Our Man In Havana (16 page)

‘Dr Cifuentes?’

‘You know – the engineer.’

‘They shot at him?’

‘I told you it was a mistake.’

‘Let’s sit down,’ Beatrice said. She spoke for both of them.

He said, ‘The dining-room …’

‘I don’t want a hard chair. I want something soft. I may want to cry.’

‘Well, if you don’t mind the bedroom,’ he said doubtfully, looking at Milly.

‘Did you know Dr Cifuentes?’ Milly asked Beatrice sympathetically.

‘No. I only know he has a ponch.’

‘What’s a ponch?’

‘Your father said it was a dialect word for a squint.’

‘He told you that? Poor Father,’ Milly said. ‘You
are
in deep waters.’

‘Look, Milly, will you please go to bed? Beatrice and I have work to do.’

‘Work?’

‘Yes, work.’

‘It’s awfully late for work.’

‘He’s paying me overtime,’ Beatrice said.

‘Are you learning all about vacuum cleaners?’ Milly asked. ‘That thing you are holding is a sprayer.’

‘Is it? I just picked it up in case I had to hit someone.’

‘It’s not well suited for that,’ Milly said. ‘It has a telescopic tube.’

‘What if it has?’

‘It might telescope at the wrong moment.’

‘Milly, please …’ Wormold said. ‘It’s nearly two.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m off. And I shall pray for Dr Cifuentes. It’s no joke to be shot at. The bullet went right through a brick wall. Think of what it could have done to Dr Cifuentes.’

‘Pray for someone called Raul too,’ Beatrice said. ‘They got
him
.’

Wormold lay down flat on the bed and shut his eyes. ‘I don’t understand a thing,’ he said. ‘Not a thing. It’s a coincidence. It must be.’

‘They’re getting rough – whoever they are.’

‘But why?’

‘Spying is a dangerous profession.’

‘But Cifuentes hadn’t really … I mean he wasn’t important.’

‘Those constructions in Oriente are important. Your agents seem to have a habit of getting blown. I wonder how. I think you’ll have to warn Professor Sanchez and the girl.’

‘The girl?’

‘The nude dancer.’

‘But how?’ He couldn’t explain to her he had no agents, that he had never met Cifuentes or Dr Sanchez, that neither Teresa nor Raul even existed: Raul had come alive only in order to be killed.

‘What did Milly call this?’

‘A sprayer.’

‘I’ve seen something like it before somewhere.’

‘I expect you have. Most vacuum cleaners have them.’ He took it away from her. He couldn’t remember whether he had included it in the drawings he had sent to Hawthorne.

‘What do I do now, Beatrice?’

‘I think your people should go into hiding for a while. Not here, of course. It would be too crowded and anyway not safe. What about that Chief Engineer of yours – could he smuggle them on board?’

‘He’s away at sea on the way to Cienfuegos.’

‘Anyway he’s probably blown too,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder why they’ve let you and me get back here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They could easily have shot us down on the front. Or perhaps they’re using us for bait. Of course you throw away the bait if it’s no good.’

‘What a macabre woman you are.’

‘Oh no. We’re back into the
Boy’s Own Paper
world, that’s all. You can count yourself lucky.’

‘Why?’

‘It might have been the
Sunday Mirror
. The world is modelled after the popular magazines nowadays. My husband came out of
Encounter
. The question we have to consider is to which paper
they
belong.’

‘They?’

‘Let’s assume they belong to the
Boy’s Own Paper
too. Are they Russian agents, German agents, American, what? Cuban very likely. Those concrete platforms must be official, mustn’t they? Poor Raul. I hope he died quickly.’

He was tempted to tell her everything, but what was ‘everything’? He no longer knew. Raul had been killed. Hasselbacher said so.

‘First the Shanghai Theatre,’ she said. ‘Will it be open?’

‘The second performance won’t be over.’

‘If the police are not there before us. Of course they didn’t use the police against Cifuentes. He was probably too important. In murdering anyone you have to avoid scandal.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it in that light before.’

Beatrice turned out the bedside light and went to the window. She said, ‘Don’t you have a back door?’

‘No.’

‘We’ll have to change all that,’ she said airily, as though she were an architect too. ‘Do you know a nigger with a limp?’

‘That will be Joe.’

‘He’s going slowly by.’

