Havana Black (18 page)

“Of course, it's an impressionist landscape,” the Count confirmed, surprised by his capacity to communicate.

“It must be a pretty landscape. A pity I didn't see it.”

“I didn't either,” the policeman lamented, and reached out to shake the old man's right hand, which had gone back to sleep on his exhausted legs. “Thanks for this conversation,” he said, letting go of the old man's hand: he hoped Forcade hadn't guessed that he shivered at the idea of touching a dead man's bones.

“Don't be embarrassed, Lieutenant,” said the old man, and the Count forced a smile.

“Forcade, what are your plants telling you about hurricane Felix?”

The old man swung his face round towards the garden, and contemplated his plants for a few minutes.

“The sage is afraid. I can tell that from its leaves. And the garlic flower, if you look, seems to be clinging tighter to the trunk of the
mamey
. . . The cyclone is on its way, and, Lieutenant, will hit here for sure.”

“Just as well,” said the Count and he moved off, not daring to think of anything. So he was transparent, was he?, and he salvaged the flower so he could smell its scent once more.

 

 

Sergeant Manuel Palacios drove the car along Rancho Boyeros at a speed faster than the Count could tolerate, but this time he let him flirt with death: after all, that outcome – sometimes visible and very real – tended to be capricious and elusive. Mario Conde wanted to reach home as soon as possible and that's
what he told Manolo when he asked him if he wanted to stop and look up his friend Carlos.

“No, what I want is to sleep and not to think about Miguel Forcade for twenty-four hours.”

“I can't think why you told the new boss that we'd solve this case by tomorrow. It's going to be difficult.”

“God will provide, as my grandad used to say,” the Count retorted with a sigh, by the time the car was progressing along Santa Catalina and approaching the house of his oldest, most sustained love: the twin Tamara.

Several months had passed since their last encounter, which had finally materialized in the depths of a soft bed of gentle gullies created by their bodies: his on Tamara, Tamara's on him, and the Count could still feel in his arms and on his skin the round densities of that female form he'd longed for over some fifteen years, in the course of which she'd been the focus for his best masturbations. Then his fevered brain always had to supply the detail, for apart from the twin's face and the reality of her smooth compact thighs, which his eyes devoured in the recreation ground at secondary school, the rest was pure poetic-pornographic imaginings, developed on the basis that what was unknown must be in line with what he'd imagined: and the margin of error had been minimal: Tamara's backside was as tight, her pubic hair as curly, her nipples as lively as he'd ever imagined, and the mere idea he might kiss that flesh again stopped the policeman's breath whenever he went past her house. But they left Tamara's spell behind and the Count wondered whether he should take the offensive and try once more to sink his lance into that pliant Flanders field. Indeed: would that beautiful, superficial woman, used to an easy, carefree life, always be the sexual obsession
of a guy as fucked and useless as himself, unable to guarantee the slightest security to anything or anybody, even himself?

When he was finally back home, the Count thought it better to forget Tamara so as to avoid yet another of his solitary exercises. In the undesirable silence of that empty house, he felt the accumulated hunger, doubts, depression and exhaustion he'd been dragging around all day weigh down on his shoulders. A physical sluggishness spread to his legs, releasing muscles, nerves and joints that fell to the floor like useless scrap metal, but the desire to flop on his bed was subdued by uncomfortable tremors in the intestine, urgent to the point of cannibalism. The possibility of finding nourishing relief at Skinny's place had been dashed by inertia: the physical need to be alone with his hunger and solitude had forced him back to a deserted home, where a disastrous gastronomic drought reigned: not even a fighting fish stirred. His friend surely would want to speak of parties and saint's days, when all he felt was rancour and frustration, and it wasn't fair: Carlos was already fucked up enough without downing him further with his sado-maso-police depressions . . . In short, the outlook was bleak until, on opening his refrigerator, he had a pleasant surprise: he saw entwined there, like friendly worms, spaghetti he'd left in a dish several days ago, red-flecked by tomato and dotted with dark specks of a mince presumably of animal origin.

While the pasta was heating up in the bain-marie, the Count got under the shower and let the cold water run over his head, cleansing him of his outer filth. He soaped himself thoroughly and as he vigorously washed his penis felt a temptation called Tamara that he repressed with a policeman's rage. “If I jerk off, I'll die”, was his rational conclusion, and he allowed the
cold water to dampen the rising motion triggered unawares by the physical needs he'd postponed too long. The painful memory of his adventure with the twin always provoked a similar effect. But now that Skinny had summoned her to his birthday party, the imminence of the encounter meant the woman was enthroned as the unchallenged queen of the Count's erotic memory, and he wondered rhetorically how long he would remain in love with her.

