Havana Gold (8 page)

Hypnotized by her magic incantation, gawping incredulously, the four friends shook their heads.

“Because the potato is hard-hearted and this lot is of more noble mind.”

“Jose, where the hell do you get all this stuff?” asked the Count, on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

“Don't be such a policeman and take the dishes to the kitchen.”

The Count, Andrés and the Rabbit voted to nominate it the world's best
ajiaco
, but Carlos, who'd downed three big spoonfuls while the others were still blowing the steam rising from their bowls, pointed out critically that his mother had often cooked it better.

They drank coffee, washed up and Josefina decided to go to see the Pedro Infante film they were showing in the “History of the Cinema” because she preferred that story of tip-top Mexican cowboys to the argument the diners launched into with the first round of the night's third bottle of rum.

“Hey, savage,” said Skinny after downing another line of rum, “do you really think the marijuana has to do with Pre-Uni.”

The Count lit his cigarette and imitated his friend's alcoholic style.

“I don't know, Skinny, I really don't, but it's my gut feeling. As soon as I stepped back into Pre-Uni I felt it was another world, another place, and I couldn't see it like it was our Pre-Uni. There's nothing stranger than going somewhere you thought you knew by heart and realizing it's not what you'd imagined. I do think we were more innocent and kids now are more crooked or cynical. We liked to wear our hair long and be transported by our music, but we were told so often we had a responsibility before history that we finally believed we did and we knew we had to shoulder it, right or wrong? There weren't the hippies or drop-outs there are now. This guy,” and he pointed at Rabbit, “spent the whole day harping on about being a historian and read more books than the whole history department put together. And this fellow,” it was now Andrés' turn, “decided he was going to be a doctor and he is a doctor, and spent every day
playing baseball because he wanted to get in the National League. And didn't you spend your whole time chasing skirt and then get an average mark of 96?”

“Hey, Conde,” Skinny waved his hands, like a coach trying to stop a runner dangerously on course to a suicidal out, “what you say is true, but it's also true there were no hippies, because they fumigated the lot . . . Every man jack.”

“We weren't so different, Conde,” then Andrés intervened, shaking his head when Skinny went to offer him the bottle. “Things were different, that's true, whether more romantic or less pragmatic, who knows, or maybe they treated us harder, but I think in the end life passes us all by. Them and us.”

“Listen to him speak: ‘less pragmatic things',” Rabbit laughed.

“Don't piss around, Andrés, what do you mean, passed us fucking by? You've done what you wanted to do and if you were never a baseball player, it was down to bad luck,” countered Skinny, who remembered the day when Andrés sprained his ankle and was out of his best championship. It was a real defeat for the whole tribe: Andrés' injury put an end to all their hopes of having a pal in the dugout belonging to the Industriales, seated between Capiró and Marquetti.

“Don't think that for one minute. What the hell happened to you? You don't fool me, Carlos: you're fucked
and they fucked you up. I can walk and I'm fucked as well: I never was a baseball player, I'm a bog-standard doctor in a bog-standard hospital, I married a woman who's also bog-standard who works in a shitty office where they fill in shitty papers that people clean themselves on in other shitty offices. I've two children who want to be doctors just like me, because their mother has put it into their heads that a doctor is ‘somebody'. Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes, Skinny, or talk to me about life fulfilment, or any of that crap; I've never been able to do what I wanted, because there was always something more vital on the agenda, something someone said I ought to do and which I did: study, get married, be a good son and now a good father . . . And the mad things, mistakes and mess-ups you should make in life? Hey, and this isn't the bottle talking. Look at me . . . No, no woolpulling please, even you lot said I was mad when I fell in love with Cristina, because she was ten years older than me and because she'd had ten or how ever many husbands and because she did crazy things and must be a whore and how could I do such a thing to Adela, from Pre-Uni and such a decent, good natured girl . . . You forgotten? Well, I haven't, and whenever I remember I think I was a big arsehole because I didn't jump on a bus and go after Cristina wherever she'd holed up. At least I'd have made one a hell of a mistake for once in my life.”

“Too lucid by far,” interjected the Count. “You're worse than me.”

The Count, Skinny and Rabbit looked at Andrés as if the guy talking was somebody else: perfect, intelligent, well-balanced, successful, calm, confident Andrés, the Andrés they'd thought they'd always known and whom, clearly, they'd apparently never known at all.

“You're plastered,” said Skinny, as if trying to protect Andrés' image and even his own.

“Something's badly wrong in the kingdom of Denmark,” pronounced Rabbit downing another shot. The clattering of his glass against the table emphasized the silence that had fallen over the dining-room.

