Authors: Leonardo Padura
Using the wooden bench Dionisio Ferrero had provided them several days ago, he started to review the top shelves. To begin with, he took down a group of books – Enrique Serpa, Carlos Montenegro, Alejo Carpentier, Labrador Ruiz – and studied their ends looking for a possible change in thickness. He then looked between each of the volumes and, convinced there was nothing there, returned to the bench and examined the remaining volumes one by one, shifting them into the space vacated by the books he’d taken down.
When he was just about to finish the top section dedicated to Cuban authors, Conde heard Manolo calling out.
“Come on, she says she’s ready.”
When they’d got to the Ferrero household, Manolo had demanded Amalia let them check over the library again and talk to her mother. Curiously, on this occasion Amalia hadn’t protested or repeated her warning about her mother being mad and, after blinking persistently, she’d asked for a few minutes to get her ready.
Manolo and Conde followed in the footsteps of Amalia through the portico of Tuscan marble columns and into a gloomy, bigwindowed room, that, Conde supposed, might have been the house’s large dining room, because he then entered a huge, dilapidated kitchen, with walls covered in colourful Portuguese tiles. The mansion was divided in two by a passageway lined with doors that led into equally enormous bedrooms and bathrooms. Amalia stopped by the third door on the right and, with the resignation of a woman whose strength had run out, unable to resist this act of violation, she pushed open the wooden and glass door etched with modernist arabesques.
Determined to find the endlessly postponed solution to that enigma, Conde strode into the room and almost screamed. A stark naked, living corpse of what had once been a human being lay on the imperial, dark wooden bed, its carved columns draped in tattered gauze. Overcoming his desire to make a run for it, Conde summoned all his strength and contemplated the skeleton supine on the mattress stripped of sheets. Only the slightest breathing movement in her collapsed diaphragm hinted at the remaining signs of life; the completely corpse-like skull, sunk in the pillow, seemed detached from the rest of the body, from which every fibre of muscle had vanished, as if devoured by a voracious scavenger. The inert arms and legs were dried up, brittle segments, and Conde was horrified to see the swollen, blackened opening of her sex, macerated by uric acids, and hanging folds of skin, which had been the preserve of the mount of Venus. Death tapped on every door surrounding that human waste, and its bitter scent hung on the air.
“Won’t you ask her a question?” Conde sensed more than indignation in Amalia’s voice: there was hatred, visceral hatred, a furious rage that could erupt in any direction. He was glad she’d reproached them, because it was the most dignified excuse to turn his gaze from that hideous spectacle.
“Why did you do this?” he gasped, moving towards the passage.
“You asked me to. There you have her . . . Isn’t that what you wanted? Wasn’t what I told you enough? Didn’t you want this spectacle? Go on, ask her a question, go on . . .”
Conde felt Manolo tap his shoulders, telling him to step aside so he could leave that bedroom stalked by death.
“Amalia, I think we have to talk,” said the police captain as the Count tried to take deep breaths.
“What else is there to talk about?” asked the woman intent on sustaining her aggressive tone and the Count thought that was preferable, because hatred made her more vulnerable.
“Lots. Let’s go to the reception room.”
The retinue retraced its steps, now led by the Count. He wanted to distance himself as fast as he could from that Goyesque tableau of his own making and, as they walked back to the reception room, he told Manolo he wanted to return to the library.
“But what do you think you’ll find?” Amalia’s voice was still deep and piercing, and the Count felt it was another woman speaking. “When will you let me be? When will you let us die in peace?”
“When we know who killed your brother,” replied Manolo. “Or don’t you want us to find out?”
“I don’t know how you’ll ever find out by prying around that accursed library and watching my mother die. I really don’t—”
“Well I do,” replied the Count, more convinced than ever of what he’d suspected, as he turned to Captain Manuel Palacios: “Leave the conversation with her till later. Get an ambulance and someone to keep an eye on Amalia. Then help me in the library.”
Manolo reluctantly obeyed the Count. He’d been honing his talents as an interrogator and only wanted to talk to Amalia. After ringing for medical help and police reinforcements, he criticized the other man’s decision as soon as they were back inside the library.
“Don’t you worry, if something turns up it will be so conclusive you won’t have to work her over . . . You take the bookcase down there. Check between the books, look at them individually, for whatever we might come across . . .”
Conde climbed back on the wooden bench and resumed his interrupted search. He kept moving the volumes, inspecting the edges and, occasionally, shook them by the covers. When he’d finished the top shelf, he went on to the next, and moved items to the space he’d cleared on the one above. In no state to consider the quality of the books he was handling, he made good headway on the second shelf and noticed his hands were sweating, disgustingly. He tried to control his anxiety and told himself to be more meticulous, at the same time instructing Manolo:
“Look carefully. We’re close,” and went back to his task, convinced his lost hunch was back in the fold, confirming that whatever had sparked it was still hidden there.
“Close to what, Conde?”
“To whatever it is we’re looking for. Something that rejected Amalia—”
“And you don’t have any idea what?”
“Not the slightest.”
“Could it be a letter?”
“Possibly,” answered the Count, concentrating on his search.
“And does it have to be signed?”
“Manolo, how do I know . . . A letter . . . It’s my hunch, fucking hell,” he whispered, wincing at the pain shooting through his left nipple.
19 March
My dearest and only love:
Six days ago, numb with grief, I said I would not write to you again and I bid farewell to you, not knowing what I was doing. My God! The punishment I then received for that act of pride which led me to tell your daughter several years ago about her true origins, had confirmed me in my belief that, if someone really was to blame for the death of the woman you loved so much, then I was that person. And I was blameworthy because, thinking I was opening the doors to love, I exposed the hatred and ambition of an individual who was not to blame for who she was or for not possessing what she began to imagine, egged on by me, was her right in natural law. Because it was I, and only I, who put the motive for the crime in her hands, as she screamed at me a few days ago when I told her what I’d found out.
