“Wait here,” he told brother and sister and, addressing the policemen, “Crespo, you come with me. Greco, you stay here.”
He went into the corridor, looking for the nearest door. He opened it and went in the archive, proclaiming: “I need to use your telephone,” and dialled Major Rangel’s number. It rang three times before his old chief said “Hello, Hello,” as he always did. “It’s me, Boss. I’ve got a question for you.”
“Out with it then, where’s the pain now?”
“The chest, beneath the left nipple.”
“And? Could it be a heart attack?”
“No, I’ve got a hunch that’s really hurting my chest. What do you advise for real pain?”
“You’ve got two options: either go to a cardiologist or follow your hunch.”
“I’ll take the second. Thanks for the advice. I’ll see you later and remember it’s my birthday,” he said, hanging up. But the pain was still creasing him up, and he began to seek relief. “Crespo, go downstairs and ask for a warrant to search Adrian Riveron’s house. Then find someone who can stay with little brother and sister and tell Greco to come with us. I’ll ring Manolo. But we’ll leave in ten minutes, got that?”
“Of course, Conde. Hey, you really in pain?”
“I swear on my mother I am. Right here,” and he touched the spot where his strong hunches pained him.
The city seemed to be on a war footing or the eve of a carnival. Or were the wondrous vessels of the Royal Fleet returning to the town of San Cristobal de la Habana, laden with gold and luxury? The latest news spoke of the imminent arrival of hurricane Felix, which at that very moment in the afternoon was gusting across the seas south of Batabano and, in all certainty, would lash the island capital the following morning, with blasts of more than a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour and soddening deluges that would begin in the small hours, according to the radio channels, which sandwiched their message between festive
A tempest culture, acquired over centuries of coexisting with those predatory weather phenomena, surfaced whenever a hurricane came near the country. Ever since Columbus heard about them, and heard the name uttered by the jittery Arahuacan Indians that month of October in 1492, thousand of tempests had swept the Caribbean, changing its topography, destroying the works of gods and men, altering the configuration of their coasts, transforming fertile fields into interminable lakes, and people had learned to live with them as you do with a bad neighbour it’s impossible to be rid of. Every year Cubans expected a tempest just as they expected winter colds and summer diarrhoea: it was something certain, inevitable and cyclical, with which you must spend a few days, out of pure and immutable geographical fatalism. The recurrence of these phenomena had the singular virtue of reviving the bad memories of people prone to forget the slightest incident: and they recalled the visitation of the mythical 1926 hurricane, the horrific 1944 hurricane, and the unforgettable Flora, thanks to which there was a reduction in coffee rations they were still living with twenty-five years later. But no hurricane, after all, had been able to sweep the island away – as some dreamed – or change the character of its people – as others would have wished. And so people even relished the rather festive atmosphere, the morbid expectancy before the hurricane hit, and they shouted at each other in the streets: “Hey, you, where you going to spend the hurricane?” as if it were like choosing somewhere to dine on Christmas Eve. The devastation would be inevitable, that they already knew, and had learned from their ancestors’ rehearsal of the lessons of history, and the Cubans tried to extract from the hurricane’s visit the strongest possible dosage of emotions they shared as a society. Later would come the time to bewail losses and forget hurricanes till the next round.
