“You’ve got an idea. How strange… Look, it must be in the basket, they didn’t empty the rubbish yesterday,” said the Major, picking the wastepaper basket from the floor and exclaiming, “Here it is. Its thickness gave it away… Why do you need this, Conde?”
The lieutenant took the piece of cigar, which had been consumed as far as the Major took things. He observed how the end was chewed, half broken, and concluded that the Boss had enjoyed it, though while he was smoking he must have been anxious or upset to bite it like that.
“Give me half an hour, Major,” he pledged, and left the office, imitating Rangel holding a cigar.
“Don’t play games with me, Mario,” he heard as he left.
“Well, Conde, this is not definitive, but you could say the two cigars have the same origin. Steady on, that only means they’re made from a similar leaf, though it’s obvious they weren’t twisted by the same person. The one from the Woods is bigger, has a slightly tighter twist to it and appears to have been lit only once, because it’s accumulated less tar and nicotine round the mouth end, apart from being only half smoked, and that’s probably why it’s still got its band. No other clues. A little earth, that’s all. But remember, cigars made by more than one person may go into the same box, because they pack them as they come. But what I am sure of is that they’re a similar quality tobacco, the same harvest, I mean, though that means nothing.”
“Then I can’t say the two bastard cigars are brothers?”
The laboratory man looked at the Count and smiled: “But why make them relatives like that? They originated from the same place, period. But don’t ask me to say they’re brothers from the same leaf or plant.”
“And if I were to bring you more cigars from the same box, do you think you could be any surer?”
The laboratory man looked at the remains of the two cigars, their guts opened up as if for an autopsy.
“That could be really helpful.”
“Well, I’ll get some. When will you work till today?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be here till four, but if necessary, I can wait. Or what are friends for?”
The Count went into the corridor and walked down a flight of stairs to his cubbyhole. His prejudices kept digging at him and he wanted to make them reality as soon as possible. He entered his small office and found Manuel Palacios brandishing a piece of paper.
“Look at this, Conde: we’ve tracked down Salvador K.”
“I’d forgotten all about that insect. Where might he be?”
“He turned up in El Cerro. Living a new romance.”
“With a woman?”
“Almost, but not quite a woman. El Greco says he went and talked to him after they’d tracked him down; the rooster told him that since everybody knew about his thing with Alexis, he wasn’t going to hide any more and would live life as it should be lived. He says the guy seemed as happy as anything now he’d come out a swashbuckling queer. What do you reckon?”
“I think he’s the only one to have got something out of this mess, don’t you?”
“What shall we do? Bring him in?”
“Let him enjoy himself for the moment… Then we’ll see if we need to speak to him. But they should keep an eye on him.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Manolo, and he put the paper and the address away in a folder on the table on which was written in red, irregular letters: Alexis Arayan/Homicide/Open.
“Now let’s play our last card. Give me the telephone.”
The sergeant pushed the receiver over to the corner of the desk where the Count was and watched him dial, as he lit a cigarette.
“Maria Antonia?… Yes, Lieutenant Mario Conde here. How are you? Look, Maria Antonia, we need you to do us a favour… No, it’s very simple… We want to talk to you… No, no. I said talk, talk over a few things to do with Alexis, because we know you and he were very fond of each other and that you saw much more of him than Faustino or Matilde, right?… Yes, I’d also prefer it to be here. .. OK? I’ll send a car… Where? Uhuh, on the corner of Thirty-Second, of course… And, oh, Maria Antonia, I’d like to ask you another favour. Could you bring me a cigar from the box of Montecristos on the coffee table?”
“Thanks, Maria Antonia,” said the Count when the black woman opened her bag and gave him the cigar. He looked at it lingeringly, as if spellbound by the pale, polished beauty of an excellent cigar grown in Vueltabajo, and smiled as he handed it to Manuel Palacios. “Come in, please,” and he opened the door to his cubicle. Maria Antonia’s feet didn’t seem as light as usual; she had rather the wary tread of a hunted animal, and the Count imagined the doubts raining down on the woman’s consciousness, as she turned round to see if the door was closed. He felt pity for her again as he pointed her to a chair, talked to her about the heat in the street, the tranquil view he enjoyed from his cubicle window and how that was why he preferred it to the big offices that faced the other wing of the building, and finally asked her if she was married.
“No, single,” she replied; wearing a flowery Sunday dress, her bag on her knees, her hair gathered beneath an imitation silk scarf and lips painted blood-red, she seemed like an escapee from a scene in The Color Purple, thought the Count.
“And how long have you known the Arayan family?”
“From ’56, when I started to work for them. Matilde and Faustino had just married and at the time lived in Santos Suarez with Matilde’s mother, who was widowed. After the Revolution I decided to leave the house, I wanted to make a life for myself, quite away from them, and intended looking for another job, but the child was born and I developed an affection for him and kept postponing and postponing my departure, until four days ago, when this happened… Now I think I will leave, though I don’t know where I’ll go. As I’ve always lived with them, I don’t have a home, or a right to a pension… I’d have to go and live with my brother and that’s a real hell, with his wife, three children and who knows how many grandchildren.”
“Did you get on well with the Arayans?”
“Yes, Fabiola, Matilde’s mum, behaved very well towards me, and I loved the kid as if he were my own. For many years we three lived alone in the house, especially here in Miramar, when they began to give Faustino work outside Cuba. The boy spent more time with me and his grandmother than with his parents, and we went out a lot, to the cinema, the theatre, museums, because Fabiola had been a university teacher and was very cultured. Faustino says it’s our fault the way he turned out, well, you know how, but I swear I brought him up like my own child. The fact he was such a loving, helpless child, and that Faustino put so much pressure on him, threatened him a lot, even hit him more than once, I think it was Alexis’s way of taking his revenge on him. They had a very difficult relationship, for a father and son. They didn’t speak to each other for several years…”
“What do you think of Faustino?”
Maria Antonia looked for a pocket handkerchief in her bag and wiped the sweat from her top lip. The air in the cubicle was perfumed by a wave of that handkerchief, which made the Count feel even sorrier for her: the woman had assumed a perfectly aristocratic manner that seemed out of kilter with her submissive attitude in the Arayan household. How many of her real aspirations and aptitudes had she hidden for years, as she deferred her own life to be close to the child of another she’d adopted as her own?
“I don’t think it’s my place…” was her response, finally.
“Tell me something,” the lieutenant continued. “Nothing will go beyond these walls.”
“Well, what is there to tell? He’s somebody in high favour with the government, you know, that’s why he travels so much, has been an ambassador and the like. He’s always behaved well towards me, although never like Fabiola or Matilde, you understand. And I never forgave him for the way he acted towards his son. The poor boy got to be afraid of his father. That’s why he left home. I was very, very happy, and we decided if he ever got his own house, I’d go and live with him.”
As he saw the tears running down Maria Antonia’s black cheeks, the Count thought the end of this soap would more than consume his Sunday quota of pity. He reproached himself for mistaking, in a flash judgement, the face of love for the mask of submission and tried to imagine the woman’s stellar solitude, her life lived at the wrong time and place, whose only reason to live was the strangled transvestite she’d reared and cared for like her own son. The Count stood up and let her cry: he supposed her pain to be as deep as her boundless solitude. Then he heard her asking him to forgive her, just as he looked at his watch and calculated that Manuel Palacios must be about to arrive, and he wanted to see a victory “V” on the sergeant’s hand more than ever. For the sake of Maria Antonia, hapless Alexis, even the Marquess and himself and his blessed prejudices. He wanted it so badly that his
