and I answered, and everything went just fine. Well, kid, two months later Rafael showed up here in a right rage: he said it was my fault they’d deferred his joining the party, that I shouldn’t have said his mum went to church or that he went to see his father when he came back to the country, that his old man was more fucked than a dog without teeth, a poor sucker who was still a third-rate Miami plumber, although he and his mother told people his father was a drunkard and dead. And what most got his goat was that I said he still loved his dad and was very pleased they’d seen each other again after twenty years, because since we’d been at primary school he’d been traumatized by what happened to his father and the fucking fact he’d left the island. You know, I looked for the human side of the story… I only wish Yoly was here to tell you. He went mad, shouted in my face that I was a cunt, that I was jealous of him plus a few excremental pleasantries. But that’s not the worst of it, and don’t look at me like that. The worst is that I went to the office where he worked and talked to the guys who questioned me because I didn’t think any of what I’d said was that bad, and that’s what they said, that it was just another element in his dossier, and of no great consequence because they could understand he’d wanted to see his father but that they had deferred his entry into the party because he’d shown signs of arrogance and been in a silly dispute with the union, I don’t remember what, but they were sure he’d get there, blah, blah, blah. That was the spot of trouble.”
“I had a vague idea about all that. Sounds just like him,” said the Count, and he anticipated Miki’s desires. Gave him a cigarette and lit his. “But what’s all that got to do with the trouble he’s causing now?”
“It has to do with the fact that, in his eyes, I’m a liar. The truth is that he thought I’d told the investigation that he accepted the suitcase of clothes his father had brought and that they went to the Diplomat Shop and that I even gave him one hundred and fifty pesos for jeans that were too big for him. But I said nothing of the sort but said what I said to defend him, not because I’m naturally a liar, but because those days all that was lethal ammunition to militants and I’d invented a sentimental tale about him and his…”
“Hell, Miki…”
“Hey wait a minute, don’t start on me, I don’t need your absolution. I didn’t ask you to come here to make a confession to you. The nitty-gritty is that Rafael came back here on the afternoon of the thirty-first, at about three pm, after years of ignoring me. Now you’re interested, I bet, Conde. I know you only too well.”
“Why did he come, Miki?”
“Now wait another minute, let me turn the record over, the one Rafael gave me for New Year. He knew I’m addicted to the Mamas and the Stones… I was very, very surprised to see him round here, but I was really pleased, as I’m not one to harbour a grudge. Well, I borrowed a packet of coffee from my next-door neighbour, and we drank the pint of rum I had left, and we chatted as if nothing had ever happened. We raked over a stack of shit about secondary school, high school, the barrio, the usual. Rafael had a chip, you know? In the end he was the one who envied me, and he told me so right where you’re sat now. He told me I’d always done what I damned well wanted and lived as I wanted: fancy, me as fucked as I am, with three books published that I reckon are pure cow dung I don’t even like opening. When I told him that he laughed his head off. He always thought I was joking.”
“But what did he want, man? Why the hell did he pay you a call?”
“He came to say he was sorry, Count. He wanted me to forgive him. You know what he said? He said I’d been his best friend.”
Mario Conde couldn’t help himself: yet again he had visions of Tamara stripping off and felt sure he was being sucked into a deadly quagmire.
“Was he a cynic or just an asshole?”
Miki repeated the exercise of crushing his cigarette end on the floor but destroyed it carefully, and after he’d destroyed it, kept stomping his foot down.
“Why talk like that, Count? You’re another one with a chip, right? That’s why you’ll never be a mediocre writer like me, or an elegant opportunist like Rafael or even a good person like Carlos. You will never make it anywhere, Conde, because you want to sit in judgement on everyone but yourself.”
“You’re talking shit, Miki.”
“I’m not talking shit at all, and you know it. You’re afraid of yourself, and you’ll never face up to it. Why aren’t you a real policeman? You’re always going off at half cock. You’re the typical representative of our hidden generation, as a professor of philosophy at the university once told me. He said we were a faceless, aimless, gutless generation. That we didn’t know where we stood or what we wanted and so preferred to hide. I’m a lousy writer, I don’t want to get into trouble over what I write: I know that much. But what are you?”
“Someone who doesn’t give a fuck about what you just said.”
Miki smiled and held out a hand. The Count gave him the last cigarette from the packet he then crumpled into a ball and lobbed at the window.
“That LP is really good, right?” asked the writer, enjoying the smoke from his cigarette.
“Hey, Miki,” asked the lieutenant, looking his old schoolmate in the eye, “was that record of yours at high school just another of your lies?”
He never heard the bullet, and first he thought, my waist’s been opened up, but hardly, because he lost his balance, and by the time he hit the ground he was already unconscious, and he only recovered consciousness two hours later, when he learned what real pain was, when he was flying in a helicopter to Luanda, with a drip in one arm, and the doctor said: Don’t move, we’ll soon get there, but he didn’t need to be told, for he couldn’t move any part of his body, and the pain was so intense he passed out, and his next memory was from after his emergency operation in the Luanda Military Hospital.
Once he’d heard that story, the Count repeated it to himself so many times he’d turned it into a film and could visualize every detail of the sequence: the way he fell facedown on the hot sandy ground that smelled remotely of dry fish; the sound of the helicopter, and a very young doctor’s pale face saying: Don’t move, the 0187 is about to land, and he could also see the inside of the aircraft, he must have felt cold, and remembered seeing an immaculately white cloud scud by in the distance.
After he’d had another operation in Havana, Skinny told him the story of his only engagement with an enemy he’d not even seen. Josefina looked after him by day, and the Count, Pancho, Rabbit and Andres took it in turns by night and chatted till they fell asleep and even Mario Conde convinced himself that that had been his war, though his hands never held a gun and the face of his enemy was self-evident: a bedridden Skinny. He already knew it was unlikely his friend would walk again: the easy, carefree, cheerful relationship they’d enjoyed till then had been tarnished by a feeling of guilt the Count never managed to exorcize.
“Why do you have to get like that, you wild man?”
“What do you expect me to be like after what those wankers did to you? The cowardly assholes. And when they lost on Saturday I imagined this was coming, because it seemed that luck was on their side but they couldn’t score and left everybody on base and the Vegueros won with just a couple of ridiculous runs. And feel pleased you didn’t see today’s game: they belted fifteen hits in the first inning, went ahead nine-one, and in the second, the one they really had to win, they lost nine-zero. Hell, how can you spend your whole life waiting for these wankers to win a championship when they always open their legs like hookers when they really need to concentrate on winning? But I get like this because I’m an idiot, I should just give up watching bloody baseball…”
“So you don’t want a shot of rum?”
“Take it easy, Count, take it easy. Give it here,” and he grabbed the glass the Count had put next to the ashtray, as if making a real sacrifice.
“Hey, and what got into you, buying rum?”
“Conde, I’m in a right state. Either you drink rum or piss off as if I’d never seen you.”
“I’ll drink rum, but let’s change the subject, because I’m not the team manager, right?”
“If you say so.”
Skinny poured himself another shot and seemed to have declared a truce. His deep breathing returned to normal.
“How you getting on with the Rafael thing, my brother?”
“It’s getting better. We’ve got a good lead.”
“Did you see Miki?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve just come from his place. He was really odd. I thought he was more in need of a priest than a policeman.”
“And did you forgive his sins?”
