Leonardo Padura: Havana Blue

Several months later, when the Rafael Morín case had been truly laid to rest, and René Maciques was rotting in jail and Tamara was as beautiful as ever and looked at him with eyes that were always glistening, he’d still ask the same question and imagine a sad Rafael Morín, a petty potentate in Miami with his five-hundred-thousand-dollar fortune that was a mere lottery prize that would never buy him the things he acquired with his power as a trustworthy brilliant cadre, always on the up. But that night he just stopped next to a group of fans and lit a cigarette. They all thought and shouted out loud in an act of group therapy: the team manager was an idiot, the star pitcher a dud and the guys from way back really good, if only Chávez and Urbano, La Guagua and Lazo would come back, they fantasized, and then he stuck the shoulder of his imagination between two enormous frightening blacks who eyed him suspiciously, where does this asshole come from, and shouted into the centre of the group: “They don’t have balls,” and he’d leave the professional gripers to their gripes, as he crossed the street and entered the haze of fumes, dry piss and pre-Colombian vomit in the doorway to the Asturian Centre, where a couple were trying to consummate their ardour behind a pillar, and finally ran into the barred doors to the Floridita, SHUT FOR REPAIRS, and abandoned there all hope of a double shot of neat vintage rum, sitting in the corner that was Hemingway’s exclusive property, leaning on the bar where Papa and Ava Gardner kissed scandalously and where he’d set his store, many years ago, on writing a novel about squalor and where he’d have asked himself the same question and supplied the only answer that allowed him to live in peace: because he always was a bastard. What else?

“Can I put some music on?”

“No, not now,” she said as she leaned her head on the back of the plush sofa, looked up at the ceiling and felt freezing again and folded her arms after she’d pulled down her jersey sleeves. He lit a cigarette and dropped the match in the Murano ashtray.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, also sinking back on the sofa. “A ceiling is a ceiling.”

“About what’s happening, everything you’ve told me, what else do you expect?”

“You really had no idea? None whatsoever?”

“What can I say, Mario?”

“But you might have seen or suspected something.”

“What was there to suspect? The fact he bought that hi-fi system or brought us whisky or a bicycle for our son? Is a dress worth a hundred and fifty dollars cause for suspicion?”

He thought: it’s all so normal. All that has always been normal for her: she was born in this house and lived that normality that makes you see life differently; and he wondered whether it wasn’t Tamara’s world that had driven Rafael mad. But knew it wasn’t so.

“What will happen now, Mario?” she now asked the question, had had enough of ceilings and silence and leaned her shoulder on the back of the sofa, tucked a foot under a thigh and chased her imperturbable wavy lock away. She wanted to gaze at him.

“Two things still need to happen. First, Rafael has to show up, dead or alive, in Cuba, or wherever. And second, Maciques must tell us what he knows. Perhaps that might help us find Rafael’s whereabouts.”

“It’s like an earthquake.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed, “everything that’s not secure is collapsing, and I imagine you feel the same way. But I think we’ve seen the best. Can you imagine Rafael arriving in Barcelona, accessing all that money and defecting?”

“There’s an idea. We’d go to live in Geneva, in a house on a hill with a slate roof.”

She said that, got up and disappeared into the dining room. He could never not: he looked at her as he always had, only he’d already observed that rump, traced the shape of her body, one ill-equipped to pirouette; his hands and mouth had travelled its length and breadth, but the memory hurt like a sharp thorn left to fester. A house in Geneva, why Geneva? And he ran his fingertips through his hair and thought how he’d started to go bald. I’d forgotten my bald patch, and he too abandoned the sofa, the house in Geneva and Tamara’s rump, and looked for a record with which to cheer himself up. Got it, he told himself when he spotted the Sarah Vaughan LP, Walkman Jazz , put it on the turntable and turned the volume down low, and the wonderful black woman sang “Cheek to Cheek” for him. She came back to Sarah Vaughan’s warm dark voice, carrying two glasses.

“Let’s finish off our stocks: the whisky in Rafael Morín’s cellar is on its last legs,” she said, offering him a glass. She went back to the sofa and swigged her first mouthful like a hard-boiled matelot.

“I know how you must feel. This isn’t easy for you or anyone, but you’re not to blame and I even less so. If only it hadn’t happened and Rafael had been what everybody imagined him to be and I wasn’t mixed up in all this.”

“You regretting something?” she rasped. She’d regained normal temperature and rolled her sleeves back to her elbows. Took another swig.

“No, I regret nothing, I was referring to you.”

“Better not speak on my behalf. If Rafael stole that money, let him pay for it. Nobody ordered him to. I never asked him for anything, and you know that only too well, Mario Conde. I thought you knew me better. I don’t feel guilty on any count, and what I enjoyed I enjoyed like anyone else would have. Don’t expect me to confess and do penance.”

“I see I know you less well than I thought.”

Sarah Vaughan was singing “Lullaby of Birdland”, the best song he knew for escaping into the magical world of Oz, but it seemed as if she couldn’t shut up and he knew it was best if she just talked, and talked and talked…

“Yeah, and you think I’m ungrateful, and I don’t know what else, and that I should say it’s supposition, that my husband is incapable of such things and then burst into tears, don’t you? It’s what one does in such situations, isn’t it? But I don’t have a tragic vocation, and I’m not a long-suffering egotist like you… I’d have preferred none of this to happen, it’s true, but do you know what it is to have a clear conscience?”

“I really don’t remember anymore.”

“Well I do, in case you didn’t know or were imagining something else. I told you the other day: Rafael had what they let him have or what was his due or whatever, and everyone knew that when he was travelling he would bring things back and it was all quite normal and he was an excellent comrade. Everyone knew and… Ah, I won’t say anymore on the subject unless you want to question me and, if that’s the case, I won’t say another word, least of all to you.”

He smiled and returned to the sofa. He sat down very close to her, touched her knee with his, thought for a moment, then dared: slowly put his hand on her thigh, afraid it might run away, but her thigh stayed under his hand, and he gripped her live firm flesh and met a slight tremor, well hidden under the skin. Looked into her eyes and saw the shiny dampness transform into a tear that welled up, hung on an eyelash and rolled down Tamara’s nose, and he knew he was ready for anything, except to see her cry. She rested her head on the Count’s shoulder, and he knew she was still crying: a tired silent lament. She then said quite matter-of-factly:

“The fact is I saw this coming. This or something similar. He was never satisfied. He was always dreaming of more and liked to play the powerful executive. I think he imagined he was the first Cuban yuppie or something of the sort… But I also got used to the easy life, to having everything all the time, to him speaking to a friend so I didn’t have to do community service in Las Tunas and for us to have holidays in Varadero and so on. In the end I was afraid of changing my style of life, although I think I’d not loved him for a long time. When he went on his travels I liked being by myself at home with my son, not having to worry he’d be back late, that he’d say he was tired and would get into bed and go to sleep or shut himself up in the library to write reports or tell me how difficult it was all getting. I’d also known for some time he’d been going with other women. He couldn’t deceive me on that front, but as I said, I was afraid to lose a tranquillity I really enjoyed. And what I did with you I’d not done with anyone else, please do believe me.”