house.
“May I smoke?”
“Yes, of course. Would you like a cigar? I have some excellent Montecristos.”
The Count thought about it: no, he shouldn’t, but he dared. “What the hell,” he told himself.
“I’d be glad to accept one, to smoke later.”
“Yes, of course,” answered his host, and from the lower drawer of the table in the centre of the room he offered the Count a cedar-wood box where a dozen Montecristos lay in perfect formation, finely scented and pale- hued.
“Thanks,” the Count reiterated, and put the cigar in his shirt pocket.
“Well, Lieutenant, what can I do for you?”
Only then did the Count become aware that he had nothing to say or had forgotten what he’d intended to say: he’d been dazzled by so much glitter and couldn’t clearly see the route he should follow. He had returned simply to comply with police routines in that perfectly ordered house, with its gleaming guayaberas and bald pates, black maids with wings on their ankles and ashtrays from Granada without a speck of dust, which seemed quite unrelated to the eschatological story of a queer who’d been strangled with two coins up his backside, after exhibiting himself through the city streets in a theatrical garment which would end up stained by major and minor effluvia – as Alberto Marques might have said.
“How’s your wife?” he asked, looking for a way to broach the matter.
Faustino nodded repeatedly.
“In very bad shape. Yesterday, when we got back from the funeral, Dr Perez Flores, well, I’ll tell you his name because everybody knows who Jorge is, prescribed sedatives and tension-reducers. She’s asleep now. The poor woman can’t accept it. But I knew one day that boy would give us a big upset, and now look what’s happened.” He paused, and the Count decided not to interrupt. “Who knows what business he’d been mixed up in? From adolescence Alexis has been a constant headache. Not only because of his… problem, but because of his character. Sometimes, I’ve even thought he hated both me and his mother, and he was particularly despotic with her. He always blamed us for the fact that we spent so much time outside Cuba and that he had to stay here with Maria Antonia and my mother-in-law. He refused to understand that my work forced me down that path. He couldn’t come with us, where would he have studied? Six months in London, three in Brussels, a year in New York, then back to Cuba… Can you imagine? I’d have preferred to give him a more stable life, for us to have brought him up here, and I can tell you I’d have kept him like that, under my thumb, but my work has always assigned me very important duties and my wife and I always made sure he had all he needed: the house, his grandmother, and Maria Antonia, who loved him as if she were his real mother, school, the home comforts he wanted… everything. If this seems like a punishment… I’ll confess something, so you see where I’m coming from: my son and I never got on. I think I was really to blame, I never made concessions to him, though to begin with I did speak to him and try to help. Now I think mine was the worst approach possible. And look what has happened, how it’s all turned out. I feel guilty, I don’t deny that, but he also behaved very badly towards me and his mother, right from adolescence. And afterwards, when he befriended that scoundrel, the Alberto Marques guy, it was impossible to see eye to eye. That man brainwashed him, injected his head with poison, changed him for ever in every way: it isn’t that he started to write or waste paper trying to be a painter. No, it was worse than that. It was his moral, even political behaviour, and I couldn’t allow that, no way, now do you understand me? No one, not Alexis nor anybody, was going to defile the status I’d won from so many years of struggle, work and sacrifice, so I dictated my rules of the game very clearly: if he wanted to live under this roof and enjoy all the comforts that gradually one had been able to accrue, one couldn’t think certain ideas about this country, or be criticizing it all the time or eat shit in church or associate with an envy-ridden guy like Alberto Marques… It had to be all or nothing, and that’s what I told him one day, because he was no longer a child, and he got furious, I wish you could have seen him, and heard the things he said, that I was a dogmatist, an extremist and a troglodyte and a good few things besides… And that was when he said he was leaving home. I know he always came back to see his mother and Maria Antonia, after his grandmother died, and if I arrived, he left, and I was almost pleased, because I didn’t want any more arguments with him. These conflicts upset me a lot, you know?… I regret that now, perhaps I could have done more for Alexis, forced him to keep going to the doctor, been more strict with him, whatever, but he never gave me that option,” he said, and bent down to the cigar-box. He took one, but rejected it immediately, as if suddenly the possibility of lighting one of those beautiful Montecristos seemed inappropriate.
“Faustino, do you or your wife have any idea about what might have happened the other night?”
The owner of the house looked at his hands as if he’d find a truth there, and looked the Count in the eye.
“What can I say, Lieutenant? It was all the result of a wrong choice… Alexis chose his path and look where it led. What I can say, it’s like a punishment… The very thought of it fills me with shame. Disguised as a woman… Can I tell you something?” The Count nodded, like an eager pupil. “Neither his mother nor I deserved to suffer this. All I hope is that time passes so we see if we can wake up from this nightmare. Of course you do understand me…”
“Of course,” the Count affirmed and looked at his own hands, searching, perhaps, for another possible truth.
“It’s really shaming,” Faustino repeated, and the Count looked him in the eye for the first time in the whole conversation: he found two damp eyes, where he thought he spotted real grief, and tears which perhaps his sense of manliness prevented him from shedding. Although it was difficult, given he was such a powerful, self-confident man, the policeman was surprised to find he could feel pity for him.
“Faustino, you may know nothing about this. Because of your relationship with Alexis, I mean… But perhaps your wife, I don’t know… Please ask her if she heard Alexis mention at all the day of the Transfiguration. I’m following this line of thought, though I can’t tell you why. It’s an idea I can’t get out of my head…”
Mario Conde began to feel a degree of relief when the car took to the tunnel under the river and ran along the Malecon, towards the city centre. The sea had a pacifying effect, and absorbed him in a state of allconsuming fascination. And that morning the sea was an invitation to quiet and calm: tranquil and blue, like the breeze blowing in through the windows.
“What do you reckon, Manolo?” he finally asked the sergeant, and lit a cigarette.
Sergeant Manuel Palacios drove down the right lane and reduced speed slightly.
“It’s difficult for him. It must be the talk of at least the diplomatic service, right? But I can tell you one thing. I reckon he’s pleased from one point of view. It’s like when someone dies of cancer: if there’s no cure, the sooner it’s over, the better.”
“Maybe,” the Count agreed, not knowing exactly what it was that might be.
“Where do we go now?” Manuel Palacios asked, preparing to accelerate.
“I’m not sure… Salvador K. looks to be top of the list, right? But it’s also true we have nothing definite against him… I’m pissed off,” he said, throwing his cigarette into the street.
“Conde, Conde,” Manolo shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it. “Here you are and you still get like that. Don’t gripe like that; if we need to invent something to implicate the painter, we will, won’t we?”
“Don’t suggest such a thing. At least not today.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m very worried. Did you manage to find out what happened to Maruchi?”
The sergeant reduced speed slightly.
“No, I haven’t got anything on that… But this morning I didn’t tell you something else that happened yesterday. I’ve got an appointment at three this afternoon with the Internal Investigation people.”
“And what do they want from you?”
Manuel Palacios shook his head, and the Count noticed he was wiping the sweat from his hands on to his trousers.
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
The Count looked into the street, more and more potholes, dustbins overflowing with rubbish, houses eroded by salt water and neglect.
“If you don’t have problems, nothing to worry about, but watch what you say, OK? You’re no idiot, Manolo, so think out your replies carefully… But don’t get too worked up, I expect it’s something quite trivial.”
