Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

“Just as well, because putting up with you when a woman’s on your back isn’t easy. But in any case, this business is almost over and I probably won’t see your face for the next month… Hey, in the end, who told Rafael’s mother and Tamara?”

“The major called the industry minister.”

“I’m sorry for his mother.”

“But not for his wife? Won’t you try to console her?”

“Go to hell, Manolo,” he replied, smiling.

“Hey, Conde, what does it feel like when you close a case like this?”

The lieutenant placed his hands on his desk. They were open, palms upwards.

“Like this, Manolo, empty-handed. The evil had already been done.”

The Count and Manolo looked at each other, and then the lieutenant offered his colleague a cigarette, as the cubicle door opened and in walked a cigar followed by a man.

“Very good work with Maciques, Sergeant,” said Major Rangel, leaning his back against the door. “You excelled yourself as you always do, Mario… What manner of man was Rafael Morín?”

The Count looked back at Manolo. He didn’t know if Major Rangel wanted a reply or was just musing aloud. It was very unusual to see the Boss outside his office and speaking so disconcertingly, and they preferred to stay silent.

“When will I have the full dossier?”

“At ten o’clock?”

“At nine. Patricia’s finishing this afternoon and will leave the enterprise to the Fraud Squad. They might dig up something likely. So nine am. Then you two can disappear and not show your faces till Friday, if I don’t call you before. And tomorrow I’m going to stir things up around this Rafael Morín affair. You just watch me. It’s all very well this ‘take it easy that’s enough on corruption’ and then we’re the ones who have to pull the chestnuts out of the fire.” And his voice sounded like a much bigger, younger man’s, a voice accustomed to demanding and protesting. He looked at the unbroken ash of his cigar and then at his two subordinates. “And they rattle on about delinquents. They’re babes on the tit compared to fellows like him or Maciques, and who knows what goes on up and down the greasy pole, but I’ll be calling for blood… A respectable director of enterprise handling thousands and thousands of dollars. I really don’t understand a thing, damned if I do,” and he opened the door and started to follow his cigar out the room. “But tomorrow at nine am I’ll leave here with the report under my arm…”

“No, don’t start fantasizing. And look, it’s not cold now, and we’ve got to be here early in the morning to write the report, so the case isn’t closed,” Manolo begged as he switched on the car engine, and the Count whispered: “Consort with kids and…”

“What’s this woman done to you, Manolo? You know, you’re shit-scared of her.”

The car left the headquarters parking lot, and Manolo was still shaking his head.

“Forget it, you won’t screw me up. It’s not worth two shots. I’m off to Vilma’s, and you can do whatever the hell you want. I’ll pick you up at six. Where should I drop you off? Besides, if I have a couple, I can’t get it up, and we start squabbling…”

The Count smiled and thought “he’s beyond redemption” and lowered his car window. It was undoubtedly getting less cold and the night was off to a peaceful start, ripe for whatever. He wanted a couple of shots, and Manolo wanted Vilma. Two reasonable options. After all, the Rafael Morín case was over, at least as far as the police was concerned, and the Count was beginning to feel empty inside. He’d got two days off which he never knew how best to spend. It had been some time since he’d dared sit opposite a typewriter, perhaps he never would again, to begin one of those novels he’d been promising himself for so long, and the solitude in his house was a hostile calm that made him felt desperate. He anticipated his fling with Tamara would probably be short-lived and would soon conflict with the everyday detail in two lives that were miles apart, two worlds that might coexist but could merge only with difficulty. Should I write my novel about old Valdemira’s library?

“We’ll pass by the undertakers in Santa Catalina. Rafael Morín’s corpse must have arrived there by now.”

“What’s the point, Conde?” rasped Manolo who’d always hated wakes and could see no reason to attend another.

“I don’t know what the point is. Everything doesn’t always have to have a point, right? I just want to poke my head into the wake for a moment.”

“That’s fine,” the sergeant accepted. “But it’s not work, right? I’ll leave you there and go on. See you at six in the morning.”

The car drove along Santa Catalina, and the Count saw people queuing to buy cold drinks; the love motel had recently been reinstated, and a neon sign erected of two red hearts transfixed by a green arrow of hope, and a couple of youngsters were going inside and looking for reception; he saw the stop with a bus packed with stressed people in a hurry, film posters and the driver shouting bastard at him as he passed him on the right, and he thought how nobody had death on their mind, and that was why they could still live, love, run, work, insult, eat, and even kill and think, and then he saw the twin’s house, shadowy between its hedges and sculptures, its big gleaming windows and a fate that had changed for the moment. Rafael Morín had departed that place to play for all or nothing, and had lost his confident dazzling smile once and for all.

“See you at six,” he said when he saw the undertakers. The lobby was empty, and he thought perhaps the morgue hadn’t yet released the corpse of his fellow school student. “And take care you don’t get her pregnant.”

“Don’t play that tune. I don’t want any such complications in my life.” Manolo smiled, shaking his boss’s hand.

“Come on, don’t play hard to get, Vilma’s got you well taped.”

“OK, my friend, so what?” Sergeant Manuel Palacios laughed again and accelerated away, and the Count thought “He’ll kill himself one of these days.”

He went up the few steps to the undertakers and read just one name on the board: Rafael Morín Rodríguez, Room D. It wasn’t a good day to be dying, and undertakers weren’t in great demand. He headed to Room D but didn’t dare go in. The sweetish scent of flowers for the dead that impregnated the walls of the building hit him in the pit of his stomach, and he decided to sit on one of the big chairs in the corridor, next to the ashtray on a stand and the public telephone. He lit a cigarette that tasted of wet grass. Inside lay Rafael Morín, dead and ready for oblivion, and it would be a very sad funeral: none of his New Year’s Eve, management-board and trips-abroad friends would come. The man was plagued in more than one sense, and perhaps not even his wife would want to be there. His old friends from high school had fallen by the wayside long ago, would only find out months later, perhaps have their doubts, and wouldn’t believe it was true. He imagined what the wake could have been like in other circumstances, the wreaths of flowers piled up all over the floor in that room, the laments at the loss of such an outstanding cadre, at such an early young age, the funeral oration, so moving and so packed with generous heartfelt adjectives. He dropped his cigarette in the ashtray and walked over to the door to Room D. Like an intruder he gingerly put his face to the glass door and observed the almost empty room just as he’d imagined: Rafael’s mother, holding a handkerchief to her nose, sobbing amid a group of neighbours: the two women who had been doing their washing on Sunday morning; one held the old lady’s hand between hers and was speaking into her ear: for all of them Rafael’s failure was in some way their own failure and the finale to a tragic destiny the man had tried to elude. Tamara was in front of her mother-in-law, and the Count could just make out her shoulders and artificial indomitable curls. She was still; perhaps she’d cried a couple of silent tears. Two chairs from her, also with her back to the door, was another woman the Count tried to identify. She seemed young, her hair style showing off the nape of her neck and straight shoulders, the taut skin on the arm that was visible, and then the woman looked at Tamara and revealed her profile: he recognized Zaida and acknowledged she was being loyal to the end. Seven women; a single female colleague from work. And, at the back, the sealed coffin, wrapped in grey cloth, shockingly bare as it awaited the flowers that always arrived late for a common wake. It would be a sad funeral, he thought yet again and went into the street.