The Neruda Case (19 page)

“But not many of them have lived in Mexico,” Cayetano pointed out.

Miguel drained his glass. “They have to be shitheads, in any case, to have come back.”

“The Cuban man was the doctor, not his wife,” Cayetano clarified. “He was a specialist in jungle plants.”

“So what are we talking about here, gentlemen? A physician or a witch doctor?” asked Miguel, who was always interested in the ethnological side of things, so he could gather material for his books.

“Beatriz arrived in Havana in 1960,” Cayetano said, after gulping down another slice of sausage. Beyond the balustrade, the treetops formed a dense green ocean that covered the street below.

“I know what to do,” Sammy insisted. He had large, deep ears. He had just married a twenty-year-old Havanan who dreamed of escaping the island under the protection of her husband’s Jamaican passport. “If you need to find out something about a foreigner and you can’t turn to State Security or embassies or
diplotiendas
, the most practical solution is the nightclubs. The dancers and musicians know all the foreigners, especially the men.”

“Now we’re really putting the cart before the horse!” Pablo Armando said, with elegant diction, as he ate and drank pensively, reluctant to trust a Cuban who could be an agent of the CIA or of the Cuban secret service.

“As if we didn’t have enough to deal with, with the horse we already have …” Heberto let out a puff of smoke out the window that dissipated over the dense green ocean.

“Don’t joke around. This is exactly why what happened to you happened,” warned Pablo Armando. His hair was unkempt, and he clung to a dog-eared copy of Bulgakov’s
The Master and Margarita
that someone had just lent him.

The group continued with its discussion of how to find the Mexican woman. Cayetano went to the phone and called the number Ángela had given him in case of emergency. A man’s voice answered in a mysterious tone, and took his number down to call back at a later time. He hung up, despondent. That he and Ángela now needed an intermediary in order to see each other only underlined that their
separation was complete. For a long time he didn’t listen to the group’s digressions, nor did he feel the humid, suffocating heat that hung in the room, redolent of rum.

All of a sudden the front door of the apartment opened, breaking his reverie. It was Belkis, Heberto’s wife, a poet and painter who worked at the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, also known as UNEAC. She stood, astonished at the fauna congregated in her home. She hated it when Heberto drank, as she feared that the regime would use the smallest misstep as a reason to do away with him in a car accident, now that he enjoyed vast international support. Miguel stood and crossed the living room, weaving past the other men’s legs, to kiss Belkis on the cheeks.

“You look better than ever, my dear girl!” he said with a slanted smile, which revealed his small teeth. “Your most recent pieces in
La Gaceta de Cuba
are essential to any anthology of our poetry. Allow me to introduce you to the best-looking bus driver in the Caribbean …”

Jerónimo shook the artist’s hand without a word, as if his body—equal parts Charles Atlas and Cassius Clay, and sporting an African lion’s tooth on a gold chain, silver bangles, and a sleeveless shirt—were enough of a greeting. Belkis excused herself and went straight to the bedroom.

“I think it’s time for us to go,” said Pablo Armando, rising warily to his feet. He smoothed his hair and put the book he’d borrowed in the pocket of his guayabera.

“And for me to go back to Bruno,” added Heberto, who was in the midst of translating
Naked Among Wolves
, by Bruno Apitz. He knew that, once again, under the instructions of the Commander himself, his name would not be credited in the publication.

The visitors rushed to drain their glasses and wolf down the last slices of chorizo.

“The Commander has arrived and sent us packing,” Sammy
said, with a mischievous smile, gathering the glasses and plates scattered on the table and floor.

“Let’s go, then,” Cayetano said. He headed toward the door, made dizzy by all the glasses of rum he’d drunk that evening.

“And don’t worry,” Heberto said to him. “I’ll see to a meeting with the Dominican’s widow. She’s well connected around here, and can help us find the woman you’re looking for. I’ll call you at Hotel El Presidente as soon as I have news.”

25

T
he colonel’s widow was an impressive Mediterranean beauty, with long jet-black hair, pale skin, full lips, and dark eyes that sparked like lightning. When she received them at her mansion in El Laguito, she was wearing a black dress and a discreet gem necklace at her throat. Heberto, Sammy, and Cayetano crossed the marble floor and entered a bright, ample room with leather armchairs and mahogany furniture, where they all sat down. Beyond the picture window, a large green lawn surrounded a tiled pool, complete with diving board.

“You look wonderful, Heberto!” the woman exclaimed as they stirred their coffee. Cayetano felt transported to a distant country where Havana’s poverty and shortages did not exist. “Any news?”

“None. They’re still processing my travel visa.”

“What a shame, young man. I’m very sorry.”

Cayetano touched the upper pocket of his guayabera, relieved his passport was still there. He imagined that Sammy Byre, sitting beside him, must be feeling the same thing.

“About the Mexican lady your friend is looking for, I don’t
know anything,” the widow added, glancing at Cayetano. “Let me tell you, we know a lot of people in Havana, but no one recalls a Beatriz Bracamonte. I wouldn’t lose hope, though, because many foreigners change their name around here, for security reasons.”

