Mambo

by Campbell Armstrong

  “How long are you here for?” he asked.

  “I leave tomorrow.”

  Pagan wondered why Magdalena was still in her robe at this hour of the day, but he wouldn’t ask. “Do you have time for dinner?”

  “There’s something I can’t cancel. I would if I could.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “I can’t, Frank. Sorry.”

  “Why do I still feel a very old jealousy?”

  “Because you’re crazy. Because you’re a romantic.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how I like to be defined.”

  “You’ll always be a romantic, Frank. You’ll always occupy a special place in my memory.”

  Something sounded sad to Pagan, as if he existed in Magdalena’s mind only as a fossil, relegated to the museum where former lovers lay mummified. There was no question so far as he was concerned – he had once loved this woman in a way he’d never quite loved again, a tempestuous affair, probably self-destructive, but dramatic and more turbulently physical than anything else he’d ever experienced. She took him to his limits then pushed him beyond them, forcing him to soar through the barriers of his reserve and aloofness.

  “Thirteen years.” She shook her head, as if the passage of time bewildered her. “I don’t think I’m over the surprise of seeing you yet. And the suspicion.”

  “Suspicion?”

  “You’re not here just to reminisce. You said it wasn’t exactly a social call.”

  Pagan was silent. He wondered if he’d hoped for something that the situation couldn’t possibly yield, perhaps a brief rekindling of old sensations, a liaison even; but this was pure bloody fantasy. People moved on. They built other lives. They had other loves.

  “The computer kicked out your name,” he said. Jesus, he didn’t want to talk about this.

  “Does that mean I’m up shit creek?” She put a hand over her open mouth; mock horror.

  “It depends on why you’re in London. The last time you were trying to buy weapons.”

  She laughed. “Don’t remind me. I was naïve then.”

  “Naïve enough to look for guns on the black market anyway. And get yourself arrested.”

  “You were the nicest arresting officer I could have hoped for.”

  “Are you still involved in the same cause? Still trying to buy guns?”

  “Hey, look at me, Frank. I’m thirty-nine and mellow. Guns in the hands of some Cuban extremists isn’t the answer. I changed direction.”

  Pagan stared at the TV a moment. A man was mutely reading the evening news. “What direction are you pointed in now, Magdalena?”

  “We still want Castro out. That never changes. But I know it isn’t going to happen unless it comes from inside Cuba, and with only a minimal amount of force. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, Frank, but there are people in Cuba who believe in bringing democracy to the island. I’m a sympathiser.”

  “How is this supposed to be achieved?” Pagan asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “A coup?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Bloodless?” Pagan asked.

  “I can’t see into the future.”

  “How could it be accomplished without some bloodshed? And what exactly is a ‘minimal amount’ of force? How do you actually measure that?”

  Magdalena Torrente said nothing.

  “But you believe this coup is a possibility?” Pagan asked.

  She didn’t answer directly. “The democratic underground in Cuba keeps growing. People are sick of deprivation. Communism has a big personnel problem. For every good man it attracts, it enlists a hundred bullies who don’t know Karl Marx from Harpo. Whenever there’s a new problem, which is ten times every day, they think rationing’s the answer. No shoes? No baby food? No drinking water? No fish to eat? Tough shit, those are all just mere inconveniences en route to the perfection of the state, which is coming. Maybe in a couple of centuries, but it’s coming. Meantime, we’re sorry we have to grind your face in the dirt.”

  Pagan remembered taking Magdalena Torrente into custody after she’d been arrested in 1977 in a gun dealer’s flat on Baker Street. He’d been part of a team watching that place for weeks, listening to tapped phoned conversations, waiting for the precise moment to swoop on the dealer, a Belgian whose cover was that of a dealer in nineteenth-century Flemish art. When the raid happened, Magdalena was in the middle of bargaining over the price of one hundred FN rifles intended for a group of anti-Castro rebels in the Escambray region of Cuba. The guns would be channelled through Miami to Cuba by a Florida group who had run afoul of the FBI and therefore had to buy weapons abroad. So Magdalena had been dispatched to London with a huge sum of cash.

