Havana Blue

by Leonardo Padura

  “And aren’t you fed up of hearing people praise Rafael? Do you think we might be wrong, that in fact he is a great leader and not into any kind of fraud and it’s all fine and dandy with his allowances and marketing expenses? Don’t you think he’s God the Father, all-caring, beyond reproach, Mr Nice, ruling the roost and bestowing favours, sympathy and trips abroad as if he were God Almighty? Or do you think he was a total bastard, a control freak who loved wielding power?”

  “Conde, Conde, watch it, you’ll have a . . .”

  “Don’t worry, my friend, getting steamed up is becoming my normal state of mind.”

  “All right then, shall I drop you off at your friend’s?”

  The Count nodded, wondering what he’d to say to Tamara now and if it was really necessary to go back to see her. The idea of confronting that woman again irritated and riled him: he wanted to leave the universe of Rafael Morín behind, but Tamara acted like a magnet drawing him into the centre of his world, encouraging him to return to the scene, like the classic murderer.

  “Hey, Manolo, it’s still early. Let me buy you a drink. I need to cool down.”

  “Isn’t the game you’re playing a bit dangerous, my friend?”

  “Yeah, the lottery. And I won a wristwatch,” he said and then smiled.

  “We’ve been whipping ourselves far too long.”

  “Turn down Lacret and park on the corner before you get to Mayía.”

  Sergeant Manuel Palacios did as he was told and eased the car in between a lorry and a taxi. A space Mario Conde could never have entered even on a bicycle. They locked the doors. Manolo disconnected the aerial, and they walked towards Mayía Rodríguez, where there was a surprisingly clean, well-lit bar that was almost always empty around midday. Bottles lined the top of the freezer, bottles of Santa Cruz rum, their labels boasting of a fake royal lineage, a few Havana Club creams and an absinthe no Creole drinker dared ask for even in times of direst shortages.

  “Two doubles of Carta Blanca rum, my friend,” the Count placed his order with the barman and went over to the bench where his friend had already taken a seat. Just a few regulars were in the bar fighting off Sunday lunchtime lethargy by drinking rum from those little jam-jars which forced you to throw your head right back to get at the last drop, while the barman’s cassette recorder played a selection of boleros for daytime drinkers: Vicentico Valdés, Vallejo, Tejedor and Luis, Contreras were recounting a long chronicle of heartbreaks and tragedies that went better with rum than with ginger ale or Coca-Cola. It was inevitable: the Count was always casing no-hopers in high-noon saloons and trying to imagine why each individual was there, what had gone wrong with their lives for them to invest time and money year after year listening to the same sorrowful songs that only aggravated their loneliness, their disenchantment, the neglect and betrayal they’d suffered, and pour me another, bro, downing gut-rot and firewater as their hands began to shake from the dosage. He exhausted his last efforts as a would-be psychologist and in the process psychoanalysed himself though without sticking the knife in, wondering what he was doing there and dodging his real answers: simply because I like dossing around, feeling damned and forgotten, asking for another drop, bro, listening to others chatter, talking to myself and feeling time go painlessly by. He’d sometimes ask for a drink in order to think a case through or forget it, or to celebrate or remember or just because he felt happier in that kind of place than in a bar with tall glasses and colourful cocktails, one of those elegant bars he’d not seen the inside of in a million years.

  “What would you like to do now, Manolo?” he asked his colleague, who was quite taken aback by such a question after just one shot.

  “Don’t know, have a few here and then head off to Vilma’s and get a bit of quiet till the morning, I suppose,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “And if you weren’t off to Vilma’s, I mean?”

  Manolo scrutinized his glass like a connoisseur, and the pupil of his left eye progressed smoothly towards the bridge of his nose.

