mario celebrated his third birthday and his Granddaddy Rufino the Count first told him of Granddad Teodoro’s adventures and his desire to found a dynasty, the kid also discovered that a pit for fighting cocks could also be the centre of the universe. At the time baseball was a vice he’d picked up in the barrio, while fighting cocks were an endemic pleasure. His Granddaddy Rufino, an enthusiastic breeder, trainer and gambler when it came to fighting cocks, took him to all the local pits and yards and taught him the art of preparing a cock to win every time: by first showering it with the finest, most sporting attentions a boxer could ever receive, and then anointing it with oil the moment before it stepped in to the arena so it would never be caught by its opponent. Granddaddy Rufino’s philosophy of never playing unless you were sure you would win gave the lad the satisfaction of seeing the cock he’d first met as a very ordinary egg die an old bird, winner of thirty-two contests and coverer of an innumerable quantity of hens as lively, if not livelier than himself. In those easygoing times of school in the mornings and work with cocks in the afternoons, Mario Conde also learned the meaning of the word “love”: he loved his granddaddy and was so miserable he was ill when old Rufino died, three years after the official outlawing of cockfights.

  Now he’d satisfied the need for cold water that had almost dragged him from his bed, the Count began that Sunday morning by indulging in memories of his grandfather. Sunday was the day for fights in the most popular pits, and that was why he liked Sunday mornings. Not the dreary endless afternoons after a siesta when he would feel tired and sleepy till nightfall, nights weren’t any better, everywhere was packed out and he’d always take refuge at Skinny’s. However, there were other things that made Sunday nights tedious and drawn-out: there was no baseball game, and it was torture to hit the rum when Monday loomed menacingly. Mornings were a different story: Sunday mornings started with lots of hustle and bustle as in the story he wrote when he was at high school. It was a time to talk to everyone, and friends and relatives who lived away always came to visit the family, and you could set up a game of barehanded baseball and end up swollen-fingered and panting at first base, or play dominos or simply shoot the breeze on the street corner till the sun chased you inside. For some ancestral reason he couldn’t explain and because of the large number of Sundays he spent with Granddaddy Rufino or his band of sporting cronies, Mario Conde enjoyed Sunday at leisure in the barrio more than any of his pals, and after a cup of coffee he’d go and buy bread and the newspaper and generally never returned home till it was time for a very late Sunday lunch. His women had never understood that necessary ritual, why can’t you stay at home the odd Sunday, there’s lots to do, but Sunday is for the barrio, he told them, leaving no room for argument, when some friend asked: “Hey, has the Count left yet?”

  And that Sunday he got up after slaking a dragon’s thirst, with memories of granddaddy still floating around his head, and went onto the porch after putting the coffee pot on to boil. He was still wearing his pyjama trousers and an old padded coat, and he noticed the streets were quieter than usual for a Sunday because of the cold. The sky had cleared during the night, but an annoyingly biting wind was blowing, and he reckoned it had gone below fifty and was perhaps the coldest morning of the winter. As usual he regretted having to work on a Sunday. He had thought he’d go and see Rabbit and then lunch at his sister’s, he recalled, and he waved at Cuco the butcher: How’s life treating you, Condesito? He too must work that Sunday morning.

