Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold

Detective Lieutenant Mario Conde was still smiling after the Polish Fiat disappeared round the bend in the Highway. He trotted happily home dreaming of future bliss.

But it was still only Ash Wednesday, however much he counted and re-counted the hours to their next meeting. The three days he had to wait gave him time enough to imagine the whole works – marriage and children included, after a prior period of lovemaking on beds, beaches, tropical foliage and British meadows, in hotels of diverse constellations, on moonlit and moonless nights and dawns, in Polish Fiats – and then he’d see her, naked, sax between legs, sucking the mouthpiece, before launching into a mellow, golden melody. All he could do was imagine, wait and masturbate, as the image of Karina, sax at the ready, became unbearably erotic.

As he’d decided yet again to settle for the company of Skinny Carlos and a bottle of rum, Conde pulled on a shirt and shut the door to his house. He went out into the dust and wind on the street, muttering that, though he found Lent enervating and depressing, right then he belonged to a rare breed of policemen on the brink of great happiness.

“Aren’t you fuckin’ well going to tell me what you’re up to?”

The Count smiled vaguely at his friend: what do I tell him? he thought. The almost three-hundred pounds of defeated body in that wheelchair creased his heart. He felt it too cruel to talk of imminent bliss with a man whose pleasures in life had been reduced forever to alcohol-powered conversations, gargantuan meals and a morbid fanaticism for baseball. Ever since he’d been shot in Angola and become a life-long invalid, Skinny Carlos, who was no longer skinny, had become a dirge, an infinite pain the Count bore with guilt-ridden stoicism. What lie shall I tell? Do I have to lie even to him? he wondered, smiling bitterly, as he saw himself walking slowly past Karina’s, even stopping and trying to glimpse through the porch windows the woman’s impossible presence in a shadowy room crammed with ferns and red and orange-hearted malangas . How come he’d never seen her, given she was the sort you scented a mile off? He downed his rum and declared: “I was going to lie.”

“Do you still have to do that?”

“I don’t think I am what you think I am, Skinny. I’m not the same as you.”

“Look, guy, if you want to talk shit, just get it out,” he said, lifting his hand to signal the pause necessary to knock back another rum. “I’ll just put myself on fastforward. But remember one thing: you may not be one of the wonders of this world, but you are the best friend I have in the world. Even if your lies will be the death of me.”

“Savage, I met a woman out there and I think…” he looked Skinny in the eye.

“Fucking hell!” exclaimed Skinny Carlos, also smiling. “So that was what it was all about. You’re incurable, aren’t you?”

“Give me a break, Skinny, I’d like you to see her. You know, you probably have, she lives just round the corner, in the next block, her name’s Karina. She’s an engineer, a redhead and fantastically sexy. I can feel her right here,” and he pressed his finger on the space between his eyebrows.

“Hey, you bastard, slow down… you’re going too fast for me. Is she your latest?”

“If only,” the Count sighed, looking forlorn. He poured himself more rum and recounted his meeting with Karina, down to the tiniest detail (the whole truth, even about the shortfall in her rear, knowing full well how highly a good rump rated in Skinny’s aesthetic judgements), and his future expectations (even the adolescent spying from the street he’d practised that night). In the end he always told his friend the whole story, however happy or wretched it might be.

The Count saw Skinny stretch but not reach the bottle and gave it to him. The level of liquid was already down behind the label and he calculated that theirs was a twolitre conversation, but hunting for rum in La Víbora at that hour of the night would be a futile, desperate business. The Count regretted that reality: talking about Karina, in Skinny’s room, surrounded by tangible nostalgia and posters that had faded with time, he was beginning to feel as relaxed as in the old days, when their whole world had turned on good rum, firm tits and, above all, the magnetic, magical orifice they always referred to in terms of its lushness, depth, hairiness and ease of access (Oh no, guy, look at the way she walks, if she’s a virgin, I’m a helicopter, Skinny would say), not worrying a bit about who owned those limpid objects of desire.

“You don’t change, you bastard, you know fuck all about that woman, but you’re already like a horny mongrel. Look what happened to you with Tamara…”

“Hey, man, don’t compare…”

“No shit, you’re… So she lives just round the corner? You’re not just dreaming this up?”

“No, I kid you not. You know, Skinny, I’ve just got to lay that woman. Either I lay her or kill myself, go mad or turn queer.”

“Better queer than dead,” his friend interjected smiling.

“Too true, savage. My life’s gone flat. I need a woman like her. I don’t know anything about her, but I need her.”

Skinny looked at him as if to say: You’re incurable.

“I don’t know, but I’ve a hunch you’re talking shit again… You like rubbing salt in the wound… You’re a policeman because it’s what you fucking want to be. If you don’t, then get out, and damn everything else… But then don’t come telling me you really liked pissing on bastards and arseholes. I can’t stand any more of your bellyaching. What happened to you with Tamara was already written in blood, my friend: she was never a dame for fellows like us, so forget her once and for all and make a note in your autobiography that at least you took out the sting and gave her a good fuck. And shit on the world, you savage. Come on, a drop more of the juice.”

The Count looked at the bottle and regretted the end was nigh. He needed to hear from Skinny’s mouth the things he himself was thinking, and tonight, while the Lenten wind stirred up filth outside, while hope flickered deep down in the form of woman, being in his best friend’s bedroom, speaking about everything under the sun, both cleansed and encouraged him. What will I do if Skinny dies on me? he wondered, breaking the chain that led to spiritual peace. He opted for suicide via alcohol: poured out more rum for his friend, gave himself another shot and realized they’d forgotten to talk about baseball or listen to music. Let’s go for music, he decided.

He got up and opened the drawer with the cassettes. As usual, he was appalled by Skinny’s mix of musical tastes: anything went, from the Beatles and the Mustangs, to Joan Manuel Serrat and Gloria Estefan.

“What do you want to hear?”

“The Beatles?”

“Chicago?”

“Formula V?”

“Los Pasos?”

“Credence?”

“Huh-huh, Credence… But don’t say Tom Foggerty sings like a black, I’ve told you he sings like God, haven’t I?” And they both nodded their heartfelt agreement: the bastard sings like God.

The bottle expired well before the long version of Proud Mary . Skinny put his glass on the floor and moved his wheelchair to the edge of the bed where his friend the policeman was seated. He placed one of his spongy hands on Conde’s shoulder and looked him in the eye: “I hope it turns out OK for you, my brother. Good guys deserve a bit more luck in life.”

The Count thought how right he was: Skinny himself was the best person he knew and luck had not run his way. But he felt that was all far too pathetic and tried to smile, retorting: “You’re the one talking shit now, guy. The good guys had their day long ago.”