When Heberto, Sammy, and Cayetano walked back out to the avenue lined with palms and the flamboyant trees with their red flowers, they were crushed by a sun that beamed onto the city with full force. They were crestfallen. Not for a moment had they expected to meet with such indifference. The widow probably didn’t want to get involved in a search spearheaded by a Cuban who lived abroad, or so it seemed to Heberto. They walked in silence, sweating buckets, hoping for a taxi to pass. After a while, they managed to flag down a Russian truck that was transporting bricks for the renovation of a home in Miramar, the residence of a party leader. Cayetano offered the driver five dollars in exchange for a ride. They had to travel in the back of the Zil, where the sun burned brutally, and they got off at Coney Island to catch a bus to El Vedado.

As they waited under the shade of some flamboyant trees, Sammy said to Cayetano, “Look, I don’t like to get involved with what doesn’t concern me. Right now I should be waiting in line at the butcher shop, since today’s chicken day. But I’m telling you that you’re never going to find anyone this way. People change their names around here, as the widow said. And many people prefer not to get involved with foreigners. At this point, you’re a foreigner on your own island.”

“So what do you propose?” Cayetano wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, distressed that this Jamaican would consider him a foreigner in his own country.

“What I said the other day.”

“Forgive me, but it’s hot as shit and I’ve even forgotten my own name.”

“The nightclubs. They know more there about foreigners than the secret service. There’s not a single foreigner here that doesn’t party. That’s how it was before the Revolution, that’s how it is under it, and that’s how it’ll be until Judgment Day. This will always be the island of parties long into the night. The rest is just poetry, with no offense to Heberto.”

“I think your tactic would work for a man, Sammy. But we’re looking for a woman.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’d just have to go to La Zorra and Cuervo, to La Rampa, or to El Gato Tuerto or Manila. Or maybe to the clubs at certain hotels, like the Riviera, the Havana Libre, or the Capri. But I would start at the Tropicana.”

“The Tropicana? Why?”

“Because if memory serves,” Sammy Byre explained, gesturing with hands as long and thin as claws, “Heberto’s wife mentioned some time ago that the state security representative at the National Union of Writers and Artists has a single weakness: his passion for the Tropicana.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Heberto said testily, adjusting his glasses.

“If we can get a couple of tickets to Tropicana for that gentleman, then maybe he could tell us about the Mexican woman.”

“Not a bad idea,” Heberto muttered, gazing at the cluster of people sweltering at the bus stop. A few sat waiting at the side of the road, others on fallen tree trunks, and one young man in a high school uniform had climbed into a tree, like a monkey. “But how do you plan to get there and ask about Beatriz without raising suspicion? Cayetano officially came to the island to extend an invitation to Cuban poets, not to look for a Mexican woman.”

“The devil knows more because he’s old than because he’s the devil,” Sammy said, and at that moment a Leyland crammed with
passengers passed the waiting cluster and stopped two hundred meters down the street.

A raucous mob rushed toward the bus, hurling insults at the driver and his mother. Elders, pregnant women, and children fell by the wayside, as well as a man whose large girth was inexplicable in a nation where food was so scarce, assisted (the man, not the nation) by an elegant old-fashioned lady carrying a purse and fan. The only people to reach the bus were two tall, strong guys who looked like athletes, a few high school students, and Heberto, Sammy, and finally Cayetano, panting heavily. The Leyland spit out pestilent black smoke through its exhaust pipe and began to move, tilted by the weight of its passengers. Cayetano saw, to his surprise, that the driver was none other than Miguel’s friend, the ethnographic novelist, Jerónimo. He presided over an enormous black steering wheel and a rearview mirror decorated with Che and Fidel stickers and necklaces of plastic red beads.

“We’re not playing around here, gentlemen,” Jerónimo said, and sped up on Quinta Avenue as though he were in the Indy 500. The bus roared forward, bucked with each change in speed, and jostled the passengers as it overtook other vehicles. This was more than a bus: it was a cocktail shaker, Cayetano thought, thirsty, squeezed between students. The inside of the bus smelled of burned tires and armpits rubbed with Russian talcum powder. Jerónimo shifted gears with an offhand sadism, enjoying the cruel lurch of passengers through the rearview mirror. He leaned to one side as he drove, with his legs wide open, as though his balls could barely fit between them. Along the way, people announced their stops by shouting and slamming the tin roof. After passing through Quinta Tunnel, the bus left the trio near the Riviera, which gleamed like a golden lion’s tooth beside the sun-drenched Malecón. At the hotel’s marquee, they approached an Anchares whose bumper was tied on with rope.

“So who can help us at the Tropicana?” Cayetano asked as the car started moving with a melancholy creaking of gears.

“A young, talented clarinetist who was recently blacklisted as a
gusano
. Give me a few days to find him,” Sammy Byre said, and then he took delight in the saline air that slipped in through the Chrysler’s windows, which had no glass.

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