Havana Gold

“My husband rang,” she replied and the Count thought he’d not understood again. The word “husband” sounded simply ridiculous and out of place in that conversation. A husband? Karina’s husband?

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“That my husband gets back tonight. He’s a doctor. He’s been in Nicaragua. His contract has been ended and he’s coming back early. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Mario. He rang me yesterday morning.”

The Count searched his shirt-pocket for a cigarette but gave up. He didn’t really want to smoke.

“How’s that possible, Karina?”

“Mario, don’t make things any harder for me. I don’t know why I started on this madness with you. I felt alone, I liked you, I needed sex, do hear what I’m saying, but I chose the worst man in the world.”

“Am I the worst?”

“You fall in love, Mario,” she said, tidying her hair behind her ears. In her shorts and T-shirt, she was like an effeminate boy. He’d always fall in love with her again.

“So what?”

“So I’m going back to my house and my husband, Mario, I can’t and don’t want to do anything else. I’m happy I got to know you but I’m sorry, it’s not possible.”

The Count refused to hear what she was saying. A whore? He thought there must be a mistake, and couldn’t find the logic behind any possible mistake. Karina wasn’t for him, he concluded. Dulcinea didn’t materialize because she didn’t exist. Mythology pure and simple.

“I understand,” he said finally, and now really did feel he needed a smoke. He dropped the match in a vase full of red-hearted malangas.

“I know how you feel, Mario, but it all happened like that, on the spur of the moment. I should never have met you.”

“I think we should have met, but at another time, in another place, in another life: because I’d have fallen in love with you just the same. Ring me some time,” he said getting up. He lacked arguments and energy to fight the inevitable and knew in advance that he was defeated. He felt he had no option but to accept failure.

“Don’t think ill of me, Mario,” she replied, also standing up.

“Does it matter to you what I think?”

“Yes, it does. I think you’re right, we should meet up in another life.”

“Pity about the mistake. But don’t worry, I’m always getting it wrong,” he said opening the door. The sun was disappearing behind the old Marian Brothers school in La Vibora and the Count felt like crying. Recently he’d wanted to cry a lot. He looked at Karina and wondered: why? He held her shoulders, stroked her thick, damp hair and kissed her gently on the lips. “Tell me when you need a tyre changing. It’s my speciality.”

And he walked down the porch towards the garden. He was sure she’d call out, tell him to hell with everything, she’d stay with him, she adored sad policemen, she’d always play her sax for him, he only had to say “play it again”, they’d be birds of the night, hungry for love and lust, he heard her run towards him, arms outstretched and sweet music in the background, but each step he took in the direction of the street stuck the knife in a little deeper, quickly bled dry his last hope. When he reached the pavement he was a man alone. What a load of shit, he thought. There wasn’t even any music.

Skinny Carlos shook his head. He refused to give up.

“Piss off, you savage. I’ve not been to the stadium for years and you’ve got to come. Don’t you remember when we used to go? That’s right, you went the day Rabbit made it to sixteen and he celebrated with us in the stadium by smoking sixteen cigarettes. The gungy croquettes and brake-fluid mineral water he vomited in the bus looked like volcanic lava, I swear on my mother. It was steaming, kid…” and he smiled.

The Count smiled as well. He looked at the posters that had faded over the time, posters that had seen him visit almost every day over so many years. They were witness to Skinny’s anti-Beatles crisis, when he converted to the religion of Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, from which he then recovered to return to the safe nest of Rubber Soul and Abbey Road and engage again with the Count in the endless argument pitting McCartney’s genius against Lennon’s. Skinny was in the McCartney team and the Count was a cheerleader among the dead Lennon’s supporters: Strawberry Fields was too powerful a lyric not to qualify him as the supreme poet of the Beatles.

“But I don’t feel like it, you animal. I just want to flop on my bed, pull the sheet over my head and wake up in ten year’s time.”

“Rip Van Winkle in this heat? And what’ll you do in ten years? You’d be thinner than a bloody rake, still in the same state and would miss out on ten championships, hundreds of bottles of rum and even the odd celloplaying woman. Do you really prefer the sax to the cello? The shittiest bit would be me being so bored out of mind until you woke up.”

“Are you trying to console me?”

“No, I’m getting ready to piss on your photo if you carry on being so silly. Let’s go and eat. Andres and Rabbit will be here any minute. I’d like the four of us to go alone to the stadium. It’s a man’s game, isn’t it?”

And the Count felt again how he’d lost the will to fight, and let himself be dragged off to his friend’s den that was perhaps the only safe place left to him in a war apparently intent on demolishing all his defences and parapets.

“I wasn’t inspired today,” warned Josefina when they all were seated round the table. “They only had one chicken and I didn’t have any brainwaves. But then I remembered that my cousin Estefania, who’d studied in France, gave me a recipe one day for fried chicken a la Villeroi. And I thought, let’s see what that’s like.”

“A la what? How do you cook that, Jose?”

“It’s real easy, that’s why I went for it. I quartered the chicken, and added a bitter orange and two cloves of garlic, and let it marinate. It has to be a big chicken, or it won’t work. Then I basted it with half a pound of butter and two sliced onions. They say one onion, but I put in two, and kept remembering the story of the pigs that go to a restaurant. You know the one, don’t you? Well, when it’s golden brown, you pour on a cup of dry white wine and add salt and pepper. Then it starts to go soft. When it’s cold, you de-bone the bird. And that’s when the fun really begins: you know how the French do everything with a sauce? This one has butter, milk, salt, pepper and flour. Then you place it on the burner until it becomes a thick, double cream, without lumps. Then more dry wine and lemon juice. You pour half the creamy sauce in a deep serving dish, the other half over the chicken and let it go cold and set, you with me? Then you bread the bits of chicken and it’s done: I’ve just fried them in hot fat. It would be a meal for six French men but you’re such a greedy guts… Will there be any left for me?”

The smell of the chicken a la Villeroi promised pleasures they’d long forgotten. When the Count tasted the first mouthful, he was on the point of being reconciled to life: the sensation that his palate was being born anew with strong, original flavours triggering the illusion that something was being re-shaped within.

“What time are these people picking us up?” he asked Skinny as he tackled the second chicken portion, accompanied by white rice, mashed green plantain and the spring rainbow salad of lettuce, tomato, and carrot seasoned with homemade mayonnaise.

“I don’t know, just after seven. Any time now.”

“A pity we don’t have any white wine,” lamented Josefina and she put her knife and fork down for a second. “Hey, Condesito, you know you’re my son too, so I can tell you this now: I knew all about Karina, that she was married and so on. I found out straight away here in the barrio. But I didn’t think it was any of my business. Perhaps I was wrong and should have said something.”

The Count finished swallowing and poured some water into his glass.

“I’m glad you said nothing, Jose. Shall I tell you the truth? Even though it’s ended like it has, it was worth it for the three days I spent with her.”

“Just as well,” said Jose picking up her knife and fork again. “The chicken’s not so bad, is it?”

The rediscovered scenario of the stadium brought with it a flood of memories. The green grass shining under bluish light and the reddish turf, freshly raked for the start of the game, created a contrast of colours that is the exclusive heritage of baseball grounds. Andres walked on in front looking for the box they’d fixed for tonight. Behind, Rabbit opened up space for the wheelchair the Count was pushing with all the skill he’d acquired over ten years. “Pardon me, gentlemen,” said Rabbit, who was at the same time trying to watch the Havana pitcher warming up,