Leonardo Padura - Havana Red

The rest of September and the whole of October, she got on his bus on a Tuesday; he asked her for her folder, and they chatted thirteen minutes, which enabled him to find out she was Isabel Maria Fajardo, thirty-three years old, divorced, childless, and had been a teacher for some time, and considered herself a boring individual. What’s more, she gave him her address, and the third Tuesday in October invited him to drop by some day for a coffee. I’m always there after six, she said.

Although he’d thought of going to a psychiatrist, Jose Antonio discarded the idea straight away: he wasn’t in the least mad, and his decision to kill Isabel Maria wasn’t even a sentence he’d personally adopted, but a mandate he’d received. The only problem was that he thought himself a complete atheist, with no expectations of a life beyond. What most worried him, nevertheless, was grasping why it had to be Isabel Maria and nobody else. Really, if it was necessary to kill someone, he could perhaps choose someone better, a person he hated or disliked, or someone infirm who’d even be grateful for his act of mercy or, better still, someone harmful to society whom society would be overjoyed to see executed by a voluntary, anonymous avenger. He knew several undesirables of that kind. So why her? After seven Tuesdays and approximately ninety-one minutes of conversation that woman hadn’t managed to arouse any special feeling in him: hatred, love, desire, repulsion, anything to justify the need (the mandate?) to kill her. Like him, she was one of those millions of anodyne beings peopling the earth, who lived in the country, right now, spent their days honourably, without excessive euphoria or ill-feeling, not in major dispute with society or the times, without well-defined political ideas or ambitious individual projects. She worked, ate, slept, suffered slightly from loneliness but wasn’t visibly tormented and, as she’d already confessed, loved spending hours listening to classical or popular music. Why? Perhaps that was it, he thought: because she represented nothing… But did he know that before meeting her?

What was even stranger, he told himself when he thought how he must kill her, is that he was in no hurry to do so, nor did he have a clear plan, and he was almost on the point of persuading himself it wouldn’t be a murder premeditated or with malice aforethought, but a fatal accident while he drove his bus. But then he realized that wasn’t right: he would kill her, with his own hands, some day, perhaps soon.

Jose Antonio was a good reader of the newspaper: every day he’d read for more than an hour, and dwell on each piece of news or comment, so he wouldn’t forget: so many things happened in the world every day, his memory recall barely lasted twenty-four hours before it gave way to fresh news and events. That Thursday afternoon he read a very interesting item on Aids and the scant immediate hopes of finding an antidote, despite the efforts of thousands of scientists throughout the world. He thought: if God existed, this would be a divine punishment. But if he doesn’t exist, why do such things happen in the world? He wasn’t usually so thoughtful, and concluded that wherever the plague came from, it was a punishment against love. He liked the idea so much that, while taking a shower, he mentioned it to his wife and later told her, “I’m going to take a spin Aunt Angelina’s way,” knowing full well he was going to drink the coffee Isabel Maria had offered him on the last two Tuesdays.

He knocked on the door and waited, thinking about how he felt: I’m not nervous, not anxious, I don’t know whether I shall kill her today, he’d just told himself when she opened up. She was still thin, unmade-up, yet more dressed up than usual; her hair was damp, just washed, and she didn’t seem too surprised to be inviting him in. She wore a dressing gown that was quite modest, and melancholy music was coming from some part of the house, the kind Jose Antonio could never have identified, and she’d later inform him: “It’s Mozart’s Requiem.” They went to the kitchen, because he said he’d come to drink the coffee she’d promised. She prepared the coffee pot, and they sat at the table. It was a clean, well-lit place, where Jose Antonio felt at ease, as if he’d been there before. As he savoured his coffee, he knew that he didn’t know what would happen in the minutes to follow. Would he try to make love to her? Would he leave when he’d drunk his coffee? Would he even tell her he was going to kill her? Then he looked her in the eye: Isabel Maria also looked at him, an adult woman’s look, ready for anything, and he heard her say: “Did you come so you could go to bed with me?” And he said: “Yes.”

Isabel Maria was naked under the dressing gown and, when they dropped on the bed, she climbed on top of him, put his penis in, and her vagina started to ride the length of his member, as if she knew that position allowed Jose Antonio’s spine, mistreated by years of driving, to rest flat on the mattress. It was a good session, well synchronized, satisfying for both.

Then she said: “From the first time I saw you, two weeks before we started talking, I knew we would make love. I don’t know where the idea came from, or why. But I knew you were going to talk to me and that one day you’d come here for a coffee… It was all very strange because when I looked at you I didn’t see too much I liked and besides, I thought I was still in love with Fabian, the headmaster. But it was like a very strong presentiment, like an imperative, a mandate, what do I know,” she said, and kissed him on the lips, the nipples, his paunchy belly and purple-headed member. “And now you’re here. What most worried me,” she continued, “was why it had to be you

…” “I experienced something similar,” he confessed, and felt the need to drink more coffee. “I’ll go get some more coffee,” he said.

He abandoned the bed, and before leaving to go to the kitchen, looked at Isabel Maria’s nakedness for a minute; two small breasts, two red, sore nipples and a little triangle of quite lank, uncombed dark hair. He poured himself some coffee, lit a cigarette, and went back to the bedroom smoking and carrying a knife. He sank it into her chest, under her left breast, and she barely flinched. Why? he wondered again, before putting his cigarette out in the ashtray next to the bed and deciding he should dress her so they didn’t find her naked. Then, as he moved Isabel Maria’s pillow, he felt the cold weight of the knife she had hidden there, perhaps to fulfil her own mandate. Just then Jose Antonio remembered he had to get a move on, for his wife hated eating without him.

Mario Conde, 9 August 1989

“You bastard, now you need a title…”

“Forget that. Just tell me what you made of the story?”

“A real scream.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, squalid.”

“And moving?”

“As well.”

“Do you like it?”

“Terribly.”

“But terribly good or terribly bad?”

“Good, you idiot, good. Let me give you a hug, you pansy. Fuck, you’ve finally got back to writing.”

The Count bent over the wheelchair between the open arms of Skinny Carlos and let himself be squeezed against his friend’s greasy, sweaty chest. Knowing he could write and that what he’d written appealed to Skinny Carlos was a combination too explosive for the Count’s emotions and he felt he was about to cry, not only for his own sake, but for a future that was impossible to imagine without a man who’d been his best-only friend for over twenty years, whose goodness, intelligence, optimism and desire to live life had been rewarded by a bullet in the back, shot from some still unknown rifle, hidden behind a dune in the Namibian desert.

“Congratulations, you bastard. But bring me a photocopy tomorrow or never look me in the face again. I know you, you’ll wake up one day saying it’s a load of shit and tear it up.”