But yesterday, when I received the terrible news, the devastating knowledge that your death will also weigh eternally on my soul descended on me, like a mountain. Knowing you as I do, I can see that you sought out this finale and the reasons driving you were the love you still felt for that poor woman and your frustration at not being able to come back and mete out the punishments that would relieve you of that grief.
I have discovered, far too late, that you were a much weaker man than I ever imagined or wanted to imagine. The extent of your capacity to feel love and suffer because of a woman shocked me and showed me how even someone like you can be left defenceless (as I always was) by the spell of true passion. And perhaps that forcefulness your daughter inherited pushed her to the extreme of committing a crime to reclaim what had been snatched from her.
Now I don’t know what will become of me. The hope I might recover you some day, which waned but never disappeared, has vanished, taking with it any possibility of ensuring you knew your suspicions about my direct guilt were unfounded. Together with my incurable sorrow at the knowledge that you died thinking I killed that woman, I must now add my sorrow from the knowledge that I was really to blame for everything that happened. As if I’d not been punished enough for my crazy actions, now imagine what I suffer when I see your daughter, our daughter, and recognize her as the one directly responsible for these misfortunes . . . It is too much, my heart cannot stand it, because I know she is the person I have most loved in the world, after you, and that I can never forgive her. From now on I shall always see her as a murderer who killed not only that woman but, forgive her, Lord, her own father!
Dear love: these horrific discoveries have made me see how fragile are the worlds that seem to have the firmest, almost indestructible foundations. Your life, mine, the family you created have collapsed, ravaged from within by an insatiable scourge, just as the health of this house is beginning to give, with paint dissolved by rain and gardens invaded by weeds.
The voices from hell echoing in my brain have become more aggressive and, I know, they will rob me of my reason. The demon who speaks to me and pursues me through the day, has finally revealed his true intent, for he pushed me towards the abyss into which I am now falling . . . Thus, before reaching the bottom which I will never leave, I decided to write to you, confident you will receive this last letter, wherever you are, where I don’t dare ask for your forgiveness (I don’t want that, I shall wallow in my guilt, anticipating the fires of hell), but where I must reiterate that my greatest sin was to love you too dearly and expect something in exchange for my love. I beg you to forgive your daughter: do not blame her for my sins.
I am sure God will take you into his bosom. A man able to love so much deserves for his sins to be forgiven. Goodbye, my love. I love you more, now and forever . . .
Your Nena
“After years of chewing on humiliation, as if it were our natural diet, when it finally seemed that luck or divine justice were lining up on our side to enable us to enjoy what was ours through natural law and the rights of fidelity, that woman appeared. She came from nowhere, ready to take everything and, when I realized what would happen, it was already happening, irrevocably. I couldn’t resign myself and that was why I did what I had to do. I wasn’t going to allow her or anyone to take away what belonged to us, what I’d been waiting for every day of my life, with incredible patience, in a corner of this accursed house, where I was born with Montes de Oca blood yet could never become a Montes de Oca . . . That’s why, even today, despite everything that’s happened, I don’t feel an atom of remorse and I say this with my conscience intact, because I’m not mad. If I found myself in the same situation today, I would do it again.
“From the moment I acquired the use of my reason, my mother taught me the great truth in my life: I wasn’t the daughter of an illiterate chauffeur, my surname wasn’t Ferrero, and my life would one day be different, because I was the daughter of Mr Alcides Montes de Oca, grand-daughter of Dr Tomás Montes de Oca and great-granddaughter of General Serafín Montes de Oca, one of this country’s heroes who left his home and fortune to fight in two wars of independence and came back with one eye, one useless arm and eighteen sword and bullet scars on his body. And coming from that stock I had a right to the privileges that one day, Mummy swore, I would enjoy. But meanwhile I had to stay silent, and my pride flourished in the shadows. That was a secret we two would share, but not my brother Dionisio. Although he was equally the offspring of Mr Alcides, he lacked my patience, and was rebellious, like our great-grandfather the general, and possessed a mind best not made privy to that secret.
“Thanks to my origins, I had my opportunities in life, although I couldn’t enjoy all the luxuries and considerations that were my right. I studied in a good private school, had a rich girl’s food and clothes and in 1956 enrolled at the university to study business. But in fact they were only crumbs and from a young age I was forced to introduce myself as having no father, an object of charity within my own family.
“Luckily, Virgilio Ferrero, the chauffeur, disappeared from our lives when I was around seven, and Mummy thought that was the best thing that could ever have happened to us. Dionisio missed him a lot: he loved him like a father, because he’d never known any other, and over time decided he was no good because he’d abandoned us, no doubt to go after another woman. I never discovered what happened to him, but in hindsight I’m sure it was something quite nasty, because Mummy once talked about him as an ungrateful so-and-so who had bitten the hand that fed him . . . and Mr Alcides wasn’t a man to allow his dogs to bite him.
“When Mr Alcides’s wife died in 1956, Mummy and I hugged each other for joy: it’s difficult to imagine someone’s death being so welcome, but for us it was as if the only obstacle stopping us from enjoying what was rightfully ours had gone. From that day on Mummy waited for what should happen to happen: after twenty years of clandestine love, Mr Alcides would marry his Nena, as he always called Mummy. In all that time, apart from being his lover, she had seen to every detail of Mr Alcides’s business and political life, and was more than his right hand: she was his two hands and often his eyes and ears. Moreover, he’d always encouraged Mummy in her expectations, and he never stopped visiting her room, even after his marriage. Until that woman appeared.