“Yes, it suits to say I'm drunk,” smiled Andrés, asking for a re-fill. “Then we can all feel at peace thinking life's not as shitty as the songs of drunks would have us to believe.”

“What songs?” piped up Skinny, trying to find a route to a more amenable conversation. Only the Count smiled, sourly.

“And today when I left Pre-Uni, I remembered Dulce. Do you remember the day she said she was off, Skinny?”

Carlos asked for more rum and looked at the Count.

“No, I don't,” he whispered. “Come on, more rum, don't be so stingy.”

“And have you never stopped to think what would have happened if Andrés hadn't done his leg in and had
married Cristina, and if you, Conde, hadn't joined the police and had become a writer, and if you, Carlos, had finished university and become a civil engineer and had never gone to Angola, and had more than likely married Dulcita? Have you never stopped to think we can't turn the clock back, that what's done is done? Have you never stopped to think it's better not to think? Have you never stopped to think that at this fucking hour of the day we'll never buy another bottle of rum and that by now Cristina's breasts must have sagged? No, it's better not to think any more crap . . . Now give me what's left in that bottle. And bugger the mother of any of you who ever thinks again.”

 

“No need to worry, they don't bite. And I don't start teaching until this afternoon,” Dagmar said as she tried to smile at him, undecided whether she was embarrassed by her dogs' welcoming barks and bared teeth or was proud to be the owner of such diligent hounds. The Count found her in her doorway, defying the wind, waiting for him like a bride scouring the horizon for the boat that will bring back her beloved. The two ugly mongrels, eager to show their rapid reactions, soon subdued their ostentatious woofs and wagged their tails as they ended their wild act. She invited him in and pointed him to a sofa where the Count sank helplessly as into a bottomless swamp. He felt tiny and inferior under
the high ceiling, even more remote now, in that airy, shadowy La Víbora house. “Yes, it's true, I got on well with Lissette the moment she started teaching at Pre-Uni and I think we were friends. At least I felt I was her friend and I was much upset by . . .”

Conde let her take a breath and was pleased he'd dispatched Manolo to talk to the forensic doctor. If the sergeant had been able to overcome his fear of dogs, he'd have launched a fresh attack right away. While he waited, Conde remembered again that it was Friday. Friday at last, he'd told himself when he opened his eyes that morning to discover miraculously that everything was in order and he didn't have a headache. Only ideas.

The moment his flabby descent seemingly came to an end and his policeman buttocks anchored to a spring that had survived the weight of a thousand bums, the Count smiled. She followed suit, as if apologizing for her welcome speech, and when she did she almost looked beautiful. Dagmar was around thirty but retained the fragility of an adolescent who has yet to blossom: big mouth and teeth as if in a growth spurt, eyebrows spreading to the bridge of her nose and a degree of imbalance between legs and arms that were over-long for her skinny thorax and tiny breasts.

“What can you tell me about Lissette's private life? Who did she use to go out with? Who was her current love?”

“You know, lieutenant, I don't know very much about any of that. I'm married and have a child and as soon as classes finish I rush back home. But she was, as you say, a modern girl, and not one with commitments like me. I did meet one boyfriend she had, Pupy, but they fell out, although he still went after her and picked her up from Pre-Uni every so often. He's a looker, for sure. I don't know what else . . . Come to think of it, she never said much about that side of her life.”

“Had she been going out with a man who was in his forties?”

Dagmar's smile faded. She stroked her forehead with her long fingers, as if trying to chase away sudden pain or squash an unexpected train of thought.

“Who told you that?”

“Caridad Delgado, Lissette's mother. She mentioned him but didn't know who he was.”

Dagmar smiled again and looked towards a distant corner of her house. In addition to physique which made Conde uncomfortable, the departmental head exuded an excessive sense of responsibility.

“No, lieutenant, I can tell you nothing about that man. She never mentioned him. I expect he was a flash in the pan.”

“Perhaps, Dagmar . . . They say she had very good relationships with her pupils.”

“That is certainly true,” the teacher answered straight
away. She seemed pleased by the turn in the conversation. “She got on very well with them all and I think they were very fond of her. The fact is she was very young.”

“Did she ever tell you why she didn't do her Social Service in the interior of the island?”

“No . . . Well, she did once say something about a stepfather, I don't know if you are aware . . .”

“I imagined that must be it. When was the last time you saw Pupy around Pre-Uni?”

“On Monday. The day before . . .”

“Is there anything else you think it's important I should know about Lissette?”

She smiled again and crossed her legs.

