Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

She didn’t react, as if she’d not heard him, and then unfolded her arms.

“Here it is,” she replied, looking for a piece of paper under a magazine. “I put down all the ones I remember, I don’t think I missed anyone out.”

He took the sheet and walked over to the lamp. He slowly read the names, surnames and positions held by the guests.

“There’s nobody like me there, is there?” he asked and then looked at her. “No sorry policeman?”

She folded her arms back over her chest and stared into the fireplace, as if asking it to do the impossible and bring forth heat.

“I realized this morning how much you’ve changed, Mario. Why are you so bitter? Why speak of yourself self-pityingly, as if everyone else was a bastard, and you were the purest and the poorest?”

He took her abuse and felt he’d got it all wrong about her; she was still an intelligent woman. He felt weak and vulnerable and needed to sit down, drink another whisky and talk and talk. But he was afraid to.

“I don’t know, Tamara. Let’s talk about it some other time.”

“I think you’re trying to run away.”

“A policeman never runs away, he simply ups and takes his happiness with him.”

“There’s no cure, then.”

“And no getting better.”

“Well, please tell me if you do find anything,” she said as they walked down the passage. She still had her arms folded, and Mario Conde, after winking at the ruddy exuberant Flora framed and hanging on the best wall in the room, wondered how Tamara Valdemira could possibly spend her time in a house that was so empty. Looking at herself in the mirror?

Skinny Carlos is in the centre of the group. Arms splayed out, head tilting to the right, as if crucified, although at the time he didn’t think he’d ever be bearing a cross. He always fixed it so he was in the centre, in order to be the centre, or perhaps we nudged that way to turn him into the group’s navel, where he and we could feel good. He could deliver a joke a minute, make a wisecrack about the silliest thing that would drop from anyone else’s mouth like a lead balloon and earn a couple of polite smiles. He wore his hair long; I don’t how he managed to get through school-gate inspections; he was still very skinny, although we were in thirteenth grade and that day we’d done our university pre-enrolment. For his first choice he’d put civil engineering; he dreamed of building an airport, two bridges, and most of all, creating the design for a contraceptive factory, with distinctive production lines according to size, colour, taste and shape, able to meet all the requirements of the Caribbean, the place on earth where people screwed the best and the most, for that was his obsession: getting laid. His second choice was industrial engineering. Between Skinny and Rabbit, Dulcita was then Skinny’s fiancé, and if Skinny hadn’t been crucified, he’d surely have been touching her up and she’d be smiling, for she too liked a touch of porn. Her skirt, with the three white stripes on the hem, was the shortest of the lot, well above the knee: she was the most expert at rolling it up round the waist as soon as she set a foot outside school; her knees were rounded, her thighs compact and long, her legs appeared well-thrown and handmade, and her buttocks – as Skinny would say, using one of his catastrophically poetic similes – were as hard as hunger at five am, and yet all that was balanced out, compensated as it were, he added, by her not having an inch of tit. Dulcita is smiling happily because she’s sure she’s going for architecture to work with Skinny on his projects, and she’ll do the designs. And as second choice, she chose geology, since she was crazy about going into caves, especially with Skinny, to satisfy their joint obsession: a good lay. At the time Dulcita was perfect: she’d kill to help you, a terrific friend, sharp, intelligent and never stopped for anything: she’d bail you out in an exam or soften a girl up for you. She was top mate, a real good gal, and I never understood why she went to the United States. When they told me, I couldn’t believe it; she was one of us, what’s happened…? Rabbit can’t avoid displaying his teeth. God knows whether he ever laughed, with those teeth-and-a half you never knew; he too was very skinny and had gone for a history degree as his first choice and for teaching history as a second, and at the time he was quite convinced that if the English hadn’t left Havana in 1763, Elvis Presley would probably have been born in Pinar del Río, or River Pine City, or whatever the hell he’d have said, in those cane-cutter’s boots that were his school shoes, for going out every night as well as to Saturday-night parties. He was really thin, because he had no choice in the matter; in his place they chewed cable, not literally, but real cable, the ones Goyo brought from his work as an electrician; he’d say, spaghetti cable, cable and chips, cable croquettes. Tamara looks serious though she always looks best like that: she’s more… beautiful? The light brown lock of hair hanging languidly and rebelliously over her forehead and her right eye giving her airs of Van Gult’s Honorata , and there right next to Dulcita, they’d say Dulcita was always better, but Tamara’s something else, more than beautiful, nice and tasty, as delicious as the crack of a baseball cleanly hit, hot enough to give Mahomet a hard-on: but, no, you felt like eating her bit by bit, clothes and all, I told Skinny once, even if I’d shit rags for a week. And you also felt like sitting with her on a manicured lawn one afternoon, all alone, and leaning your head back on her bounteous thighs, lighting a cigarette, hearing the birds chirp and enjoying happiness. She’d chosen dentistry as her first choice and medicine as second, and it’s a pity to see her looking so serious, as if the future dentist had teeth that would never visit a dentist, and Rabbit would be her first customer, when I get you in my chair, she’d say, I’ll do my doctorate trying to get your buckteeth under control. My awful face hasn’t changed a bit: I’m on the far right, next to Tamara naturally, as always whenever possible; and look, with my trousers cut round the knee so my mum can turn the leg upside down, with the knee which is broader at the bottom and the bottom which is narrower sewn at the knee, it being the only way to get a spot of flares, which were the rage then. And gym shoes without socks, both patched over the toes: mine are crooked and always poked a hole through the same place: I’m also smiling, but it’s a forced smile, only halfway across the lips, on my starving scary face, with bags under my eyes, and I’m thinking I’m sure I won’t get literature, for they’ve almost shut down literary studies this year, I’m in a good position but it’s a lottery and I so much want to get in, and I put down psychology for second choice and not dentistry. That was Tamara’s fault, for I can’t stand the sight of blood so perhaps history would be a better option like for Rabbit, I don’t know, a psychology degree leads to somewhere, but I never knew how to decide. Taking decisions was always torture, and it makes sense that I didn’t feel like laughing in that photo we took coming down the steps at high school, on the eve of our final exams that we were all going to pass because in thirteenth grade they don’t fail anyone, unless there’s another Viboragate scandal and they set special exams in order to fuck us up, as happened to thirteenth grade last year, to Dulcita who’s so intelligent but is repeating a year because of all that, but we would pass, for sure. On the back of the photo it says June 1975, we were all still very poor – that is, almost all of us – and very happy. Skinny is skinny. Tamara is more than beautiful, Dulcita is one of us, Rabbit is dreaming of changing history, and I’m on my way to being a writer like Hemingway. The photo has yellowed with age: it got wet one day and one corner is cracked, and when I look at it I get a real guilty conscience because Skinny is skinny no more and Rafael Morín is the invisible presence lurking behind the camera.