Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold

“What are you doing, Conde? Come on, give me a cigarette.” Manolo took the cigarette while he looked at the park where a group of kids had assembled who’d just left school for the day. Their white shirts formed a low, hyperkinetic cloud, caught between the benches and trees. Boys just like them, remembered the Count, so near and so far to the solemnity of death.

“I’m going to wait for the Boss to come out so I can talk to him.”

An unmistakable odour that made Conde feel sick drifted over from the undertakers. He’d gone in for a second and seen the grey box containing Jorrín between flowers and family. Manolo had peered over the edge of the coffin to look at his face, but the Count kept his distance: it was disturbing enough to think that he’d remember Jorrín in his hospital bed, pallid and dozy without the eschatological extra of seeing him definitively dead. Too many dead. To hell with all this, Conde had told himself, refusing to offer his condolences to the family, as he sought out fresh air on the street and a vision of life. He’d like to have been far from there, beyond the grasp and memory of that absurd, melodramatic rite, but he decided to mount guard and wait for the Major.

“So how long do we have to put up with this bloody wind? I can’t stand it any more,” the Count protested, as an old man, carrying a pint of coffee, walked down the steps and over to the two policemen. He kept moving his mouth, as if chewing something light but indestructible, while his cheeks pumped air or saliva at a monotonous, regular rhythm, towards the engine that kept him on his feet. He wore a jacket that had seen too many autumns and black trousers stained by drops of piss he’d splashed around his fly.

“Give me a cigarette, amigo?” the old man asked quietly, and gestured as if to receive the smoke he’d requested.

The Count, who’d always preferred to pay for a shot of rum for a drunk than give a cigarette to a beggar, reflected for a moment and told himself he liked the dignified way the old man had made his request. The nails of the hand awaiting the cigarette were pink and clean.

“Here you are, granddad.”

“Thanks, son. So we’ve got wreathes today, have we?”

“Yes, quite a lot,” agreed the Count as the old guy lit up. “Do you come here often?”

The old man lifted up his can of coffee.

“I buy five reales worth of coffee and it keeps me going to night-time. Who died today? He must be a bigwig. There aren’t usually so many flowers,” he said, lowering his voice as if to confide a secret. “The fact is flowers are in short supply and that’s why wreathes are too and sometimes there’s such a dearth I’ve seen loads of wakes without flowers. Not that it bothers me, not likely. When I die, I’m not worried if I get flowers or cow shit. The guy who died today was a high up, wasn’t he?”

“Not really,” allowed the Count.

“Well, that’s beside the point as well, he’s fucked, the poor chap. Thanks for the smoke,” said the old man, back to his usual tone, as he continued his descent.

“He’s madder than a March hare,” commented Manolo.

“Not really,” allowed the Count a second time, as he saw a car from headquarters draw up by one side of the park – and he remembered what had set off the headache neither the rich mix of two analgesics nor several layers of Chinese pomade had managed to subdue. Four men got out of the car, two in uniform. Fabricio got out the back door and the Count was pleased to see him in plain clothes, because right then he’d thought there are things men have always had to settle in the same way, and that particular story was due its final chapter now. Let’s see how we play it, he thought.

“Wait here,” he told Manolo and went down to the street.

“Where you?…” the sergeant started to ask, when he understood what the Count intended. He dropped his cigarette and ran in the opposite direction, into the undertakers.

The Count crossed the narrow street that separated the undertakers from the park and went over to the group of men coming from the car. He pointed a finger at Fabricio.

“We didn’t finish our conversation earlier on,” he said gesturing to him to separate out from the group.

Fabricio moved away from his companions and followed the Count to a corner of the park.

“Well then, what are you after?” the Count asked, who at that split second remembered how years ago he’d had his last fist-fight to defend his food in a school camp, and had been helped by Red Candito. He should be grateful to him to this day that the three thieves hadn’t made mincemeat of him. “Tell me, Fabricio, what you got against me?”

“Hey, Conde, who the hell do you think you are? You think you’re better than anybody else or what?…”

“Hey, I don’t think I’m anything at all. What are you after?” he repeated and, without thinking what he was doing, threw a punch at Fabricio’s face. He wanted to hit him, feel him come apart in his hands, do him damage and not see or hear him again. Fabricio tried to dodge the blow, but Conde’s fist caught the side of his neck and made him stagger backwards, and then Conde’s left hand smashed into his shoulder. Fabricio responded with a backhander that hit his attacker in the middle of the face. A distant fire, he thought he’d forgotten, exploded in Conde’s cheeks: blows to the face enraged him and his arms were now two flailing windmills punching the red mass he could see opposite, until an alien force intervened to lift him up and suspend him in the air: Major Rangel had succeeded in catching him by the armpits and only then did the Count notice the ring of students that had formed around them to egg them on.

“Go on, hit him on the jaw.”

“Fuck, great punch.”

“I’m betting on Striped Shirt.”

“Hit him! Hit him!”

And a hoarse voice, shouting in his ear, in a tone he didn’t recognize.

“I’m going to have to kill you, you idiot,” and then an immediately changed inflection almost whispering: “It’s all right now. It’s all right.”

“Look, Mario Conde, I’m not going to argue with you about what happened. I don’t even want to hear about it. I’d prefer not to see you, you bastard. I know you loved Jorrín, that you’re uptight, that you’re a neurotic fellow, I even know that Fabricio is an arsehole, but there’s no forgiving what you did, and I at least will never forgive you, even though I love you like a son. I – will-not-forgive-you – get it? Give me your lighter. I think I lost mine in the fight you started. It’s the only smoke I’ve got left and the burial’s tomorrow morning. Poor Jorrín, Jesus fucking wept! No, don’t speak, I said, let me light up. Here’s your lighter. Hey, didn’t I tell you to keep as quiet as a nun? Didn’t I warn you I didn’t want any problems? And look what you do: slugging it out with an officer in the middle of the street, in front of an undertakers packed with people from headquarters. Are you mad or an arsehole? Or both?… All right, we’ll leave this to later, and prime your arse for a good caning. I’m warning you. And don’t wipe more Chinese pomade over your forehead because it won’t make me take pity on you… Fuck, you’re over forty and still behaving like a young kid… Look, Conde, we’ll leave this to later. Now try to do your job properly. You can do that, I know. Take it easy tonight and tomorrow, after the wake, pick this boy up from his house. By that time we should know what the peasant from Escambray knows, the one Orlando San Juan mentioned. The boy has classes in the afternoon, right? Well, bring him along here and Cicerón’s gang will check out his house for drugs, because that’s probably where the Russian keeps it. But remember he’s a boy from Pre-Uni, so easy does it, a firm hand and a tight leash and dig out the name of the midwife who brought him into the world. We need to know whether Lando was in a relationship with the teacher or if it was the boy who brought drugs into the teacher’s house, and we need to know how much the drugs circulated in Pre-Uni. The Pre-Uni business terrifies me, it’s shit-scary… And I think you’re right, the marijuana lead will solve the murder, because it would be a big coincidence if the drugs person weren’t the murderer, in a case where at the end of the day there’s been neither theft nor robbery, and I don’t give a fuck for coincidences. Your face hurts. Well, too bad. I wanted Fabricio to knock the living daylights out of you, which is what I’d like to do. Go, move yourself, and get your act together, because now you’re going to obey my orders to the letter or I’ll stop calling myself Antonio Rangel. Look: I’ll swear to it right now, on my mother’s life.”