Havana Fever

by Leonardo Padura

  “Let’s wait for the coffee.”

  Mario Conde put in the minimum dose of sugar he used to sweeten his coffee and poured out two cups. He drank his standing up, blowing hard, and lit a cigarette.

  “Good, right?”

  “Conde, what’s up? You seem so, so, you know, limp . . .”

  “Everything . . . But back to the business in hand. I’m sure Dionisio’s sister knows something and doesn’t want to let on. There was or is something in that library that can explain what happened.”

  “You still on that tack? OK, what do you suggest?”

  “To check every bit of the library, force Amalia to let us talk to her mother, to see if she’s really as mad as she says. And I want you to question her again, but not softly, softly like last time.”

  “Conde, she’s a woman. She’s over sixty. She’s no juvenile delinquent. Did you know she belongs to the Party?”

  “Start gently and then you’ll see how far you need to push her. You’re good at that. And you like doing it.”

  Manolo moved his empty cup over the top of the table, apparently wondering whether he should fall in with his old boss or not. When they worked together, Manolo obeyed the Count’s orders almost blindly and things usually turned out well.

  “I’m not sure, really—”

  “Look, I’m practically sure of one thing: the tall black guy is a phantom; he never existed,” he said and spelled out his theory to Manolo.

  “But if they both did it to get more money,” Manolo reflected, “I can’t see how it connects with Dionisio’s death.”

  “If the unidentified fingerprints belong, say, to the electrician, and the rest are mine, Yoyi’s and Amalia’s, and if neither Yoyi nor I killed Dionisio, who does that leave us?”

  “You’re kidding, Conde,” reacted Manolo.

  “Obviously, it could have been someone who was there and didn’t touch anything.”

  “You’re giving me the shakes,” Manolo shifted nervously, picked up his empty cup and looked inside.

  “Join the club. Amalia is the key to all this. Amalia and the library,” said the Count while he went to get more coffee.

  “It makes sense,” agreed Manolo.

  “What have you got on one Juan Serrano Ballester who turned up dead in Tallapiedra?”

  Surprised by the sudden change of topic, Manolo suspended his cup in mid-air.

  “Did you know him?”

  “He was an informer of mine, years ago.”

  “Say your . . . We’ve got nothing so far. He was stabbed eight times.”

  “What’s going on in that barrio, Manolo? It’s got laws unto its own.”

  “It’s common knowledge. Every two or three months we take a little dip and bring in ten whores, five pimps, three sellers of crack and marijuana and a number of traffickers.”

  “And?”

  “In two months it’s back to square one. Some go to jail, others come out; some close their businesses, others start up, new ones. It’s never ending.”

  “So why do you think it’s like that?”

  Manolo finished his coffee, and took a cigarette from Conde’s packet. He puffed the smoke towards the ceiling.

  “It’s the only way they know how to live. It’s like an incurable disease: it can be treated but it won’t go away.”

  “You know they’re organized? That they function like a mafia and the real capos aren’t even from the barrio? They’re the people who handle the funds and have the power to order someone to be taken out.”

  “Yes, and I know it’s very dangerous. It could end up getting very nasty.”

  “We’re fucked, man.”

  “And the fact is there are more police than ever . . . But even so—”

  “That illness, as you call it, can’t be cured by police . . . Poor Juan.”

  Manolo looked at the Count and smiled faintly.

  “There’s something you don’t want to tell me.”

  “And won’t tell you,” the other asserted, returning to his chair.

  “You weren’t involved with what happened to that guy, were you? Come to think of it, he was killed near where you turned up the worse for wear . . .”

  “You going to accuse me of killing him as well?”

  “No, because he was killed the day you came out of hospital. But I’m sure you’re connected somehow . . .”

  “All right, now tell me, what do we do with Amalia?”

  Manolo stood up and placed a hand on the Count’s shoulder.

