“It’s OK, Conde, you know the whys and wherefores… It’s a shame though, you know. I’m just trying to save a bit of money…”
“And what about the mulatto the other day? The one the fight was over?”
Now Candito smiled, but looked fed up and sad.
“He said he’d come to speak to me so I’d let him in for a piss.. .”
“I told you. You’re all mad.”
“No, Conde, we’re not mad. You know your business and I know mine
… That guy’s a debt-collector.”
“What do you mean a debt-collector?”
“What I said. People hire him to collect their debts: he collects money owed or any kind of debt: settling accounts, spying on wives, people wanting to get their own back on someone. And the guy’s a pro.”
The Count shook his head, refusing to believe all that, though he knew it must be true coming from Candito.
“But was it true the guy wanted a leak?”
“Nobody gets in here just to piss. Everybody knows that, it was just bullshit. And if it was true he wanted a piss, then the poor guy was fucked, but I wasn’t going to get fucked, nor were you. Nor Carlos.”
The Count shook his head, denying something words couldn’t deny.
“Sure he wasn’t after me?”
“He said not, but who knows…”
“I’m the one who’s never in the know, Red. You know I’m beginning to feel as if I was no longer a player? It’s strange, but I understand less by the day. Either everything’s changing very quickly, or I’m losing it. I really don’t know, but my head feels like a football.. . How about another coffee, go on,” he asked, and lit another cigarette. “Let me tell you one thing, Red. After you shut up shop, make yourself scarce, try going to the beach for a week, or the moon, as you put it… But if anyone comes after you, the first thing you do is find me wherever I’ve gone to ground. Because if they put the heat on you, they’ll have to burn me too… Anyway, go to church tomorrow, and ask God, on my behalf as well, to lend a hand, if he can.”
“What a character you’ve turned into, Conde!”
“Hey, while we’re at it. As you’re shutting up the office, how about another beer to help the windingdown process?”
The Count contemplated himself in the mirror: head on, in the eyes, observing the shifty rake of his profile, and when he’d finished the self-scrutiny he had to agree: it’s true, I’ve got a policeman’s face. And whatever will I do with this policeman’s face if they kick me out of the force? To start with, I won’t shave today, he told himself, and it was then he decided to call Alberto Marques and accept his invitation. Nine o’clock? That’s fine. On Prado and Malecon… Careful you don’t get knocked off your feet, my prince…
Already by nine fifteen the Count had stood on each street corner three times at the stretch of pavement configured by the crossroads where the Paseo del Prado meets the Malecon, for he’d made the mistake of not specifying an exact spot for his rendezvous with the Marquess. The worst was feeling his hands moistening all the time, as if he was going on a first date with a new woman. This is queer shit of my own making, he reproached himself, but the awareness that he was carrying that terrible burden wasn’t enough to mitigate a sweat not warranted by the heat. At that time of day a light but strongish breeze blew in from the sea, refreshing that ancient corner of the city, while intermittent gusts wafted along various women who reeked of the port, who’d flown in like dusky butterflies from some flower in its lunar cycle, perhaps summoned by the penumbra recently installed where their shadowy occupation always prospered. The Count understood his anxiety was down to uncertainty. Where would they go? What would Alberto Marques propose they should see (or do)? Although he was sure the old dramatist wouldn’t try to cross swords with him, the Count had tangibly blushed before leaving home, and reckoned that if he looked like a policeman and was under investigation because he was a policeman, he should take his policeman’s pistol with him tonight, the cold weight of which his hands felt for a moment, before he convinced himself that tonight’s dangers couldn’t be fought off with bullets and opted to consign his weapon to the depths of his desk drawer. When he thought of his pistol, he again thought of his friend Captain Jesus Contreras, the dreadful Fatman, and the news Manolo had brought him. Fuck my mother, he said to himself, surveying the dark expanse of sea he couldn’t grasp, like happiness or fear, thought the Count. And then he heard his voice.
“Don’t think so hard, Mr Lieutenant Policeman Mario Conde. Please forgive my being so late.”
Then he saw him: it was the same man, but was perhaps someone else, as if he’d donned a disguise for an impromptu carnival. A short, thick crop of fair hair now covered his originally bereft head, making him look like a living caricature. He tried to improve things by making constant adjustments to his helmet of hair, while his carefully, abundantly powdered face imitated the yellow pallor of a Japanese mask… A pink shirt, open at the neck like a dressing gown, floated over his skinny, sombre skeleton, and he wore the tightest black trousers over his skinny thighs, and sandals but no socks, allowing one sight of his fat toes with nails like gruesome hooks. Then the Count understood: he’d committed a folly, not just made a mistake. That was why he looked at the three meeting- points on the two avenues, looking for possible tails, for if they were watching him, as Manolo said, they’d kick him out not because he was corrupt or inefficient, but for being plain stupid. He tried to imagine the image he and Alberto Marques must cut from the pavement opposite and was horrified by what he saw.
“Go on then, out with your compass,” he finally said, ready to meet his fate.
“Let’s go up Prado, for though lots of people won’t believe it, the south also has a life.”
“You’re in charge,” nodded the Count, and they crossed over the Malecon, going away from the sea.
The policeman followed in the footsteps of the Marquess, a route he marked out across the old avenue, flanked by oleanders getting more battered by the day, and by the queues which swelled and lengthened at each bus stop. The surviving street-lights lit up the dirty terrain which, for the first time, the Count began to imagine as a boulevard.
“Did you know this road is a tropical replica of the Ramblas in Barcelona? They both peter out in the sea, have almost the same buildings on either side, although the birds they sell in cages in Barcelona once flew free and wild here. The last delight this place lost was its long-beaked toti birds that came and slept in the trees. You remember them? I used to enjoy watching their evening flights in bigger and bigger flocks as they got nearer to Prado. I never found out why those black birds chose to sleep in these trees in the centre of Havana every night. It was magic seeing them fly, like black gusts of wind, weren’t they? And they disappeared because of an act of witchcraft. Where can those poor totis be now? I once heard the sparrows blamed for their departure, but the fact is neither’s around now. Were they kicked out or did they go voluntarily?”
“I don’t know, but I can ask if you like.”
“Well, ask then, because any day now you’ll wake up and the bronze lions will have gone too… It’s pitiful, this place, isn’t it? But it still retains some of its magic, as if it had an invincible poetic spirit, right? Look, though the ruins keep spreading and grime’s winning, this city still has soul, Mr Count, and not many cities in the world can boast they have soul, bubbling on the surface… My friend the poet Eligio Riego says that’s why there’s such a flowering of poetry here, although I don’t think the country deserves it: it’s much too frivolous and sun- loving…”
The Count nodded silently. He wanted to sidestep that metaphysical turn in the conversation and drift back to levels of concrete reality.
“Well then, what are we doing?”
“Well,” the Marquess readjusted his blond wig and said: “Didn’t you want a close-up of the nocturnal habits of Havana gays?”
“I don’t know… I wanted to get a sense of the scene…”
The Marquess looked in front, just after they’d walked by a group of youths who’d brazenly eyed them over. “Well, you’ve just seen a bit
… And what you want to see and know isn’t that pleasant, I warn you. It’s sordid, alarming, stark and almost always tragic, because it’s the result of loneliness, eternal repression, mocking, hostility, contempt, even of monoculture and under-development. Do you understand?”
“I understand, but I still want to take a look,” the Count insisted, covering the nostrils of consciousness as a prelude to jumping into that dark, bottomless pit of invert sex.
“Well, let’s take a stroll and then go to a little party at Alquimio’s place, a mate of mine and an alchemist by