  When she’d been arrested the money was confiscated. The judge, who thought Communism akin to rabies or a rattlesnake’s bite and believed democracy to be the British Empire’s one true gift to the planet, had lectured her in the fashion of a stern uncle but he’d refused to imprison or deport her. She had been “misguided by her own youthful zeal for liberty”, a nice judicial phrase, a kindness. Obviously, the good justice had been mildly infatuated with the beautiful young Cuban-American who stood in the dock before him.

  After her acquittal, Frank Pagan defied protocol and good sense by spending ten days and nights with her. He’d known it wasn’t a bright career move to fraternise with your prisoner, even if she’d been discharged. But that was how she affected him. She made him blind to consequences.

  “What brings you here this time, Magdalena?”

  “I’m a tourist.”

  “A very fussy one when it comes to hotels, I gather.”

  She stared at him. She was capable of making her eyes seem like two hard stones, which stripped her face of all expression. She had masks that could be terrifying. “You’ve been spying.”

  “No. You move so often we had trouble tracking you down.”

  “I’m a hard woman to please. A hotel has to be comfortable.”

  “Look at it from a police point of view. Maybe you’re up to something and you want to make it difficult to be followed. You take the precaution of moving around.”

  “You can shove that one, Frank. I didn’t like the first two hotels. There’s nothing sinister in that. I don’t know what you’re fishing for. I was in Paris before London. Before that Rome. You know how superficial we Americans can be. Six hours in Barcelona and we’ve seen everything. Now it’s London’s turn. Three antique stores, Harrod’s, the Changing of the Guard, and I’m out of here.”

  Pagan experienced one of those drugged moments in which the strip of electricity under the bathroom door seemed to vibrate. He rubbed his eyes, looked away.

  “Do you have any more questions, Frank? Or are we through?”

  There, he thought. A sliver of ice in her voice; a little frost. He said, “Look, I already told you your name had to be checked, that’s all. You haven’t been singled out especially. There’s a whole slew of names.”

  “It’s got something to do with this character Ruhr?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t imagine for a moment that I’d ever be connected with anybody like that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you just had to see me.”

  “I had to see you. Did you come here alone?”

  “Sure. I often travel on my own. I’m reaching that stage – set in my ways. I like solitude.”

  Something troubled him here. An element was wrong, a balance disturbed. Somehow he was having difficulty imagining Magdalena, gregarious Magdalena, travelling alone.

  That isn’t quite it either, Frank.

  He said, “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t gone back home thirteen years ago.”

  “Do you think we ever really stood a chance, Frank? Do you think we’d still be together?”

  “Tough question.” He remembered trips along the river to Richmond; strolling in Kew Gardens; walking hand-in-hand around
the Serpentine. Bistros in Chelsea; antique shops on the Fulham Road; Petticoat Lane. He’d taken her to a cricket match at the Oval and she’d fallen asleep. Tourists and lovers in starry, brilliant London.

  “And totally unanswerable,” she said. “You’re a British cop. I’m a Cuban democrat exiled in Florida. It’s a big divide.”

  Pagan looked round the room. He didn’t want to leave. Screw divides, he thought. Why didn’t she ask him to stay a little longer?

  He realised with a quiet little shock that he knew the answer to that question, that he’d known it for some minutes now, but hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. The light under the bathroom door shimmered like mercury, then seemed to expand. Of course! Bright light in a closed room. The mystery of Magdalena’s new-found love of her own companionship. The strange uneasiness he’d felt. It tumbled into place like so many coins slowly falling.

  She was looking at her wristwatch on the bedside table; a surreptitious glance. “It was good to see you again, Frank. But I’m already late for my appointment. I’m sorry we don’t have more time. I hope you get your man.”

