Havana Blue (10 page)

“No, don't tell me what you're thinking, wait before you tell me,” he begged Manolo as they walked out of the building. A fine monotonous drizzle was still falling, and darkness had descended on the city. “Let's go to Seventy and Seventeenth and see what surprises Zoila has in store.”

“You don't want anything to prejudice you?” queried Manolo as he slotted the aerial back in place.

“Hey, man, just give me a break. Leave the aerial in peace, we'll be getting out in a minute.”

Manolo carried on as if he'd heard nothing, and while the Count got in the car he put the aerial back. He knew the lieutenant was beginning to get on edge and that it was best to ignore him. You don't want to know what I'm thinking? Well, I won't tell you and stick that . . . But I am thinking lots of things, he said loudly as the car sped up Línea towards the tunnel, and the Count scrawled some notes on his battered writing pad. He started playing with the catch on his pen again and without so much as a by your leave switched off the car radio Manolo had turned on. Nonetheless, Sergeant Manolo confessed he preferred working with his half-neurotic lieutenant and had reached that
conclusion when he was a greenhorn cop assigned to a team investigating the theft of various pictures from the National Museum and the forensic worker in the group had said: “Look, the guy who just arrived is the Count. He's in charge of this operation. Don't be put off by anything he says, because he's crazy, but he's a good guy and I think he's the best detective we've got” as Manolo saw for himself on several occasions.

“And might I know your thoughts on the matter?” asked the sergeant, staring at the road ahead.

“No.”

“You in crisis, my friend?”

“Yeah, sure. On the verge of a nervous breakdown. Well, I know Rafael Morín and can smell where this is coming from, but there are lots of loose ends and I don't want to prejudge anything.”

The car advanced down Nineteenth, and Manolo decided to smoke his first cigarette of the day. I envy this fellow as well, thought the Count, imagine smoking just when you feel like it.

“If you're agonizing about reaching the wrong conclusions, then you really are in crisis,” Manolo declared as he turned into Seventy on his way to Seventeenth.

“That's the one,” said the Count when he saw house number 568. “Stop here, and if you remove the aerial again, I'll file a disciplinary report, you hear me?”

“Got you. But at least wind up the window properly, if you don't mind?” Manolo shouted as he closed his as tight as it would go.

The light was on in the hallway, but the house door and front windows were shut. The Count knocked, two, three times and waited. Manolo, now by his side, put on his rainproof jacket and tried to zip it up. The lieutenant knocked again and glanced at his colleague still fiddling with his zip.

“Those zips are useless, pal. Let's go, nobody's at home,” he said as he hammered on the wooden door again.

The knocks echoed in the distance, as if around an empty house.

“Let's talk to the committee,” the lieutenant went on.

They walked along the pavement, looking for the sign for the local Revolutionary Committee, and finally spotted one on the corner, almost hidden by a jungle of box-hedges and dwarf palms in the garden.

“That's the worst of this cold. I'm getting hungrier and hungrier, Count,” Manolo lamented his afflictions and begged his boss to make it short and sweet.

“And what do you think I've got in my belly? After what I drank last night, today's fasting and the cigar the Boss gave me, I feel like I've got a dead toad in my gut. I feel as if I'm about to throw up.”

He tapped on the glass in the door, a dog started barking, and now Manolo was on edge.

“I tell you, I'm going back to the car,” he said, reviewing his unique record of bites on duty.

“Don't be silly, kid, stay still.” The door opened.

A black and white dog ran out, ignoring his master's orders. Lion Cub, he called him, fancy calling that funny-coloured mongrel Lion. It was curly tailed and half mulatto, and had ignored Mario Conde and gone straight to sniff Manolo's shoes and trousers, as if they'd once belonged to him.

“He's harmless,” the proud owner of the wellbehaved dog reassured them. “But he's a good guard dog. How can I help?”

The Count introduced himself and asked for the head of the committee.

“Yours truly, comrade. Would you like to come in?”