  “I think I’d like to listen to music. I always like listening to music. I wish I had a good hi-fi system, with all those equalizers and fucking gadgets and a couple of those speakers, so I could stretch out on the floor with my head between them, my ears right up against them, listening to music for hours on end. Just imagine, man, my old dad couldn’t even give me a hundred and forty pesos to buy myself a guitar! I’d have been the happiest soul on earth playing that guitar, but you land up the son of a bus driver with a wage that has to look after six people, and happiness has to come in at a sight less than a hundred and forty pesos.”

  The Count thought how right you are, happiness could be a very expensive business and ordered another double. He looked out on the cold sunlit street, where few cars drove by, and felt completely at ease with his conscience. It was a good time to have a few drinks and sleep with a woman, as his colleague was about to, or catch a bus with Skinny and suffer for four hours in the stadium. It was a good time of day to be alive and happy, with or without a guitar, his throat reacting gratefully to each sip of rum – the familiar gentle heat of white rum – he thought how he’d often been happy and would be again some day, that loneliness isn’t an incurable disease and perhaps one day he’d rekindle old expectations and own a house in Cojímar, right on the coast, a house made of wood with a tile roof and a writing room and never again be in thrall to murderers and thieves, attacked and attackers, and Rafael Morín would vanish from his nostalgic reveries and only good memories would surface, the way they should, the ones time rescues and protects so the past isn’t a nasty horrible burden and you don’t have to walk to the bridge and throw your love in the river, as in the Vicentico Valdés song they were now listening to.

  “Listen to that,” he said to Manolo with a smile. “Just what you want to hear after you’ve downed a couple: ‘To the river I’ll go to throw your love in the river/ watch it fall into the void/float off on the stream . . .’ Almost what you call beautiful!”

  “If you say so,” nodded the sergeant, looking back at his glass.

  “Hey, Manolo, are you or are you not squint-eyed?”

  Manolo smiled, keeping his eyes on his glass, his left eye in free float.

  “One day on, one day off,” the sergeant replied and downed his drink. He looked at his colleague and pointed to his empty jar. “And what would you like to do right now?”

  The Count also downed his drink and hesitated a moment before answering:

  “Spend time with your big hi-fi, stretched out on the floor listening to ‘Strawberry Fields’ ten times on the trot.”

  I never took to that outfit. It made you look like a hoodlum – a jailbird – protested Alexis the Yankee, and it was true: the purple socks, cap, wording and sleeves on a chicken-yellow khaki background, the trousers that were far too wide and which we couldn’t narrow as people normally did because Antonio the Fly, our teacher-cum-manager, made it plain that when the championship was over we would have to return everything, in the same or a better state than when we got it, what a fucking joke, as if anyone would want to hang on to outfits that earned us a great nickname: “The Víbora Violets”. The championship involved six high schools and, as usual, we got a bad deal. After Water-Pre we got shat on from all sides, from the camps for rural labour to our baseball outfits, we always got the worst, because they dug deep and discovered first that we topped the exam league tables as a result of fraud and second that we won the cane-cutting competition because someone at the central store gave us cane cut by other schools, and then they discovered a whole string of other things.

  Andrés, our usual first baseman, refused to have anything to do with the game after he injured himself and couldn’t play for the National Youth Team. They let me take first base, despite being only the eighth batter in the line-up, in front of Arsenio the Moor, who was condemned to be last as he was a fuck-up dressed as a player – or jailbird – in one of those uniforms.

  When we c
ame out to warm up it was already dark and they’d switched on the lights, and the Habana High School team ran onto the field, enormous blacks about to slay us alive as they already had other teams, but we were cocksure and shouted at the pre-game huddle, we’re going to beat the skinny liquorice sticks, fuck ’em, said Skinny, and even the Moor and I thought we would. The worst bit was our gear, because the stadium had had a fresh lick of paint, the floodlighting was great and half of the terraces were full of people from Havana and the other from Víbora, and there was a fantastic din, and we wore this disguise that belonged to the days when one played baseball in a bowler hat and gaiters.