  He finally gave way to an impulse, pulled her towards him, perhaps just a little too sharply, and kissed her. He surprised himself, but she didn’t resist, she offered her open mouth and the tip of her tongue, and when he placed a hand inside her robe she didn’t immediately push him away. For a few seconds he forgot Ruhr, and the wound, and the way the world trespassed. He remembered what it was like to be inside this woman, that collision of flesh, and how her breasts tasted between his lips. The memory had all the odd luminosity of an hallucination and the poignancy of a dead love.

  “Go,” she said.

  He stepped into the corridor, turning once to look at her, seeing only one hand raised in farewell as the door closed on her. One hand. A fragment of Magdalena. It was somehow very fitting.

  Downstairs in the lobby he found Foxworth sitting impatiently under a vast spidery plant. Foxie stood up.

  “I want you to go up to the twelfth floor,” Pagan said.

  “Oh?”

  Pagan grunted and lowered himself cautiously into the sofa alongside his assistant. The plant created a dark green umbrella over his head. “The room number’s 1209. Keep an eye on it in a casual way. See if you can look like the house detective.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I want to find out who’s hiding in the bathroom.”

  “Bathroom? Can you fill me in slowly, Frank?”

  Pagan looked in the direction of the lifts. “Later.”

  Rafael Rosabal dried his face, then tossed the towel aside. “I didn’t know you had friends in this town.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said.

  “Yeah? Poor Frank. I heard.” He opened the closet, removed a shirt, pulled it on. “It sounded like it was only yesterday.”

  “You’re jealous. How wonderful! You’re actually jealous!”

  Rosabal said nothing. He clipped his cufflinks neatly in place. Silver and diamond, they gleamed in the lamplight. He was fastidious about his appearance.

  She went on, “You heard him. He came here on a routine matter. There’s a hunt going on for this German, whatever his name is. Pagan isn’t the kind of guy to cut corners. He sees stones, he turns them all over. Compulsive. I just happened to be one of his stones.”

  “Was he also compulsive as a lover? Did he make love to you all the time? Was he insatiable?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You obviously still mean something to him. But does he mean anything to you?”

  She laughed because she was enjoying this moment. She’d never seen him even remotely jealous before. “We’re planning to run away together. We lowered our voices when it came to that part so you wouldn’t overhear.”

  Rosabal took her in his arms and held her. Had he really been jealous? He wasn’t sure. He thought about Pagan and Magdalena for a moment – a surprising little fluke, a trinket of fate, amusing the way all such concurrences can be, but it meant nothing in the end. There was no way the English policeman could link Magdalena to him; and even if Pagan made such a connection, what did it matter? How could the Englishman possibly discover any association between Rosabal and Gunther Ruhr?

  “Is he likely to catch the German?” he asked.

  “I don’t give a damn. I don’t want to spend our last half hour together wondering about some lunatic on the run. We’ve got better things to do.”

  “I was just curious. If he’s compulsive, presumably he isn’t going to sleep until the man is caught.”

  “Who cares? What difference does it make to you?” She unclipped his cufflinks, slid her hands up his arms and felt the fine hair stir as if touched by electricity. She undid the buttons of his shirt, then pushed him back across the bed; he was distracted.

  “I’m just interested in the kind of man your former lover is,” he said. “Natural curiosity. Was he better than me?”

  “Forget him. Nobody’s better than you.”

  She lowered her face and kissed the hairs that grew across his chest. Where the hairs faded, his skin was brown and almost satin to the touch; she opened her eyes, studied a small blue vein that travelled crookedly just beneath the surface of flesh. She said, “I adore you. I wish I had words to tell you how much.”

  Rosabal lay silent, his eyes shut. She felt his fingertips against the back of her neck, small indentations of pressure; he had powerful hands and sometimes he underestimated his own strength. She moved her head and his hands slackened and the pressure diminished.

  She opened his fly slowly. She always knew how to arouse him and change his mood. “My sweet darling,” she said. Vida mia!