‘He sells dirty postcards. He’s going home, that’s all.’

‘He couldn’t be expected to follow you with that limp, of course. He may be their tictac man. Anyway we’ll have to risk it. They are obviously making a sweep tonight. Women and children first. The professor can wait.’

‘But I’ve never seen Teresa at the theatre. She probably has a different name there.’

‘You can pick her out, can’t you, even without her clothes? Though I suppose we do look a bit the same naked, like the Japanese.’

‘I don’t think you ought to come.’

‘I must. If one is stopped the other can make a dash for it.’

‘I meant to the Shanghai. It’s not exactly
Boy’s Own Paper
.’

‘Nor is marriage,’ she said, ‘even in
UNESCO.
’

2

The Shanghai was in a narrow street off Zanja surrounded by deep bars. A board advertised
Posiciones
, and the tickets for some reason were sold on the pavement outside, perhaps because there was no room for a box-office, as the foyer was occupied by a pornographic bookshop for the benefit of those who wanted entertainment during the
entr’acte
. The black pimps in the street watched them with curiosity. They were not used to European women here.

‘It feels far from home,’ Beatrice said.

The seats all cost one peso twenty-five and there were very few empty ones left in the large hall. The man who showed them the way offered Wormold a packet of pornographic postcards for a peso. When Wormold refused them, he drew a second selection from his pocket.

‘Buy them if you want to,’ Beatrice said. ‘If it embarrasses you I’ll keep my eye on the show.’

‘There’s not much difference,’ Wormold said, ‘between the show and the postcards.’

The attendant asked if the lady would like a marijuana cigarette.

‘
Nein, danke
,’ Beatrice said, getting her languages confused.

On either side of the stage, posters advertised clubs in the neighbourhood where the girls were said to be beautiful. A notice in Spanish and bad English forbade the audience to molest the dancers.

‘Which is Teresa?’ Beatrice asked.

‘I think it must be the fat one in the mask,’ Wormold said at random.

She was just leaving the stage with a heave of her great naked buttocks, and the audience clapped and whistled. Then the lights went down and a screen was lowered. A film began, quite mildly at first. It showed a bicyclist, some woodland scenery, a punctured tyre, a chance encounter, a gentleman raising a straw hat; there was a great deal of flicker and fog.

Beatrice sat silent. There was an odd intimacy between them as they watched together this blueprint of love. Similar movements of the body had once meant more to them than anything else the world had to offer. The act of lust and the act of love are the same; it cannot be falsified like a sentiment.

The lights went on. They sat in silence. ‘My lips are dry,’ Wormold said.

‘I haven’t any spit left. Can’t we go behind and see Teresa now?’

‘There’s another film after this and then the dancers come on again.’

‘I’m not tough enough for another film,’ Beatrice said.

‘They won’t let us go behind until the show’s over.’

‘We can wait in the street, can’t we? At least we’ll know then if we’ve been followed.’

They left as the second film started. They were the only ones to rise, so if somebody had tailed them he must be waiting for them in the street, but there was no obvious candidate among the taxi-drivers and the pimps. One man slept against the lamp-post with a lottery-number slung askew round his neck. Wormold remembered the night with Dr Hasselbacher. That was when he had learnt the new use for Lamb’s
Tales from Shakespeare
. Poor Hasselbacher had been very drunk. Wormold remembered how he had sat slumped in the lounge when he came down from Hawthorne’s room. He said to Beatrice, ‘How easy is it to break a book-code if once you’ve got the right book?’

‘Not hard for an expert,’ she said, ‘only a question of patience.’ She went across to the lottery-seller and straightened the number. The man didn’t wake. She said, ‘It was difficult to read it sideways.’

Had he carried Lamb under his arm, in his pocket, or in his brief-case?
Had
he laid the book down when he helped Dr Hasselbacher to rise? He could remember nothing, and such suspicions were ungenerous.

‘I thought of a funny coincidence,’ Beatrice said. ‘Dr Hasselbacher reads Lamb’s
Tales
in the right edition.’ It was as though her basic training had included telepathy.

‘You saw it in his flat?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he would have hidden it,’ he protested, ‘if it meant anything at all.’

‘Or he wanted to warn you. Remember, he brought us back there. He told us about Raul.’

‘He couldn’t have known that he would meet us.’

‘How do you know?’

