Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

“Manolo,” he said, without looking at his companion, “let’s get on with the business. Drop me at Foreign Trade, and I’ll find out who Dapena the Galician is and where we can find him if we need him, and you go and see Maciques and talk to him. Record the interview and take it gently please, you’ve been a bit heavy recently. Then we’ll meet up at headquarters… But are you telling me you wouldn’t fancy laying a woman like that?”

“… I’d just like to ask whether I could record our exchange/that’s all right, comrade, whatever you want… /so, you’re René Maciques Alba and head up Rafael Morín Rodríguez’s office, the citizen who disappeared from his home on the first/yes, comrade, on the first… /and how long have you been working for him?/… well, it’s almost the other way round, if I might explain, I was in charge of the previous director’s office and when they appointed Rafael I continued in the same post, you understand, it was two and a half years ago, in June 1987, and I can almost remember that day… /and how did you get on with him/with Rafael?… well, you know, it’s not the thing to say, but he and I were always like friends, right from the start, and how can one describe a friend, he was a fine leader, always concerned about his work and subordinates, the kind of person who’s liked, who’s very responsible… /you have any idea why he’s disappeared?/any idea? not really… he and I went to the New Year’s party held at the house of comrade Alberto, the deputy minister/what’s his full name? deputy minister for what?/oh, of course, Alberto Fernández-Lorea, deputy minister for industry, he sees to anything to do with the commercial work of the ministry, and as I said, we and our wives went to his place in Miramar, and were there from around ten o’clock to just after two or three, time flies when you’re at a party like that, and Rafael and I talked a bit and agreed to meet on Monday to prepare the contracts we had to send to Japan for an urgent deal/what kind of deal?/what kind?… a purchase, you know, bearings and other things to do with plastics and computers, you know the Japanese offer very good prices for this kind of thing?/and you say you didn’t notice anything strange?/well, to be frank, I didn’t… I’ve given it some thought but I don’t think so, he danced, ate, drank, ate an enormous amount, that’s for sure, he said the deputy minister did the best roast pork in the world/and was the enterprise in any difficulty?/not really, no… the accounts at the end of the year were very favourable, perhaps some worries at the amount of work we had on our plate, but that always worried him, and that’s normal given he was in charge, do you see? and besides with the socialist countries in difficulty, life can only get more complicated from here on, you know… /do you have any idea where he might be?/well, was it lieutenant?/sergeant/that’s right, sergeant, I don’t have a clue about what might have happened, he led his normal life/did he have any problems at work?/at work?… none at all, sergeant, I told you, Rafael had everything very well taped/and did he have lots of women friends?/what do you mean, lots of women friends? who told you that, sergeant?/nobody, I’m just trying to find out where Rafael Morín is, did he like women?/I know nothing about his private life… /but you were friends, weren’t you?/yes, we were, but more like work friends, you know? I’d pay the odd visit to his house, and he’d come to mine/did anybody at work have it in for him?/in what way? wanting to make his life difficult?/ yes, in that sense… /… no, I don’t think so, there’ll always be someone envious or resentful, they’re more common than muck in Havana, that’s true enough, but he wasn’t the kind to create enemies, at least at work, which is where I knew him best/who is José Manuel Dapena?/oh, right, Dapena, a Spanish businessman /how did he get on with Rafael?/well, let me explain, Dapena owns a shipyard business in Vigo, and he helped us to import various things, though he wasn’t really in the same line of business, more into the fishing industry/and what was he doing at the party?/at the party? I expect he’d been invited, right?/ invited by?/by the owner of the house, I expect, naturally /and what were relations like between Rafael and Dapena?/to be frank, they were purely business, I don’t know if I should mention this but… /do please feel free/one day Dapena made a pass at Rafael’s wife… /and did it lead to problems?/no, don’t imagine that for one minute, it was all a misunderstanding, but Rafael found it difficult to tolerate him after that/and is the Spaniard a friend of yours?/he’s no friend of mine, after what happened with Tamara, Rafael’s wife, the Galician guy is one of those who thinks he’s God Almighty because he’s got dollars/and what happened to the previous head of the enterprise?/so what’s the relevance of that? I’m sorry, sergeant… nothing, a spot of dolce vita , as people say, he set himself up, well, you know what it’s like… /and was Rafael so inclined?/Rafael was quite the opposite to the extent that… /to the extent that what?/he was different, I mean/what time did you leave the party?/oh, right… about three/and did you leave together?/no, well almost, when I went, he was bidding farewell to the comrade deputy minister and… /and what?/no, nothing, I left… /you say you’ve no idea what might have happened to citizen Rafael Morín?/no, sergeant, not a clue…”