Without a doubt, the macabre carnival seemed to have begun: some people, on their roof terraces, strapped down the lids on their water tanks; others cut down trees, with a furious intensity that anticipated the hurricane’s; others preferred to shore up mattresses, televisions, drawers full of things in the slim hope they might save something that otherwise would take them years to recover, and they did so with incredible broad smiles on their faces; and others took sensible precautions that grated on Mario Conde’s nerves, buying up the stocks of rum in markets and liquor stores, convinced that drowning their sorrows in alcohol was the best way to await Felix, or whatever this year’s blasted tempest was called. Everything was done at a frantic pace and, while his car advanced towards Adrian Riveron’s house, in the old neighbourhood of Palatino, the Count recalled his father’s visceral fear of hurricanes. It was an irrepressible fright that had apparently infected him from the cradle (so they said), because ten days after he was born the city was swept by the 1926 hurricane, the most memorable in all the city’s chronicles of meteorological catastrophe. Grandad Rufino would recount how the wooden house where they lived had been lifted clean out of the ground by the force of the wind and the family was saved thanks to a small shed driven far into the ground, which he had built to store maize for his fighting cocks and feed for the pigs he also reared. The Count had always tried to imagine that tiny space giving shelter to his two grandparents, their six children, two dogs, twenty handsome roosters, the milking goat, pack-mule and three pigs, while outside the refuge the hurricane changed the face of the earth and left them homeless.
“Of all the terrible tempests there are in all the seas of the world, the worst are those in the seas around these islands and Tierra Firma,” wrote Padre Las Casas, half a millennium earlier, astonished by the onslaught of the first Caribbean cyclone described by a European, and the Count thought the friar was right: the tropical hurricane reigned supreme over other terrible storms; it was so persistently hard-hitting, stubborn and predictable… And I feel you coming, he told himself, because he felt it coming, inside and out, and he wanted it here now: “Get here now, for fuck’s sake,” he repeated softly as he lit up a cigarette.
They found an external peace in Adrian Riveron’s house that was alien to the tragic festivities of the preparations for the hurricane. As they approached the front door, the Count wondered again what exactly he was hoping to find there, and he still couldn’t find an answer. Something, he thought, as he opened the door and Adrian Riveron flashed a smile seasoned with a cough at the sight of the four policemen. Although the wind already lashed, drenched and gusted, the fellow wore only shorts and seemed calm and relaxed, when he said: “And what are you doing in these parts, Lieutenant?” and he coughed again, as persistently as ever, which made the Count doubt once more whether Adrian was a fully paid up member of the select club of non-smokers.
Mario Conde looked at him almost tenderly: a feeling of relief spread across his chest, though he would be sorry if Adrian Riveron turned out to be Miguel Forcade’s executor. In his heart of hearts, his skin and even his toes, he’d have preferred to put the blame on a character like Gomez de la Pena or, if that proved impossible, someone like Fermin Bodes; both carried a burden of age-old guilt they’d never atoned for. And what about Miriam? He hesitated for a moment and decided he preferred her to her eternal suitor, the victim of an ancient passion. Unjust justice.
“We’ve come to search your house,” he finally replied, and Adrian Riveron’s smile withered at the policeman’s words.
“And what’s it all about?”
“According to Fermin Bodes you were preparing a clandestine departure from the country. We want to see whether you’ve begun your shopping. Look, here’s the search warrant. And two neighbours are coming as witnesses.”
“But this is madness…”
“No, it’s just a hunch,” retorted the Count, and he pointed Adrian Riveron to one of his own armchairs. “Manolo, you talk to him and see if he has anything useful to say,” added the lieutenant and, when the neighbours came, he explained the reasons for the search and went into the house followed by Crespo and el Greco.
“What are we looking for, Conde?” El Greco seemed confused and the lieutenant stopped in his tracks. He looked at the policeman, remained silent for a few seconds, then responded: “Whatever, how do I know? Something useful for making a secret departure, but above all a sign that Miguel Forcade was here the day he was killed.”
“But what might that be, Conde?”
“I told you, whatever, for fuck’s sake. Let’s just take a look and forget everything else. Use your heads… Oh, and see if you can find a box of cigars.”
While his helpers searched the garage, the Count started on Riveron’s bedroom. He looked in the wardrobe, under the bed, and reviewed a few books of socialist economics somnolently gathering dust on a small bookcase, as abandoned as the planned ideal they had proposed for their real, near, dialectically historical future. Then he opened the chest of drawers: Adrian Riveron was an organized man despite his prolonged bachelordom, and the Count envied a quality he had never possessed. Pullovers, underpants and handkerchiefs were clean and neatly
