Leonardo Padura - Havana Fever

The Count swallowed Amalia’s torrent of words sitting on the edge of their threadbare sofa, smoking and using his hand as an ashtray, until Dionisio returned with a chipped, gold-edged dessert dish which he apologetically handed to the smoker. But Dionisio’s actions went unnoticed by the Count, entranced by that chronicle of irrational loyalty. His emotions hadn’t, however, entirely stifled his critical powers: the automatic alarm developed by his time in the police was alerting him to the fact that it was only part of the story, perhaps the most pleasant or dramatic part, though for the time being he had to go along with what he’d heard.

“Well, if you’ve made your minds up… I’ll come back tomorrow…”

“Won’t you take any books now?” Amalia almost implored.

“I’m really not carrying enough money on me…”

Amalia looked at her brother and took the initiative: “Look, we can see you are a decent, honest fellow…”

“It’s years since I’ve heard that phrase,” the Count responded. “A decent, honest…”

“Yes, we can tell,” the translucent woman assured him. “Can you imagine the number of bandits we’ve had to deal with to sell the vases and other adornments? And how often they offered a pittance for things that were really valuable? Look, just make us an offer, take a few books and… pay us what you can. How about it? You can come back, draw up whatever inventory you want and take the books you then decide to buy…”

Conde noticed that while Amalia was talking, Dionisio reacted almost defensively as if he wanted to shield himself from the words he was hearing. He discreetly averted his gaze in the direction of the library, whose mirrored doors remained open, as if inviting him to walk in and help himself to the royal banquet spread out there.

“I’ve got five hundred pesos on me… Four hundred and ninety, to be exact. If I’m going to take a few books with me now I’ll need ten for a minicab.”

“That will do…” she replied, unable to rein in her eagerness.

Conde preferred to walk into the library rather than return Amalia’s look, let alone Dionisio’s. Able to obliterate the remnants of pride and an old pledge, their despair was the last scrap of dignity to be destroyed by the calamities that had destroyed those lives. Yet again, he regretted the sordid side of his trade, but soon found relief from remorse in his quest for books that would easily sell on the market. Two volumes of population censuses prior to 1940 that an Italian was after, a client of his partner Yoyi Pigeon, were the first he put aside. He then picked out three first editions of works by Fernando Ortiz – that were always easy to place with readers keen on rumbling the mysteries of the world of Afro-Cubans; a first edition of The Slave-trader , by Lino Novás Calvo; and, after putting to one side several books printed in the nineteenth century whose value he needed to check out, he bagged several historical monographs published in Havana, Madrid and Barcelona in the twenties and thirties, that didn’t have tremendous bibliographical value, but were coveted by the non-Cuban buyers who flitted from one second-hand bookseller’s stall to another. He was about to shut his bag and tot up the total, when he saw before his eyes a book that practically screamed at him: it was an intact, sturdy, healthy, well-nourished copy of My Pleasure? with the secondary title of An indispensable… culinary guide , printed by Úcar y García in 1956, and illustrated by the great cartoonist, Conrado Massaguer. Ever since that remote afternoon when the Count had seen that book for the first time in the hands of a nouveau riche owner of several of those private restaurants that sprang up in the first days of dire shortages, as a compulsive buyer of gastronomic literature, he’d tried to track it down, thrilled by its wonderful recipes for Creole and international cuisine, compiled to satisfy the most aristocratic kitchens in an era when aristocratic kitchens still existed in Cuba. However, the Count’s persistent search wasn’t driven by bibliophilic or even commercial goals, but the grandiose, self-interested idea that he might present that wonder to old Josefina, the only person the Count knew with a magical ability to conjure up miracles – even in times of Crisis – and convert those dream dishes into edible realities.

With his bag of books over his shoulder and his stomach gurgling in joyful anticipation, Mario Conde returned to the reception room, where the Ferreros awaited him looking grave and anxious. He only then noticed how the fingers of Amalia, who was at that moment wiping the sweat from her hands, were atrophied and sore around the cuticle edges, like frog toes, no doubt because of her compulsive need to nibble her nails and the skin surrounding them.

“All right, I’ll take these sixteen books. There’s only one that’s special, the one on Cuban cooking, though it doesn’t have a high market value… I want it for myself. How about five hundred pesos for the lot?…”

Dionisio looked at his sister and they stared at each other. They both slowly turned to the Count who rather uneasily anticipated possible recriminations: ‘You don’t think it’s enough?’

“No,” Dionisio immediately replied. ‘No… not at all. I mean, it’s very fair.’

Conde smiled with relief.

“It’s not very much, but it’s fair. That price includes my earnings, and the bookseller’s, after he’s paid the space he rents and taxes… You get about thirty per cent of any final price tag. That’s how we work out the earnings from books that sell easily, a three-way split.”

“So little?” Amalia couldn’t repress that complaint.

“It’s not so little if you’re convinced I’m not going to swindle you. I’m a decent fellow and, if we don’t fall out, I will buy lots of books from you at a good price.” He smiled, assuming he’d dealt with that quibble, and, before brother and sister could do their sums differently, he handed over the agreed amount.

When he walked out into the street, he was hit in the face by the afternoon humidity the sun had whipped up: a short-lived shower that had stood in for the anticipated storm had merely increased the mugginess of the air. The Count immediately noticed the contrast in temperature: the Ferreros’ house, once the property of the filthy-rich Montes de Ocas, could cope with a Havana summer and for a moment he felt tempted to go back and take a second look at the cool mansion, but an intuition warned him against looking back. If he had, he’d most certainly have been astonished to see a Ferrero running out of the house to the nearest market, trying to arrive before five o’clock when they closed the meat, vegetable and grocery stalls that might spare them for once the obligatory diet of rice and black beans they shared with several million compatriots. But as he walked off in search of a road where he might flag down a passing mini-cab, Mario Conde noted that, although some symptoms had slackened off, his hunch was still alive and kicking, clinging to the skin of his left nipple like a bloodthirsty leech.

Yoyi Pigeon, who’d been civically registered and Catholically baptized with the resonant name of Jorge Reutilio Casamayor Riquelmes, was twenty-eight years old, slightly swollen-chested – hence his pigeonnish nickname – and had an irrepressible propensity for verbal wit. He was moreover a man who thought on his feet and was quick and efficient at complex calculations, as endorsed by the academic diploma in civil engineering, framed in a soberly elegant, wrought bronze frame, that hung on the wall of his living room in Víbora Park. He was patiently waiting, said the engineering laureate, for toilet paper to go into short supply so he could adapt the crackling piece of university parchment to such use, given it had brought him little success and no economic advantage. Although the Count was twenty years his senior, he recognized, with a touch of envy, that Yoyi possessed a cynicism and practical knowledge of life he had never and clearly would never possess, even though those qualities were increasingly necessary for survival in the jungle of Creole life in the third millennium.