the 10th October Avenue a thousand times, by the street corner which harboured the cockpit where Grandfather Rufino had, eight times, put his fortune on spurs that enriched and impoverished him in equal measure. But yesterday for the first time an alarm bell, specially aimed at my brain, forced me to look up and there it was, waiting for me from time immemorial: in the middle of a roughly classical triangle, the coat-of-arms of a well-to-do Creole, atop a building that wasn’t at all well-to-do, worn by time and rain. Only the date remained mysteriously intact: 1919, on the chipped eave, under the battered shield. At the vortex of two cornucopias hurling tropical fruit into the air, the inevitable pineapples, soursops and anones, mangos and furtive avocados, no soft fruit, meat or greens, and where others would have placed castles or fields of azure, a prodigious canebrake to which the date, architectural wealth and fruit-filled shield necessarily paid tribute, to its source… I love discovering these unpredictable heights of Havana – second and third floors, out-of-date baroque, bereft of spiritual contortions, names of owners long forgotten, cemented dates and glass skylights broken by stones, balls and the passage of time – where I always thought there was an air path to the sky. At that height, beyond human reach, exists the purest soul of the city that further down is tarnished by sordid, heartbreaking stories. Havana has been a city in its own right for two centuries and imposes its own laws and selects its own adornments to mark its unique resilience. Why was this city, this proud, exuberant city fated to be mine? I try to understand this fate I can’t throw off, that I didn’t choose, as I try to understand the city, but Havana eludes me, always takes me by surprise with its forlorn blackand-white photo shots and my perception is as worn and cracked as the old coat-of-arms of those who luxuriated on wealth from mangos, pineapples and sugar. After so much rapture and rejection, my relationship with the city has been marked by a chiaroscuro painted by my eyes: the pretty young girl turned sad hooker, an angry man a potential murderer, the petulant youth an incurable drug addict, the old man on the corner a thief wanting peace. Everything blackens over time, like the city where I pace, between crumbling arches, petrified rubbish tips, walls peeled to the bone, drains overflowing like rivers born in the heart of hell and rocky balconies living on props. In the end the city that chose me, and I, the chosen one, resemble each other: we die a little each day, a long, premature death made from pinpricks, pain that is progressive, tumours that advance… And although I want to rebel, this city grips me by the neck and overwhelms me with its arcane mysteries. That’s why I realize the decrepit beauty of a well-to-do coat-of-arms and a city’s apparent peace are transient and mortal – a city I know I see through the eyes of love, that dares show me those unexpected delights from its sumptuous past. I’d like to be able to see the city through your eyes, she told me when I described my recent find, and I think it would be melancholically beautiful – perhaps, squalid and moving – to show her my city, but I know it’s impossible, for she could never wear my spectacles, as she’s beside herself with happiness, and the city will never reveal itself to her. Miller said Paris is like a whore, but Havana is more whorish: she only offers herself up to those who repay her in pain and anguish, and even then she doesn’t yield up her whole self, doesn’t surrender the innermost secrets from her entrails.
