Havana Black

Friguens smiled, hiding his mouth as usual, and said: “My dear boy, I haven’t been to the doctor for twenty years. The last time I went was when my bunions started playing up…”

“Here’s to my health and his, you’re already far too healthy,” said the Count, raising his glass, and the three sipped their rums.

Juan Emilio took a second sip before speaking.

“My dear boy, I’m so glad you came to see me. Because that Matisse has been intriguing me for more than thirty years. Well, not just me… You realize that right now it’s easily worth four or five million dollars? Yes, because it’s a rare work, one of the last from Matisse’s post-impressionist period, before he became one of the fauves when he had that exhibition in the Paris Autumn Salon in 1905 with Derain, Rouault and Vlaminck. I don’t know if you realize it was there that the fauvist movement was invented? That’s when they started to make paintings in which the drawing and composition were the most important ingredients and pure colours were rediscovered, and quite aggressively at times. Though the fact is Matisse always paid tribute to working with that light he had learned from his master Cezanne… You know, according to the information I have, that painting must have been created in 1903, at a time when the poor fellow was always up to his eyeballs, grabbing help from wherever, one hand behind him and the other God knows where, and he sold very, very cheaply. Just imagine, he was working as a decorator’s assistant and was one of the painters of the friezes in the Grand Palais. And Marianito Sanchez Menocal, a nephew of General Garcia Menocal who was strutting his dandy stuff in Paris, took full advantage of that bad patch, and, bought the picture for a rock-bottom price. Marianito then brought it to Cuba when his uncle was President and the 1914 war was starting in Europe, and the family kept it here till the 1929 crash, when they also sank in it up to their eyeballs and decided to sell it to the Acostas de Arriba, owners of sugar refineries in Matanzas who didn’t know too much about art, but had too much money by half and a son who was half, well, half pansy, a gay, as they say nowadays,” and he emphasized the nowadays, as an evil thought went through his head. “In short, the little queer decided he wanted to buy the picture, because Matisse was now famous and he imagined the work must be rather important. When the Acostas de Arriba left the country, lots of people said the painting had already been lost, because they didn’t take it with them, but nobody knew where it had gone. I remember it being said the family no longer had it because one of Batista’s ministers had bought it around 1954, but the truth was nobody knew where the Matisse had ended up. You follow me? What we do know is that when the little queer who bought it from the Sanchez Menocals arrived in Miami, he can’t have had the picture, because a few months later one of his lovers shot and killed him with two bullets to the chest and nobody mentioned finding a Matisse in that shakeout… The fact is a haze descended over the painting and whoever bought it didn’t want people to see it or talk about it again. They must have had good reason. So, what’s the verdict, my Count of Transylvania?”

The policeman took a long draught and two drags on his cigarette. “Devious.”

“A synonym for trickery, as well as for cunning,” the old man riposted, performing his entire smiling routine.

“Now one would need to know how it reached that house where it was expropriated as property reclaimed by the State that never reached the hands of State.”

“Oh, my dear boy, if I start telling you those tales…”

“So I’ll have to find out who owned the house and see if we can conclude the story of that painting… Because there were other impressionist paintings in the place and even, I was told, a Goya and other things as well.”

“Did they tell you what the Goya was like?” jumped in the old man, goaded by professional curiosity and deep pride.

“No, they didn’t.”

“Because there were three Goyas in Cuba, and if that one was in Miramar it must have been the one the Garcia Abreus owned… So were they the ones who bought the Matisse?”

The Count attacked his glass of rum once more.

“And, Juan Emilio, are you sure the Matisse had a yellow patch like a dog in the middle of the street?”

“Yes, in the background. You almost can’t see it, but it is there, as God is in Heaven. Most definitely.”

“Did or didn’t you see it?”

“I didn’t see God, and don’t need to. Or the dog.”

“So how do you know the damned dog was there?”

