Havana Blue (26 page)

Several months later, when the Rafael Morín case had been truly laid to rest, and René Maciques was rotting in jail and Tamara was as beautiful as ever and looked at him with eyes that were always glistening, he'd still ask the same question and imagine a sad Rafael Morín, a petty potentate in Miami with his five-hundred-thousand-dollar fortune that was a mere lottery prize that would never buy him the things he acquired with his power as a trustworthy brilliant cadre, always on the up. But that night he just stopped next to a group of fans and lit a cigarette. They all thought and shouted out loud in an act of group
therapy: the team manager was an idiot, the star pitcher a dud and the guys from way back really good, if only Chávez and Urbano, La Guagua and Lazo would come back, they fantasized, and then he stuck the shoulder of his imagination between two enormous frightening blacks who eyed him suspiciously, where does this asshole come from, and shouted into the centre of the group: “They don't have balls,” and he'd leave the professional gripers to their gripes, as he crossed the street and entered the haze of fumes, dry piss and pre-Colombian vomit in the doorway to the Asturian Centre, where a couple were trying to consummate their ardour behind a pillar, and finally ran into the barred doors to the Floridita, SHUT FOR REPAIRS, and abandoned there all hope of a double shot of neat vintage rum, sitting in the corner that was Hemingway's exclusive property, leaning on the bar where Papa and Ava Gardner kissed scandalously and where he'd set his store, many years ago, on writing a novel about squalor and where he'd have asked himself the same question and supplied the only answer that allowed him to live in peace: because he always was a bastard. What else?

“Can I put some music on?”

“No, not now,” she said as she leaned her head on the back of the plush sofa, looked up at the ceiling and felt freezing again and folded her arms after she'd pulled down her jersey sleeves. He lit a cigarette and dropped the match in the Murano ashtray.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, also sinking back on the sofa. “A ceiling is a ceiling.”

“About what's happening, everything you've told me, what else do you expect?”

“You really had no idea? None whatsoever?”

“What can I say, Mario?”

“But you might have seen or suspected something.”

“What was there to suspect? The fact he bought that hi-fi system or brought us whisky or a bicycle for our son? Is a dress worth a hundred and fifty dollars cause for suspicion?”

He thought: it's all so normal. All that has always been normal for her: she was born in this house and lived that normality that makes you see life differently; and he wondered whether it wasn't Tamara's world that had driven Rafael mad. But knew it wasn't so.

“What will happen now, Mario?” she now asked the question, had had enough of ceilings and silence and leaned her shoulder on the back of the sofa, tucked a foot under a thigh and chased her imperturbable wavy lock away. She wanted to gaze at him.

“Two things still need to happen. First, Rafael has to show up, dead or alive, in Cuba, or wherever. And second, Maciques must tell us what he knows. Perhaps that might help us find Rafael's whereabouts.”

“It's like an earthquake.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed, “everything that's not secure is collapsing, and I imagine you feel the same way. But I think we've seen the best. Can you imagine Rafael arriving in Barcelona, accessing all that money and defecting?”

“There's an idea. We'd go to live in Geneva, in a house on a hill with a slate roof.”

She said that, got up and disappeared into the dining room. He could never not: he looked at her as he always had, only he'd already observed that rump, traced the shape of her body, one ill-equipped to pirouette; his hands and mouth had travelled its length and breadth, but the memory hurt like a sharp thorn left to fester. A house in Geneva, why Geneva? And he ran his fingertips through his hair and thought how
he'd started to go bald. I'd forgotten my bald patch, and he too abandoned the sofa, the house in Geneva and Tamara's rump, and looked for a record with which to cheer himself up. Got it, he told himself when he spotted the Sarah Vaughan LP,
Walkman Jazz
, put it on the turntable and turned the volume down low, and the wonderful black woman sang “Cheek to Cheek” for him. She came back to Sarah Vaughan's warm dark voice, carrying two glasses.

“Let's finish off our stocks: the whisky in Rafael Morín's cellar is on its last legs,” she said, offering him a glass. She went back to the sofa and swigged her first mouthful like a hard-boiled matelot.