  “You’re a bastard, Conde. You want me to confide in you but it’s one-way traffic. Although I’ll act on what you said. We’ll inspect the library and question her . . . But it’ll be tomorrow. I can’t even think about it today, I’ve got three cases on the go and need a rest. Just like you. You look terrible. Anyone would think you were beaten into a pulp today.”

  13 March

  Dear love:

  I have been remembering your father a lot recently. I can see him sitting in this library where I now write to you, at his desk strewn with papers, but always ready to speak to me for a few minutes while he drank his freshly brewed coffee that I, personally, made and brought him. In my memory his image is that of the most kind and generous man I have ever known. On two, three, however many occasions, he told me how he liked to motivate his pupils at university and by making them read Oedipus Rex, because he thought that Sophocles, five centuries before our era, had performed the miracle of writing a play about what he considered to be the perfect criminal investigation: that which finally accuses the investigator himself of a murder he never thought he’d committed.

  Although I read that tragedy several times at his insistence, for many years I forgot our conversations and for many months also ignored the voices of the demon (yes, I now know it’s a demon) that lives in my brain, when it both tempted and warned me of the dangers of finding out a truth that could turn sour. Perhaps it was my mistake, despite my every desire, to believe that these voices referred to you, and I even began to think again that, somehow beyond what I’d been able to find out, you were to blame for what happened and that there was the terrible truth I might find if I kept scratching around. But what I’ve discovered today, entirely by accident, is a reason not only to gouge my eyes out but also to rip my belly open: the source of the seed of this real tragedy has been finally revealed to me beyond all doubt, in all its horrific magnitude. And I have learned, most terribly, that the fate of Oedipus is the fate of all humans who have sins hanging over them.

  A totally innocent comment, made by our old vet (he came to examine our decrepit Linda, your favourite terrier, who, like me, has been sick with melancholy ever since you left) about the disappearance of two cyanide capsules from the packet he brought months ago to combat the invasion of rats we had had in the patio and garden. It might have seemed a chance loss, perhaps down to the vet’s miscalculation, and might have sounded like a random remark, totally unrelated to the death of a person who, in almost everyone’s eyes – our vet included – wasn’t in the slightest linked to you. But cruel, persistent fate ensured that this scrap of information that could feed all my suspicions fell precisely into my hands and brought me face to face with a truth I had been seeking so insistently, never imagining I could be to blame for what happened by providing, I now know only too well, the arguments to inspire this crime.

  I’ve wracked my brain for some thread of justification and I think I’ve found it in the reason that forced this tragedy to its fatal finale: and I can only blame love; love was to blame for everything. Our poor little girl always loved you silently, always hoped for the reward of a father and because of that love she rebelled and refused to give up what that woman was going to steal from her, from me, even from you . . . But such thoughts can’t save me from the eternal condemnation brought by the knowledge I created a person able to resort to the most premeditated crime to save her rights and need for love, who never imagined that her action would kill that love and those rights, de
finitively . . .

  My dear: such is the burden of grief within me that I find myself without the strength to continue writing these senseless letters. You will never receive them, firstly because you have no desire to, and secondly because I would be incapable of sending them, even more so, knowing what I know now, because I prefer you to continue to blame me and never find out this desperate truth. At any rate, as my eternal punishment, I will keep them as a testimony to my sins, my sorrows, and also to my love. A love that from this day on becomes impossible, but will always be yours.

  Goodbye, my love. Now and forever.

  Nena

  The police tape slithered to the ground like a decapitated snake. When he pushed the glass doors and breathed in the faint scent of old paper, Mario Conde recalled the excitement he’d felt ten days ago, when he first stepped into that dream library. Only ten days ago? So many things had happened since then in his life, and in the lives – and even deaths – of the people connected to that place, that he now wondered if his presence hadn’t been like that of a prince endowed with the power to end a paralysing spell that had been decreed for eternity. At least that library, the dazzling fossil left by the efforts of three generations of bibliophiles with enough money to purchase on any whim, had been profaned by his commercial interests and, with a final vengeful, agonic swipe of the tail, had taken with it the wrong-headed life of a man who perhaps never found out who he really was.

