Havana Fever (2 page)

“Hello,” he greeted the person opening the door, and smiled politely, as etiquette dictated.

The woman, whom Mario Conde tried to place on a scale descending from seventy to sixty, didn’t deign to reply and eyed him severely, imagining her “visitor” was quite the opposite: a salesman. She wore a grey housecoat blotched with prehistoric grease stains and her hair was discoloured and flaked with dandruff. Furrowed by pale veins, her skin was almost transparent and her eyes seemed appallingly desolate.

“I’m sorry to bother you . . . I buy and sell second-hand books,” he went on, avoiding the word “old”, “and was wondering if you might know someone . . .”

This was the golden rule: you madam are never so down and out that you need to sell your library, or your father’s – once a doctor with a famous consultancy and a university chair – or your grandfather’s, who was perhaps even a government senator if not a veteran from the wars of independence. But you might know of someone?...

As if deadened to emotion, the woman showed no sign of surprise at the mission of the man on her doorstep. She stared at him impassively for a few lengthy, expectant moments, and Mario Conde felt himself on a knife-edge: his training told him a huge decision was being reached by the parched brain of that translucent woman, in desperate need of fats and proteins.

“Well,” she began, “the fact is I don’t . . . I mean, I don’t know if in the end . . . My brother and I
had
been thinking . . . Did Dionisio tell you to come?”

Conde glimpsed a ray of hope and tried to relate to the question, but felt he’d been left dangling in the air. Had he perhaps hit his target?

“No . . . who is Dionisio?”

“My brother,” the enfeebled woman went on. “We have a library. A very valuable one . . . Do come in . . . Sit down. Wait a moment . . .” and the Count thought he detected a determination in her voice that could see off life’s hardest knocks.

She vanished into the mansion, through a kind of portico erected on two Tuscan columns of shiny, green-striated black marble, and the Count regretted the poor state of his knowledge of the now scattered Creole aristocracy, an ignorance that meant he didn’t know, couldn’t even imagine, who’d originally owned that marmoreal edifice, and whether the present occupants were descendants or mere beneficiaries of a post-revolutionary stampede to safety. That reception room, with its damp patches, missing plaster and cracked walls, looked no better than the outside of the house, but retained an air of solemn elegance and vibrant memories of the huge wealth that had once slept between those now bereft walls. Flanked by dangerously crumbling cornices and faded coloured friezes, the high ceilings must have been the work of master craftsmen, as were the two large windows that preserved remarkably intact romantic stained-glass scenes of chivalry, no doubt designed in Europe and destined to attenuate and colour the strong light from a tropical summer. In eclectic rather than famous styles, and shabby rather than broken, the still sturdy furniture also exuded an odour of decrepitude, while the black-and-white marble tiled floors, patterned like an out-sized chessboard, gleamed cheerfully and looked freshly cleaned. On one side of the reception room, two very high doors mounted with square bevelled mirrors, set in dark wood marquetry, reflected the desolation between flowery quicksilver blotches. It was then that the Count grasped what was behind the oddness he’d experienced on entering the room: there wasn’t a single adornment or painting, a single visual prop to break the grim void on walls, tables, shelves or ceilings. He assumed that the noble bone china dinner services, repoussé silver, chandeliers, cut-glass and canvases with dark or elaborate still lives that once brought harmony to that scene, had been sent packing in advance of the books, to address food shortages – a fate that the library, already flagged as a very valuable asset, might similarly meet, if he were in luck.

The moment mentioned by the woman turned into a wait of several minutes which the Count spent smoking, knocking the ash out of the window, through which he saw the first drops of an evening shower. When his hostess returned, an older, more ancientlooking man followed in her wake, in urgent need of a shave and, like his companion, of three square meals a day.

“My brother,” she announced.

“Dionisio Ferrero,” responded the man in a voice that was younger than his body, as he held out a calloused hand with grimy fingernails.

“Mario Conde. I . . .”

“My sister has already explained,” he said in the curt tone of a man used to giving orders, rounding off his remarks with an order rather than a request: “Come this way.”

