Havana Bay (36 page)

That hardly described Osorio, Arkady thought, but
he didn't have time to delve into religious matters.

"I saw you leave this morning in that big white car,
that chariot with wings," Abuelita said.» The whole
Malecon was looking at that."

"Did you happen to notice any tall, black sergeant
from Minint go in the building after I left?"

"No."

"No one fitting that description carrying a machete or a baseball bat?" He added five dollars to the crown
at the Virgin's feet.

Abuelita sighed and took the money out.» I know
the man you mean. The one who arranged the Abakua.
I was at my window like I always am, but the truth is, I fell asleep right there standing up. Sometimes my body
gets old."

Arkady put the money back.» Then I have another
question. I still need a picture of Sergei Pribluda for the
police and I'm looking for any close friends of his who
might have one. No one here does, but the first time we
met you mentioned that Sergei Pribluda was a man who shared his pickles. Yesterday I was at a market that sold
vegetables, including cucumbers, but nothing like the homemade pickles in Pribluda's refrigerator. Because
you're right, there's nothing like a Russian pickle. Did
he have a special visitor?"

Abuelita spread her hand wide as a fan and hid her
grin.» Now you're talking. There was one woman, a
Russian, who came sometimes with a basket, sometimes
not."

"Could you describe her?"

"Oh, like a fat little dove. She came on Thursdays, sometimes alone, sometimes with a girl."

Ofelia climbed a ladder to Hedy Infante's home, a
platform built under the ceiling of a rococo foyer. The ten-by-ten loft held her cot, rack of dresses and stretch pants, electric bulb and candles, cosmetics and shoes, window with rope to a pail and view of the chandelier
and, far below, a marble floor. The house had been
built by a sugar magnate with a taste for froth, and the
ceiling's swirls of white plasterwork evoked a sense of
nesting in the clouds.

Hedy's interior decoration was just as fantastic, an
interior of pictures she had clipped from magazines
and taped to her walls, a handmade wallpaper of Los
Van Van, Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan singing soulfully
to a microphone, bathed in strobe lights, reaching
out to fans. On one singer she had superimposed her
own face, which reminded Ofelia of the real condition
of Hedy's neck. The loft wasn't the sort of room a prostitute took a client, it was more her true, private
place.

Private but violated by the little touches left by
forensic technicians, police tape around the dresses,
fingerprint powder on the mirror, the subtle disarray
when men rather than women put things away. Hedy had collected hotel soaps, cutlery, coasters, made a
seashell frame around a photograph of her
quince,
her fifteenth birthday party—the picture showed off the
state-supplied frosted cake, beer and rum. In another
photograph Hedy wore the blue ruffles and scarf of a
devotee of Yemaya, the goddess of the seas, and, sure
enough, on the wall was a statuette of Our Lady of
Regla, spirit and saint being one and the same. A cigar box held snapshots of a variety of tourists with Hedy,
toasting her with daiquiris or
mojitos
at cafes in the
Plaza Vieja, Plaza de Armas, Plaza de la Catedral, the
make-believe world of Old Havana. Hedy's favorites,
though, seemed to be two photos pinned to a heart-
shaped pillow of her and Luna. What had the techs
made of that, the dead girl with the officer in charge?
The photos had apparently been taken at different times
because of a difference in clothes, but both in front of
a building that bore in rusty stains the name Centra
Russo-Cubano. On the underside of the pillow was
pinned a third snapshot, this of Hedy, Luna and the
little
jinetera
Teresa in the back of a white Chrysler Imperial. There were no names, telephone numbers or
addresses around the bed, in the cigar box or on the
wall.

There were no neighbors in the building to talk, and Ofelia went across the street to a
botdnica,
where a
cardboard listed guava for diarrhea, oregano for conges
tion, parsley for gas. A Coca-Cola mirror hung on the wall, and taped to it were testimonials, including a
postcard from Mexico with the illustration of a dancer
with the same sort of ruffled skirt, black hair and fair
skin as the woman she had seen kissing Renko. Ofelia
personally couldn't care less, but she was annoyed, after
all her efforts to ensure the
bolo's
safety, to see him
invite just anyone in. Ofelia remembered how the
woman leaned into Renko and brought his face down
to hers.

"Hija?"
The
herbalista
stirred from a chair.

"Oh, yes." Ofelia bought a bag of mahogany bark for
her mother's rheumatism before mentioning Hedy.

"Yerba buena,"
the
herbalista
remembered Hedy by
remedy.» A pretty girl but a nervous stomach. A dancer,
too. Such a shame."

The woman knew Hedy from the local group that performed at Carnival. There had been sixty dancers, drummers, men balancing giant tops, all dressed in
Yemaya's signature blue and swirling like waves all the
way up the Prado where the Comandante himself was
in the reviewing stand. And she remembered Hedy's
friend, who could burn a hole through wood with his
gaze.

"There, that's him."

A Minint Lada stopped outside Hedy's address, and
Luna emerged with more haste than usual. Ofelia
turned her back to the door, removed her cap and
watched the street in the mirror, which meant she had
to endure more recommendations from the herbalist
and the stupid card from Mexico, but only for a minute before the sergeant came out of Hedy's with the heart-
shaped pillow.