  Perhaps the most unforgivable sin committed by Mario Conde had been to think that, those books, accumulated over a century and preserved with sickly zeal for another forty years, could change his precarious economic state and, at least, books permitting, spread riches and happiness among his nearest and dearest, who needed emergency rations of both as much as he did. Consequently, he now thought everything that had happened was the work of fate overriding his sins, his karma and his errors; a fate lurking between those silent volumes that had come back to life to demand justice that had been put off too long. The clearly predestined discovery of the press cutting reporting the surprise retirement of Violeta del Río had turned out to be merely the tip of the iceberg. The fragments of truth the Count dredged to the surface as a result of that forgotten newsprint had gradually given flesh and taste to a tragedy lost in the mists of yesterday, a drama whose mysterious cause had led to at least two more deaths.

  Conde looked around and tried to resuscitate the hunch that had surprised him when he first came to the library of the Montes de Oca. But the hunch refused to surface. He studied the chaos he’d created in the centre and right-hand section of the precinct, in contrast to the rows of volumes still sleeping on the shelves on the left. He gently ran his fingers over the spines of the most valuable items and felt a tremor of thanks from those books for not having been turned into market fodder, despite the alarming amounts their beauty, antiquity and rarity augured, and his contact with the books finally convinced him the magic cipher to complete the truth equation was still in that room.

  He looked at the well-ordered shelves and understood it must all have been a question of time. The six missing books hadn’t been moved because of their quality or value, but because of where they were. The truth had been hidden in, on, above or below them and that insight brought a wave of frustration: whoever had taken the books had taken the truth, and no doubt the whole truth. But he had to be sure.

  Using the wooden bench Dionisio Ferrero had provided them several days ago, he started to review the top shelves. To begin with, he took down a group of books – Enrique Serpa, Carlos Montenegro, Alejo Carpentier, Labrador Ruiz – and studied their ends looking for a possible change in thickness. He then looked between each of the volumes and, convinced there was nothing there, returned to the bench and examined the remaining volumes one by one, shifting them into the space vacated by the books he’d taken down.

  When he was just about to finish the top section dedicated to Cuban authors, Conde heard Manolo calling out.

  “Come on, she says she’s ready.”

  When they’d got to the Ferrero household, Manolo had demanded Amalia let them check over the library again and talk to her mother. Curiously, on this occasion Amalia hadn’t protested or repeated her warning about her mother being mad and, after blinking persistently, she’d asked for a few minutes to get her ready.

  Manolo and Conde followed in the footsteps of Amalia through the portico of Tuscan marble columns and into a gloomy, bigwindowed room, that, Conde supposed, might have been the house’s large dining room, because he then entered a huge, dilapidated kitchen, with walls covered in colourful Portuguese tiles. The mansion was divided in two by a passageway lined with doors that led into equally enormous bedrooms and bathrooms. Amalia stopped by the third door on the right and, with the resignation of a woman whose strength had run out, unable to resist this act of violation, she pushed open the wooden and glass door etched with modernist arabesques.

  Determined to find the endlessly postponed solution to that enigma, Conde strode into the room and almost screamed. A stark naked, living corpse of what had once been a human being lay on the imperial, dark wooden bed, its carved columns draped in tattered gauze. Overcoming his desire to make a run for it, Conde summoned all his strength and contemplated the skeleton supine on the mattress stripped of sheets. Only the slightest breathing movement in her collapsed diaphragm hinted at the remaining signs of life; the completely corpse-like skull, sunk in the pillow, seemed detached from the rest of the body, from which every fibre of muscle had vanished, as if devoured by a voracious scavenger. The inert arms and legs were dried up, brittle segments, and Conde was horrified to see the swollen, blackened opening of her sex, macerated by uric acids, and hanging folds of skin, which had been the preserve of the mount of Venus. Death tapped on every door surrounding that human waste, and its bitter scent hung on the air.

