“What I said before: this country has gone mad.” And his voice sounded neutral, neither astonished nor exhausted: it was simply an empty voice, and the Count thought what he’d thought on other occasions: his voice was the mirror of his soul.
“OK, I’ve earned my week off, haven’t I?”
“Yes, you certainly have. I hope one day you’ll decide to be a good policeman… Talking of which, will you tell me some time why you ever joined the police, eh, Conde?”
“Well, I’ll try to find out and then I’ll tell you… Oh, I can tell you one thing I do know: you’re the best police chief in the world, whatever they say or do.”
“Thanks, Mario, it’s always good to know such things, though they sometimes don’t help one little bit.”
“Yes, they do help, Boss, and you know it. Look after yourself and I’ll see you Monday,” he said as he hung up to ring Skinny’s number. It only needed three rings.
“Skinny, it’s me.”
“Go on, wild man. You going to drop by?”
“No, I can’t tomorrow or the day after… I’m with little sparrow butt. I asked her for asylum for three days.”
“Hey, have you fallen for that little madcap?”
“I don’t know, Skinny. I think my thinking head isn’t thinking so much, and it’s just as well.”
“Sure… But watch the other head, for when it fancies an idea …”
“Note down my number. Six, one, three, four, five, six. That’s for you and old Josefina, but don’t give it out even to death if she makes a call. Or the Guggenheim Foundation, or Salinger if he comes to Havana to see me, right? Oh, give it to Red Candito if he needs me for something…”
“And what if those investigators want to see you?”
“Let them go to hell. Skinny, to hell, or they can set their sniffer dogs after me. We’re going to mount the Cuban version of The Fugitive… Oh, and I was forgetting the most important thing with all this shit I’m pouring out: buy two bottles of rum for Wednesday, and I’ll give you the money. It’s my birthday present. I’ll call Andres and the Rabbit to see what we can think up for the day, all right?”
“No problem. Do you know what the old woman wants to do on my birthday? She says an Argentine roast-up, with best beef, porterhouse, fillet, chitterlings… Hey, and remember you didn’t bring me a photocopy of your story, right?”
“But I’ll bring it on Wednesday… What’s happening about Dulcita?”
The Count knew he would have to wait and he waited with all the patience he could muster.
“Nothing, Conde, what the fuck can I do? If she comes, well, let her come, and I’ll see her and tell her: ‘It’s life, my love.’ ”
“Yes, it’s life, a fuck-up. Well, let’s speak later. A big hug for my brother,” and he hung up.
Polly was waiting for him on the edge of her bed, a glass of rum in each hand, and the Count thought it wasn’t right to feel happy while Skinny, who was no longer skinny, a victim of a geopolitical war in which he’d been a pawn destroyed, had had shut off any avenue to that necessary satisfaction and he anguished over the idea that one of his old flames might see him at the bottom of the void. He caressed Polly’s fringe, chose the fullest glass and went out shirtless on to the small balcony wanting to relieve his physical and mental heat, and observed, as night began to fall, the roof terraces of Old Havana, spiky with aerials, desire to collapse and stories impossible to contain. Why the hell did it have to be like that? Because life is like that and not any other way. Was it possible to retrace steps and right wrongdoings, mistakes, errors? Impossible, Conde, though you can still be invincible, he told himself, when, in the heart of that darkness, he spotted the extravagant flight of that white pigeon, which sprang from a dream and mocked her habits as a daytime animal, defied the torrid night and soared high, relentlessly vertical, and then opened her wings and pirouetted strangely, as if at that moment she had discovered the dizzy sensation of plunging into the void, till he lost sight of her, behind a building worm-eaten by time. I’m that pigeon, he thought, and thought that, like her, he could do nothing else: only soar high till he disappeared into the night- time sky.
