Havana Fever

priest, standing up and grumbling, “Well, I must get ready for mass. Will you be staying? Look, the altar boy’s not come yet…”

“I’d fancy myself as an altar boy… Keep your hopes up, but don’t get too excited… Know what? If I discover my father did in fact fall in love with Violeta del Rio I’ll start believing in miracles.”

It was inevitable: as soon as he saw their faces he recalled Rubbish’s early morning jubilation at the feast of leftovers; recalled the worst nights during the Crisis, when his desolate larder forced him to toast old bread and drink glasses of sugared water; he even recalled the old man who several days ago had asked him for two pesos, one peso, anything, to buy something to eat. The now happy but still emaciated faces with which Amalia and Dionisio Ferrero welcomed him told the Count that both had got to the market the previous evening before it closed and, like himself, had feasted on an exceptional banquet that, because they were out of gastric training, had made sleep difficult. Such an irritation, though, would never mar their real satisfaction at feeling stuffed, and safe from the cruel, stabbing pain of hunger. They might well have had some milk with their breakfast that morning and restored a creamy bliss to their gruel, even luxuriated in bread and butter, and drunk proper strong coffee, like the coffee they now offered their buyers, perhaps over-sweetened, as the ex-policeman’s expert palate detected, though it was no doubt genuine, and not the ersatz powder sold in minimal amounts according to a strict ration book.

On arrival, Conde had introduced them to his business partner: flustered by the proximity of the treasure, Yoyi Pigeon hurried through the polite chit-chat and asked to see the library, as if it were a warehouse full of hammers or a container of scissors.

Amalia gave her apologies, because she had to wash and feed her mother, go to the market – did she still have money left? – and do a thousand things in the house, but Dionisio stayed with them in the library, hovering mistrustfully by the door. At the Count’s suggestion, the buyers began their prospecting among the bookshelves located on the right of the room, a less crowded area where the bookcases had been cut back to create space for the ironbarred window overlooking the garden now dedicated to growing vegetables necessary for survival. Following the Count’s plan, they started to make three piles on the desk’s generous surface: books that should never be sold on the market, books of less interest or no interest at all, and books for immediate sale. Conde placed in the first group nineteenth-century Cuban publications that seemed straightforwardly rare and very valuable and a number of European and North American books, including a first edition of Voltaire’s Candide that made him sweat excitedly and, especially, exquisite, invaluable original printings of the Most Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, by Fray Bartolome de las Casas, dated 1552, and The Inca’s La Florida: the History of Hernando de Soto, Governor and Captain-General of the Realm of La Florida and Other Heroic Indian and Spanish Gentlemen, printed in Lisbon in 1605. But the books that most disturbed the Count were unimaginable treasures from Creole publishing, some of which he now saw and touched for the first time, such as the four volumes of the Collection of Political, Historical, Scientific and Other Aspects of Life on the Island of Cuba, by Jose Antonio Saco, printed in Paris, in 1858; The First Three Historians of the Island of Cuba: Arrate-Valdes- Urrutia, printed in three volumes, in Havana, in 1876 and 1877; The Annals of the Island of Cuba, by Felix Erenchun, printed in Havana, in 1858, in five hefty tomes; Land Surveying as Applied to the System of Measuring on the Island of Cuba, by Don Desiderio Herrera, also printed in Havana, in 1835; the extremely rare 1813 edition of the History of the Island of Cuba and Especially of Havana, by Don Antonio Jose Valdes, one of the first books ever made on the island; and as if handling gold bars, he lifted out the thirteen volumes of the Physical, Political and Natural History of the Island of Cuba, by the controversial Ramon de la Sagra, published in Paris between 1842 and 1861 and that, if it was as complete as it appeared to be, should have 281 plates, 150 coloured by hand, which meant they might fetch more than ten thousand dollars even in the most sluggish of markets.

But the mountain that grew most, as if powered by inner volcanic forces, was the one of books that could be sold, which, apart from calming a neurotic Yoyi, worried by the quantity of books the Count considered unsaleable, brought a metallic glint to the eyes of that young man, transformed momentarily into a scavenging hawk.