Dionisio Ferrero walked towards the doors with bevelled mirrors and the Count noted that his own appearance, framed in the reflection between the dark stains, was no better than the skeletal Ferreros’. The exhaustion in his face after successive rum-sodden, sleepless nights, and his squalid skinniness gave the impression that his clothes had outgrown his body. Dionisio pushed the doors with unexpected vigour and Conde lost sight of himself and his physiological musings at the same time as he felt a violent searing pain in his chest, because there before his eyes stood a splendid array of glass-doored, wooden bookcases, where hundreds, thousands of dark volumes rested and ascended to the lofty ceiling, the gold letters of their identities still glinting, neither subdued by the island’s insidious damp nor exhausted by the passage of time.

Paralysed by that vision, conscious of his breath’s halting rhythms, Conde wondered whether he’d have the strength, then ventured three cautious steps forward. When he crossed the threshold, he realized, in state of total shock, that the quantity of shelves packed with volumes extended down every side of the room, covering the roughly thirty-six square yards of wall. It was at that precise moment of more than justifiable emotion and awe, that the tumultuous symptoms of his hunch hit him – a feeling quite distinct from any surprise prompted by books or business, with the power to suggest that something extraordinary was lurking there clamouring for his presence.

“What do you think?”

Paralysed by the physical impact of his hunch, Conde didn’t hear Dionisio’s question.

“Well, what do you make of it?” the man persisted, standing in the Count’s field of vision.

“Simply fantastic,” he muttered finally, as his excitement led him to suspect he was most certainly in the presence of an extraordinary vein, one of those you’re always seeking and which you find once in a lifetime, if ever. Experience screamed to him that it must hold unimaginable surprises, for if only five per cent of those books turned out to have special worth, he was potentially looking at twenty or thirty bibliographical treasures, able on their own to kill – or at least fend off for a good while – the hunger now torturing the Ferreros and himself.

When he was sure he was fit to make another move, the Count went over to the shelf that was looking him in the eye and, without asking for permission, opened the glass doors. He reviewed at random some of the book spines, and spotted the ruddy leather jacket of Miró Argenter’s
Chronicles of the War in Cuba
, in the 1911
princeps
edition. After wiping the sweat from his hands, he took out the volume and found it was signed and dedicated by the warriorwriter “To my warm friend, my dear General Serafín Montes de Oca”. Next to Miró’s
Chronicles
lay the two imposing volumes of the much prized
Alphabetical Index of Demises in the Cuban Liberation Army
, by Major-General Carlos Roloff, from its rare 1901 single printing in Havana and, his hands shaking even more violently, Conde dared remove from the adjacent space the volumes of the
Notes Towards the History of Letters and Public Education on the Island of Cuba
, the classic by Antonio Bachiller y Morales, published in Havana between 1859 and 1861. Conde’s finger caressed even more lingeringly the lightweight spine of
The Coffee Plantation
, Domingo Malpica de la Barca’s novel, published by the Havana printers Los Niños Huérfanos in 1890, and the pleasantly muscular, soft leather covers of the five volumes of José Antonio Saco’s
History of Slavery
, in the 1936 edition from the Alfa printing house, until, like a man possessed, he fished out the next book. The spine was only engraved with the initials C.V., and opening it he felt his legs give way, for it really was a first edition of
The Young Woman with the Golden Arrow
, Cirilo Villaverde’s novel, in that first, mythical edition printed by the famous Oliva print shop, in 1842 . . .

Conde felt that space was like a sanctuary lost in time, and for the first time wondered whether he wasn’t committing an act of profanation. He gingerly returned each book to its respective place and inhaled the lovely scent emanating from the open bookcase. He took several deep breaths until he’d filled his lungs, and shut the doors only when he felt inebriated. He tried to hide his discomfort as he turned to the Ferreros, whose faces now burned with a flame of hope, that was determined to triumph over the only too conspicuous disasters life brings.

“Why do you want to sell these books?” he asked, against all his principles, already seeking out a path to the history of that exceptional library. Nobody consciously, so abruptly, got rid of treasure like that, (and he’d only glimpsed the first promising jewels), unless there was some other reason, apart from hunger, and the Count felt an urgent need to know what that might be.

