Authors: Leonardo Padura
Lying on the grass, wracked by the pain issuing from his battered anatomy, Mario Conde realized he couldn’t pinpoint how long he’d needed before finally daring to open his eyes, because in spite of his wishes, only one eye raised its lid, the bare minimum necessary to see that night had fallen and he was alone. He closed his working eye and felt the other, only to find a moist, latent swelling extending from his eyebrow to his cheek. Had they knocked an eye out? he wondered, momentarily forgetting his conversation with the Enlightened One, because thirst and pain were pummelling him, and he felt a desperate desire to cry from his surviving eye. He fought off the pains shooting up his back, knee, stomach, face, the nape of his neck and, especially, from inside his head, pulled himself up and, hands against the ground, rode out a dizzy spell that was regrettably non-alcoholic. From the heart of darkness he saw he was on empty wasteland and a few minutes later glimpsed, 200 metres away, a poorly lit street along which the odd car sped. He wondered if it would be best to crawl to the street, but was afraid he might cut his hands on the broken glass that was no doubt scattered among the grass. He summoned all his energy, pulled himself up on his knees and, holding his battered head, made the supreme effort necessary to totter to his feet as if in one of his most drunken moments. He then realized that he was barefoot and, when he touched his chest, that he was bare-chested too. And what about that eye? Had they really knocked it out?
Twelve falls later, burnt by the thirst searing his throat, with a new sharp pain in the sole of his left foot, the remnants of Mario Conde finally made it to the road, and he saw he was near the silent, rusting power station that cast its gloomy, geometrical shadows over the wasteland. He thought his best option would be to cross the street to the service station and try to locate Yoyi or Manolo from there, but doubted he had the strength to make it that far. Before attempting such a risky crossing he’d have to recoup energy; he flopped to his knees in the grass, and was unable to stop his body from collapsing in the direction of the pavement. He probably lost consciousness as he fell because he felt no pain when his face hit the concrete.
The hand swabbing his sore eyebrow and cheek brought him back into the land of the suffering. The stabbing pains were so severe that the Count struck out.
“Hey, easy does it, Bobby,” said a voice. “They gave you enough to eat and take away . . . Let me clean you up a bit, then they’ll X-ray you up to your ears.”
Conde realized the voice wasn’t his enlightened friend’s and, imagining he must be in a place as mundane and nasty as a hospital he asked: “Did they knock one of my eyes out?”
“No, it’s still there but in a mess.”
“Who are you?”
“A nurse. The doctor gave you a painkiller and we’re going to stitch you up now.”
“With a needle?” asked the Count, appalled.
“Yes, of course, though you’ve got so many holes we could use a sewing machine . . . Up you get . . . now faint again, I’ll start on the eyebrow . . .”
“Wait a minute . . . Let me weep a few tears first . . .”
“All right, but make it quick.”
“Hey, by the way, you ever seen a big guy around here in an orange tunic?”
“Yes, he was round and about, but went off to the carnival. Come on, faint, then I can get on with it.”
Five minutes or hours later the Count moved his eyelids and suspected he really was dead – definitively, unequivocally dead, as if someone had ignored all his sins and he was ascending to heaven, where an angelical voice said: “It’s him, it’s him.”
When he opened his working eye, he could see, from his supine position, Tamara, Candito, Rabbit and Yoyi’s faces: his blurred brain worked out that the voice he’d heard belonged to none of those archangels. He dropped his head to one side and found himself level with the face of Skinny Carlos, leaning forward in his wheel chair.
“Hey, brother, you got one hell of a pasting.”
“You’re kidding, Skinny, they didn’t even take an eye out.”
Mario Conde refused to report the incident. He thought it would be absurd, a sign of softness in the head, to start telling a policeman that some bad guys had kicked him to pulp because he’d poked his nose somewhere he wasn’t invited. Besides, who could he blame for his drubbing apart from himself, his own naivety and stupidity? The unlikely names of Veneno and Michael Jordan were the ones that came to mind as possibly being behind the attack, but lack of proof and his conviction that both would have set up good alibis were grounds enough to see that making a statement would be futile. To cap it all, in the depths of his battered self he felt grateful: they were only telling him he was unwelcome in the barrio and bidding him farewell in their time-honoured manner.