  “Won’t you ask her a question?” Conde sensed more than indignation in Amalia’s voice: there was hatred, visceral hatred, a furious rage that could erupt in any direction. He was glad she’d reproached them, because it was the most dignified excuse to turn his gaze from that hideous spectacle.

  “Why did you do this?” he gasped, moving towards the passage.

  “You asked me to. There you have her . . . Isn’t that what you wanted? Wasn’t what I told you enough? Didn’t you want this spectacle? Go on, ask her a question, go on . . .”

  Conde felt Manolo tap his shoulders, telling him to step aside so he could leave that bedroom stalked by death.

  “Amalia, I think we have to talk,” said the police captain as the Count tried to take deep breaths.

  “What else is there to talk about?” asked the woman intent on sustaining her aggressive tone and the Count thought that was preferable, because hatred made her more vulnerable.

  “Lots. Let’s go to the reception room.”

  The retinue retraced its steps, now led by the Count. He wanted to distance himself as fast as he could from that Goyesque tableau of his own making and, as they walked back to the reception room, he told Manolo he wanted to return to the library.

  “But what do you think you’ll find?” Amalia’s voice was still deep and piercing, and the Count felt it was another woman speaking. “When will you let me be? When will you let us die in peace?”

  “When we know who killed your brother,” replied Manolo. “Or don’t you want us to find out?”

  “I don’t know how you’ll ever find out by prying around that accursed library and watching my mother die. I really don’t—”

  “Well I do,” replied the Count, more convinced than ever of what he’d suspected, as he turned to Captain Manuel Palacios: “Leave the conversation with her till later. Get an ambulance and someone to keep an eye on Amalia. Then help me in the library.”

  Manolo reluctantly obeyed the Count. He’d been honing his talents as an interrogator and only wanted to talk to Amalia. After ringing for medical help and police reinforcements, he criticized the other man’s decision as
soon as they were back inside the library.

  “Don’t you worry, if something turns up it will be so conclusive you won’t have to work her over . . . You take the bookcase down there. Check between the books, look at them individually, for whatever we might come across . . .”

  Conde climbed back on the wooden bench and resumed his interrupted search. He kept moving the volumes, inspecting the edges and, occasionally, shook them by the covers. When he’d finished the top shelf, he went on to the next, and moved items to the space he’d cleared on the one above. In no state to consider the quality of the books he was handling, he made good headway on the second shelf and noticed his hands were sweating, disgustingly. He tried to control his anxiety and told himself to be more meticulous, at the same time instructing Manolo:

  “Look carefully. We’re close,” and went back to his task, convinced his lost hunch was back in the fold, confirming that whatever had sparked it was still hidden there.

  “Close to what, Conde?”

  “To whatever it is we’re looking for. Something that rejected Amalia—”

  “And you don’t have any idea what?”

  “Not the slightest.”

  “Could it be a letter?”

  “Possibly,” answered the Count, concentrating on his search.

  “And does it have to be signed?”

  “Manolo, how do I know . . . A letter . . . It’s my hunch, fucking hell,” he whispered, wincing at the pain shooting through his left nipple.

  19 March

  My dearest and only love:

  Six days ago, numb with grief, I said I would not write to you again and I bid farewell to you, not knowing what I was doing. My God! The punishment I then received for that act of pride which led me to tell your daughter several years ago about her true origins, had confirmed me in my belief that, if someone really was to blame for the death of the woman you loved so much, then I was that person. And I was blameworthy because, thinking I was opening the doors to love, I exposed the hatred and ambition of an individual who was not to blame for who she was or for not possessing what she began to imagine, egged on by me, was her right in natural law. Because it was I, and only I, who put the motive for the crime in her hands, as she screamed at me a few days ago when I told her what I’d found out.