Authors: Leonardo Padura
When he entered her bathroom, after discarding the idea of masturbation which had been his goal, Conde stood in front of the mirror and told himself he was fed up of looking like a badly packaged mummy; he ripped the bandages from his eyebrow and the back of his ear. The sight of the three stitches on his bruised skin produced a slight queasiness and he looked away, horrified by his own scars.
After a coffee and his first cigarette of the day, he ran over a possible agenda: he decided he’d try to talk to Amalia Ferrero, now that Dionisio’s funeral rites had been performed, and concluded he should go back to Elsa Contreras, the once famous Lotus Flower, now sheltering behind the name and terrifyingly real skin of the ravaged Carmen Argüelles.
Tamara took him by surprise as he was lighting his second cigarette, after a second cup of coffee.
“How do you feel?” she asked, lifting his chin to get a better view of the state of his injuries.
“Like shit, but ready for battle,” he said. “The coffee’s still hot.”
She went to get the coffeepot and Conde, still with the morning hunger provoked by his musings, watched her well-endowed buttocks move under the flimsiest of nightdresses. Unable to hold back, he jettisoned his cigarette, went in hot pursuit, kissed her neck, and put his hands on her buttocks that he opened like the pages of a beautiful book.
“So you woke up with love on your mind?” she smiled.
“Seeing you makes me feel like love,” he replied, rocking her gently against the small table.
“Can I drink my coffee?” she asked.
“Only if I can do other things afterwards . . .”
“You’re ill.”
“It’s not catching. And we’ve been sleeping together for three days like brother and sister. I can’t stand it any more. It’s your fault I was about to jerk off and break my fast . . .”
“Mario, I’ve got to go to work.”
“I’ll give you a day’s pay.”
“Like a whore!”
Conde’s memory flashed back. He glimpsed the mercenary mulatta’s lascivious tongue, her pert nipples, and even heard her would-be temptress’s voice. He felt his parts rapidly recede, like a timorous animal running into a cave.
“All right, off you go to work,” he replied, picking up his cigarette that was still smoking and almost smoked out.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, alarmed by his reaction.
“Nothing much really, I’m worried,” he whispered and went off to get the telephone. He came back to the kitchen and, as if making his first ever confession, asked: “Haven’t you ever seriously thought we should tie the knot?” and, seeing the startled look on Tamara’s face, added: “Only joking, don’t worry . . .” and left.
Still surprised by his question, Tamara looked ecstatic, almost not crediting what she’d heard and, telephone in hand, the Count smiled as he heard her say: “Is that what a knock on the head does for you?”
Yoyi Pigeon honked his Chevrolet’s horn insistently and a pensive Count bid farewell to the concrete shapes by Tamara’s house.
“What do you hope to get from the dead man’s sister?” Yoyi asked, after shaking the Count’s hand and shifting the gear lever.
“I’d like the truth, but I’ll settle for any lead . . .”
“And the old dear in Atarés?”
“I want her to fill in the gaps. She didn’t tell me a number of things. And I don’t think it was out of fear. Too many years have gone by . . .”
“Are we going by ourselves? I’ve not come prepared. I’ve only got the chain and handcuffs . . .”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think they’ll dare do it again. That’s something I’d like to get to the bottom of . . . Anyway we’ll take steel bars . . .”
When they were opposite Amalia Ferrero, Conde once again saw the exhausted, transparent woman he’d met several days ago. The food cure brought by the books seemed eaten away by grief and her sad eyes were hidden from sight by constant blinking. Her fingers were raw, about to bleed, and had suffered from a bout of frantic chewing.
“The police have told me to stop selling books until they finish their investigation,” she said, when she saw her visitors, skipping any polite chitchat.
“We’ve come about something else. Can we talk for a few minutes?”
Amalia’s lids started blinking again, uncontrollably, as she ushered them into the reception room. Conde inspected the closed mirrored doors of the library, and looked in vain for the glass ashtray. What the fuck had one of those two told him about that library? Which one was it? He tried to poke in his memory: the reply wasn’t forthcoming.
“Amalia, I’m really sorry to bother you, but we need your help. The man who came to buy books still hasn’t shown up, although we’ve found other things out and perhaps . . .”