  And our team had Skinny, Isidrito the Joker – our pitcher for the day – and Pello and me – dubbed Foul, because all I ever hit were foul balls – and almost everyone from our class went to the games, starting with Tamara, who was in charge of the Achievement Committee because participation in activities counted and The Inter-School Games were an activity, and people always preferred a baseball game to the other kind – a museum visit or yawning through a performance of the school choir, for example. And the class invented a chorus they shouted whenever we played: “Violet team, Violet team/go for the brass”, but the opposition went one better and sang: “Violet team, Violet team/the donkey’s prick up your ass”, so the cure was worse than the illness. Anyway, I was thrilled to be in the team, playing under the lights and feeling you could see things from a different angle: because sure it’s not the same watching the players from the terraces as wearing the gear and watching the people on the terraces. It’s something else.

  “Balls, gentlemen, balls is what you need to win at this game,” Skinny shouted from the bench when the game was about to start, but it was never just a game for him when it was baseball, and the veins on his neck bulged, he was so skinny. “And we’re more than well-endowed, right?”

  And we had to say yes or he might have a fit, and as we were the home club and came out first, the Havana fans started to boo and the Víbora mob cheered, and then I looked towards the terraces and truly saw things differently. I saw Tamara wave a purple handkerchief, and I stopped wanting to play when I spotted the former Student Federation president, next to Tamara, like a police dog. Rafael Morín laughed his usual sparkling, self-satisfied laugh, like the day he told us “I’m Rafael Morín”, looking down at us in his flash check shirt, and us below in gear that made us look like jailbirds.

  But even so it was the best game I ever played. That day Isidrito had downed two quarts of undiluted milk, which he said was good for pitching straight and the fact was he was throwing really hard and farting like a lord . . . And the Joker starting striking out the Havana darkies, and almost nobody got on their base, and if they did, it didn’t matter, because they weren’t scoring. And we were the same, or worse, because Yayo Butter, Havana’s pitcher, was red-hot and struck out seven of us in a row, and the crowd on the terrace went quieter and quieter; the game became really serious, was keeping its big outburst for the last innings, right?

  We were zero-zero in the eighth inning, when it was Skinny’s turn to bat, for he was fifth up, and he hit a drive past the shortstop and he got to second. All hell was let loose: people started shouting “Violeta, Violeta”, and Skinny went “Balls, we’ve got balls” till the umpire had a go at him for swearing. And it was all down to that bitch destiny, because Isidrito, who was sixth up and never blew it, made a pig’s ear out of it, was the first out, and Paulino the Bull’s Testicle, who was seventh, rolled it into Yayo’s hands who leisurely stroked it over his balls before throwing it to first base, and Paulino was the second out. Then it was my turn to hit.

  I was shitting myself, legs shaking, hands sweating and everybody went dead silent, and even Skinny, who knew me well, didn’t shout at me and I think he reckoned the innings was done for. Then I picked myself up, spat into my hands and rubbed them with earth and remembered I should lift the bat right back, raise my elbow, grip tight when I started my swing, a deep, deep silence, and Yayo Butter pitched it straight, a mean fucking fastball, and I said here we go, lifted my bat back, raised my elbow, gripped tight, shut my eyes and swung. And it was Sodom and Gomorrah: fuck! It was one hell of a hit right down the middle of the field, real hard, like I’d never hit before, and it was like seeing the ball flying in slow motion, flying till it hit the fence right under the scoreboard, and I started to run hell for leather, and it went so far I could go to third, almost enough for a homerun, they screamed, Skinny scored, then ran to third base and scooped me up in his arms, Isidrito who hadn’t spoken to me from the day we’d had that fight, kissed me he was so excited, and the whole team came to hug me, and I deserved it, right? I was over the moon, the fans were going crazy, and I looked to the terraces to see things differently and felt I would die: Tamara and Rafael had left . . .

  In the ninth innings the La Habana lot scored twice and beat us two-one. But it was the best game of my life.