René Maciques must be around the fifty mark, balding, and wears glasses, the round sort, like a model librarian, thought the Count as he stared at the cassette recorder. Manolo’s work highlighted the man’s bureaucratic rhetoric and his strict ethics when it came to always defending his boss’s back until the opposite is proved to be true, wherever he may be, and now at least we don’t where the hell he’s got to, he told himself. Nevertheless, the sphere of Rafael’s relationships and friendships, the recorded interview with Maciques and his own conversation with Tamara were evidence of an important element in his search: Rafael was as squeaky clean as ever, and Conde shouldn’t let his prejudices get the better of him. His memories were scars from wounds he’d thought had healed a long time ago and a case under investigation was quite another matter, and investigations have antecedents, evidence, clues, suspicions, hunches, intuitions, certainties, comparable statistical data, fingerprints, documents and many, many coincidences but nothing as tricky and treacherous as prejudice.

He stood up and walked over to the window in his cubicle. He’d looked out so often on that fragment of landscape that it had become his favourite vista. The leaves on the laurel trees moved slightly, rustled by a northern breeze bringing a patch of dark heavy clouds that were gathering on the horizon. Two nuns clad in dark winter outfits left the church and got into a VW Beetle with a naturalness that was simply post-modern. His empty stomach fluttered like the leaves on the laurel trees, but he didn’t want to think about food. He thought about Tamara, Rafael, Skinny Carlos, Aymara in Milan and Dulcita, who was God knows where, about the twins’ spectacular fifteenth birthday party and about himself, in that office which was so cold in winter and so hot in summer, contemplating laurel leaves and engaged in a search for someone he’d never have chosen to look for. Everything was so perfect.

He rested his fingertips on the icy windowpane and wondered what he’d made of his life: whenever he revisited his past he felt he was nobody and had nothing, only his thirty-four years and two abandoned marriages. He left Maritza for Haydée, and Haydée left him for Rodolfo, and he couldn’t bring himself to look for her, although he was still in love with her and could forgive her almost anything: he was afraid and preferred to get drunk every night for a week, and in the end he couldn’t forget that woman; and the terrible truth was he’d been magnificently cuckolded, and his detective instinct had never alerted him to a crime that had been months in the making before reaching its grand finale. His voice grew hoarser by the day because of the two packets of cigarettes he smoked daily, and he knew that apart from going bald, he’d end up with a hole in his throat and a check scarf round his neck, like a cowboy eating a snack, perhaps talking via an apparatus that would make him sound like a stainless steel robot. He hardly read nowadays and had even forgotten the day when he’d pledged before a photo of Hemingway, the idol he most worshipped, that he’d be a writer and nothing else and that any other adventures would be valid as life experience. Life experience. Dead bodies, suicides, murderers, smugglers, whores, pimps, rapists and raped, thieves, sadists, twisted people of every shape, size, sex, age, colour, social and geographical origins. A load of bastards. And fingerprints, autopsies, digging, bullets fired, scissors, knives, crowbars, hair and teeth extracted, faces disfigured. His life experiences. And the plaudits at the end of every case solved and the terrible frustration, disgust and infinite impotence at the end of every case that was filed unsolved. Ten years wallowing in the sewers of society had finally conditioned his reactions and perspectives, revealing to him only the sourest, most ornery side of life, even impregnating his skin with a stench of rot he’d never cast off and, worse still, one he only smelled when it was particularly offensive, because his sense of smell had gone forever. Everything as pleasant and perfect as a good kick in the balls.