The doctor insisted on keeping him under observation in hospital for a day, but when he discovered nothing was broken, that he’d only severe bruising, soreness and a couple of wounds they’d already stitched on his left eyebrow and behind his right ear, Conde asked to leave and swore an oath – which he conveniently faked by raising his fingers – that he’d inject himself with the prescribed antibiotics. Taking full advantage of his situation, he pretended to turn down Tamara’s suggestion that she could put him up for a few days: why should she bother, he said, if it’s nothing serious, but yielded tamely the first time she insisted.
When he finally saw himself in the mirror, Conde confronted a budding monster he only vaguely recognized. Although the swellings on his eyebrow and cheek had gone down thanks to an intake of anti-inflammatory pills and bags of ice, and he could half-open the eyelid, his eyeball was completely bloodshot and its vision mediated by an opaque film bent on changing his view of the world by painting it pink.
After he’d swallowed a couple of pills, suffered a sharp jab in the buttock and begun to reconcile himself with the world after drinking fresh coffee made by Tamara, Conde slipped into a warm bath and soaked there until it went cold. The peace and elegance, the feeling he was safe and the centre of attention of the woman he’d loved the most and longest, restored his sense of well-being, and he wondered if the whole of his life shouldn’t be like that. However, some difficulty was always lurking ready to divert him from the peace he so desired, as if he were fated to hover between the edge and centre of a whirlpool of doubt.
Keen to make the most of a bad situation, his friends converted his convalescence into a party, rolling up at Tamara’s at ten a.m. Candito and Rabbit had taken turns to push Skinny’s wheelchair fifteen blocks, and when Yoyi arrived he lambasted them for not giving him a call: he’d have driven them all the way in his Chevrolet, listening to his birthday gift from the Count, that selection of hits by Credence Clearwater Revival.
Sheltering under the foliage of the flowering ceiba that dominated Tamara’s patio, they drank cold lemonade out of militant solidarity with their battered friend, Conde, who reeled off possible reasons why he’d been chased so forcefully out of the old barrio of Atarés. Skirting round his flirtation with drugs and his encounter with the pale J.D., he announced he was going back the following day to find the elusive woman whose address he’d finally tracked down.
“You think they beat you up to stop you talking to her?” asked Candito, who, after more than ten years of Christian clean living, still maintained his streetwise knowledge from his time as an urban warrior in the most diverse fields of battle.
“No, I don’t,” the Count replied thoughtfully. “They can’t know the African left me that lead. They drove me out so I wouldn’t fuck up their trade. They’re cooking up big deals with guys from abroad who move lots of cash and I bet they thought I was police.”
“You reckon they’d dare take on the police?” wondered Carlos.
“Down there, man,” interjected Yoyi, waving a finger at hidden depths under the soil, “they don’t believe in anything or anybody. And the guys not from the barrio work like the mafia. But they didn’t do you over for being police, that’s too dangerous. It was because you were being a nosey parker.”
“My problem is I need to talk to that woman soon. The world is the way it is, independent of any specific thought you might formulate about it. What that woman says will decide if I’m on the wrong path or not. I’ve meditated long and hard and I think enlightenment may be just around the corner.”
“You got a temperature?’ asked Carlos, alarmed by Conde’s florid language.
“Why the hell should she tell you something she probably doesn’t want to tell anyone?” Rabbit’s merciless logic brought the Count’s desires back to the real world.
“Because if what I think is true,” the Count went on, “Lotus Flower has lived in fear for the last forty years. And that’s too long, right?”
“True enough. But she even changed her name . . .” Rabbit continued to doubt.
“And when do you say you’re going?” Skinny Carlos sat back in his chair.
“Tomorrow,” asserted the Count, his vehement tone sparking off pain and bewilderment.
“I’ll go with you,” said Candito, “and don’t argue.”
“What the hell, so will I,” joined in Rabbit.
“How many pistols should I hire out?” asked Yoyi, enthused. “The rate’s dropped recently . . .”
“No, we’ve got to go clean,” rasped the Count,
“A couple of truncheons might come in handy,” concluded Candito, before adding: “May Jesus My Lord and Saviour forgive me.”