“What other things?” the woman’s eyes sparked.
“The singer I told you about, Violeta del Río, was really Catalina Basterrechea. She was Alcides Montes de Oca’s lover.”
“It’s news to me . . . I didn’t know. Didn’t have the slightest . . .” she answered emphatically.
“It’s strange you didn’t know. She was going to leave Cuba with Alcides. And if you’d made your mind up, you’d have gone together.”
“But I didn’t know . . . I didn’t want to leave . . .”
The Count decided it was time to apply a little pressure.
“Your Mummy knew. She knew everything . . . She sorted out all the red-tape to bury that woman when she committed suicide.”
“Mummy did whatever Mr Alcides told her to do. I told you: she was his trusted help. But I didn’t know . . .”
“There was a lot of doubt as to whether Catalina Basterrechea committed suicide or was murdered.”
When he said that last word Conde knew he’d touched a sensitive spot. An almost imperceptible physical reaction rippled though her. She was on tenterhooks. Conde hesitated, although his instinct told him to stick the scalpel in and gouge out the dead tissue.
“I still think it odd that you were living in this house, so close to your mother and Alcides, and knew nothing about that tragedy. How old were you in 1960?”
“I don’t know,” stammered Amalia, who blinked frantically, put a finger to her mouth, and tried to restrain herself. “I was twenty. It was decades ago . . . and I was just a young girl.”
“From what I gathered, you’d started working, joined the union, and accepted a post in a bank, a position in the Federation . . .”
“That’s true enough, but I knew nothing about any Catalina, or what Mr Alcides did with his life. And what my mother once knew has gone with her madness . . . Satisfied? Why don’t you go and leave me in peace? I feel very upset,” her voice pleaded; she was close to collapse. “Dionisio was my brother, can’t you understand? He was almost all I had left in this world . . . My nieces and nephews went. My mother’s dying. Today or tomorrow . . . And that bloody hole of a library . . .”
A shaft of light rent the shadows in Conde’s mind and lit up his memory. Amalia had struck a very personal note about the library which might just have opened a way to the truth.
“What’s your problem with the library, Amalia? A few days ago you said something about the library rejecting you and you rejecting the library. Why did you say that?”
Amalia looked at the two men and blinked and blinked. Her voice sounded like an exhausted sigh.
“Will you leave me in peace?”
Conde nodded and accepted their conversation was at an end, convinced more than ever that that house, and in particular the coveted library of the Montes de Ocas, hid the secrets that couldn’t be revealed, that Amalia perhaps thought had been swallowed by her mother’s dementia and the occasionally merciful passage of time.
Yoyi insisted on being present at the conversation with Elsa Contreras – or would it be with Carmen Argüelles? – and the Count thought he had the right: after all, the police still reckoned he was a murder suspect in the present mess the ex-detective was intent on using the past to solve.
“You like the beautiful, expensive things in life, so I can tell you now: you’re not about to see anything pleasant,” said the Count as they drove into the barrio.
“Don’t give me that shit, man, it’s not as if the sight of an ugly old woman is anything out of the ordinary . . . You know what? I agree with you. The person who killed Dionisio didn’t do it to steal. This isn’t very charitable of me, but I think Amalia knows something, I’d swear to it.”
The Count smiled, when they turned into Factoría.
“No need to swear . . . I’m going to ask a favour of you now: let me do the talking. Whatever bright thoughts you might have, keep your nose out of it, right?”
“You like being the boss?”
“Yeah, sometimes, man,” replied the Count, when they peered into the yard and found that the place seemed to have recovered its usual rhythm. At the back, the two women from the day before were washing huge piles of clothes, and the Count assumed it was how they earned their living. The music people had chosen blared from doorways, in counterpoint, in open warfare, competing to burst unaccustomed eardrums. One doorstep was home to three men worshipping a bottle of rum on the dirty floor, while a young boy under the stairs was busy washing a pig with water stored in a petrol tank. A black woman, all dressed in parchment white, necklaces dangling from her neck, was smoking a big cigar on the balcony of the upstairs flat, behind a washing line of patched sheets and almost see-through towels. Next to her, a young mulatta, her curly hair fanning out like a peacock’s tail, rubbed her eyes swollen by sleep and scratched under her breasts with mangy pleasure. All the gazes, including the pig’s, followed the steps of these strangers, who, without a word of greeting for anyone, trooped to the back of the lot.
