Leonardo Padura: Havana Gold

The experiment rarely failed: when he boarded a bus, when he went into a shop, reached an office, or even entered a shadowy cinema, the Count went through the motions and was always pleased to corroborate its effectiveness: the deep reflexes of a trained animal always led his eyes towards the figure of the most beautiful woman in the place, as if the quest for beauty formed part of his vital needs. And that magnetic aesthetic attraction able to trigger off his libido couldn’t have let him down now. In the bright sunlight the woman stood out like a vision from another world: gleaming red hair, all soft and curly; legs like Corinthian columns, climaxing in luscious hips, barely covered by frayed, cut-down jeans; her face red from the heat, half hidden by round sunglasses, above a set of fleshy lips belonging to a woman determined to enjoy life to the full. A mouth to suit any whim, fantasy or imaginable need. How tasty can you get! he muttered. It was as if she’d sprung from the rays of the sun, hot and tailormade for his atavistic desires. The Count hadn’t had an erection in the street for a long time – the years had made him slow and overly cerebral – but suddenly he felt something disruptive in his nether regions, just beneath the protean layers of Madrid stew, and the waves provoked by that movement led to an unexpected firmness between his legs. She leaned against the car’s rear mudguard and, as he stared at her long-distance runner’s thighs, the Count understood why she was sunbathing in the street: a flat tyre and hydraulic jack lying against the kerb explained the despair he could see on her face when she removed her glasses and wiped the sweat from her face with such elegant panache. Mustn’t even let it cross my mind, the Count warned himself, predicting his usual awkwardness and timidity and, as he drew level with the woman, he greeted her as boldly as he knew how: “Can I help?”

That smile was worth any sacrifice, even the public sacrifice of a siesta. Her mouth broadened out and the Count thought that the sun had no need to shine.

“Really?” she hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. “I just came out to get some petrol, and look what’s happened,” she moaned, pointing her greasy hands at the mortally wounded tyre.

“Are the nuts too tight?” he asked, by way of introduction, as he clumsily tried to look handy at putting a jack in place. She crouched down next to him, keen to express her moral solidarity, and the Count saw a bead of sweat launch itself down the lethal incline of her neck and plunge between two small breasts that were no doubt free and firm under her sweat-stained blouse. She smells like a femme fatale coming on, warned the persistent protuberance the Count tried to conceal between his legs. Well, who’d have thought it, Mario Conde?

Yet again Conde grasped why he always got low marks for manual techniques and workplace training. It took him half an hour to change the punctured wheel but in that time he discovered you tighten nuts from left to right and not right to left; that her name is Karina and she’s twenty-eight, an engineer; and that she is separated and living with her mother and a half-crazy brother, a rock musician playing in the band: The Mutants. The Mutants? He’d also found out that you must use your foot to turn the nuts with the spanner, and that she was driving to Matanzas in the morning with a technical unit to work in the fertilizer factory till Friday – and, yes, it was true, she’d always lived in that house opposite, although the Count had been going down that same street every night for nigh on twenty years – and she’d even once read something by Salinger and she thinks he’s fantastic (and he even thought of correcting her: no, he’s squalid and moving. In short, he learned that changing a flat tyre can be one of the most exacting jobs around.

Karina’s gratitude was bubbly, all embracing, when she suggested he should accompany her to get petrol and then she’d drive him home – look how sweaty you are, you’ve got oil on your face, oh dear, I told you – and the Count felt his little heart race at these slow, sweet words from that woman, who liked a laugh and who’d appeared from nowhere.

At the end of the afternoon, after queuing for petrol and discovering that Karina’s mum had attached an Easter palm leaf to the rear-view mirror, after chattering about punctured cars, Lenten heat and winds, and drinking coffee at the Count’s, they agreed she would call him as soon as she got back from Matanzas: she could return Franny and Zooey, it’s the best Salinger ever wrote, the Count had remarked, unable to contain his enthusiasm, handing her a book he’d never lent anyone ever since he’d stolen it from the university library. That way, they could meet up and chat a bit more. OK?

The Count’s eyes had remained glued to her and, although he recognized quite candidly that the girl wasn’t as beautiful as in his first impressions (her mouth was too big, her eye-lashes fluttered rather sadly and she was rather deficient in the backside department, he concluded critically) he was nonetheless impressed by her constant cheerfulness and unexpected ability, in the middle of the street, after lunch and under a murderous sun, to raise a virile extremity that had neither legs nor wings.

Karina accepted a second cup of coffee and it was now time for the revelation that would finally drive the Count mad.

“My father turned me into a coffee addict,” she said looking at him. “He drank coffee all day, whatever he could get.”

“And what else did he teach you?”

She smiled and swayed her head, as if chasing off ideas and memories.

“He taught me everything he knew, even how to play the saxophone.”

“The saxophone?” he almost shouted, incredulously. “You can play the saxophone?”

“Well, I’m not a musician or anything like. But I do blow that horn, as jazz musicians say. He loved jazz and played with lots of people, with Frank Emilio, with Cachao, with Felipe Dulzaides, the old guard…”

The Count hardly heard what she said about her father and the trios, quintets and septets he’d played in over the years, the jam sessions in the Grotto, Las Vegas and Copa Room, and had no need to close his eyes to imagine Karina with the sax’s mouthpiece between her lips and the instrument’s neck dancing between her legs. Is this woman for real? he wondered.

“What about you? Do you like jazz?”

“You know… it’s something I can’t live without,” he replied opening his arms out to emphasize the depths of his passion. She smiled and appreciated his playacting.

“OK, I must be off. I’ve things to get ready for tomorrow.”

“So you’ll ring me?” asked the Count almost imploring her.

“Of course, the moment I get back.”

The Count lit a cigarette, injecting himself with smoke and Dutch courage, before he made the decisive move.

“What did you mean by ‘separated’?” he blurted out, gawping like a half dopey pupil.

“Look it up in the dictionary,” she retorted, smiling and swaying her head once again. She picked up her car keys and walked towards the door. The Count pursued her to the kerb. “Thanks for everything, Mario,” she said and, after pondering for a moment, asked: “Hey, isn’t it about time you told me about yourself?”

The Count threw his cigarette into the street and smiled as he felt he was back on safe ground.

“I’m a policeman,” he replied, folding his arms, in a gesture to accompany his revelation.

Karina looked at him, nibbled her lip, then asked, disbelievingly: “Canadian Mounties or Scotland Yard? I guessed as much. You look like a liar,” she said, leaning on Conde’s folded arms and kissing his cheek. “Bye-bye, Mr Policeman.”