“The most solid proof of Jesus’s authority is that he didn’t need distance to wield it but exercised it from the closest proximity to his neighbour. Power dresses itself in attributes (wealth, might, banking knowledge) that constitute its glory as it simultaneously creates remoteness. The powerful, when naked, feel impotent, but Jesus, the son of man, naked and barefoot, lived among men, remained among them and exercised over them the infinite sweetness of his infinite power…”
Always the infinite, the infinitely invariable, and the dilemma of power, thought the Count, who had last seen the inside of a church on the memorable day of his first communion. He’d prepared at Sunday catechism over many a month for that act of religious re-affirmation that he had to go through, knowing full well why: he would receive, from the priest’s hands, a small piece of flour that contained the whole essence of the great (infinite) mystery; the immortal soul and suffering body of Our Lord Jesus Christ (with all his power) would pass from his mouth to his (equally) immortal soul. This would be a necessary digestive step to possible salvation or the most terrible damnation, he now knew, and the knowledge transformed him into an (infinitely) responsible being. Nevertheless, at the age of seven the Count thought he knew a lot of other things much better: that Sunday was the best day for playing the best games of baseball outside his house, for going off to steal mangos from Genaro’s farm, for taking a bike ride – two or even three on each bike – to fish
The Count couldn’t imagine his return to a parish church, almost thirty years after defecting, would spark off the feeling he’d suddenly recovered a quiescent, not simply lost memory: the cavernous smell of the chapel, the tall shadows from the domes, the reflections of a sun dimmed by stained glass, the blurry glints from the main altar were all present in his memory of that poor, smallscale church in his barrio. Such memories were tangible in the inevitably luxurious church of the Passionists, with its Creole neo-Gothic finery, the highest domes decorated with filigree, celestial gold, the sensation of the smallness of humans provoked by a structure reaching for heaven and a profusion of hyper-realistic, human-sized images and gestures of resignation that seemed about to speak; became tangible in the church he’d now entered, in the middle of the mass, searching for the saviour he needed right now, namely Red Candito.
When Cuqui told him that Candito was in church the Count’s first reaction was one of surprise. It was the first he’d heard about Red’s profession of faith, but he was pleased, for he could talk to him on neutral territory. In front of that facade with towers like exotic European pines, the policeman had hesitated for a second about what he should do: but then decided to wait for Candito by participating in the mass himself. Conde breathed in the pliant smell of cheap incense; he sat on the back pew and listened to the Sunday sermon of that priest who was young and vigorous in his gestures and words, and spoke to his flock of the most arcane mysteries, of power and the infinite, in the tones of a good conversationalist:
“The paternity of Jesus, who revealed the paternity of God through fraternal solidarity. By relating to people from below, at their level, he not only saved the one who received the gospel, and Jesus was fulfilled as brother to men and as son of God. Hence the vulnerability of Jesus: his joy when simple people welcomed the revelation of God and his sorrow for Jerusalem, because of the authorities that wouldn’t receive him…”
Then the priest raised his arms and the parishioners who packed his church stood up. Feeling he was profaning an arcane mystery he himself had renounced, the Count took advantage of that movement to escape like a man persecuted into the light of the square, a cigarette between his lips and an amen in his ears chorused by people who were happy once again to have known the sacrifices made by their Lord.
Fifteen minutes later the believers began to process, their faces lit by an inner light rivalling the splendour of the Sunday sun. Red Candito, on the last step of the stairs, stopped to light a cigarette and greeted an old black guy who was walking by, dressed in a linen guayabera and straw hat, perhaps in flight from a 1920s photo. The Count waited in the middle of the square, and saw how his friend raised his eyebrows when he spotted him.
“I didn’t know you were a churchgoer,” the Count said, shaking his hand.
“Some Sundays,” admitted Candito who suggested they should cross the road. “It makes me feel good.”
“Church depresses me. What do you hope to find there, Candito?”
The mulatto smiled, as if the Count had said something stupid.
“What I can’t find elsewhere…”
“Of course, the infinite. You know, I now find myself surrounded by mystics.”
Candito smiled again.
“And what’s up now, Conde?”
They walked up Vista Alegre and the Count waited for his breathing to settle after their climb as the ochre structure of the school where Lissette Nunez had taught and where they had met came into sight.
“Yesterday I was thinking this bastard Pre-Uni seems to wield power over my destiny. I can’t throw it off.”
“They were good years.”
“I think they were the best, Red, but it’s not as simple as that. This is where we grew up, right? It was here I met most of the people who are my friends. You, for example.”
“I’m sorry about Friday, Conde, but you’ve got to understand me…”
“I do, I do, Candito. There are things you can’t ask of people. But a twenty-four year-old woman was teaching in one of the classrooms over there until she turned up the other day dead, murdered, and I’ve got to find out who did it. It is that simple. And I’ve got to find out for several reasons: because I’m a policeman, because the person who did it must be called to account, because she was a Pre-Uni teacher… It’s a fucking obsession.”