But it didn't matter to Ofelia that none of the
technicians who visited Hedy Infante's loft had gathered
the pillow and its photographs in time. It didn't matter
whether or not they dusted Hedy's childish possessions for prints. None of them for all their expertise would understand Hedy as well as she did.

Ofelia lived in two worlds. One was the ordinary
level of ration lines and bus lines, of streets of rubble, of the blue trickle of electricity that allowed Fidel to
flicker on the television screen, of oppressive heat that
made her two daughters spread like butterflies on the
cool tiles of the floor. The other was a deeper universe
as real as the veins beneath the skin, of the voluptuous
Oshun, maternal Yemaya, thundering Change, spirits
good and bad that brought blood to the face, taste to
the mouth, color to the eye and dwelled in everyone if
they were evoked. Just as drums carried a kola seed that
was the soul of the drum, that only spoke when the drum was played, every person carried a spirit that
spoke through their own heartbeat if they would only
listen. So Ofelia Osorio carried the fire of the sun
hidden behind her dark mask and saw with a penetrating light the double worlds of Havana.

This time Arkady found Olga Petrovna in a housedress and her hair up in curlers as she was organizing bags of food in the front room of her apartment. She gave him
the pained smile of a pretty woman, an older woman
caught by surprise. A fat little dove? Perhaps.

"A side business," she said.

"A healthy side business."

What had been a Russian nook was obscured by rows
of white plastic bags stretched to the bursting point by
Italian coffee tins, Chinese tableware, toilet paper, cook
ing oil, soap, towels, frozen chicken and bottles of
Spanish wine. Each bag was taped and marked with a
different Cuban name.

"I do what I can," she said.» It was so much easier in
the old days when there was a real Russian community
here. Cubans could depend on us for a decent supply
of dollar goods from the diplomatic market. When the
embassy shipped everyone home, that put a heavy
burden on those of us who were left."

For a percentage, Arkady was sure. Ten percent?
Twenty? It would have been vulgar to ask such a perfect
Soviet matron.

"I'll be right back," she promised and slipped
into a bedroom, which emitted a hint of sachet. She
called through the door, "Talk to Sasha, he loves
company."

From its perch a canary seemed to examine Arkady for a tail. Arkady peeked into the kitchen. Samovar on
an oilcloth, oilcloth on the table. Calendar with a
nostalgically snowy scene. Salt in a bowl, paper napkins
in a glass. A sparkling shetf of home-bottled jams,
pickles and bean salad. He was back in the front room when she returned, ash-blond hair brushed into place, primped in record time.

"I would offer you something, but my Cuban friends
will be arriving soon. It makes them nervous to see
strangers. I hope this won't take long. You understand."

"Of course. It's about Sergei Pribluda. You said the first time we spoke that some women on the embassy
staff speculated because of the improvement of his
Spanish that he had become romantically involved with
a Cuban."

Olga Petrovna allowed herself a smile.» Sergei Ser-
geevich's Spanish was never that good."

"I suspect you're right, because he was so Russian.
Russian to the core."

"As I told you, a 'comrade' in the old sense of the
word."

"And the more I investigate, the more it's clear that
if he did find a woman to admire that deeply, she only
could have been as Russian as he was. Would you
agree?"

While Olga Petrovna maintained the same bland
smile, something defiant appeared in her eyes.

"I think so."

"The attraction must have been inevitable," Arkady
said.» Perhaps with reminiscences of home, a real Rus
sian dinner and then, because an affair within the
embassy is always discouraged, the necessity to plan liaisons that were either secret or seemed accidental.
Fortunately, he lived well apart from other Russians,
and she could always find a reason to be on the
Malecon."

"It's possible."

"But she was seen by Cubans."

There was a knock at the door. Olga Petrovna opened
it a crack, whispered to someone and shut the door
gently, returned to Arkady, asked for a cigarette and,
when it was lit, sat and exhaled luxuriously. In a new
voice, a voice with body, she said, "We didn't do
anything wrong."

"I'm not saying you did. I didn't come to Havana to
ruin anyone's life."

"I have no idea what Sergei was up to. He didn't say
and I knew better than to ask. We appreciated each
other, was all."

"That was enough, I'm sure."

"Then what do you want?"

"I think that someone close to Pribluda, who cared
for him, probably has a better photograph than what
you showed me the first time."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

She rose, went to her bedroom and returned a
moment later with a color photograph of a tanned and
happy Colonel Sergei Pribluda in swim shorts. With the
warm Caribbean at his back, sand on his shoulders, and
a grin as if he'd shed ten years. For Bias's purposes of
identification the photograph was perfect.

"I'm sorry, I would have given it to you before, but I
was sure you would find another one and this is the
only good one I have. Will I get it back?"

"I'll ask." He slipped the picture into his pocket.» Did you ever ask Pribluda what he was doing in
Havana? Did he ever mention anyone or anything to
you?"

"Men like Sergei perform special tasks. He would
never say and it wasn't my place to pry."