  Before he knocked on the door, he glanced at his watch: ten past four. If she’d been having a siesta, she’d be up by now. Perhaps she was watching the Sunday matinee film, he thought, then thought he didn’t exactly know why he’d come or else he knew only too well and didn’t want to give it another thought. Lam’s sham figures rested under the shadow of a ceiba-tree, possibly quite deliberately planted next to the concrete jungle, and the well-pruned hedges and lush hibiscus created the atmosphere of a colourful artificial wood he really liked. In fact, as he had reminded Manolo, it wasn’t a house for policemen, and the pain of nostalgia the place provoked was so intense, his temples and chest felt ready to burst. He was pleased he’d had a couple with Manolo; when and after he’d pressed the bell, he felt calm and relaxed.

  The ring of the bell echoed round the huge house, and while waiting he lit a cigarette and adjusted the regulation pistol in his belt, the weight of which he’d never accepted, and finally she opened the door and greeted him with a smile: “Well, if it isn’t the Prince of the City. I watched that film last night and pitied the policeman. Recently all the police I’ve seen have looked sad. Though that guy doesn’t look much like you.” And she stepped back to let him in.

  “Lately I don’t feel much like myself,” he retorted as she shut the door, and they headed for the television room. “Do you want to see the rest of the film?”

  “No, I saw it three months ago. Rafael brought the video, but as I was bored . . .” She settled down in a plush armchair that matched his. “I felt drowsy. I slept very badly last night.”

  The curtains were closed, and the room got little of the cold light from outside. He searched for an ashtray and finally spotted a metal one, of the lidded variety to hide the ash and cigarette ends. It was annoyingly clean and shiny, and he moved the lid two or three times before enquiring:

  “Who cleans this place, Tamara?”

  “A lady who’s a friend of Mummy’s. She comes twice a week, why?”

  “Nothing really, I just pollute ashtrays.”

  She smiled almost sadly.

  “Nothing new there, right, Mario?”

  “So here we are again, Tamara,” he lied, not feeling the slightest remorse, and wondered how much of the truth his old comrade knew.

  “That’s what I’d imagined. My mother-in-law called this morning and told me you’d been round to see her. The poor woman was in tears.”

  “It’s to be expected. And then I spoke to Fernández-Lorea, who confirmed what an excellent fellow your husband is. And with García, from the union at the enterprise, and he insisted on singing Rafael’s praises like everyone else. I was quite won over.”

  “That’s good then,” she replied, and her almond eyes shone even more brightly. But he knew she wouldn’t start crying. “You’re always prospecting for mud.”

  “Can I tell you something? I don’t swallow all this. I know Rafael, and I’m sorry but I saw him do two or three things I never liked.”

  “What kind of things?” she asked and started tangling with her wayward lock.r />
  “No, nothing serious, don’t worry, but enough to make you wary.”

  “And what did Alberto tell you?”

  He contemplated the Flora by Portocarrero ladying it on one of the walls. Read on one side “For you, Valdemira, from your friend René” and decided that he liked the blues the maestro used when painting Flora’s hair, that looked colder yet more alive and noted that, like all Floras, she also viewed the world through trustingly tender eyes.

  “Nothing new of note. We’re trying to find Zoilita, who’s still not put in an appearance. And tomorrow we’ll start at the enterprise to see if anything turns up there.”

  And she crossed her legs and studied him as if he were suddenly a very alien being she was seeing for the first time. But he could only look at her legs and dress, nothing more than a very long white pullover revealing almost all the front of her thighs.

  “Why did you leave that day at the baseball game?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, taken aback.

  “Oh, nothing. I want to find your husband and find out why he went missing . . . And I want to know how you’re feeling.”

  She made an effort to tame her impertinent lock and rested her head on the back of her chair.

  “Quite at a loss. I’ve been thinking a lot,” she said before standing up. He watched her walk towards the library, and the mere sight of her brought to mind his masturbatory frigging of the previous night and he was almost ashamed he liked that woman, when she returned with two glasses and a bottle of Ballantine’s. She pulled a coffee table over and poured out two big chestnut-coloured shots, and the unmistakeably oak smell hit the Count.