“Yes, it’s true. You’re doing right,” affirmed Andres.
“What? And will you take the same righteous path?” the Count demanded, and immediately regretted his sarcastic tone.
“What the fuck is eating you, Conde? I said Red was doing right. That’s all. Isn’t it, Candito?”
Their host smiled. The Count searched him for visible physical changes and thought Red’s smile seemed different: perhaps more peaceful, more accepting: strengthened and able to withstand jibes. A smile expressing a hope in belief.
“It makes sense for the Count to get like this, Andres. Well, you know him better than I do… I once told him to watch out, because he was turning cynical, you remember, Conde?”
“Sorry, Red, it isn’t what Andres is thinking, but the fact is even after I’ve seen you in action I can’t imagine you’re really into that,” replied the Count, trying to salvage something.
“And why can’t you imagine me into that? Isn’t it better than being a petty criminal for the rest of my life worrying every day in case the policeman knocking on my door isn’t you? Or downing a bottle of rum morning and night to forget how fucked I am, which is what you do? Isn’t it better to pray and sing a bit, Conde, and think someone somewhere only wants you to have faith and be good? You know, Mario, I’m sick of all the shit out there…”
“You said ‘shit’, Candito,” quipped Skinny, and Candito smiled. His inner peace is already becoming evident, thought the Count.
“Yes, of the shit everywhere. You know what my life’s been like. But I think you can change if you make it in time, although I’ve got to forget a lot of the things I’ve been for a long time. And besides, I don’t feel empty anymore, like I used to, and I’m learning you can’t live a life of emptiness. You get me?”
“I get you, Candito,” replied Andres. “I know what it’s like to feel empty…”
As if he’d not heard the doctor, the Count looked Candito in the eye and took out a cigarette. He made a gesture to ascertain whether he could light up and the other nodded. The Count thought his friend had said something that could convince him and he now envied that possibility of change and fulfilment Red had glimpsed by way of his religious faith. Were all those in the church better than he was? The certainty that that might be so alarmed Mario Conde’s incredulous spirit even more.
“And how do you feel the change, Red?”
“You don’t feel it, Conde. You search it out. The first step is to want it. For example, to want to change, or love one’s neighbour, or want to live free of anger and bitterness.”
“And forgive everyone?” asked the Count, out of interest.
“Yes, forgive. Nobody must stand in judgement…”
“Well, I am fucked. Well and truly. Do you want people to forget everything? No, my brother, there are things one can’t forgive, and you know that’s so…”
“You can, Conde, you can.”
“In which case I’m happy for your sake. If only I could change and want to believe and even love all my neighbours, including the two million bastards I know only too well. The truth is sometimes I don’t even believe in myself. I’m not in the running. I don’t want to forgive: not fucking likely. The fact is I don’t want – ”
“I’m not going to say you should go to the church, because I respect you as a friend and I don’t like to tell anyone what he must or must not do in this kind of thing. Not even my wife… But if only you could.”
“Forget it, there’s no cure for my state, but if you feel good then I’m pleased, because I’m not the cynic you sometimes think, and I love you more than you can imagine… But tell me just one thing: can people of your religion go to a friend’s birthday party?”
Candito nodded again and smiled on. If the grace of God has really touched him, it seems to have done so at nerve points that generate laughter, thought the heretical, anatomical Count.
“Of course they can. And if he’s a real close friend, I can even have a couple of drinks. You know I’ll never be a fanatic. What I want to change are other things that are in here,” and he touched his head, now a greyflecked red, “because I can’t change some things that are out there…”
“Great, the day after tomorrow, at Skinny’s place. It’s my birthday and this guy says you only get to be thirty- six once.”
“Of course I’ll be there. And don’t worry. I know what I have to bring, right, Conde?”
“May God keep you this wise, Red… But I also came because I wanted to ask you something, to sound you out, because you might be able to help me in the bit of bother I’m investigating now. Listen, a fellow comes from Miami to see his family. He comes with his wife, who is twenty years younger than he is. The fellow was a high rider in the seventies and then defected in Spain, but they let him back in, to see if he’d come looking for something, even though he appeared to be clean. But one day the fellow throws his tail and disappears, immediately after he’d seen a horrible individual who had once been his boss… And he turns up two days later on Goat Beach, half eaten by fish. A blow with a bat to the head killed him, but as well as that, and here’s what I want you to mull over, they cut off his cock and balls with a knife… Does it sound to you like jealousy or something else? Do you think it could be the
Red Candito shifted in his armchair, trying to protect the area of his genitals with his legs. His smile had gone and he seemed like the Candito of old, the owner of that feline mistrust with which he now looked at his friends and replied: “It wasn’t jealousy, and you know the
“I quite agree.”
“It reeks of revenge.”
“But a bastard form of revenge…”
“There you are, Conde, and still you reckon you shouldn’t forgive… It’s terrible what they did to that fellow.”
“Well, I need you to find out what it might mean without making too much fuss. Just see whether there’s any gossip going the rounds.”
Candito looked at his hands with great concentration.
“I’ve totally left that scene, Conde, but I’ll see what I can turn up. What we really need to know is what the fellow was after…”
The Count glanced at Red and thought that, despite the respect and envy he now felt towards him, he couldn’t let such an opportunity go by.
“The only ones in the know are the dead man, his killer and Jehovah. Hey, Red, why not have a word with your man who knows all and see if he can’t help me get to the bottom of this mess.”
From now on everything should become much clearer: obviously, a tropical cyclone is not a rebellion of all nature’s forces against man, nor a curse from on high, nor even an act of vengeance wrought by the atmosphere against its predators. “At this time of year it is simply a common meteorological phenomenon in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean, created by a system of low pressure, near the centre of which the wind gyrates at great speed, in an anti-clockwise direction when it develops in the northern hemisphere,” stated the commentator on Radio Reloj before adding: “Six minutes past eight the correct time.” The Count noted that his watch was slow as usual, perhaps it was going backwards like a northern cyclone, but he left it to its own devices and turned up the volume on the radio: “The central area, called the eye of the hurricane, reaches a diameter of between six and thirty-five miles, and at the perimeter the sky is clear, with no currents of air, only a kind of ring forming around the eye where the strongest winds blow… Tropical cyclones are almost always formed out to sea, from clusters of clouds associated with different meteorological systems, such as tropical waves, sudden drops in temperatures and, in the southern section, cold fronts.” And added: “Radio Reloj, seven minutes past eight the correct time,” and didn’t say anything about fear. Because, like the Count, the announcer must have recalled as he spoke that in the island’s historical memory, even before it had any notion of history, the hurricane was the god most feared by the first men to live there, who considered it to be the Father of All Winds and bestowed upon it strength of intellect and will, power and perversity. Its possible image, perpetuated in small mud and stone figures by the imagination of these peaceful, nudist barbarians, smokers of tobacco and other more cheerful herbs, splayed unmistakable arms that grew from its belly, and a face stricken with terror: it was engendered by fear of what had been experienced and