  Coffee bubbled up like lava from the innards of his coffeepot, and the Count put four spoonfuls of sugar into a jug. Waited for the pot to percolate all the coffee, poured it in the jug and stirred slowly, relishing the hot bitter smell. Then returned it to the pot before pouring the coffee into his thermos and serving himself a large cup of coffee. He sat in his small dining room and lit the first cigarette of the day. He felt terrifyingly alone and decided to ward off melancholy by thinking what to do with the list of guests at the deputy minister’s New Year party. He anticipated he had a number of tricky interrogations ahead, the kind he’d rather avoid. Zoilita still hadn’t put in an appearance – he’d not had a call from headquarters – and she’d been gone four days, like Rafael. He couldn’t go to the enterprise till the following morning, and that blocked one avenue he was keen explore. He’d not heard anything from the provinces, or from the coastguards, who could have contacted him at any time, so there was still no trace of the man who’d vanished into thin air. And what about the Spaniard Dapena? Mañana: the usual story. Hunting tit in Key Largo . . . But he did have work that Sunday and, sipping a cup of coffee that aroused his palate and intellect, he decided to give himself more time for thought: he wanted to put himself in Rafael Morín’s shoes, although he’d never before believed that was even remotely possible; he should feel what a person like that felt, should want what he wanted, which was a sight easier, and generate at least one idea about his startling disappearance, but he couldn’t. Rafael wasn’t one of the criminals he encountered daily, and it was giving him detective’s block. He preferred homegrown wide boys, smugglers of whatever, traffickers in the unusual and fences of the most exotic merchandise, he knew their habits and could discern a logic to guide his investigations. Not now: now I’m lost on the prairie, he said, crushing his cigarette end in the ashtray and deciding it was time to call Manolo and go out onto the street, on a Sunday that seemed ideal for shooting the breeze on street corners, catching a little sun and listening to stories told time and again by his old friends.

  He poured himself a less generous second cup of coffee, thanked his stomach for sparing him a punitive ulcer, lit up again and walked into his bedroom, congratulating himself on the quality of his lungs. He sat on his bed, by the telephone, and watched Rufino, his fighting fish, embark on a solitary circular dance. He then looked at his empty room and felt he too was circling round and round, in an attempt to find the tangent to take him out of that infinite circle of anguish.

  “We’re well and truly fucked, Rufino,” he said, then dialled Manolo’s number and heard it ring. “Hello,” said a woman’s voice as she picked up the receiver.

  “Alina? It’s the Count, how are you?” he enquired fearfully, for he was familiar with that lady’s stress with telephones and before she could reply he jumped in: “Your son up yet? Get him on that phone, tell him I’m in a hurry.”

  “Ah, Manolito. Hey, Count, he stayed over at Vilma’s, his current girl friend, you . . .”

  A good catch, he felt like saying, but he took the easy option:

  “Look, Alina, do me a favour. Call him and tell him to pick me up in half an hour. It’s urgent business. You OK? See you and thanks, Alina.” He sighed and hung up.

  He drank his coffee slowly. Was fascinated by the ease with which Manolo switched girlfriends and persuaded them to let him sleep over. He, howev
er, was enduring a long spell of solitary, and although he’d have preferred not to, he thought of Tamara, saw her in the tight-fitting tracksuit or yellow dress, marking out her knickers, and she was mouth-watering. Perhaps Manolo and the Boss were right: he should watch out for himself, and he thought he’d prefer not to see her or talk to her again, to keep her far from his mind and avoid frustrations like the previous night’s, not even the drinking session with Skinny had tamed his desires, and he’d finished off the night by masturbating in honour of that unforgivable woman. Only then had he been able to get to sleep.

  This is where Rafael Morín came from, he muttered as he walked towards the room at the back. Fame and paint had long deserted the big house on the Avenue of October Tenth, now a creaking sweaty ruin, where each room in the ancient mansion was an individual home with a communal bathroom and washhouse at the back, flaking walls with generations of graffiti, an ever-present smell of gas and a long overburdened washing line on that Sunday morning. “The pit and the peak,” quipped Manolo, and he was right. That dark promiscuous rooming house seemed so remote from the residence on Santa Catalina that one could easily think they were separated by oceans, mountains and deserts and centuries of history. But Rafael Morín had been born on this shore, in room number seven, right at the back, next to the communal bathroom and washhouse now occupied by two women unafraid of the cold or life’s other contingencies.

  They greeted the women and knocked on the door of number seven. The latter looked at them, recognized their business and policemen’s airs, had no doubt heard of Rafael’s disappearance and returned to their washing only when the door opened.

  “Hello, María Antonia,” said the lieutenant.

  “Hello,” the old woman replied, and her eyes had a scared, hunted-animal look. The Count knew she was barely sixty, but life had dealt her such hard knocks she seemed more like eighty, long-suffering and with no will to keep going.