“Because I was told about the painting and committed it to memory,” he responded, smiling, dental occlusion included. “Remember it was my livelihood…”

“And how come I never saw the damned dog, if I see every stray dog going? Tell me something else, Juan Emilio, are there more of these famous paintings, worth millions, that went missing around that time?”

“You know, my dear boy, as far as I am aware there are three that could submerge in pesos whoever owns them. But I don’t think they exist any longer, because some people who left, rather than abandon their possessions, preferred to hide or set fire to them. That was what Serafin Alderete did, the man who owned half Varadero, when he set fire to guess what: to a Titian… You know, just the thought gives me the shakes,” and to exorcize his trembles he downed his rum in one gulp. “Poor imbecile. Well, as I was saying, apart from that Matisse I still have to see to believe, there are three other works on which silence descended and that must now be worth several millions, with the added bonus of the mystery of their disappearance thirty years ago. These eyes of mine saw one when it was still a sketch, a table by Lam. You’re familiar with The Chair, I expect? Well, Lam was working on a diptych, which was that chair and a table, on which he was going to paint a kind of ‘active’ still life, as he put it to me. But as Chinese Lam was always hungrier than a church mouse, when he finished The Chair he sold it to the Escarpentiers, I think for three hundred pesos. We never knew the exact sum, because the Escarpentiers never let on and Lam forgot within the week, after eating away half the money and drinking the other half with his friends, and owing another half to several individuals… And that was when he began to work on the sketch of the table, which was going to be better than the famous chair. I know he finished it, but Lam never said where that painting went. Nobody saw it in a finished state, but I can assure you it exists, although Lou Lam, his widow, told me the last time she was in Cuba that he never finished it. But, believe me, for I know more than that French girl: The Table exists… The other is a Cezanne owned by the family of the marquesses of Jaruco. I never saw it, but Maria Zambrano did when she once went to their house and she told me about it: Mariita said it was a Normandy landscape, with a lake reflecting the surrounding trees. In ’51 they announced the theft of the painting and no more was ever heard of it, and the fact is it’s not in any known museum or private collection anywhere in the world. Can you imagine, my dear boy, a Cezanne gone missing? And the third is a blue-period Picasso owned by a family in Cerro because Alfonso Hernandez Cata gave it to them. The gossip is that when Picasso still gave drawings away as presents, he gave it to Hernandez Cata in Paris and that Alfonso, on one of his trips to Cuba, had an old man’s affair with the daughter of the household and to show them he was a true gentleman, he gave her the Picasso. Then, when those people left, a fake Picasso was found in their house, a dreadful copy of the supposed original: the strange thing is that those people, who still live in Miami, never sold the picture and have never exhibited it. My brother, the one who lives over there, knows them, and he’s asked after their Picasso and they always say it was a fake, which is why they left it in Havana, but I don’t believe a word. Hernandez Cata wasn’t a poor fool who’d go giving bad fake Picassos as presents to a woman who had sent him crazy, now was he?”

“No, that doesn’t sound right, though you can expect lecherous old men to get up to all manner of tricks, can’t you? One final thing: what size were those canvases?”

Juan Emilio shut his eyes and the Count thought he was looking at a dead man. But he knew the brain of the apparently deceased man was working overtime. “I’m no lecherous old man, you know… Well, the Lam must be about two and a half yards by two. Yes, more or less. And the Cezanne, from what Mariita Zambrano told me, must be around a yard square. And the Picasso was smaller: forty-five by thirty inches…”

The Count calculated the sizes as Friguens gave out the measurements and concluded: “The Picasso and Cezanne can be carried pretty easily. But the Lam is too big.”

“Yes, my dear boy, it’s large even when rolled up,” the old journalist agreed and he asked: “Another little tot?”

The Count stood up and looked at his bereft glass. He felt like filling the void, but opted to fly the white flag of alcoholic truce.

“No, Juan Emilio, thanks. I’ve got to keep a clear head because the plot’s still thickening… but you’re the one who can help me clear a way through… But we must go now,” he said, though his last wish was a lament that Friguens hadn’t repeated his alcoholic invitation.