Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold

Lissette’s mother’s hair was blonde, almost strawberry, although traces of colour endured close to the skull: a dark brown she perhaps considered too vulgar. The Count wanted to touch it: he’d read that, when Marilyn Monroe died, after so many years of relentless bleaching to create the perfect, immortal blonde, her hair was a sheaf of sun-dried straw. Nevertheless, Caridad Delgado’s still had a bright resistant sheen. Unlike her face: despite the advice she showered on other women, and followed fanatically herself, she couldn’t hide the fact she was fifty; the skin on her cheeks had begun to furrow around her eyes and the folds shelving down the nape of her neck formed an unsightly bundle of flab. But she must have been beautiful once, although she was much smaller than she seemed on television. To prove to the world and herself that she retained some of her old glory and that “beauty and happiness are possible” she wore no bra under a jersey – through which her plump nipples poked threateningly, as big as baby’s dummies.

Manolo and the Count entered the living room and, as usual, the lieutenant began his inventory of goods.

“Please sit down for a moment, I’ll get you your coffee, it must have percolated by now.”

A sound system with two gleaming speakers and a gyrating tower to store cassettes and CDs; a colour television and Sony video-player; fan-lamps on each ceiling; two drawings signed by Servando Cabrera where you saw two torsos and rumps in combat (in one, triumphant penetration proceeded honourably face to face, while in the other it was reached per angostam viam ); the wicker furniture, rustic chic, wasn’t the common stock that came to the shops from distant Vietnam. The tout ensemble was most pleasant: ferns hanging from the ceiling, different styles of tile and a mini-bar on wheels – where a pained and envious Count spotted a bottle of Johnny Walker (Black Label) that was full to the hilt and a litre flagon of Flor de Caña (vintage) that seemed so huge as to be overflowing. Living like that anyone can be beautiful and even happy, he muttered, as Caridad came back into view with a tray and three rattling cups.

“I shouldn’t drink coffee, I’m really stressed, but it’s a vice I can’t resist.”

She gave the men their cups and sat down in one of the wicker armchairs. She tasted her coffee, with an aplomb that included raising her little finger to show off a shiny platinum ring mounted with black coral. She took several sips and whispered: “The trouble is I had to write my Sunday article today. Regular columns are like that, they enslave one so; one has to write, whether one wants to or not.”

“Absolutely,” replied the Count.

“All right, how can I help,” she countered, putting her cup down.

Manolo also leaned forward, put his cup back on the tray and stayed anchored to the edge of his chair, as if intending to get up at any moment.

“How long had Lissette been living by herself?” he started, and although Conde couldn’t see his face from where he sat, he knew his eyes, staring into Caridad’s, were starting to come together, as if pulled behind his nasal septum by a hidden magnet. It was the strangest case of intermittent squint-eyes Conde had ever encountered.

“From the moment she graduated from Pre-Uni. She always was very independent, I mean, she studied with a grant for years, and the flat was empty after her father married and moved to Miramar. Then, when she started university, she decided she wanted to go off to Santos Suárez.”

“Was she worried about living by herself?”

“I just told you…”

“Sergeant.”

“… that she was very independent, sergeant, knew how to look after herself, and do I really have to go into all that now?”

“No, I’m sorry. Did she have a boyfriend?”

Caridad Delgado paused for a moment’s thought and at the same time made herself more comfortable opposite Manolo.

“I think she did, but I can’t tell you anything for sure on that front. She led her own independent life… I’m not sure, not long ago, she mentioned an older man.”

“An older man?”

“I think that’s what she said.”

“But didn’t she have a boyfriend who rode a motorbike?”

“Yes, that was Pupy. But they broke up sometime ago. Lissette told me she’d rowed with him but never explained why. She never explained anything much to me. She’d always been like that.”

“What else do you know about Pupy?”

“I’m not sure. I think he prefers bikes to women. You know what I mean. He kept on his bike the whole damned day long.”

“Where does he live? What does he do?”

“He lives in the building next to the Los Angeles cinema. The Settlers Bank building. I don’t know which floor,” she said, thinking before she continued. “I don’t think he had a proper job. He lived on repairing bikes and that kind of thing.”

“What kind of relationship did you two enjoy?”

Caridad looked imploringly at Conde. The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sat back to listen. So sorry, my dear.

“Well, sergeant, not very close, you might say.” She paused to contemplate the copper-coloured freckles dotting her hands. She knew she was on treacherous terrain and had to watch her every step. “I’ve always shouldered a lot of responsibilities at work as did my husband, and Lissette’s father was hardly ever home even when we lived together and she was a student on a scholarship… I mean, we were never a very united family, although I always kept an eye on her, I bought her things, I brought her presents when I travelled, tried to please her. Relating to one’s children is a very taxing business.”

“Rather like one’s weekly magazine column,” interjected Conde. “Did Lissette talk to you about her problems?”

“What problems?” she asked, as if she’d heard someone blaspheme, and finally press-ganging her lips into a smile, she lifted a hand up to her chest and splayed out her fingers before launching into a convincing list. “She had it all: a house, a career, was well integrated, was the perennially good student, had clothes, youth…”

She didn’t have enough fingers on one hand to enumerate so many blessings and possessions and two tears ran down Caridad’s wan face. As she concluded, her voice lost its sparkle and self-assurance. She doesn’t know how to cry, Conde told himself, and he felt sorry for that woman who had lost her daughter such a long time ago. The lieutenant looked at Manolo signalling him to halt the conversation there. He stubbed his cigarette out in the large, coloured glass ashtray and leaned back.

“Caridad, you must understand. We need to know what happened and we have to have this conversation.”

“Yes, I know,” she replied, flattening the wrinkles around her eyes with the back of her hand.

“What happened to Lissette wasn’t at all straightforward. They didn’t do it to steal, because as you know nothing seems to be missing from her flat, and it wasn’t simple rape, because they beat her up as well. And most alarming of all: there was music and dancing that night at her place and they smoked marijuana in her flat.”

Caridad opened her eyes and then slowly dropped her eyelids. Something deeply instinctual led her to lift a hand up to her chest, as if trying to shield her breasts that shook beneath her jersey. She looked downcast and ten years older.

“Did Lissette take drugs?” the Count followed on determined to force through his advantage.

“No, she didn’t, how can you think such a thing?” the woman retorted, recovering some of her battered confidence. “That’s impossible. She may have had several boyfriends or been a great partygoer or got drunk occasionally but she never took drugs. What have people been saying about her? Don’t you know she’s been a comrade from the age of sixteen, and that she was always a model student? She was even a delegate to the Moscow Festival and a revolutionary from primary… You must know all that?”