While they checked the books, constantly surprised by dates and places of publication, caressed gnarled leather or original board spines, lingered occasionally to admire engravings or hand-painted illustrations, Conde felt the sharp pain from the previous day’s hunch return, warning he’d yet to uncover all the surprises that were undoubtedly awaiting him in some corner of that sanctuary. Nonetheless, he couldn’t avoid the uncomfortable truth: that he was introducing chaos into a universe of paper that, for more than forty years, had safely orbited beyond the wrath of time and history, thanks to a simple pledge that had been honoured with iron determination.

When another set of coveted books passed through his hands – as he fingered like a delicate child the now fragile, profusely illustrated volumes of the Picturesque Stroll Around the Island of Cuba, printed in 1841 and 1842 – he tried to persuade himself they might herald other surprising encounters, and wondered if his hunch related to the palpable possibility he was going to scale the heights all specialists in the trade dreamed of: the discovery of the unimaginable. Perhaps among those volumes lurked one that pre-dated The General Tariff for the Price of Medicines, the flimsy pamphlet published by Carlos Habre in Havana in 1723 and considered to be the first-born child of Cuban typography; might he find slumbering there with one eye half open the original parchment manuscripts to prove that the Gaelic writings of the mythical Ossian were awesomely genuine?; or the gold plaques etched with hieroglyphics of the Book of the Mormons, never seen by anyone after Joseph Smith found and translated them – with indispensable divine help – only for an angel to pick them up and return them immediately to heaven, according to every account? Or The Mirror of Patience that had never been described, let alone touched, although it supposedly marked the birth of poetry on Cuban themes in 1608? Its appearance would end once and for all the debate raging over the clever forgery or authenticity of an epic poem peopled with satyrs, fauns, wood folk, pure, limpid, frolicking naiads and napeas, enjoying life between Cuban streams and forests despite the island’s perennial heat waves.

Conde’s emotional exhaustion got the better of Yoyi’s entrepreneurial energies, and they called it a day at three p.m., after counting out two hundred and eighteen saleable books, some of which could fetch juicy prices, nearly all printed in Cuba, Mexico or Spain between the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.

“Those go back on the shelves,” the Count told Dionisio, pointing to the most valuable volumes. “We’ll take these. Is that all right by you?”

“I don’t have a problem with any of that. What do we do with the ones you say shouldn’t be sold?” he asked, gazing at the mountain of fantastic books the Count was returning to one corner of the empty shelves.

“You decide… It would make sense to try to sell them to the National Library. They all have a heritage value. The Library doesn’t pay very much, but…”

“But, man, I think…” Pigeon couldn’t repress a reaction his partner quickly nipped in the bud.

“It’s not open to debate, Yoyi,” and he added, for Dionisio’s benefit, “I already told you, you must decide. Most of those books are worth $500, others over a thousand and some several thousand.” He watched the sickly pallor spread over Dionisio’s face and, pre-empting a heart attack, added, “If you like, when we finish today, talk to him,” and he pointed at Yoyi. “But I won’t be part of that deal. My only condition is that, if you’re not going to do a deal with the National Library or a museum, do it with Yoyi. He’ll pay you best. I can assure you of that.”

Excited by these figures, Dionisio Ferrero coughed, sweated, reflected, trembled, hesitated and looked at Yoyi, who welcomed his look with an angelic, understanding smile.

“I knew they could be quite valuable, but really never imagined they might fetch those prices. Naturally, if I’d had any inkling, I’d have…” Dionisio smiled, happy at the dazzling prospect of a better future. “So how much will you give me for the ones you have separated out?”

“We’ll have to do our sums,” Pigeon interjected hastily. “Can you leave us alone for a few minutes so we can tot up?”

“Yes, of course… I’ll go and make some coffee. Some cold water as well?”

When Dionisio went out, the Count looked at his colleague and received the murderous look he anticipated and deserved.

“I’ll kill you one of these days. I swear I will. How the hell can you be such a bastard? And to cap it all you tell him there are books worth over a thousand dollars…”

“I erred on the conservative side, Yoyi. What do you reckon for the thirteen volumes of La Sagra? And the first editions of Las Casas and the Inca Garcilaso? Got any idea what they’d pay out in Miami for the Picturesque Stroll?...”