Leonardo Padura - Havana Red

When he went out into the car park at Headquarters, the Count felt all the heat in the city descend on him, as must happen when you cross the black waters of the Styx, before the sulphurous doors of a world from which there was no return.

“Did you take Maria Antonia back?” he asked Manuel Palacios, as he got in the car.

“Yes, she told me to take her to Miramar. She wanted to collect up her things. She says she’ll go to her brother’s tonight.”

“At least she’ll see the unmasking. I hope she enjoys it… Take me home, I need to sleep. Perchance to dream,” he quoted, lit a cigarette and spat into the street. “What a load of shit, right?”

“Yes, Conde, and what shit… Hey, does it seem stupid if I ask you to forgive me for the silly things I said the other day?”

The sweat woke him up, his skin as slimy as an eel. He looked for the red figures on his electronic clock and found a blank screen. The fan had also stopped turning. But how can the power go at this time of day, he protested, when he finally found his wristwatch and saw it was barely four o’clock. Penetrating the thickness of his curtains, the reflection from the sun drifted rudely into his room, like a favour imposed which he couldn’t refuse. He’d intended waking when it was dark. He got up and went after the mortal remains of the coffee he’d made that morning. As he drank, he looked through the window at the perspectives for his most immediate future and for the first time in several months they seemed vaguely promising. He smoked quietly and, when he was about to take a shower, the telephone rang.

“It’s me, Mario.”

“Yes, Major, what’s the matter?”

“The man’s here, he’s confessed already.”

“And how did he perform?”

“Well, he says it must have been a moment of madness, that he never planned to do it, and puts all the blame on Alexis. He says he left the Hotel Riviera, where he had an appointment with an Italian deputy who is a personal friend, and bumped into a woman at the side of his car. He says he didn’t recognize her to begin with, but looked at her because there was something odd about her, then realized it was Alexis.” Major Rangel’s intentionally monotone voice continued the story while Conde’s mind, already racing on ahead, visualized one scene after another, to the tragic denouement: the character of the tall man, who’d been faceless till that morning, now wore the face of a Faustino Arayan shocked to see his son, dressed as a woman, waiting for him by the exit from a hotel.

“What are you doing here in that woman’s clothing?”

“Nothing. I was waiting for you to take me home. Tona told me you’d be here. Can you drive me or does it make you very embarrassed to see me like this?”

Alexis doesn’t get a reply, but his father gets into his car and opens the far side door. Annoyed, Faustino lights one of the Montecristos he’s carrying in a pocket and the inside of the car is flooded with smoke that disappears as soon as the car sets off.

“And what will you do at home in that dress? Have you gone mad? Doesn’t it upset you walking the streets like that? Where’ve you been dressed up like that?”

“I got dressed in the hotel bathroom and I’m not upset at all.. . Today I felt my life would change. I saw a light, which gave me an order: do what you must do and go to see your father.”

“You are mad.”

“I couldn’t be more lucid.”

“Tell me what you want for God’s sake and don’t fuck around any more.”

“Let’s go into the Woods, where we can speak more calmly.”

Once again Faustino thought his son had gone mad, that he was provoking him and that perhaps it was better to resolve everything before they reached home. He turns left and the car goes down to the Havana Woods, where at that time of night a breeze contrasts with the heat in the rest of the city.

“Let’s go towards the river. I want to see the river.”

“Fine, fine. Well, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

And Alexis told him he hated him, had only contempt for him, that he was an opportunist and hypocrite, and suddenly launched an attack on his face. Faustino dropped his cigar and pushed Alexis, who fell to his knees on the grass, but only to spring back up and attack him, and Faustino, not realizing what he was doing, went into action with the swathe of silk he’d taken from the waist of that equivocal, enraged woman who in turn was putting him in a rage, attacking him, making him mad, and by the time he realized what he was doing, Alexis had collapsed, his lungs without oxygen… What do you reckon?”

“Sounds pretty good, but you missed out half the story. Alexis said something else, which is what drove him mad: he threatened to do or reveal something, whatever… And I think that’s why he paid him with two coins.”

“You’re inventing now, Conde.”

“I’m inventing nothing, Boss. Alexis had already called him an opportunist, a hypocrite and hateful person a thousand times. They must find out what Alexis knew that might be very dangerous for his father… Alexis told him because he knew he’d react like that. Let them dig out the whole story and they’ll see some horrible things crawl out, or my name’s not Mario Conde. But they’ve got to put the screws on, Boss, like with any criminal.”

“I can imagine…”

“And what about the coins?”

“He says he was very scared and suddenly thought of that to put people off track, so they’d think it was a homosexual scrap.”

“What a bastard! And what does he say about the medallion?”

“He says he thought maybe nobody would identify Alexis, and that’s why he took it. But he forgot he might be carrying his identity card.”

“Yes, I didn’t think that a woman carrying his identity card was very elegant either. So we’re both agreed on that. I’m sorry for my part.”

“He says he put the medallion in the trinket-box that same evening

… Now all he does is to put all the blame on Alexis and say he doesn’t know how it all happened. You know what it’s like.”

“Yes, Boss, I know what it’s like, but don’t forget one thing: that guy’s a bastard with real pedigree and comes with a guarantee.. . You must have a really twisted mind to think about taking a medallion from a strangled man who is your own son in order to try to save your own skin and then put two coins up his arse for good measure. And why does he reckon he didn’t throw him in the river?”

“He says a motorbike drove by and he took fright. That was when he removed the medallion.”

“Well, the guy’s sick… Hey, Boss, don’t start feeling sorry for him…”

“No, don’t be like that, Mario, everything will be done by the book.”

The Major’s voice now sounded mellow and peaceful, and the Count thought it was better that way: everything should be mellow and peaceful, and he decided he’d start lifting the red ghost of Alexis Arayan from his shoulders.

“Well, good luck to you and him… Boss, how about giving me a week’s holidays?”

“What’s up? Don’t tell me you want to do some writing?”

“No, of course not. That’s history. I’m just exhausted and fed up. What about you?”

The silence floated down the line more than it usually did with Major Rangel.

“I’m fed up, Conde. And disappointed… I think I’m going to hang up the sword. But forget it. Take a week and, if you can, start writing. Learn to help yourself and quit the self-pity… Come back next Monday. If I need you I’ll call you before, OK?”

“OK, Boss, look after yourself. And you know, I’ll get you some real good cigars,” he said, as he hung up.

While he showered, he thought he’d more than enough time to tell the Marquess the last chapter of that sordid story the whole truth about which would never be known. But he owed him that version. He tried to imagine how he’d tell it to the dramatist, and realized that all he was doing was concealing the real anxiety he felt at the prospect of the visit: he’d take his manuscript to the old dramatist. Will he like it? he wondered as he washed, when he got dressed, as he went into the street, and was still wondering when he let the door knocker fall for a third time and waited for the curtains to open on the theatrical world of Alberto Marques.