“I don't know, just imagine . . . Lissette was like an earthquake; she turned everything upside down. She was always doing something, was always ready to have a go. And was ambitious: everyday she'd make it plain she could be much more than a mere chemistry teacher like me. But she wasn't one to climb over everyone else. It was just she was so full of energy. I can't imagine anyone wanting to do that to her. That was horrible, really barbaric.”

A madman, a psychopath who beats his victims, then rapes and strangles them. Could Skinny be right? Or would everything be much simpler if she were an opera singer?

“Dagmar, there's something stands out in all this business and don't be afraid to answer me sincerely. I'll treat
whatever you say confidentially . . . There was a party at Lissette's the night she was killed. Music, rum, and people smoking dope,” the Count counted each element on his fingers and saw the surprise in the teacher's eyes provoked by the last item of information. “Do you have any idea if Lissette smoked? Have you heard any talk about dope at Pre-Uni?”

“Lieutenant,” she said after pausing a long time to think. She passed her magician's fingers back across her brow, never once smiling.

“No, it's not very nice, I know,” concluded the Count, “this is what you call serious.”

“I can't imagine Lissette doing anything of the sort. I refuse to believe that. People can say what they like. It's not true people always speak well of the dead . . . And forget the idea about kids smoking dope in Pre-Uni. It's quite ridiculous. Forgive my plain speaking.”

“You're forgiven,” the Count conceded, struggling to lever his behind out of the quick sands of her sofa. When he'd recovered the two-leggedness that meant so much in man's evolution, he had to re-position his pistol that threatened to slip out of his waistband. He then thought perhaps Manolo should have been there, and in his honour, declared with suitable acerbity, “I'd had great expectations of this conversation. I still think you could have been more helpful. Remember someone is dead, a friend of yours, and any scrap of information is
useful right now. Forgive my saying this, but I have a job to do: I don't really know why, but I think you're holding something back. Look, these are my contact numbers. If anything else comes to mind, ring me, Dagmar. I'd be very grateful. And don't be afraid.”

 

He had legs of stone. He'd sit on a stool in the entrance to the cockpit, and, holding the rooster in one hand, lean his legs of stone slightly backwards so the back of the stool rested against the doorpost made of
caguairán
, the hardest of Cuban woods. He then stroked the cock, fingered its neck and breast, combed its tail, cleaned the sawdust from its feet and blew on its beak, and injected his own breath. He was always poking a toothpick in his mouth and I was afraid he would swallow it one day. He had some small scissors in his shirt pocket and when he'd caressed and soothed his rooster he'd say “Come on, you beauty. Up you get, you fine fellow.” He'd take his scissors and start clipping its feathers, I don't know how he did all that with his two hands, moving the bird as if it were a toy and the cock moving with him, as the scissors trimmed and the feathers fell on his legs of stone and the cock became even more handsome, a perfect beauty, red thighs and red comb and spurs as long as needles, no, spurs of a fighting cock. By that time of day the sun was filtering through the branches of the tamarind tree and in that light Granddad
seemed speckled by the sun, himself a huge fighting bird. The rich smell from the neighbouring bakery wafted on the air in the cockpit entrance, mingled with the unmistakable odour of feathers, the vapour from the liniment for the birds' muscles, the stench of fresh chicken shit and the aroma from the wood chips covering the floor of the enclosed arena. He will kill or be killed, he'd tell me, when he let the cock go to peck in the grass, sitting me on his legs, that felt as hard as stone. The fate of the cock was an everyday issue, and I wanted to tell him to give it to me as a present, that it was such a beautiful cock, that I wanted it for myself and didn't want it to be killed, ever. “Look at it scratch; look at it strut. This is a blue-blooded bird, it's got balls, can you see them?” and I thought a cock's balls never hang down, they're inside, and they drop them for just a second, when they mount the hen, but so quickly you never see them – until I discovered my Grandfather was a poet and that the cock's balls business was a metaphor, or a chance, happy association, as Lorca would say – a man who knew nothing about fighting cocks, but all there was to know about bulls and bullfighters, but that's another story: yes, you could see it had balls. I sometimes dream about Grandfather Rufino and his roosters and it's a dream of death: all those perfect animals died in some contest, and my grandfather died from a dearth of fights and poetry, when cock-fighting
was banned and when he became so old his legs of stone went soft and he could no longer go to clandestine pits and be sure to run faster than the police. Then he aged to his bones: “Never start a fight if you're not intent on winning,” he always told me, and, when he knew all was lost, he didn't fight any more. A poet of war. I don't know why I'm thinking so much of you today. Or perhaps I do: seeing him, his legs of stone and the stool leaning against the
caguairán
doorpost, I learned, quite unawares, that he and I shared the fate of the fighting cock.