Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

He looked for a cigarette in his jacket pocket. He was really dry, and noticed Baby-Face Miki on the pavement opposite, as he waited for a gap in the traffic and wondered why he was coming to the wake. But he felt he could take no more, quickened his step and walked up the street that ran parallel, spontaneously bursting into song: “Strawberry Fields forever, tum, tum, tum…”

Skinny Carlos looked at his glass as if he couldn’t understand why it was empty. He felt like that after the fourth or fifth shot, and the Count smiled. They’d already seen off half a bottle of rum and hadn’t seen off their sadness. Skinny had wanted to go to the wake, and the Count refused to take him, why do you want to go, don’t be morbid, he said accusingly, and his friend ordered him not put any music on. Skinny felt the respect for death of those who know they will soon die and have decided to drown their bad memories, fatal thoughts and gloomy ideas in rum. But those fucking bastards always come up for air, thought the Count.

“So what do you intend to do with Tamara?” asked Skinny when his glass regained its rightful weight.

“I don’t know, you beast, I don’t know. It won’t work, and I’m afraid of falling in love.”

“Why on earth?”

“Because of what might come later. I don’t like suffering for the sake of it and so prefer to suffer in advance, right?”

“I always said you liked punishing yourself.”

“It’s not easy. You know, it really isn’t,” he said, gulping his rum down. He put his glass on the small table in the centre of the room. “I must go. I’ve got to write a report in the morning.”

“You going to leave me almost a pint? You’re not eating? Do you want old Josefina flying into a tantrum? No, wild animal, no, for I’m the one who will have to listen to her saying you don’t eat properly, that you’re really skinny and that I’m the bad boy for starting you on the rum, that you’ve got to look after yourself more and asking when are you going to marry the nice girl, get this, and have a kid. And I’m not up for it today, you know. It’s been fucking awful enough as it is.”

The Count smiled but wanted to cry. He looked over his friend’s head and saw on the wall the faded Rolling Stones poster and Mick Jagger’s buckteeth; the photo taken at the coming of age party for Rabbit’s sister, Pancho smiling, Rabbit trying not to laugh and Skinny in his special party hairdo, the fringe he hid at school over his eyebrows and almost closed eyes, putting an arm round Mario Conde’s shoulders, looking as if he’d had a fright, soul brothers from time immemorial; the tatty medals under false colours Skinny had won when he was a very skinny baseball player; the now almost invisible Havana Club label that someone had stuck to the mirror years ago during one hell of a drinking binge and that Skinny had decided to preserve for eternity in that same spot. It was a sad wall.

“Skinny, have you ever thought why you and I are mates…?”

“Because one day I lent you a knife at high school. Come on, don’t harp on about life. It just comes as it comes, fucking hell.”

“But it could be different.”

“Lies, you brute, lies. That’s just one tall, tall story. Hell, don’t get me on that tack, but I will tell you one thing for nothing: the guy who’s born to get honey from heaven, gets it in jarfuls and if that bullet’s meant for you, it does your life in. Don’t try to change what can’t be changed. Don’t whinge. That’s right, pour me another.”

“One day I’ll write about this, I swear I will,” said the Count, pouring two generous shots into his friend’s glass.

“Right, just do that, get writing and don’t just keep thinking about doing it. The next time you want to bring the subject up, please put it in writing, OK?”

“One of these days I’ll tell you where to get off, Skinny.”

“Hey, what’s the point of all this chitchat?”

Mario Conde looked at his glass and looked like Skinny looked when it was empty but didn’t dare say a word.

“Nothing, just forget it,” he replied because he thought one day he wouldn’t be able to converse with Skinny or call him my brother, wild animal, pal or tell him life was the most difficult profession going.

“Hey, and in the end where did he put the suitcase full of money?”

“He copped out and threw it into the sea.”

“With all those notes?”

“That’s what the man said.”

“What a fucking shit.”

“Right, a fucking shit. I feel very odd. I wanted to find Rafael and really didn’t mind whether he was dead or alive, and now he’s appeared it’s as if I’d like to disappear him again. I’d rather not think about him but can’t get him out of my head, and I’m afraid this might last a long time. Whatever can Tamara be feeling, do you reckon?”

“Hey, put some music on if you want,” Skinny suggested, “Whatever.”

“What do you fancy?”

“The Beatles?”

“Chicago?”

“Formula V?”

“Los Pasos?”

“Credence?”

“Uh-huh, Credence,” they concurred, and listened to Tom Foggerty’s rich voice and the guitars of Credence Clearwater Revival.

“It’s still the best version of ‘Proud Mary’.”

“By a long chalk.”

“He sings like a black. Just listen.”

“You’re kidding. He sings like God.”

“Up on your feet, lads. Man doesn’t live on music alone. Time to eat,” said Josefina from the doorway where she was taking her apron off, and the Count wondered how many more times he’d hear that call from the wild that summoned the three of them to the incredible feast Josefina struggled daily to create. It would be a difficult world without her, he told himself.

“Let’s have the menu, Señora ,” the Count demanded, already in place behind the wheelchair.

“Cod Basque-style, boiled rice, a Polish mushroom soup I’ve improved with cabbage, chicken giblets, tomato sauce, fried ripe plantain, and a radish, lettuce and watercress salad.”

“Where do you find all this, Jose?”

“Better not to ask, Condesito. Hey, let me have a drop of that rum. Today I feel happy for some reason or other.”

“This is all for you,” the Count offered her a shot and thought: “Hell, I really love her.”

What you call an empty room, he muttered, breathing in a deep consistent smell of solitude. There’s an empty bed, he thought, scrutinizing the mysterious shapes in the screwed up sheets that nobody bothered to smooth out. He switched the light on, and solitude hit him between the eyes. Rufino was hurtling round his goldfish bowl. Don’t exhaust me, Rufino, he told him and started to undress. Put his jacket on the chair, threw his shirt in the direction of his bed, placed his pistol on his jacket and, after he’d prised off his shoes with his feet, dropped his jeans on the floor.

He walked into the kitchen and poured the last remains of coffee powder he’d found in an envelope into his coffee pot. He washed out his thermos once he’d got rid of the white fetid coffee he’d left there the morning of the previous day that now seemed distant, very distant. The reflection of his face in the pane of glass confirmed his impending baldness yet again, and he opened the window onto the nocturnal peace and quiet in his barrio and thought how this might also be a perfect night to sit under a lamp on the street corner playing a few rounds of dominos, soothed by healthy intakes of gut-rot. Only it was a long time since people had gathered there, on such a night, to play dominos and down cheap liquor. Now we’re not even a shadow of our former selves and will never be the same again, he muttered, wondering when he should call Tamara. Solitude will be the death of me; he sweetened his coffee and poured himself a huge cup of early-morning coffee while lighting up the inevitable cigarette.