Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

Out of pure routine and to see whether he still had something new to learn about Rafael Morín’s character, the Count decided to interview Salvador González, the secretary of the party cell, a professional cadre in the organization sent to the enterprise by the municipality barely three months ago.

“I don’t know how useful I can be to you,” Salvador confessed as he spurned the cigarette the lieutenant offered. He opted to fill his pipe and accept a lit match. He was a man well into his fifties and seemed both straightforward and out of his depth. “I hardly knew Comrade Morín, and I’ve only got impressions of him as a party member and an individual and I don’t like to be impressionistic.”

“Describe one of those impressions,” asked the lieutenant.

“All right, at the General Accounts Meeting, he was really very good. His report was one of the best I’ve ever heard. I think he’s a man who’s understood the spirit of the times. He called for quality and high standards at work, because this is a very important enterprise for the nation’s development. And he subjected himself to self-criticism because his style of leadership was to centralize, and he asked comrades to help him in a necessary redistribution of tasks and responsibilities.”

“And now let’s have another impression.”

The general secretary smiled.

“Even though it’s only an impression?”

“Uh-huh.”

“All right, if you must. But remember, it is only an impression… You know what travel means for anyone, not only in this enterprise but in the country as a whole. A person who travels feels different, chosen, as if he’d broken the sound barrier… My impression is that comrade Morín liked to get people’s good will by offering them opportunities to travel. It’s an impression I picked up from what I saw and from our conversations.”

“What did you talk about? What did you see?”

“Nothing very exciting. When we were preparing the Final Accounts Meeting he asked me if I liked travelling.”

“Then what happened?”

“I told him that, when I was a kid, I read a Donald Duck comic where the duck goes to Alaska with three nephews prospecting for gold, and for a long time I was dead envious of the ducklings whose uncle took them to Alaska. Then I grew up and never went to Alaska or anywhere else and, excuse my French, but I decided that Alaska could go frig itself.”

“Don’t you have any other impressions?”

“I’d prefer to keep quiet about them.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m no longer an ordinary worker or even an ordinary party member. I’m general secretary in this enterprise, and my impressions could be seen as arising from my present post and not from me as an individual.”

“What if I turn a blind eye? What if you forget your post for a moment?”

“That’s very difficult for either of us, Lieutenant, but as you’re so insistent, I will tell you something and hope I’m not making a mistake,” he declared, and he initiated a pause that he prolonged as he knocked his pipe against the ashtray. He’s not going to tell me anything, thought the Count, but he didn’t despair. “They say a cautious man is worth two, and I’d always thought Rafael Morín a cautious man par excellence . But of the two men who surface from such caution, there’s always one who’s less so: he’s the one who’s gone missing.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I’m almost certain your colleague, the slant-eyed mulatta, will find something. You can feel it in the air. Naturally, it’s only an impression. I could be wrong, right? I’ve got it wrong with other comrades. I hope I’m wrong in this case, because if I’m not, I won’t just have made a mistake as an individual, if you follow me?”

“Just a bit of routine, OK?”

“Get fucking lost, Conde,” said Manolo, sprawling over the car boot. It was just gone twelve, a feisty midday sun was trying to chase the cold off, and its warmth was pleasant, you could even take your jacket off, put your sunglasses on and feel like saying: “Let’s have another go at Maciques, but at headquarters, not here. Let’s go.”

The Count rubbed his specs on the hem of his shirt, looked at them against the light and returned them to his pocket. Unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled his sleeves twice and thrice in uneven bulges up to his elbows.

“We’ll wait, it’s only just twelve, and China said three o’clock, and Fatman will only have just got going. I reckon we deserve lunch… don’t you? Who knows when we’ll get finished today?”

Manolo stroked his stomach and rubbed his hands together. The sun’s efforts weren’t enough: a persistent perfumed breeze blew in from the sea and chased off the timid warmth.

“Do you reckon I’ve got time to go to see Vilma?” he asked, not looking at his colleague.

“So did she or did she not kick you out?”

“No, she’s just a jealous bitch.”

“Like a business with lots of money.”

“More or less.”

“But you like her, don’t you?”

Manolo tried to kick a car-flattened bottle top and then rubbed his hands together again.

“I think so, comrade. She wears me out in bed.”

“Take care, kid,” replied the Count, smiling. “I once had one like that, and she almost killed me. The worst of it is that afterwards none can compete. But he who dies from pleasure… Come on, hit the road, drop me off at Skinny’s and pick me up at two, two fifteen. Does that give you enough time?”

“Why do you think I’m faster than Fangio?” he asked and was already opening the car door.

The Count preferred not to talk to him on the road. He thought driving at fifty miles an hour in Havana was slightly barmy and decided it was best to let Manolo concentrate on his driving and Vilma’s frenzied love, and that way they’d perhaps arrive intact. The worst thing about the speeding was that he couldn’t think, although he was happy enough: he didn’t have much to think about, he could wait and perhaps start exercising his brain later.

“Two o’clock here,” he repeated to Manolo as he got out in front of Skinny’s house and went to cross himself as he saw him career round the corner. Two tits always have more pull than a carthorse, he reflected as he crossed the very minimal garden that Josefina kept as pretty as she could with what her hands could get hold of. Roses, sunflowers, red mantos, picuala and an old set of chopsticks blended colours and scents on a clean dark earth where it was a mortal sin to throw a cigarette end, even if Skinny Carlos were the culprit. The door to the house was open as usual, and as he went in he was hit by the smell of a strong sauce: juices from bitter oranges, peeled garlic, onion, pepper and olive oil were bubbling in the pan, juices to bathe the victuals that Josefina would present to her son whose scant pleasures she cultivated more lovingly than her garden. Ever since Skinny had returned, maimed for life, that woman who retained the freshness of her smile had devoted herself to living for her son with a cheerful, nunnish resignation now in its ninth year, and the daily act of feeding him was perhaps the ritual that most expressed the pain of her love. Skinny had refused to abide by the advice of his doctor who warned him of the dangers of his obesity, as he assumed that death had been deferred only briefly and he wanted to live with his usual gusto. If we’re going to drink, let’s drink; if we’re going to eat, let’s eat, he’d say, and Josefina satisfied him well beyond her means.

“Set another place,” the Count told her as he entered the kitchen, kissed the woman’s sweaty brow and prepared his own to receive a return kiss which in the event never came, because the lieutenant suffered an attack of love and melancholy that forced him to hug her as tightly as a strangler and say “I love you so much, Jose” before he let her go and walked over to the sidetable where the thermos of coffee stood and thus he fought off the tears he felt were imminent.