They left the Bel Air Chevrolet under the watchful eye of a vigilante on an hourly rate, opposite Fraternity Park, and, still limping, with one very sore eye and a bruised eyebrow covered in sticking plaster, the Count led his troops towards the Calzada de Monte and the barrio of Atarés. Candito and Pigeon, in loose fitting shirts, hid steel bars in their waistbands, which they’d use in self-defence if necessary, while Rabbit, in trembling tones, insisted on recounting the history of that eternally marginal barrio famous for its rabid inhabitants, and where it was always perilous to put a foot wrong.
When they were on the doorstep of 58, Factoría, Conde asked his friends to wait on the pavement and keep out of trouble. He apologized for the sewage flowing down the street opposite which infected the air with its stench. He overcame his lameness and walked through the door to an inner patio which opened out like a small square, where two women were trying to wash clothes white in concrete washtubs. Conde looked around for signs of danger, but imagined that at this time of the morning a necessary truce must rule after a night of non-stop hustle and bustle. Forcing a smile, he advanced on the washtubs where the women stopped wringing and turned to challenge the intruder. The Count thought his appearance could arouse curiosity rather than seem threatening. He broadened his smile as he greeted them, and asked which was the room where an elderly lady called Carmen lived. The women glanced instinctively at each other.
“No Carmen lives here,” replied the bigger of the two, a black woman with arms like soft hams.
“Yes, a Carmen does live here,” the Count insisted as a light flashed in his brain. “My friend Veneno gave me her address.”
The women exchanged more glances, but said nothing, and the Count added: “I’m not a policeman, I just want to speak to her about a relative of mine we lost track of a long time ago.”
“It’s right at the back, at the end,” said the stouter black woman, making it obvious how much she disliked giving information to a stranger.
Conde waved gratefully at them and headed to the back of the ruin, dodging wooden supports that, miraculously rather than from any feat of engineering, propped up the second-floor passageway, and poked his head round the open door of the last room. The room was four by six yards, littered with grimy, battered objects, the most noteworthy being a small, narrow bed, a flaking fridge from the fifties that coughed asthmatically, and an altar covered in various plaster images, as well as a wooden chair where, a thin, elderly, balding woman was dozing. Her skin was all cracked.
He tapped softly on the door and the elderly woman opened her eyes and looked up. She didn’t move.
“Carmen?” he asked, bending in her direction, but not going through the door.
“Who are you?” The question surprised Conde who didn’t have a good reply ready: a second-hand bookseller who’d found a photo and listened to a record?...
“It’s quite a long story. Can I come in?”
The elderly woman looked him up and down and nodded him in. When he was inside, she pointed her chin to a small wooden bench. Conde saw that Carmen was sparing in her movements and the awkward way she was holding her left arm against her chest suggested she’d suffered some kind of paralysis. It pained him to see how life and time combined so cruelly to ravage a human being. Had that eyesore once been a beautiful, thrusting, depraved and hot-blooded woman,
the
sexy number in Havana because of rumbas she danced naked on stage. Or might it just be, he wondered, all a tremble, a false trail dreamt up by the African or one of his mates, to send him after an old woman who really was called Carmen, and had nothing to do with Elsa Contreras, alias Lotus Flower?
Conde sat on the bench and leant towards her.
“I apologize, I’ve probably got it all wrong . . . The person I’m hunting for was called Elsa Contreras . . . lots of people knew her as Lotus Flower.”
“Why are you after her?”
Conde jumped in at the deep end.
“I was told she was the best friend of a singer. Violeta del Río.”
“And who might you be?” the elderly woman asked again, not changing her expression, and the Count realized he’d no choice but to tell the truth.
As he’d run through who he was and why he was looking for Elsa Contreras, the Count began to see how ridiculous his story was: he was trying to erect an impossible structure without foundations or supports, that would collapse under its own weight. Even so, apart from Dionisio Ferrero’s murder, he told all, including his father’s silent infatuation, still not knowing if that elderly lady was the person he was after and without the slightest hope that, if she were Elsa Contreras, he had aroused her interest and could perhaps extract the missing links from her memory to bring together the disconnected parts of that incredible story that was lost in the past. The Count saw a first flicker of light when he related the beating he’d received and glimpsed a sign of life: the woman’s cracked lips puckered into a smile.