Havana Blue

asking him what’s your problem, my lad, and he thought what have I done to warrant an interrogation? It’s down to money, comrade; I need work right now. So why don’t you make an effort? the captain asked and he was even more at a loss. I need to work, he repeated, and I really don’t like the degree course, and they started talking and he started to be less afraid when Captain Acosta suggested he entered the Academy, because he’d come out an officer and would get a wage from month one. I’m not a party member, he’d said. Doesn’t matter, we know who you are. I’ve never been a leader, he’d said, I’m very laid back, and I love the Beatles, he thought, and again it didn’t matter. He’d never thought of becoming a policeman or anything of the sort, what on earth use will I be? You’ll find out later, persisted Captain Rafael Acosta, the important thing was to join, afterwards he could even study at university in the evenings, this degree or whichever you want to, and you’ll have time to think about it, and didn’t give it another thought: he said yes. Was that Destiny? he’d wondered ever since because he’d never imagined becoming a policeman, let alone a good policeman, as he’d been told he was, you need common sense, lots of common sense, a colleague explained, and they never assigned him to the Re-education Section, as he’d requested when he finished at the Academy, but to the General Information Department, classifying cases, modus operandi, different types of criminals, until he shut himself up in the computer room with an old file, read and reread papers and data, racked his brains till his head ached and forged a striking metaphor by joining two disconnected distant leads that had been rattling around loose in a murder case that had been under investigation for four years. Was that Destiny? he wondered now and remembered with pleasure his first stint in Criminal Investigations, when he didn’t have to bother about uniform and could wear jeans and even grew a beard and moustache after working the Boss round, and felt he was foraying into the world to right wrongs and was full of optimism. Those days of euphoria now seemed distant and had soon given way to routine, for that is what being a policeman is, they’d enlighten him, common sense plus routine, as he’d later tell new recruits, repeating Jorrin’s patter, knowing how to make a start every day, even though you didn’t want to start again and again. If it hadn’t been for Destiny, he’d never have discovered the case waiting to be solved by him alone, because he wouldn’t have said yes to Captain Acosta; because his father wouldn’t have died before he’d finished his degree; because they’d have given him literature and not psychology when he finished at high school; because he wouldn’t have enjoyed those books by Hemingway when he caught chickenpox late when he should have got it years earlier with all the other kids on the block; because he’d liked to have been a pilot, and they wouldn’t have expelled him from military school for launching a verbal and physical attack on a colleague who’d mercilessly mocked his desire to fly, and so on ad nauseam, because perhaps he’d never have been born or, Great Granddad Teodoro, the first of the Condes, wouldn’t have thieved or ever have landed up in Cuba. That was why he was a policeman and Destiny had placed him in Rafael Morin’s life and in yours, Tamara, a life so remote from yours, it was difficult to think they’d once thought they were equals. But life changes, like everything else, and he was no longer crazy and irresponsible, only as neurotic as ever, incurable, sad, lonely and sentimental, without wife or children perhaps forever, knowing his best friend might die, that nothing could be done for him, and carrying that pistol that weighed on his belt and which he’d only once fired away from the practiceground, in fact, almost sure he’d miss his target, because he couldn’t shoot anyone, yet he did shoot and was on target. But he could remember how on that precise day that changed his life he’d asked himself what is this thing called Destiny and got a single response: say yes or say no. If you can… I did have a choice, Tamara.

“Pour me another,” he asked, taking another look. She’d listened to him while drinking her whisky, and her eyes glazed over. She poured two more shots before admitting: “I’m afraid too”, and it was almost a sigh that rose from the depths of that armchair. She’d left her troublesome lock over her eyes, as if she’d got used to living with it, to seeing it before she saw anything else in the world.

“Afraid of what?”

“Of feeling empty inside. Of ending up on my back talking about cotton and silk, of not living my life, of thinking I have everything because I’m used to having everything and there are things I think I can’t live without. I’m afraid of everything and don’t even understand myself anymore, and I could quite easily want Rafael to be here, so everything could stay easy and orderly, as wish he might never reappear so I can strike out on my own, without Rafael, Daddy, Mima, my son even… And it’s nothing new, Mario, I’ve felt like this for some time.”

“Let me tell you something. I just remembered what Sandin the gypsy’s aunt said when she read your palm. Do you remember?”

“Of course I do, I’ve never forgotten: ‘You’ll have everything and nothing.’ Could that have been on my palm ever since? Was that my destiny, as you say?”

“I don’t know, because she got me all wrong: she said I’d travel a long way and die young. She mistook me for Skinny Carlos, or possibly not, perhaps we’re the ones who got it wrong… Tamara, do you have it in you to kill your husband?”

She took a long sip, then stood up.

“Why do we have to be so complicated, my sorry policeman?” she asked as she stood in front of him. “Every woman at some stage wants to kill her husband; that much you must know. But in the end few do. Least of all big cowardly me, Mario,” she announced before taking a step forward.

He gripped his drink, held it against his stomach, tried not to touch her thighs. He felt his hands shaking, and breathing became a difficult conscious act.

“You never before dared tell me you liked me. Why now?”

“How long have you known?”

“Forever. Don’t belittle the female intellect, Mario.”

He leaned his head back and shut his eyes.

“I think I’d have dared if Rafael hadn’t beat me to it seventeen years ago. After that I couldn’t. You can’t imagine how much I loved you, the number of times I dreamed of you, the things I imagined us doing together. But none of this makes any sense now.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because we drift further apart by the day, Tamara.”

She shook her head, took another step forward and touched his knees.

“And what if I said I’d like to go to bed with you right now?”

“I’d think it was just another one of your whims, that you’re used to getting what you want. Why do this to me?” he asked because he couldn’t fight it, his chest throbbing, his mouth dry and his glass about to slip from his wet palms.

“Didn’t you want me to say that? Wasn’t that what you wanted me to say? Are you always going to be afraid?”

“I think so.”

“But we will go to bed because I know you still want me and that you won’t say no.”

He looked at her and put his glass on the floor. He felt she wasn’t the same woman, she’d changed, was a woman in heat, had that smell. And he thought now was his chance to say no.

“And if I say no?”

“You’ll have had yet another chance to create your own destiny, by saying yes or no. You like decisions, don’t you?” she asked, taking the final step possible, the one placing her right between his legs. Her smell was irresistible, and he knew she was more desirable than ever. He could see her nipples under her pullover, threatening, inflamed by cold and desire, no doubt as dark as her lips, and caught a glimpse of himself, at the age of thirty-four, on the rim of the pan, nourishing his most ancient of frustrations with saliva and without passion. He then stood in the intimate space she’d left him to take his decision and looked at the inevitable lock of hair, her moistening eyes, and knew he should say no forever, I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it, I can’t, I shouldn’t. He felt a stupid emptiness between his legs, and that was another form of fear. But always fighting against Destiny was futile.

They didn’t touch each other as they walked towards the hall and went upstairs to the rooms on the second floor. She went first and opened a door, and they entered more palpable shadows around a bed perfectly draped in a brown overlay. He didn’t know if he was or wasn’t in her room, his ability to think had evaporated and when she pulled her pullover over her head and he finally saw the breasts he’d been dreaming of for the last seventeen years, he did think they were more beautiful than he’d ever imagined, that he could never have said no. But as much as he desired her, he wanted Rafael Morin to pop up at that precise moment, just to see that perpetual smile wiped from his face.