be a woman dressed in proper English style, according to his mood on the day… Then he’d be Mister Forcade and would demand his employees address him as such, because those imaginary millions put a distance between him and the rest of us mortals. Poor Miguel.
“In recent years, though we moved to a better house in Coral Gables, which we’ve only half paid for, and Miguel was promoted within Montiel’s enterprise and had his own office and a secretary he shared with another head of department, he’d always talk of the possibility of changing everything and living as he deserved to live. He’d tell me about a big business deal he might conclude at any moment and when I asked him what that might be, he’d always reply: ‘You’ll find out when you swim in the pool in the house I’m going to buy, Mistress Forcade,’ and he’d laugh to himself. I felt his spirits rising and over recent months, when he decided we’d come to Cuba despite what he had done, Miguel was almost the confident, self-assured man I knew here and that I’d fallen in love with when I was a young girl. He investigated and found out that the best way to return to Havana was via negotiations with the Red Cross, by showing his father’s medical certificates, and he started to phone Fermin, who was out of prison by then, to get him to do the necessary paperwork here. That’s why, two or three days before our trip, I asked him if he didn’t now regret leaving Cuba, and he replied: ‘What I regret is putting off my return for so long,’ and he laughed, just like Cuban magnate Montiel might have laughed at one of his own jokes.”
“Do you like fallen flowers, Lieutenant?”
The voice came from behind a shrub and caught the Count in the act of plucking a tiny white flower, asleep on the path to the street.
“Yes, you may smell it: it’s from the white weepingwillow to your right. Its real name is
The Count took a few steps and then glimpsed the shrivelled, desiccated figure of the old man, resting on a wrought-iron bench, by the side of which two wooden crutches were resting. In the midst of that solitude, surrounded by so many trees, flowers and silence, he was like a prophet tarnished by memory and time.
“Are you Senor Forcade?”
“Doctor Alfonso Forcade, at your service,” he replied and initiated the deferred gesture of presenting a hand to shake, declaring, “And you, beyond any shadow of doubt, are Lieutenant Mario Conde.”
“And how come there are no doubts?” the Count decided to ask, as he felt an unexpected pressure issue from the old man’s hand.
“Because Caruca, my wife, is the best physiognomist I have ever known and she told me what you were like.”
“Your garden is very pretty. That’s what I told your wife as well.”
“Yes, it is pretty, that’s why I try to come every day, to look at my plants and watch them grow… It’s one of the few pleasures left to me in life. But there are days I cannot even do this. I don’t know what will come of them after my death, an event concerning which there are also few doubts but that it will be very soon… Look, except for the laurel tree, the silk-cotton tree, the
“For business or pleasure?”
Old Forcade’s face started to move in a strange way. His wonderfully false teeth gleamed in a onedimensional, gloomy smile that pursued only a vertical path. His face muscles, worn by the years or by a wasting illness, sagged as if in need of instant lubrication, then lingered before regaining their position of repose. That facial play seemed beyond the grasp of the man’s physical possibilities, as he remained static, waiting for the grimace to disappear.
“Both,” he said finally, “both. Beauty and business can go hand in hand in some walks of life, and botany has this advantage. Policemen aren’t so fortunate, if I am not mistaken. I’ve got a real catalogue of Cuban plants here and each has a double function: the ability to be beautiful and useful to the people who know its secrets.”
The Count lit his cigarette and looked at the hanging flowers.
“And have you written about those secrets?”
“I’ve published some things, and upstairs I have several unfinished catalogues that the university will inherit when what has to come comes… It’s terrible how life never gives us enough time, although sometimes one has it in excess, as is my case. But that’s not the problem worrying me: it is that the plants will be all alone and abandoned. Though you probably won’t believe me, each of these trees knows I am its creator, or at least its guardian, and that my hands have nourished, cleaned, looked after and watered them for thirty years. That my voice has talked to them and my presence has accompanied them from the instant they sprouted their first shoots. My absence will create a void for them and you can be sure many of these plants will get sick when I die and several will die soon after, for they will be the first to discover I am dead…”
“I’d never heard about such things happening to trees. To dogs but…” and to some people, he was about to say, but he bit his tongue.
“Well, I can assure you, each plant has a life of its own and consequently a spirit where the centre of its consciousness resides: soul and matter, you see? Don’t look at me like that: they are living beings, Lieutenant, and life begets spirituality, you know. It is not a sensibility like ours, but it would be cruel and stupid not to admit it or respect it from a simple perspective of blinkered anthropocentrism… Do you have the time for me to tell you some things about plants? If so, listen to this: it has been demonstrated scientifically that when plants are on the same wavelength as a particular individual, they can establish a permanent relationship with them, wherever that person goes and even though they are surrounded by millions of people. But that isn’t what is most surprising: plants can also feel fear or happiness and are equipped to perceive the thoughts and wishes of men, even to detect their lies… But we also know they can have intentions, because they possess the ability to perceive and react to what is happening around them. I’ll give you an example you might find interesting: the Indian liquorice tree, of which regrettably I’ve not managed to rear a single specimen, is so sensitive to all forms of electric and magnetic pressures that it’s used as an indicator of the weather, because it has mechanisms that can forecast hurricanes, electric storms, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. That is something only very sensitive spirits and intellects can achieve, surely?”
The Count nodded at that panoply of scientific animism proposed by old Forcade. There was something about the old man that recalled the final days of grandfather Rufino, when Mario would sit next to his bed and ask him to tell him those few stories he knew so well, which grandfather used to retell to grandson like the only recordings saved from the fires of time: the one about the day he’d managed the feat of stealing the home run in a game of baseball, which they won thanks to that act of desperation; the one about the night when he had to flee a jealous husband, leaving three strips of his flesh on the spikes of a fence; the one about the death of that many-coloured rooster with which he won the incredible tally of thirty-two fights and about whom he spoke as of a beloved son he should have given a better chance in life, but no doubt Grandad Rufino also thought his rooster was particularly intelligent.
“Do you know anything about spirits?”
“Depends what you mean by spirits, Lieutenant. If what you mean by spirit is a manifestation of matter organized by an inscrutable higher power or force, then I do believe. Because it’s not only what is visible and obvious that exists, as you know…”
“Marxist manuals would have slotted you into the category of a materialist idealist… But, do you know why I ask?”
“I think so, because you’re very transparent,” suggested old Forcade. “Or didn’t you notice that I guessed you intended to smell the flower from the willow that you saw on the ground? It was too predictable… But not your desire to put it in your shirt pocket. Or your anxiety at the approaching hurricane.”
The Count smiled again, surprised by the old man’s powers of intuition.
“How do you do that?”
“Nothing could be simpler, if one is well prepared and, naturally, if the right conditions exist. Equally, there