“It’s a long story and . . .” Dionisio hesitated for the first time since he’d encountered the Count, but immediately recovered an almost martial aplomb. “We still aren’t sure we want to sell. That will depend on the offer you make. There are lots of bandits in the antiques trade as you well know . . . The other day two paid us a visit. They wanted to buy our stained-glass windows and the cheeky bastards offered three hundred dollars for each . . . They think one is either mad or starving to death . . .”

“Of course, lots of people are on the make. But I’d like to know why you’ve decided to sell the books
now
. . .”

Dionisio looked at his sister, as if he didn’t understand: how could the fellow be stupid enough to ask such a question? The Count cottoned on and, smiling, tried to refocus his curiosity for a third time.

“Why did you wait
until now
to decide to sell them?”

The transparent woman, perhaps stirred by the urgency of her hunger, was the one who rushed to reply.

“It’s Mummy. Our Mother,” she explained. “She agreed to look after these books years ago . . .”

The Count felt he was treading on typically swampy ground, but with no choice but to press on.

“And your Mother?. . .”

“She’s still alive. She’ll be ninety-one this year. And the poor thing is . . .”

Conde didn’t dare keep on: the first part of the confession was on its way and he waited in silence. The rest would come of its own accord.

“The old girl’s past it . . . she’s been a bundle of nerves for a long time. And the fact is we need some money,” spat Dionisio waving at the books. “You know what things are like these days, the pension goes nowhere . . .”

Conde nodded: yes, he did know about that. His eyes followed the man’s hand towards the shelves crammed with books and he felt the hunch that he was on the verge of something big, still there, rudely pricking him under the nipple, making his hands sweat. He wondered why it hadn’t gone away. He knew he was surrounded by valuable books, so why should the alarm-call still sound so loudly? Could it be there was a book that was
too
much to hope for? That must be it, he told himself, and if that were true it would only stop when he’d inspected every shelf from top to bottom.

“I’ve no wish to pry, but . . . But when was the last time anyone touched this library?” he asked.

“Forty . . . Forty-three years ago,” the woman answered and the Count shook his head incredulously.

“Hasn’t a single book left here in all that time?”

“Not one,” interjected Dionisio, confident he was upping the value of the library’s contents by making such a statement. “Mummy asked us to air it once a month and clean it with a feather duster, just along the tops . . .”

“Look, I’ll be frank with you,” Mario Conde decided to issue a warning, aware he was about to betray the most hallowed rules of his profession: “I have a hunch, in a manner of speaking. I’m quite sure there are books here worth lots of money, and others so valuable that they can’t or shouldn’t be sold . . . If I might explain myself: there could be books, particularly Cuban books, that shouldn’t leave Cuba and almost nobody in Cuba has the money to pay out what they’re really worth. The National Library, for a start. And what I’m telling you now goes against my own business interests, but I believe it would be a crime to sell them to a foreigner who’d only take them out of the country . . . and I say a crime because it would be more than unforgivable, it would be a felony, and that’s the least of it. If we can agree terms, we can do business with the saleable books, and if you then decide to sell the more valuable books, I’ll get out of your way and . . .”

Dionisio stared at the Count with unexpected intensity.

“What did you say your name was?. . .”

“Mario Conde.”

“Mario Conde,” he chewed on the name slowly, as if extracting from the letters an injection of dignity his blood sorely needed. “Standing where you can see us now, my sister and I have really run ourselves into the ground over this country, in a big way. I risked my life here and even in Africa. And although I’m starving to death I won’t do anything like that . . . Not for a thousand or ten thousand pesos,” and he turned to look at his sister, as if seeking out a last refuge for his pride. “Will we, Amalia?”

“Of course we won’t, Dionisio,” she assured him.

“I’m glad that we understand each other,” nodded the Count, moved by the naivety of the heroic Dionisio, who thought in pesos, whilst he calculated similar figures, but in dollars. “Let’s do it this way. I’ll choose twenty to thirty books that will sell well, although they’re not particularly valuable. I’ll separate them out now and come for them tomorrow with the money. After that I’d like to check the whole library, so I can tell you what I’d be interested in taking, what books would interest no buyer, and which books can’t, or rather shouldn’t, be sold, right? But first I’d like to hear the whole story, if you don’t mind, that is . . . I’m sorry to insist, but a library that has books like those I’ve just fished out and that’s been untouched for forty-three years . . .”