“No, that's not necessary. We just want to know if
you've seen Zoila Amarán today. We're looking to ask her a few . . .”

“Is there something the matter?”

“No, just a routine enquiry.”

“Well, my friend, I think you're up against it. You'll need a lasso to get a hold on Zoilita, because she hardly shows her face around here,” the committee head observed. “Hey, Lion Cub, come here, leave the comrade alone or he'll lock you up,” he said with a smile.

“Does she live by herself?”

“Yes and no. Her brother and his wife live in her place, but they are doctors and have just been posted to Pinar del Río, and they visit every two or three months. So she lives by herself and I heard, you know, you find these things out without trying. I think it was today when I was getting bread from the corner store that she'd told someone she was going away and she's not been sighted for three days.”

“Three days?” asked the Count, smiling at the relief on Manolo's face when Lion Cub finally lost interest in his shoes and trousers and scampered into the garden.

“Yes, three days or so. But, you know, to be frank, and this is a fact: ever since she's been a kid – and I've watched her grow up right here – Zoilita's been a tearaway, and not even her mother, the late Zoila, could keep track of her. I even thought she'd turn out a tomboy, but no way. OK, she's not done anything wrong, has she? She might be half-mad, but I can honestly say she's not a bad girl.”

The Count listened to the man expressing his opinions while he searched his jacket pocket for a cigarette. His brain wanted to weigh up the fact Zoila hadn't been back home for precisely three days, although suddenly he was feeling weary of all this, of Zaida and
Maciques defending Rafael, of Zoila and the Spaniard Dapena, who'd also vanished on the first, of Tamara and Rafael, but he replied: “No, don't worry, there's nothing wrong. We only wanted to find out a couple of other things: how old is Zoilita and where does she work?”

The committee head rested his forearm on the doorframe, watched Lion Cub shit copiously and pleasurably in the garden and smiled.

“I don't remember her exact age; I'd have to look on the register . . .”

“No need, more or less,” said Manolo, coming back to life.

“About twenty-three, I'd guess,” he said. “As you get older, a twenty-year-old seems much the same as a thirty-year-old, you know? And as for your other question: well she works at home, makes arty-crafty objects from seeds and shells and earns good money and only works when she has to. You can imagine, around New Year she rakes it in. You can't find anything to buy then, you know?”

“Very good, comrade, many thanks,” said the Count, stemming the flow of words that threatened to drown them. “We'll just ask you for one favour. When she comes, call us on this number and leave a message for Lieutenant Conde or Sergeant Palacios. Is that OK?”

“On the contrary, comrades, it's a real pleasure. We are here to serve you, naturally. But, I must say, Lieutenant, it's strange you won't come in for a sitdown and a cup of freshly made coffee? I thought when two policemen visited a Revolutionary Committee that always had to happen.”

“So did I, but not to worry. There are also police who are scared of dogs,” said the Count as he shook the man's hand.

“That was nice of you,” griped Manolo as they walked to their car. He was wearing his jacket open to the cold air. “You're very witty today. As if not facing up to dogs were a sin.”

“That must be why they bite you. Look what a sweat you're in, kid.”

“Yes, it's all very well to go on about adrenaline, smell and your fucking mother, but the fact is they always go for me.”

They got into the car; Manolo took a deep breath and put both hands on the wheel.

“Well, we now have some idea about who Zoilita is. The plot thickens.”

“The plot thickens, but it makes no odds. Look, let's divide up now. I'll go to collect the guest list for the deputy minister's party and you put two people on task to find out about Zaida and Zoilita. Particularly Zoilita. I want to know where she's got to and what she's got to do with all this.”

“Why don't we switch tasks? I'll collect the list, go on.”

“Hey, Manolo, you can play with the chain but leave the monkey in peace. No more griping,” he said and looked into the street. He was fascinated by the steady flow of white lines the car was devouring, and only then did he notice it had stopped raining. But the pain from his hungry misused stomach now met the pressure from the urine filling his bladder. “What else are you thinking of doing?”

