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 se
rious 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.
Havana Fever Page 19