He wanted to protest that nothing made sense, that Raul didn’t exist, and Teresa didn’t exist, and then he thought of how she would pack up and go away and it would all be like a story without a purpose.

‘People are coming out,’ Beatrice said.

They found a side-door that led to the one big dressing-room. The passage was lit by a bare globe that had burned far too many days and nights. The passage was nearly blocked by dustbins and a negro with a broom was sweeping up scraps of cotton-wool stained with face powder, lipstick and ambiguous things; the place smelled of pear-drops. Perhaps after all there would be no one here called Teresa, but he wished that he had not chosen so popular a saint. He pushed a door open and it was like a medieval inferno full of smoke and naked women.

He said to Beatrice, ‘Don’t you think you’d better go home?’

‘It’s you who need protection here,’ she said.

Nobody even noticed them. The mask of the fat woman dangled from one ear and she was drinking a glass of wine with one leg up on a chair. A very thin girl with ribs like piano-keys was pulling on her stockings. Breasts swayed, buttocks bent, cigarettes half finished fumed in saucers; the air was thick with burning
paper.
A man stood on a stepladder with a screwdriver fixing something.

‘Where is she?’ Beatrice asked.

‘I don’t think she’s here. Perhaps she’s sick, or with her lover.’

The air flapped warmly round them as someone put on a dress. Little grains of powder settled like ash.

‘Try calling her name.’

He shouted ‘Teresa’ half-heartedly. Nobody paid any attention. He tried again and the man with the screwdriver looked down at him.

‘
Paso algo?
’ he asked.

Wormold said in Spanish that he was looking for a girl called Teresa. The man suggested that Maria would do just as well. He pointed his screwdriver at the fat woman.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He doesn’t seem to know Teresa.’

The man with the screwdriver sat down on top of the ladder and began to make a speech. He said that Maria was the best woman you could find in Havana. She weighed one hundred kilos with nothing on.

‘Obviously Teresa is not here,’ Wormold explained with relief.

‘Teresa. Teresa. What do you want with Teresa?’

‘Yes. What do you want with me?’ the thin girl demanded, coming forward holding out one stocking. Her little breasts were the size of pears.

‘Who are you?’

‘
Soy
Teresa.’

Beatrice said, ‘Is that Teresa? You said she was fat – like that one with the mask.’

‘No, no,’ Wormold said. ‘That’s not Teresa. She’s Teresa’s sister.
Soy
means sister.’ He said, ‘I’ll send a message by her.’

He took the thin girl’s arm and moved her a little away. He tried to explain to her in Spanish that she had to be careful.

‘Who are you? I don’t understand.’

‘There has been a mistake. It is too long a story. There are people
who
may try to do you an injury. Please stay at home for a few days. Don’t come to the theatre.’

‘I have to. I meet my clients here.’

Wormold took out a wad of money. He said, ‘Have you relations?’

‘I have my mother.’

‘Go to her.’

‘But she is in Cienfuegos.’

‘There is plenty of money there to take you to Cienfuegos.’ Everybody was listening now. They pressed close around. The man with the screwdriver had come down from the ladder. Wormold saw Beatrice outside the circle; she was pushing closer, trying to make out what he was saying.

The man with the screwdriver said, ‘That girl belongs to Pedro. You can’t take her away like that. You must talk to Pedro first.’

‘I do not want to go to Cienfuegos,’ the girl said.

‘You will be safe there.’

She appealed to the man. ‘He frightens me. I cannot understand what he wants.’ She exhibited the pesos. ‘This is too much money.’ She appealed to them. ‘I am a good girl.’

‘A lot of wheat does not make a bad year,’ the fat woman said with solemnity.

‘Where is your Pedro?’ the man asked.

‘He is ill. Why does the man give me all this money? I am a good girl. You know that my price is fifteen pesos. I am not a hustler.’

‘A lean dog is full of fleas,’ said the fat woman. She seemed to have a proverb for every occasion.

‘What’s happening?’ Beatrice asked.

A voice hissed, ‘Psst, psst!’ It was the negro who had been sweeping the passage. He said, ‘
Policia!
’

‘Oh hell,’ Wormold said, ‘that tears it. I’ve got to get you out of here.’ No one seemed unduly disturbed. The fat woman drained her wine and put on a pair of knickers; the girl who was called Teresa pulled on her second stocking.