Manolo kept staring at the road ahead.

“I'm talking to you, Manolo,” insisted the Count.

“Well, I reckon there are too many bloody coincidences, and Zoilita's much too much of a coincidence, don't you think? And I reckon you should talk to Maciques. That man knows more than he's letting on.”

“We'll see him at the enterprise on Monday.”

“I'd see him before then.”

“Tomorrow if there's time, OK?”

“Hey, let's have some music, I'm going to piss myself.”

“You can piss yourself, but I can't put any music on.”

“What's a matter, man, you still shaking because of that mongrel?”

“No, it's your fault we can't listen to music. They stole our aerial from in front of Zoilita's place.”

 

 

His favourite song had always been “Strawberry Fields”. He'd discovered it one unexpected day in 1967 or 1968 in his cousin Juan Antonio's house; it was horribly hot, but Juan Antonio and three of his friends were older, in eighth grade, and they'd squeezed into his cousin's bedroom, he recalled, as if they were going to pray to the prophet: they were sitting on the floor around an ancient RCA Victor gramophone, it even had termites, and an opaque, unidentified record was turning on the deck. “It's a copy, idiot, of course it's not got a label,” said Juan Antonio as bad-temperedly as ever, and he also sat on the floor because nobody wanted to speak, not even the women. Then Tomy moved the arm and placed it lovingly on the record, and the song began; he understood nothing, the Beatles didn't sing as well as they did on real records, but the big lads hummed the words, as if they knew them, and all he knew was that “field” was park, “centerfield” was centre of the park, he concluded, but that would come later. He felt as if he were experiencing a unique act of magic, and when the song finished he asked, go on, play it again, Tomy. And he started singing again and didn't know why: he didn't
want to accept that that melody was flagging up his nostalgia for a past when everything was perfect and straightforward, and although he now knew what the lyrics meant, he preferred to repeat them unthinkingly and just feel as if he were walking through that field of strawberries he'd never seen, the one his memories were so familiar with, to be alone with that music. “Strawberry Fields” always came like that, out of nowhere, and pushed everything else out. He sang along, picked up on any phrase and felt better; he no longer saw the dark or gloomily overcast sky or the image of Rafael Morín speechifying on the podium at school. He didn't want to smoke and listen to Manolo recounting his latest amorous conquest, as he drove him to Tamara's house, “Strawberry fields forever, tum, tum, tum . . .”

 

 

“The book was right there.”

Time is an illusion; nothing had changed in the library: the complete set of the
Espasa-Calpe Encyclopaedia
, the one most packed with knowledge, its dark blue spines and gilt letters still shiny despite the years that had gone by; Tamara's father's Doctor in Law certificate still fearlessly enjoying its privileged position, even above Victor Manuel's two pen-and-ink drawings he'd always coveted so much. The dark tome of Father Brown stories, with the leather covers that his fingers caressed, brought on another bout of melancholy; old Doctor Valdemira recommended them to him so many years ago when the Count could never have imagined he'd become a colleague of Chesterton's little priest. And the mahogany desk was immortal, broad as a desert and beautiful like a woman. A handsome writing desk. Only the leather on the swivel chair seemed
rather tired, it was over thirty years old and genuine bison; that was the place occupied by the person responsible for night-time revision before an exam, the privilege of the one who knew most. The day Mario Conde first entered that room, he had felt small, helpless and terribly uncultured, and his memory could still recreate that painful sensation of intellectual inadequacy he'd yet to cure himself of.

“I've often dreamed of this place. But in my dreams I never remembered your father having a telephone here, or did he?”

“No, never. Daddy hated two things to the point of sickness: one was the telephone and the other television, and that shows how very sensitive he was,” she recalled as she flopped down into one of the armchairs in front of the desk.

“And do those two phobias relate to this redbrick fireplace in a Havana library?” he asked as he bent down over the small hearth and played with one of the tongs.