Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

“Park there,” he ordered the sergeant when they crossed Mayía Rodríguez, and he threw his cigarette end on the road. There on the opposite pavement, right on the corner, stood the two-storey house where the twins had lived, a spectacular house splendid with large swathes of dark glass and red brick and a wall around a professionally manicured garden at the right height not to hide the line of concrete sculptures that denoted the shaping hand of a Wifredo Lam.

“This is it,” exclaimed Manolo. “Whenever I drove by here I’d stare at that house and think how I’d like to have lived in a house like that. I even started to think there’d never be problems with the police in such a place and that I’d never get to see the inside.”

“Well, it’s no house for policemen.”

“It was given to him, I suppose.”

“No, not this time. It belonged to his wife’s parents.”

“What can life be like in this kind of house, Conde?”

“Different… Hey, Manolo, wait a minute. There’s an idea I want to work on: the party on the thirty-first. Rafael Morín disappeared after going to that party. Something may have happened there that impacts on all this business, because I’m not into coincidences. I want to ask you a favour.”

Manolo smiled and struck the steering wheel with both hands.

“The Count asking me for a favour? Of a personal or work nature? Go ahead, I’ll be pleased to do anything for you.”

“Hey, shut that trap and let me interview Tamara. I’ve known her for some time, and I think I can handle her better like that. That’s the favour: not much to ask, is it? You can tell me later of any thoughts that may come to you. OK?”

“OK, Conde, it’s not a problem,” the sergeant replied, preparing to make a sacrifice in order to be present at what he guessed would be a settling of accounts with the past. As he locked the car Manolo saw the Count cross the road and disappear between the box-hedges and the head of a terrified concrete horse that seemed more Picasso than Lam. At any rate, that house continued to be far beyond the reach of any policeman.

Her eyes were two classic almonds, polished and slightly moist. Just the minimum to suggest they really were two eyes that might even shed tears. A lock of her artificially curled hair twisted down over her forehead, almost engulfing her thick, very high eyebrows. Her mouth attempted to smile, in fact did so, and her dazzlingly white teeth, like a healthy animal’s, deserved the reward of a broad smile. She didn’t look thirtythree, he thought as he stood in front of his former schoolmate. Nobody would believe she’d given birth, could still perform ballet pirouettes, although she was now clearly more in control of her profound beauty: rounded, exuberant and provocative, and at the peak of her bodily charms. She could still get into her school tunic and tight-clinging blouse, he thought as he tightened the pistol in his belt and introduced Sergeant Manuel Palacios, whose eyes were bulging out of their sockets. The Count wanted to leave as soon as he sat down on the sofa next to Tamara and she pointed Manolo to an armchair.

She was wearing a gaudy yellow loose-fitting dress, and he noted she was not at all unnerved: even wrapped in that garish colour she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, and now he didn’t want to leave but to stretch an arm out when she stood up.

“Well, life is full of surprises, isn’t it?” she remarked. “Wait a minute while I get you some coffee.”

She walked towards the passage, and he observed the movement of her buttocks under the fine yellow material. He followed the faint outline of her knickers on her thighs and exchanged glances with an almost panting Manolo. He recalled how that memorable bum had led to lots of tears when her ballet teacher inevitably advised her to revisit her artistic ambitions: those earth-shaking hips, fleshy buttocks and rounded thighs weren’t a sylph’s or a swan’s, but rather an egglaying goose’s, and she’d suggested an immediate transfer to a sweaty, liquor-laden rumba beat.

“A sad fate, right?” he commented, and Manolo shrugged his shoulders and prepared to investigate that inexplicable sadness when she came back and forced him to look at her.

“Mima’s just made it, it’s still hot,” she assured them, offering a cup first to Manolo and then to himself. “Incredible, the Count in person. By now you must be a major or captain? Right, Mario?”

“Lieutenant, and sometimes I wonder how,” he replied, tasting the coffee but not daring to add: It’s good coffee, bloody hell, especially for friends; it really was the best coffee he’d tasted in years.

“Who would have thought you’d ever join the police?”

“Nobody, I reckon.”

“This guy was a right character,” she told Manolo and looked back at him. “You were never named as an exemplary pupil because you wouldn’t join in the right activities and always bunked off the last classes to go and listen to episodes of Guaytabó . I still remember that.”

“But I got good marks.”

She couldn’t repress a smile. The flow of memories between them jumped over the bad moments, erased by time, and only touched down on happy days, memorable events or incidents that had improved with hindsight. She even looked more beautiful: that can’t be true.

“You don’t write these days, Mario?”

“No, not anymore. But one day,” he responded uneasily. “And what’s become of your sister?”

“Aymara’s in Milan. She went for five years with her husband, who’s a representative for Cuban Export. Her new husband, you know?”

“No, I didn’t know, but good for her.”

“Tell me, Mario, whatever happened to Rabbit? I’ve never seen him since.”

“Nothing much, you know he finished teacher-training but managed to get out of education. He’s at the Institute for History still thinking about what would have happened if they hadn’t killed Maceo or the English had stayed in Havana and other historical tragedies he likes to invent.”

“And how’s Carlos these days?”

She said Carlos, and he wanted to disappear down her cleavage. Skinny Carlos used to reckon Tamara and Aymara had big dark nipples, look at their lips, he’d say, they’re like a black’s and, according to his theory, nipples and lips were directly related in colour and size. They’d often tried to test out his theory in the case of Tamara by waiting for her to bend down to pick up a pencil and by watching her in PE classes, although she was always one to wear bras. But not today?

“He’s fine,” he lied. “And what about yourself?”

She took the cup from his hands and put it on the glass table, next to an artistic wedding shot in which the smiling Tamara and Rafael, in their wedding outfits, happily embraced and looked at each other in an oval mirror. He was thinking she ought to say fine, but she didn’t dare: her husband had disappeared, might be dead and she was distressed but the fact was she looked great, when she finally declared: “I’m very worried, Mario. I’ve got this feeling, I’m not sure…”

“What feeling?”

She shook her head, and that lock of hair danced irreverently over her forehead. She was nervous, rubbed her hand, and her usually tranquil eyes seemed stressed.

“Something’s amiss,” she said, looking into the silent house. “This is all too strange; something must be going on, right? Hey, Mario, you can smoke if you like,” and she got him a pristine ashtray from the shelf under the glass coffee table. Murano, a purple-blue glass flecked with silver. He lit his cigarette and thought what a sin it would be to sully that ashtray.

“Don’t you smoke?” she asked Manolo, and the sergeant smiled.