“Well, it’s all supposition, but if he put your medallion there, perhaps he was thinking of committing suicide and didn’t want it to be lost… Although there’s another possibility, which is less likely: that someone else put it there…”
“When?”
“Perhaps after Alexis’s death,” Manolo Palacios answered, and the Count looked at him. I shit on your mother, the lieutenant then said to himself, surprised by that strange possibility he hadn’t envisaged. Might the murderer have hidden the medallion there? No, of course not, the Count tried to tell himself, although he knew it was an option. But why?
“What’s all this about, Tona?” Matilde then asked, barely turning towards the black woman. Striking a dramatic pose, Maria Antonia recounted her discovery, very early this morning, and her call to Alberto Marques. Matilde turned to look at her, and finally said, “Please bring me the medallion.”
Maria Antonia glided into the house, while Matilde looked at the two policemen.
“They weren’t exactly the same. I differentiated mine from Alexis’s. The man on mine had a line etched under his left arm,” she said, and sank back into a silence which extended anxiously in the minutes before Maria Antonia returned. “Give it me,” Matilde then told her; she peered at the shiny figure trapped in the circle and said: “This is Alexis’s.” There wasn’t a trace of doubt in her voice.
“Just as well,” sighed Sergeant Manuel Palacios, betrayed by the intensity of his desires, and the Count rushed to harness Matilde’s burst of vitality.
“We also want to ask if you are sure this is Alexis’s writing.” And he showed her the page from the Bible.
The woman stretched out her hand mechanically to reach her glasses on the corner table, and Maria Antonia moved to place them in her hand.
“Yes, I think so. You look, Maria Antonia.”
“It’s his,” said the servant, without recourse to spectacles, as confident, the Count supposed, as she would be in the art of identifying the creators of renowned Italian Madonnas… The lieutenant noted the empty ashtray, and this time held back. He spoke, looking at both women.
“Madame, the medallion, this page Alexis tore out and wrote on, and the dress he wore on the night are very peculiar items. Did Alexis ever mention the word suicide in your presence?”
You cannot imagine what a mother feels when she discovers her son is homosexual… You think everything’s been in vain, life’s come to a halt, it’s a trap, but then one begins to think it isn’t, it’s a passing phase, everything will return to normal, and the son you dreamt of as married and with children of his own will be a man like any other, and then you begin to look at every man, wanting to swap them for your son, that son you think still has time to become what you wanted him to be. But the illusion was short-lived. Alexis was never going to change, and more than once I even wanted him to die, before seeing him transformed into a homosexual, pointed at, execrated, belittled… I know if there’s a God in heaven he won’t forgive me. That’s why I’m telling you now, quite calmly. Moreover, I got used to the inevitable and realized that above all, he was my son. But his father didn’t. Faustino would never accept him, and converted his disappointment into contempt for Alexis. Then he preferred to stay longer outside Cuba, and leave him here with Maria Antonia and my mother. And that was very hard on Alexis: can you imagine what it’s like to feel different and scorned at school and at home with your own father rejecting and denying you? One day, after the theatre, Faustino and I were chatting to friends, and Alexis left in the company of a boy like himself, a thirteen-year-old, and Faustino averted his gaze to show he didn’t even want to acknowledge him. It was all too cruel. It was giving Alexis a guilt complex, and worst of all I persisted in wanting to cure him, as if it were possible to cure either that or his preference for men. I took him to several psychiatrists, and I now know that that was a mistake. It made him feel unhappier, more scorned, more different, I don’t know, as if he were the leper in the family. It was then he began to go to church and apparently nobody humiliated him there, and he also began to chat to Alberto Marques, when he was working in the library in Marianao, and his life developed in those directions, far from me, from his family… He became a stranger. After he had his last row with his father and Faustino kicked him out of the house, he came barely once a week, to speak to his grandmother and Maria Antonia, and sometimes he would chat to me, but he never gave me space in his world. My son was no longer my son, do you understand now? And I was very much to blame. I helped him to be an unloved person, and he began to say perhaps it would have been better if he had not been born or had even killed himself: he said that to me one day. Is that what you wanted to know? Well, he did say that… And now would you be very surprised if I told you I also wish I were dead? If I told you these two hands created Alexis’s death? Tell me, can there be a worse punishment than this?
“Well, fuck me, just as well, it looks like rain. Come on, you up there, the one who doesn’t want to be the great policeman. Tell me, where are we at now?”
“Well, Conde…”
“We now know the medallion is Alexis’s and that opens up two possibilities: he put it there or someone did who must be the murderer. Well, who could have put it there?”
“It wasn’t Maria Antonia, because she wouldn’t have rung, or Matilde, because she was the only one who knew the difference between the two.”
“Faustino?”
“No, Conde, for fuck’s sake. He’s his father. They had their problems, but you’re prejudiced against the guy. Hey, give me a cigarette.”
“Then we must assume the murderer is a stranger who entered the house to put the medallion there.”
“Well, that must be it, I guess. The day of the wake and burial the house was left empty.”
“Don’t be crazy, Manolo. What would be the point?”
“To put us off track. What about that cigarette?”
“Here you are… But the murderer didn’t know the medallions were different, or even that there were two of them, right?”
“No, I suspect he didn’t. But if it wasn’t Alexis who put it there, it must have been an acquaintance of his.”
“And where does that leave your theory that the murderer didn’t throw the corpse into the river because nobody would ever connect him with Alexis?”
“Sure, it doesn’t square… But what if Alexis, who certainly knew they were different, told Salvador, or another of his lovers?.. . Just as well it’s raining, perhaps it will cool down… Over the last few days several people have visited the house: the gardener, yesterday; the gas fitter, on Thursday; Matilde’s doctor, three times after Alexis died; five, seven, eight people from Matilde and Faustino’s families before and after the funeral; Alexis’s two poofy friends, Jorge Arcos and Abilio Arango, right…? Some thirteen people all told.”
“Too many. But a good crew, don’t you reckon!”
“Yes, though the doctor had more opportunities than the others, don’t you think?”
“Of course, one day he stayed with Matilde until she fell asleep. But why did Salvador K. go into hiding?”
“Yes, he’s the jackpot winner so far, don’t you think?”
“Conde, the fitter guy was new. Could it have been Salvador?”
“Don’t be crazy, Manolo, don’t get too far-fetched. Just imagine all the coincidences necessary for Salvador to hear the oven needs fixing, to decide to substitute for the fitter, put the medallion in place, and fix the cooker while he’s about it!”
“Conde, you’ve seen greater coincidences… Anyway, if he’s scarpered, it’s because he’s got dirt on his hands.”
“Sure enough. And we’ve got the page of the Bible Alexis annotated and hid in the Pinera book… ‘God the Father, why do you force him to suffer so much?’… What does that mean?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Don’t be crazy, Manolo, it’s easy: Alexis is suffering and feels solidarity with a fellow sufferer, right?”
“Yes, very touching, but just tell me one thing: why did he put the page in that book?”
“Because he’d already decided to dress up in Electra’s gear… He wanted to set up his own tragedy… That sounds queer enough, doesn’t it?”
“If you who know about these things say so… And what about the coins? Have you forgotten them?”
