Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold

The Count pegged the last pair of underpants on the clothes line and contentedly surveyed his praiseworthy labours. I must be a vanguard policeman, he told himself, watching the gusts of winds make all the clothes that his hands had washed dance in the air, hands softened by water and still smelling of potash and scented conditioner: three sheets, three pillowcases and four towels, boiled and washed; two pairs of trousers, twelve shirts, six pullovers, eight pairs of socks and eleven underpants; the whole range from his wardrobe, clean and gleaming under the midday sun. It had been a must: he contemplated the fruit of his labours in ecstasy, burning to witness the miracle of the entire, aseptic drying process.

He went inside and saw it was almost 3 p.m. He heard a cry of panic rise from the darkness of his gut. It would be quite wrong to go to Josefina at that hour in the afternoon and beg for a plateful of food: he imagined her in front of her television, nodding off, yawning like a good early riser and lapping up the Sunday films, so he decided to earn himself even more merit points by preparing his own lunch. How I need you, Karina, he thought when he opened the fridge and eyed the dramatic loneliness of two possibly prehistoric eggs and a piece of bread that could easily be a survivor from the siege of Stalingrad. He dropped the two eggs in heterodox fat tasting of mutually hostile fry-ups, toasted the two slices of bread on a flame that managed to melt their heart of steel on the end of his fork. A hundred per cent socialist realism, he told himself. He downed the eggs thinking of Karina again and the date they’d agreed for tonight, but not even dreams of their meeting could temper the taste of that food. Although he sensed the daring sexual adventures of the previous day were unique and unrepeatable, full of discoveries, surprises, revelations and signs of portentous paths to explore, a second encounter, after that experience, might break all the records from his real and imaginary sexual expectations and knowledge: as he swallowed two greasy eggs with leaking yolks, the Count saw himself, on that very chair, at once the beneficiary and object of a mindblasting fellatio that left him exhausted until, two hours later, Karina began her third victorious offensive against defences that were apparently down. And tonight she’d come, armed with her saxophone…

“Don’t ring me, because I’ll probably have to go out. I’ll come at night,” she’d said.

“With your saxophone?”

“Huh-huh,” she said imitating the man’s intonation.

The Count sang as he washed the dishes, frying pan and cups where the previous day’s coffee and lusts still lingered. He’d once heard it said that only a woman who’d been well served sexually could sing as she washed up. Surreptitious machismo: simple sexual determinism, he concluded as he sang on, “Good morning, star shine, / I say hello…” As he dried his hands he critically surveyed the state of his flat: tiles covered in grease, dust and grime more ancient than envy didn’t make his place an especially magic spot for passionate dates, saxophone included. It’s the price love pays, he told himself, looking with male love at the broom and duster, preparing to present Karina a clean, well-lit haven.

It was gone four-thirty when he finished his cleaning and proudly contemplated the rebirth of that place abandoned by female hands for over two years. Even Rufino, his fighting fish, had been favoured by that overdue springclean and swam in clear, oxygenated waters. “You’re a bastard drop-out, Rufino, you good-for-nothing…” The Count was so pleased with himself he even considered giving a lick of paint to walls and ceilings in the near future and putting potted plants in the right places and even getting poor Rufino a mate. I’m horribly in love, he told himself, and dialled Skinny Carlos’s number.

“Listen to this, savage: I’ve washed my sheets, towels, shirts, pants and even two pairs of trousers and just given the house the once over.”

“You’re horribly in love,” his friend confirmed and the Count smiled. “Have you taken your temperature? You must be in a bad way.”

“And what are you up to?”

“What do you think I’m up to?”

“Watching baseball?”

“We won the first game and the second is about to start.”

“Playing who?”

“The bozos from Matanzas. But the interesting games start on Tuesday, against those fucking bastard Orientales… Speaking of which, Rabbit says if nothing untoward happens he’ll drive us to the stadium on Tuesday. Brother, I’m dead keen to go to the stadium. Hey, are you or aren’t you coming today?”

The Count glanced at his spick-and-span house and felt the hollowness left by the two fried eggs in his gut.

“I’m seeing her tonight… What did Jose cook for lunch?”

“You animal, you missed a treat: chicken in rice juicy enough to bring back the dead. Guess how many helpings I knocked back.”

“Two?”

“Come off it, three and a half!”

“And is there any left?”

“I don’t think so… Although I heard the old girl saying she might keep some for you…”

“Hey, can’t you hear something?”

“What?”

“Your doorbell ringing. Tell Jose to open up, it’ll be me,” and he hung up.

LOVE IN THE TIMES OF CHOLERA

by Caridad Delgado

I have always defended freedom in love. The fulfilment it brings, the beauty one discovers, the anguish it can usher in. But now Aids has given a bitter reminder to those of us who live in the common home that is our planet Earth, that we can remain aloof from nothing that happens anywhere: wars, nuclear tests, epidemics, let alone love. Because the world gets smaller by the day.

And although happiness is always possible in these turn-of-the-century times, a scourge is whipping love and making it a difficult, dangerous option. Aids threatens us and there is only one way to avoid it: by carefully choosing one’s partner, seeking safe sex, way beyond necessary measures like the use of condoms.

My readers shouldn’t think I’m trying to deliver them a moral lecture or an instant lesson in self-denial. Nor do I want to restrict the free choice of love that likes to surprise us with its mysterious, warm presence. No. And even less to use my position to interfere in matters of an entirely private nature. But the fact is that danger haunts us, whatever our sexual inclinations.

I don’t aspire to reveal what has already been revealed, when I remind you that promiscuity has been the main means of transmitting the apocalyptic scourge across our planet. Consequently, I’m shocked when I talk to some people, in particular the young people my work brings me into contact with, who seem unaware of the danger implicit in certain attitudes towards life, and practise sex as if it were a simple game of cards one will win or lose, for, as they sometimes say, “You’ve got to die from something…”

The Count shut his newspaper. For how long? he wondered. A promiscuous daughter had died three days ago from a motive much less novel and romantic than Aids and she was capable of writing that rubbish about fin-de-siècle sexual insecurities. The bitch. Right then the Count lamented his pathetic manual clumsiness. Never, not even when it was a compulsory task in class, had he managed to make a little paper aeroplane, or even a glass for drinking water or coffee, despite the efforts of the teacher he fell in love with. But he now put every effort into it, almost lovingly tore the page from the newspaper, and separated out from the article he’d just read from. He stood up, leaned slightly forward, and with the skill brought by practice wiped the striated remains of his defecation on the article with a well-honed flourish. He dropped the paper in the basket and pulled the chain.