Carmen Argüelles sat in the same chair, in the same position as the previous day, but that morning she had company and Conde presumed this must be the niece who lived with her, as the elderly woman had mentioned. She was fat, coarse, with ballooning breasts and fifty tough years behind her, and was now busily arranging small packets in a bag on the bed.
Conde greeted them and apologized for interrupting; he then introduced his companion and asked Carmen if they could continue their chat.
“I said all I had to say yesterday.”
“But there are other things—”
“What are you after?” blurted out the fat woman.
“This is my niece Matilde,” Carmen confirmed, turning to speak to her. “Don’t worry, you go, or you’ll be late . . .” and she looked at her visitors. “She sells peanut nougat and this is the best time . . .”
Conde stayed silent, waiting for Matilde to reply, and glanced at Yoyi to tell him to keep quiet.
“All right then,” Matilde finally said, putting the last packets in the bag and hanging it over her shoulder: “I’ll be back soon.”
When she left, Conde and Yoyi walked into the middle of the room and saw the smile on Carmen’s face.
“I didn’t say anything to Matilde about the money you gave me yesterday. If I tell her, it’ll disappear like that. You know, there’s never . . .”
“That money was for you,” replied the Count, giving approval of Carmen’s precaution and raising her hopes of another little sum at the end of today’s conversation.
“What else do you want to know?” the elderly woman asked and Conde congratulated himself on the way he’d played it. “I told you all there is to know yesterday . . .”
“There are two or three things . . . Did you know the children of Nemesia, Alcides’s secretary?”
“She had two, boy and girl, but I never saw them. They lived in Alcides’s house and, obviously I never got an invite there.”
“What was Alcides and Nemesia’s relationship like?”
“I told you . . . She saw to his paperwork and the house, particularly after he was widowed. She was a highly intelligent woman, very cultured, but rather harsh on everybody, except Alcides, naturally . . .”
“And that’s all?” the Count persisted.
“What else do you know then?” Carmen responded, somewhat taken aback.
“Nothing really,” Conde admitted. “I don’t know anything . . .”
The elderly woman hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment.
“Lina told me that Alcides was the father of Nemesia’s son. They were very young when it happened. The family decided the best thing was to marry Nemesia Moré off to Alcides’s chauffeur, so he’d have his surname. Then the daughter was born, but Alcides swore she wasn’t his, although Lina didn’t believe him. According to her, she was his spitting image. They paid the chauffeur a hundred pesos a month on top of his wage to keep his mouth shut. The strange thing is that the chauffeur disappeared one fine day, as if the earth had swallowed him up, and nothing was heard of him again . . .”
Conde weighed up Carmen’s words and glanced at Yoyi.
“What do you reckon happened?”
“I can’t imagine, you know, but it was strange, wasn’t it?”
“People don’t vanish like that, particularly when they have a job that pays double the rate . . . unless Lansky?. . .” exclaimed the Count, in a flash of inspiration.
“What about Lansky?”
“When did Lansky and Alcides become friends?”
“When Lansky started to come to Cuba in the early thirties. But they started doing business together later, during the war.”
“What kind of business?”
“Alcides’s family was very influential and he knew everybody. Lansky had money he wanted to invest. That was what it was about. When the world war started, Alcides made a fortune importing lard from the United States. Lansky used his connections over there so that Alcides had a monopoly . . . Luciano helped them. At the time he controlled the port of New York. Alcides paid Lansky back by introducing him to the people in charge over here. The politicians and so on . . .”
“And what was the line of business they were pursuing in 1958, when they met in Lina’s flat? If Alcides didn’t have the same clout under Batista and Lansky wasn’t exactly popular in the United States . . .”
“I wouldn’t know about—”
“Oh, yes, you would . . . It was fifty years ago, Carmen. They’re all dead and can’t get you now. I’m sure it was something important . . . They shattered a man’s hand because they thought he was trying to find out what they were up to.”