“I know how you must feel. This isn't easy for you or anyone, but you're not to blame and I even less so. If only it hadn't happened and Rafael had been what everybody imagined him to be and I wasn't mixed up in all this.”

“You regretting something?” she rasped. She'd regained normal temperature and rolled her sleeves back to her elbows. Took another swig.

“No, I regret nothing, I was referring to you.”

“Better not speak on my behalf. If Rafael stole that money, let him pay for it. Nobody ordered him to. I never asked him for anything, and you know that only too well, Mario Conde. I thought you knew me better. I don't feel guilty on any count, and what I enjoyed I enjoyed like anyone else would have. Don't expect me to confess and do penance.”

“I see I know you less well than I thought.”

Sarah Vaughan was singing “Lullaby of Birdland”, the best song he knew for escaping into the magical world of Oz, but it seemed as if she couldn't shut up and he knew it was best if she just talked, and talked and talked . . .

“Yeah, and you think I'm ungrateful, and I don't know what else, and that I should say it's supposition, that my husband is incapable of such things and then burst into tears, don't you? It's what one does in such situations, isn't it? But I don't have a tragic vocation, and I'm not a long-suffering egotist like you . . . I'd have preferred none of this to happen, it's true, but do you know what it is to have a clear conscience?”

“I really don't remember anymore.”

“Well I do, in case you didn't know or were imagining something else. I told you the other day: Rafael had what they let him have or what was his due or whatever, and everyone knew that when he was travelling he would bring things back and it was all quite normal and he was an excellent comrade. Everyone knew and . . . Ah, I won't say anymore on the subject unless you want to question me and, if that's the case, I won't say another word, least of all to you.”

He smiled and returned to the sofa. He sat down very close to her, touched her knee with his, thought for a moment, then dared: slowly put his hand on her thigh, afraid it might run away, but her thigh stayed under his hand, and he gripped her live firm flesh and met a slight tremor, well hidden under the skin. Looked into her eyes and saw the shiny dampness transform into a tear that welled up, hung on an eyelash and rolled down Tamara's nose, and he knew he was ready for anything, except to see her cry. She rested her head on the Count's shoulder, and he knew she was still crying: a tired silent lament. She then said quite matter-of-factly:

“The fact is I saw this coming. This or something similar. He was never satisfied. He was always dreaming of more and liked to play the powerful executive. I think he imagined he was the first Cuban yuppie or
something of the sort . . . But I also got used to the easy life, to having everything all the time, to him speaking to a friend so I didn't have to do community service in Las Tunas and for us to have holidays in Varadero and so on. In the end I was afraid of changing my style of life, although I think I'd not loved him for a long time. When he went on his travels I liked being by myself at home with my son, not having to worry he'd be back late, that he'd say he was tired and would get into bed and go to sleep or shut himself up in the library to write reports or tell me how difficult it was all getting. I'd also known for some time he'd been going with other women. He couldn't deceive me on that front, but as I said, I was afraid to lose a tranquillity I really enjoyed. And what I did with you I'd not done with anyone else, please do believe me.”

He couldn't see her eyes, hidden as they were behind her impertinent lock, but he knew she'd stopped crying. He watched her gulp down her whisky and followed suit. She got up, said, for God's sake, went back into the kitchen, and the palm of his hand felt the warmth he'd stolen from Tamara. He now knew he could go to bed with that woman who'd been driving him crazy for the last seventeen years, and he put his tumbler down on the glass table, forgot the cigarette burning in the Murano and abandoned his pistol on the sofa cushion. He felt ready for it and walked into the kitchen behind her. Began to caress her hips – hips of a would-be rumba dancer – her belly he was already familiar with, and reached for the most discussed breasts in La Víbora High School, and she let him caress her until she couldn't stand it anymore and turned round and offered him her lips, her tongue, her teeth and saliva smelling of single malt scotch, and he pulled at her jersey zip – she no longer wore bras – and lowered
his head to nibble her dark nipples until she gave a start from the pain, then pulled down his trousers, fumbled taking her knickers off and kneeled like a repentant sinner to breathe in Tamara's femininity, to kiss and consume her, ravaged by an ancient, never satisfied hunger.