  “I’m Lieutenant Mario Conde,” he said, showing his card, “and this is Sergeant Manuel Palacios. We’re responsible for your son’s case.”

  “Please do come in and ignore the mess, I’m like that . . .”

  The room was smaller than Tamara’s father’s library yet contained a double bed, a cabinet, a sideboard, an armchair, a dressing-table chair and a colour television on a small wrought-iron table. A curtain hung down by the television, and the Count imagined it must hide the way to the kitchen and perhaps an inside lavatory. He tried to see the mess she’d warned about and saw only a blouse draped on the bed and a linen bag and ration book on the sideboard. In one corner of the room stood a Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre lit by the blue flame from a languishing candle.

  The Count sat down in the chair, Manolo took the armchair and María Antonia teetered on the edge of her bed and asked: “Is it bad news?”

  The Count looked at her and felt ill at ease: that luckless woman’s life must gravitate round her son’s triumphs, and Rafael’s absence perhaps robbed her of her only reason to exist. María Antonia seemed extremely fragile and sad, so much so that the Count caught himself sharing her sadness, and he wanted to be far from that spot, immediately.

  “No, María Antonia, there’s no news,” he said finally and repressed his desire for a smoke. There were no ashtrays in the room. He decided to fiddle with his pen.

  “What an earth has happened?” she asked, although she was really talking to herself. “I don’t understand it at all. What can have happened to my son?”

  “Madame,” said Manolo, leaning towards her. “We’re doing all we can, and that’s why we’ve come to see you. We need your help. OK? When was the last time you saw your son?”

  The woman stopped nodding and looked at the sergeant. Perhaps she thought he looked very young, and she rubbed her long bony hands gently together. The room was damp, and the cold sticky.

  “He came at midday on the thirty-first to bring me my New Year present, that perfume over there,” and she pointed to the unmistakable bottle of Chanel N° 5 on the sideboard. “He knew my only weakness was for perfumes and was always giving them to me as presents. For Mother’s Day, for my birthday, for New Year. He used to say he wanted me to smell sweeter than anyone else in the barrio, just imagine. And at night he called my neighbour’s phone to wish me good luck. He was at that party he’d gone to, and it must have been around ten to twelve. He always rang me, from wherever he was, last year he called from Panama, right, I think it was Panama.”

  “And did he have lunch with you?” continued Manolo, shifting his skinny rump onto the edge of the armchair. He liked asking the questions and when doing so he’d hunch up, like a cat whose fur was bristling.

  “Yes, I made him beans and sausage, the way he liked it, and he said neither his wife nor mother-in-law could cook them the way I did.”

  “And how did he strike you? The same as usual?”

  “What do you mean, comrade?”

  “Nothing in particular, María Antonia, did he seem at all nervous, worried or different?”

  The old lady looked up at the Virgin and then rubbed her legs, as if trying to relieve pain. Her hands were white, and her nails spotless.

  “He was always stressed by problems at work. He said: you won’t believe this, mummy, but I’ve got to spend the afternoon at the office, and he left around two.”

  “And did he seem anxious or on edge?”

  “Look, comrade, I know my son very well: I gave birth to him and brought him up. He ate the beans and sausage at around one, and then we both washed up and lay on this bed and talked, as we always did. He liked stretching out on this bed, my poor son. He was always tired and sleepy, and his eyes would shut as we spoke.”

  “And what time did he leave?”

  “At around two. He washed his face and told me he was going to a party that night, that he had lots of work on, and gave me two hundred pesos so you can buy yourself something for New Year’s Eve, he said and he went to clean his teeth and comb his hair and gave me a kiss and left. He was as loving towards me as ever he was.”

  “Did he always give you money?”

  “Always? No, just occasionally.”

  “Did he mention any problems he was having with his wife?”

  “He and I never spoke about her. It was a kind of agreement between us.”

  “An agreement?” asked Manolo, leaning forward even more on the edge of the armchair. The Count thought: “Where’s he taking this?”