Body still wet and towel wrapped round his waist, he went into the kitchen and turned off the flame. As he finished drying his hair, he switched on the television, which was broadcasting the late-night news. The expansive impact upwards and downwards of the investigations against police corruption was repeated and given scope in the report, gravely intoned by the newscaster, who spoke of necessary punishments, exemplary measures, unacceptable attitudes and moral, historical and ideological purity. But what nobody knew was how such radical surgery, now extending into high ministerial reaches, would end, although the prospect of escaping unharmed the necessary purge, announced in the report, relieved the lieutenant's contrite soul, and he pondered hopefully on the short time left to him before his final liberation: a mere twenty hours . . . As the Count had decided, he refused to continue assessing the possible reasons for Miguel Forcade's death and concentrated on the special weather report the Official Weatherman was solemnly reading:

“At eight o'clock, only a few minutes ago, satellite reports located Felix here – ” and he pointed his marker at a crazy white whirl in the middle of the Caribbean – “at eighty-two degrees longitude north and twenty-one point four latitude west, that is, some
fifty miles north of Grand Cayman and almost one hundred and fifty miles south of the eastern tip of Juventud Island. It is estimated that this strong tropical hurricane, the most violent in recent years, will continue to progress in a northerly direction, at some ten miles an hour, meaning it represents an immediate threat to the island's western provinces, in particular to Havana and Matanzas, where it might hit between early and late Thursday morning, bringing torrential rain and winds of more than one hundred and ten miles an hour, and occasional gusts of one hundred and fifty an hour, which may even be stronger in areas close to the centre of the hurricane,” he added before handing over to the Colonel from Civil Defence, who enumerated the precautions to take before the seemingly inevitable arrival of cyclone Felix, which, as the Count had predicted and concluded, had to come. And he felt scared.

Just as the country was preparing to resist the onslaught of this meteorological phenomenon, a harassed Count downed his dish of spaghetti resurrected by the sudden change in temperature to which they had been subjected at the ripe age of six days after they'd first been cooked. But the fuckers taste good, he thought, chewing the pasta and merely regretting that the island's hellish, cyclonic climate didn't allow vines to grow and wines to be manufactured: because a red wine, unrefrigerated, would have lifted heavenwards those juicy mouthfuls fit for a Neapolitan cardinal, promoted up the culinary-church hierarchy by a policeman's hunger on the eve of his retirement. A pity he couldn't add fried yucca, and he smiled mischievously at the dilemma confronting Major Rangel, a wretchedly monogamous, dethroned king reduced to imbibing infusions.

The empty plate went to sleep it off in the sink next to the other plates, glasses and dishes piled there, betwixt grease and apathy. Without wetting his fingers, the Count rescued from the summit of deferred filth the container for grinding coffee and, after cleaning his teeth, he placed his Italian coffee pot on the stove and waited for it to percolate. His melancholy gaze reviewed the selection of dead bottles demonstrating in one corner of the kitchen, and when he heard the first gasps from the coffee pot he had his brightest idea of the night: he poured into one glass the residues of various rums – all cheap – sloshing around in the remote bottoms of those bottles, and managed to gather almost a tot of rum in a glass that welcomed the remains thus milked. Palpably happy, the Count ground the coffee and returned it to the pot, then poured a long measure on to the combination of rums, thus creating, in a unique solution, the communion of two tastes so necessary to his life: and took with him the honey dew that even tasted good as he went to dial Skinny Carlos.

“It's me, you dog,” he said, when he heard his friend's voice.

“So, wild man,” came the reply. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Cracked the case yet?”

“Yes and no, it's going both ways . . . Come to think of it, today I found out my thoughts are transparent and communicable.”

“Well I'm happy for your thoughts. Now tell them to remember tomorrow.”

“Course I remember . . . The bastard is I'm broke and can't buy anything.”

“Forget it: it's your birthday . . . So come by early on.
The old girl says better not eat during the day, because she's going to cook a lot.”

“She's mad, she'll get put away . . . Hey, I called you for two reasons . . . Don't know about you but I'm really worried about Andrés. There's something up with that bastard, I've never seen him so aggressive.”

“Yeah, he's as queer as a coot. I spoke to his mother and she says he's odd with her as well. Something not quite right with our prince of Denmark. What was the other thing?”

“Oh, I'd like your opinion; you're an intelligent man, would you believe anything from a woman who dyes her hair?”

“What colour?”

“Blonde.”

“Not a word.”

“Why?”

“Because blondes who aren't blondes are whores or liars. Or both at once, which is when they're best . . .”

“Yes, you're right. Hey, thanks for the advice. Tell your mother I'll fast in her honour.”

“I'll tell her. But don't get caught up, and come early, my friend.”

“You bet . . . See you tomorrow, my friend.”

The Count gulped down his mélange of coffee and rum and felt that, although he was tired and sleepy, he should strike a few keys on his decrepit Underwood: he needed to lance a painful boil and say something he didn't dare to express verbally to Skinny Carlos and perhaps the story of friendship, pain and war he'd been concocting in his head for several weeks was finally ready to see the light, tonight of all nights. His spirit now carried a high enough dose of love and squalor to commit it to paper and, without more ado, he put the typewriter on the dining table and read the
last of the pages he'd left on the platen on the distant morning of the previous day.

Almost without thinking the Count put his fingers on the worn keys and felt as if his hands were thinking for him, while the letters etched themselves on the fresh paper in the platen.