Leonardo Padura - Havana Fever

“But, fuck, it can’t? It can’t,” he told himself and ran to the old cupboard in his bedroom where he kept the souvenirs and flotsam from his previous lives. In the process he lost his towel and, stark naked, flung its doors wide open. On his knees, he extracted the wooden container in the bottom left-hand side, provoking an avalanche of objects he’d pushed out of his way.

There were things belonging to his father inside the box he’d decided to keep; things that he’d not revisited since the long distant day when his dad died. A pre-historic baseball glove, two photograph albums, an envelope containing merit certificates from work, a pair of black and white winkle-pickers, a dog-eared telephone book, two packets of rusted Gillette blades, and his busdriver’s hat and identification tag emerged from the trunk, and then Conde saw what his memory had finally dredged up from the depths of his murkiest reminiscences. The original sleeve seemed washed out by damp and old age, but it was unmistakable: he took out the small record, lit up by a yellow circle, the shiny gem of the recording company. Conde stroked the vinyl and saw it was warped and unusable. He finally remembered his father, sitting in the living room in that same house, wrapped in a gloom that seemed mysterious to his childish gaze, listening, enthralled, to that record, perhaps experiencing sensations similar to those that were now disturbing his son, forty years on. Retrieving the image of that solitary man, sat listening to a woman sing on an electric appliance, finally seemed to account for his visceral empathy with a voice he’d met for the first time so long ago and that had been slumbering, had not died, at the back of his mind. How much had his father really loved that woman he listened to in darkness? Why had he kept that record that had probably been unusable long before it made its way into the Count’s junk? What had he said to his son on that night which had disappeared in a succession of yesterdays? Why had he, the man who remembered, forgotten that strange episode which should have floated quickly to the surface of his memories? Mario Conde again stroked the vinyl surface, as undulating as the night-time sea, and thought how his father had been just one more man to succumb to Violeta del Río’s seductive powers and how, like Silvano Quintero, he must have wept when he heard the news of her death and realized that the only testimony to her voice was pressed into the grooves of that little record. Or were his memory and hitherto untarnished image of his own father playing yet more tricks on him, concealing truths that might be truly horrific?

8 January

Dear love:

I had decided to wait several days before writing to you again, to allow the spirit of Christmas that passed by without giving me a glance to vanish, but the events of the last few days changed my mind, because they have snatched away my few remaining hopes. What will become of our lives now? Will you ever come back? What will happen here? Although I have tried to shut my ears to the noise in the street, the decision to break off relations just announced by the United States fills me with new fears, because the doors to possible homecomings have now shut, and yours, the one you so longed for, now becomes practically impossible.

Hence, more than ever, these letters are my only consolation, and my greatest reward would be to receive a reply. You cannot imagine what I would give to know if you thought of me if only for a second at Christmas or New Year. I would give my life to know whether you remembered the years of love and prosperity we shared together (although they sometimes seem so distant) as the chimes of the clock reached the final second of the old year and we swallowed our grapes, in time-honoured tradition. How can I tell if this end to a year of separations and resentments was better than those when we shared an expectation of happiness, in necessary silence?

What I cannot understand in the slightest is why you’ve not even sent me a card with gleaming snow or the twinkling star of Bethlehem, pre-printed thoughts and space for a couple of personal words. Is my punishment to be eternal? I suppose it is, since I must sadly assume that your resentment is more than a passing irritation, a suspicion that may fade when other ideas and soothing thoughts… Your resentment is like a life-sentence, and my only salvation is to be able to persuade you of my innocence, with irrefutable proof. That’s why I have decided to go in search of that proof. I intend to overcome the terrible fear I feel when walking in a strange world, that is no longer mine, that I don’t understand and that becomes daily more radical and dangerous. I will overcome the echoes from voices that pursue me in the night destroying the peace of solitude, and will reach out to the greater good of your forgiveness.

Today, when I decided to write to you and begin my search, I felt that I regained a different attitude of mind, an energy I thought lost, and I devoted almost all day to cleaning your library. It is the first time in months that I have returned to this sacred place in the family memory, because it is too painful, it recalls the happy times in our lives and the lives of the whole family. I have looked again at the books your grandfather bought in his youth, with that passion that made him never hesitate for a second when it was a choice between a book or a pair of shoes; those gathered by your father on the days he worked at the office, in the university, in the period he had political commitments; and above all those that you, driven by the family fervour, bought in every corner of the city and hoarded like treasure, books that aroused so much envy in those privileged to see them. I saw your private collection of books on legal matters and customs regulations and your business magazines and, I can’t deny I felt my heart crushed by the thought that you will perhaps never again touch their leather covers, grainy pages or read the words that meant so much to you. Consequently, when I finished cleaning I reminded your daughter that whatever happens, whoever dies, everything in this sanctuary is absolutely and eternally sacred: not a page may leave, not a single volume put in a different place, so that the day you return – because against all the odds I know it will come – you will be able to walk with your eyes shut to the bookcase of your choice and take out, as was your habit, the book you want. I have arranged for the bookcase doors to be opened once a month, for a few hours and always on a hot day, when no rain threatens, to allow the books to breath and gather strength, as you would say. Once every six months, a cloth and feather duster will pass along the spines and tops of the books, which will never be moved, to avoid the slightest disorder entering your personal order. But above all I wanted these decisions to ensure that if anything should happen to me, that no hand, not even your children’s, can penetrate the most hidden secrets of your life and mine, that from today await you between the pages of these books.

Dear love: I will say farewell for a time. I won’t write until I have news from you or have my hands on the truth. And no matter if that truth, as the voices persecuting me say, is my worst punishment. Because I cannot stand you despising me and blaming me for a crime I have not committed. But rest assured that I will go on loving you as now, even more deeply, ever more longing for you to return…

Your Nena

23 January

Dear Love:

A few days ago I swore not to write again, at least not until I had news from you, or could tell you what we are desperate to know. I was so disappointed by your silence and blinded by my own situation and the accursed voices speaking to me in the night, intent on driving me crazy, that I forgot the importance of this date: happy birthday, my love!