Leonardo Padura - Havana Black

“Who’s it a pity for?” the Count interjected, unable to restrain himself.

“For Adrian… and for me.”

And the policeman saw the armour of a thousand skirmishes fall from Miriam’s shoulders, the woman with the perverse eyes. She was now going to cry, from her own eyes and with real reason. And it would be better if she did cry a lot, and bellowed if she wanted to, at the loss of her last chance to be happy.

“Let her be, Manolo,” said the lieutenant, bored. “Let her cry. It’s the best thing she can do.”

He had to run and lock himself in the bathroom. He turned on the tap in the washbasin and watched the water flow crystalline and pure, before putting his hands in the jet and wetting his face, again and again, in an attempt to wipe away the oppressive filth and angst: the knowledge that he’d just witnessed the definitive collapse of several lives had provided him with the most glaring evidence of why he hadn’t been able to write that squalid and moving story he’d been dreaming of for years: his real experiences instinctively headed elsewhere, far from beauty, and he realized he should first rid himself of his frustrations and hatred if he was ever to be – or had been – able to engender something beautiful. It was only then that he grasped the realm of fear that prevented him from letting rip on paper, from making real, alive, independent, and perhaps everlasting, the dark flow of lava that had swept away his life and his friends’, and transformed them into what they were: less than nothing, nothing at all, nothingness itself. Candito was right: cynicism had become the antibody that allowed him to carry on, and Andrés had also discovered his double-think: irony, alcohol, sadness and a few doses of scepticism provided a carapace, while the rationale he had fabricated for his inability to write what he wanted served as a soothing, enduring wall of self-deception.

Finally he dared look up and contemplate himself in the mirror: once again he didn’t like what he saw. It wasn’t his face, which was beginning to line; nor his hair, beginning to thin out; nor his teeth, beginning to yellow: nor any of those first signs of predictable decline, but the feeling that the end was already cast in stone, and a painful conviction: only a miracle could bring him back to his true path – if miracles existed, and if that path existed – and only one decision could set him on the road to redemption: we’re either saved or fucked together: he just had to write, squeeze the seed, lance the boil, empty his intestines, spit out the bitter saliva, execute that radical operation, begin to be himself.

He didn’t think about it: his cupped hands splashed water over the mirror and his image became elusive and difficult to retain: transfigured and blurred, with no definite outline and always half hidden, that had been his real face, the policeman’s face he’d been showing to the world for the last ten years: and with it he must finish this story of ambition and hate, until he could finally relinquish the shards of that battered carapace.

The Count looked at his watch again: now it indicated five twenty-five.

“Please forgive me, Colonel. I promised I’d deliver the case at five ten and I’m fifteen minutes late. But the fact is the typewriter ribbon jammed.”

“Is everything here?” asked the new chief of Headquarters, licking his lips, and Mario handed him the folder of preliminary case-findings.

“All that’s missing is the authentication certificate for the Buddha. The people at Patrimony need to seek more advice, but it is definitely gold, Chinese and pretty old. And also worth much more than the five million Miguel told everybody.”

“But that’s incredible, over five million,” responded Colonel Molina, laughing nervously.

His new boss, thought the Count, was no doubt already savouring the congratulations that he would receive for his evident efficiency as a leader of efficient criminal investigators.

“Are you pleased?”

“Of course I am, Lieutenant. I’ve very happy I wasn’t mistaken when I sent for you and gave you all the freedom you required for this case. It seems incredible: in three days you discovered a fake painting, you found a sculpture that had been lost for forty years and which is worth millions and millions and you even solved the story of a murder that at the end of the day had nothing to do with the sculpture worth millions.

“I’d hardly say that,” suggested the Count.

“Well, not directly,” agreed the Colonel, smiling again.

If I call his mother a whore, he’ll split his sides, thought the Count and went on the offensive.

“Now I hope you’ll keep your promise, as I did mine.”

Alberto Molina’s broad smile faded quickly.

“But, Lieutenant, have you thought it through? I think your future lies here,” and his gesture, which indicated the boss’s office, rapidly extended, to other less specific limits within the building. “You’ve shown me what an excellent policeman you are, and I’m going to promote you here and now.”

“Don’t harp on, Colonel. I want my release, not a promotion. I’m done with all this.”

And Molina still couldn’t understand.

“But why?”

The Count mentally fanned out before him the possible reasons and decided to select the least aggressive.

“I just don’t like solving cases like this one: the most innocent character in the whole story is the one who will rot in jail… First, I’m fed up with wallowing in shit, lies and deception. Second, I can’t stand the idea that half the police who were my colleagues for ten years, including people I really believed in, have been kicked out, rightly or wrongly. Third, I want a house by the sea, where I can start to write. I want to write a story that is squalid and moving.

“Squalid?”

“And moving” added the Count, elaborating. “Because I want to speak of love between men. That’s what I want. Over to you, Colonel.”

“I swear by my mother I really don’t understand you. Love between men, Lieutenant?”

Molina left the folder on his desk and preened his magnificent officer’s jacket. He edged round his desk and opened the centre drawer.

“Here you are,” he said, and opened out the sheet of paper on to the table.

The other stood up and grasped it. He read the opening sentences and felt satisfied, but he continued to the end: Lieutenant Mario Conde was granted the discharge he had requested for personal reasons, and it stated, in the second paragraph, that he had shown an exemplary attitude in ten years of service, demonstrating through his efficiency that he had been the best detective at Headquarters and an excellent work colleague, among other praises sung single-spaced. The Count swallowed, he didn’t know if it was because he felt emotional or full of doubt, and dared to ask: “Colonel, why did you write these things about me?”

“Which things?” came his reply.

“The stuff under the granting of permission…”

Molina smiled again and flopped into his comfortable armchair.

“Did you notice the date on the letter?”

The Count looked and understood even less.

“It says October 4, and it’s the 9th today…”

“Yes, it says the 4th. Did you look at the signatures?”

He glanced back at the paper and couldn’t believe what he saw: there, on that same horizontal line, sat the signatures of Colonel Alberto Molina and Major Antonio Rangel. No, that was impossible, he thought.

“When you told me you were going to hand in your file on the crime solved within the hour, I realized it was a pity to lose you as a policeman, but that I had no right to hold on to you. I thought it through, took a decision and went to see Major Rangel to ask him to write this letter, backdated a week, and for it to carry two signatures. You owe the praise to him. My role was to grant you the discharge that you’d asked for.”