  He saw her hair fall over his thighs. He shut his eyes and held his breath as if he meant to contain the explosion in his fashion, but he couldn’t. He heard the way she moaned joyfully, her hands cupped together under his testicles; he came with a surge that rocked him. She raised her face. A glistening thread of semen lay on her lip and she removed it with a fingertip. She held this frail memento towards the light, then it drifted away. There was a profound intimacy she had with Rafael that with any other man would have been unthinkable. Certainly she’d never known it with another lover. It excluded the rest of the world. She found herself doing things she’d never done before, thinking thoughts that would never have entered her mind until now. She looked at him. He was so beautiful at times he made her ache.

  They lay together in silence.

  Then she said, “I want to leave before you. I don’t like waiting behind after you’ve gone.”

  “Of course.”

  She shut her eyes very tightly. At the back of her mind she could already feel the sorrow that always came, like some vindictive wraith, whenever they parted. And there was always the same penetrating doubt, the heartache of wondering if, and when, they would meet again.

  “Tell me we’re going to win,” she said. This was another troublesome matter for her; she needed reassurances here too. Her love for Rosabal, her political beliefs, her desire to play a significant role in changing Cuba – these were bound together so tightly as to be inseparable.

  “Do you doubt it?”

  “I like to hear you say it, that’s all.”

  He turned his face towards her. “We’re going to win. Nothing can stand in our way.”

  Her face propped against the palm of her hand, she gazed at him. The ultimate victory. There were moments in which she could feel it as certainly as she might some fever in her blood – a raging flood of light and warmth. She had one such moment now as she studied her lover’s face. Her fears and doubts drifted away like so much steam.

  She turned over on her back, looked up at the ceiling. She thought about the role she would play later, in the time after Castro. Rosabal had brought it up a year ago in Mexico City; the only true democracy, he’d said, was one based on elections that were not only free but fair. And with that delightful smile on his face which contained her future, he t
old her how he had come up with a special job for her, namely Minister of Elections, a post he’d create for her when the time came, a powerful position that would bestow upon her the responsibility of ensuring elections free of corruption and coercion, elections that would be untainted by fraud as they so frequently were in such countries as Panama and Chile. Cuban democracy would be a model for the rest of Latin America.

  Besides, what damn good was a rotten democracy? he’d asked. What good was it if votes could be bought with money or threats of violence? People had to cast their ballots without fear. Her job, as Rafael had enthusiastically described it, would be more than merely overseeing the impartial counting of ballots; a whole nation accustomed to one antiquated system for which nobody had ever voted had to be re-educated, an enormous task that affected every stratum of society. Immense propaganda would have to be created in schools, factories, farms. Simple democracy; an alien concept for a whole generation of Cubans who had to be wakened, and shaken, and remade! And he had absolutely no doubt that she had the energy for this; she had the zeal, the dedication, there was no question.

  The prospect, and Rafael’s faith in her, filled her with excitement; he intended to make her the principal architect of free elections in Cuba. In 1961, at the Bay of Pigs, scores of men, including her own father, had died in pursuit of that ideal. She shut her eyes. She said, “Do you know what makes me really happy? It’s not just the importance of this job – it’s the fact you understand what it means to me. Even after we’re married, you want me to have a life of my own.” She opened her eyes, looked at him.

  He said, “You have too much to contribute. I wouldn’t expect you to give up your independence. I’ve told you that before. In any case, it’s part of your charm.” He smiled now. “Presidente Rosabal and his wife Magdalena,” he added, as if testing the coupling. “It sounds so very right.”

  And it was; what could be more natural? she wondered. Rafael and Magdalena. Lovers. Husband and wife. President and Minister. All along the line they fitted smoothly together. Sometimes this realisation overwhelmed her. She, who had always looked upon marriage as a relic of a simpler age when women blindly entered into unfair contracts – she wanted to be this man’s wife; she wanted Rafael as her husband. He had asked her a year ago in Mexico City; her acceptance had been the most tranquil moment of her life. But she had known from the beginning that she’d never be just a decoration at Rosabal’s side, never window-dressing. She wanted more. And she was going to get it.