  “The fact is I never liked that woman. Not that she’d ever done anything, or that I had anything special against her, but I think she never cared for him as a husband should be cared for. She even had a maid . . . Forgive me, this is family business, but I think she always looked after Number One.”

  “And what did he say when he left?”

  “He said he was going to work, as usual, that I should look after myself and sprayed me with the new scent he’d brought me. He was always so kind, and not because he was my son, I swear, just ask any of the old neighbours around here, and they’ll all tell you the same: he turned out much better than anyone could have imagined. This isn’t a good barrio, I can tell you, and I came here when I was still single and I’m still here, where I married, gave birth to Rafael, brought him up by myself in the direst of circumstances and, forgive me, I don’t know what you think, but God and that Virgin over there helped me make a good man of him. They never had to call me from school, and in that drawer you’ll find more than fifty diplomas he won as a student, his engineering degree and certificate for getting top marks in his year. All his own effort. Haven’t I a right to be proud of my son? His destiny turned out so different to mine, or his father’s, who never got to be more than a plumber. I don’t know where my boy got his intelligence from, but when you think how fast he climbed the ladder and how he no longer lived in a rooming house and had a car and travelled to countries I didn’t even know existed and was somebody in this country . . . My God, what an earth has happened? Who can want to hurt Rafael who never
hurt anybody, anybody at all? He’s always been a revolutionary, from when he was a young boy. I remember how he was given responsibility at secondary school and was often president, at high school as well as university, and nobody from the ministry helped him. Nobody was levering him up; he got where he got, by himself, one rung at a time, by working very hard. Just for this to happen. But God can’t punish me like this. My son and I don’t deserve it. What has happened, comrades? Tell me, say something. Who can want to threaten my son? Who can have hurt him? For God’s sake . . .”

  I think it was two or three weeks to the end of classes, then came the exams and after that the second year of high school would start, which is almost like the third, and almost like already being at university, and nobody could bug us about the length of our sideburns or our moustaches or about the virtues of short hair and all that stuff that makes you want to get out of school, however much you like going round with your schoolmates, having a girlfriend from there and so on. That was the worst of all: wanting time to pass quickly. Why should we? And we were lined up in the playground, it was June, the sun was burning our backs, and the headmaster spoke: we would win all the honours in all the competitions, we would be the most outstanding high school in the whole of Havana, in the country, practically in the universe, because we’d been best at working in the countryside, had won the Intercollegiate Games, two prizes in the National Amateurs Festival and ninety percent of us would get to university and nobody would shift us from first place, and we clapped, hurray, hurray, we shouted and thought how wonderful we were, how unbeatable. And the headmaster said there was more good news to come: two comrades had won medals in the National Mathematics Competition, hurray, hurray, more clapping, Comrade Fausto Fleites, hurray, hurray, a gold medal in the category of eleventh grade, and, hurray, hurray, Comrade Rafael Morín, a silver medal in the thirteenth grade category, and Fausto and Rafael climbed onto the platform where all the speeches were being made, real champions, arms aloft in salute, smiling, naturally, they’d showed they were tremendous wavers of the flag, and Tamara kept on applauding after almost everyone else had stopped, even jumped for joy and Skinny asked, hey, pal, is this for show or did our girlfriend there really not know? And right, she just must have known, but she was too, too happy, as if she had just found out, jumping for joy, swinging her butt, in a way that even showed through the voluminous spoilsport tunic she was wearing, and Rafael walked over to the microphone, and I told Skinny, be prepared, you animal, under this scorching sun and the way he likes to gab, but I got it wrong, I almost always get it wrong: he said he and Fausto were going to dedicate their prizes to the teachers in the maths department and to the school management team, but anyway he exhorted students to give it their all in the final examinations and stay in the forefront of the results table etcetera, etcetera, and while he was talking I looked at him and thought he was a fantastic guy after all, bright and dapper, silver-tongued and blue-eyed, with a girlfriend like Tamara who was always so well turned out and I muttered, fuck, I reckon I do really envy the bastard.