And with a strength he'd forgotten he possessed, he lifted her up, took her over to the table, sat her down and felt her as he'd never felt another woman. They made love again on the living-room sofa. And a third time in her bedroom before finally calling it a day.

He lifted the lid of the coffee pot and saw the dark black coffee bubbling up from its red-hot entrails. The light was beginning to break over the trees and filter through to the kitchen windows, and he added four spoonfuls of sugar to his jug of breakfast beverage. It looked as if it would be a sunny morning, and he anticipated it wouldn't be so cold. He stirred the first coffee in the jug till the sugar melted, then returned it to the coffee pot, where a thick yellow foam formed. Then he poured himself his half-cup so he could start to think. She was asleep upstairs, ten minutes to seven o'clock and to when she gets up, he calculated as he lit his first cigarette. It was a necessary ritual without which he couldn't start life each day, and he thought about Rufino and about what would happen if he fell in love with Tamara. He couldn't imagine it happening, he told himself, and even shook his head to confirm that this was so, I still don't believe it, he muttered and he saw his and Tamara's clothes on the chair where he'd placed them before making coffee. His vanity as a man satisfied by a memorable sexual performance hardly left room for thought. He knew he had defeated Rafael Morín and regretted he'd not yet shared the second part to the story with Skinny, the successful feats of conquest and colonization. He knew he shouldn't, but, as soon as possible, I've got to tell him.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” she said, and he
almost jumped out of his chair as he realized at that precise moment that if he didn't flee, he would fall in love.

He liked to hear a woman's voice at the start of the day and found Tamara was more beautiful then, with her dressing gown mostly unbuttoned, her lips unadorned and one side of her face marked by the fold in the pillow, her hair relentlessly impertinent, irrepressibly covering her forehead, and her eyes reddened by lack of sleep. He could see she was very happy with her state as a woman who's well-served and better serviced, so well that she would sing while cleaning a grimy pan, and she came over, kissed him on the mouth and then, only then, asked for her coffee: it was all quite conclusive: he fled or was lost.

“It's a pity one has to work in this world, isn't it?” she said, hiding her smile behind her cup.

“What would happen if your husband came in through that door?” asked the Count, expecting to hear another confession.

“I'd offer him a cup of the coffee, and he'd have no choice but to say it's really good, you know?”

 

 

He travelled in a crowded bus and never stopped smiling; he walked six blocks and kept smiling; he walked into headquarters, and everyone saw him smiling and still laughing when he climbed the stairs and went into his office, where Sergeant Manuel Palacios was waiting for him, feet on his desk and face stuck behind a newspaper.

“What's got into you?” Manolo asked, also laughing, reckoning good news was on its way.

“Nothing really, today's the sixth of January, and I'm waiting for my present . . . What's new, then?”

“Oh, I thought you'd something to tell me. Nothing you could call new . . . What are we going to do with Maciques?”

“Start all over again. Till he's exhausted. He's the only one who's allowed to get exhausted. Did you see Patricia?”

“No, but she left a message with the duty officer saying she was going straight to the enterprise. She left at eight last night, and I think she was back welcoming the dawn there.”

“Have you seen the reports?”

“No, not yet. I just got here and started to read all the stuff about AIDS in the newspaper. Fucking hell, comrade, soon you won't even be able to get laid in this world.”

The Count smiled, was still smiling as he said:

“Uh-huh, take good note, then. I'm going to have a look at the reports so we can start on Maciques.”

“Thanks, Boss. May you always wake up smiling,” retorted the sergeant, weaving his way back to the desk.

He preferred to go down the stairs and, while he did so, he thought how he was in a mood to write. He'd write a very squalid tale about an amorous triangle, in which the characters would live, in different roles, situations they'd lived previously. It would be a nostalgic love story, with no violence or hatred, about ordinary people and ordinary experiences, as in the lives of the people he knew, because you must write about what you know, he told himself, remembering how Hemingway wrote about things he knew and Miki wrote about things he knew he ought to write about.