“I remember seeing Violeta three or four times, I think, I didn’t have time to go and see other musicians. Once in the Las Vegas cabaret and another in The Vixen and the Crow, where they had a tiny little dance floor. That day she wasn’t performing, I mean, wasn’t on the programme there, but sang anyway because she really felt like singing and Frank Emilio was at the piano because he really felt like playing and as they were both so keen, what they came out with was something you’d never forget even if you lived to be a thousand. Did I say Violeta was a fantastic female? Well, she was eighteen or nineteen and at that age even Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s a looker. She was olive-skinned, a dark tan, but not mulatta, with jet-black hair, and a big, beautiful mouth, with good teeth, that gave her lots of character even if they were a bit chipped here and there. But her eyes were her best asset: they could chill you to the bone if she pointed them at you, checked you inside and out, like an x-ray machine. She used to sing for the sake of singing all the time, so they said: she enjoyed singing boleros, always very quietly, always with a hint of scorn, half aggressively, as if letting you in on things from her own life. She had quite a husky voice, like an older woman who’d had to put up with a lot in life, and never raised her voice much, almost spoke rather than sang, but when she let rip with a bolero, people went quiet, forgot their drinks, as if she’d hypnotized the lot of them: men and women, pimps and whores, drunks and junkies. She turned out boleros that were dramas and not ordinary songs, as I said, as if they came from her own life and she was telling the whole world, there and then.
That night I was blown away. I even forgot Vivi Verdura, a big, fat whore, over six feet tall, who’d got her claws into me and was swigging my drinks. And the hour, hour and a bit, two hours, or whatever time Violeta was singing, was like being off the planet, or very close, so close you were right inside that woman, and you never wanted to leave… Fucking hell! That day a photographer who was always round the clubs and cabarets, because he earned his crust from taking photos of artists for newspapers and magazines, told me: ‘Rogelito, Violeta’s miracle isn’t that she sings the best but that she can seduce anyone who walks in.’ It was so true. So much so, that picking up gossip here and there one day, I discovered that a very rich fellow, one of the really rich who never went to clubs, had fallen in love with her, wanted to marry her, the whole lot, although he was thirty years older. It seems this big shot was the one paying for the record to launch her big time, get her on television and on the road to an LP with ten or twelve songs…
“But Violeta didn’t need any such helping hand, because she was really good, I tell you, and that was why she began to make a name for herself with that kind of performance and, as always happens in this piss-pot of a country, people couldn’t keep the lid on their envy. Other singers began to stick their knives in and some said if it weren’t for the big shot she’d never get to sing, even in her own backyard. Katy Barque was the most vicious. Katy was in her prime, but was always fucking venomous, and didn’t want any competition. She knew that Violeta could beat her in that bolero style, as the hard, contemptuous woman, because it came more naturally to her, and because as a female she was much better equipped than Katy. That fracas led to a big row, I discovered, as was to be expected: one day Katy created a scene and called her every name under the sun, but Violeta didn’t respond, just laughed a bit and said that if envy turned your hair yellow, Katy wouldn’t need to dye hers every week…
“Everybody was talking about the cat fight between Katy and Violeta and the mysterious rich guy intent on marrying the girl when that same cabaret photographer, the one they called Salutaris, because he looked like the guy in the advert for Salutaris soft drinks, told me one night: ‘Hey, Rogelito, Violeta’s not going to sing any more.’ He didn’t really know why, and he was the one who knew the tricks everyone was up to, but the rumour was she was going to marry the rich guy, and that the rich guy, after paying for the record and all, now wanted her to give up the club and cabaret scene, not appear on television and become a proper lady. I believed what Salutaris said, because it had happened a thousand times before and Violeta’s situation was nothing new: you bet, she was a girl from a poor background, even though she seemed gentle and good-mannered, and the fact was she lived by singing and if she could suddenly live like a princess, the songs, melodies, even the Parisien and the long, evil nights that do you in could go to fucking hell. Or do some people in, at least… Frankly, it surprised me, because I reckoned Violeta lived to sing rather than to earn a few pesos. She had so much passion, she wanted to sing so much, at any hour of the night, whether paid or not, unlike Katy Barque and all the others, and that’s why I was surprised she’d accepted the condition that she had to give up singing, although women sometimes fall in love – men too, for fuck’s sake – and do what they have to do and especially what they shouldn’t do. All the same, it smelt odd,
“Well, of course, apart from the photographer, as I remember it now, let’s see… well, I told you Katy Barque knew her. And she was a friend of Lotus Flower, that blonde who danced almost nude in the Shanghai and then set up her own whore-house. I know they were friends because that day in The Vixen and the Crow they sat at the same table and talked to each other for ages. Another guy who must have known her, because he knew everybody, is Silvano Quintero, the
As soon as he got home that afternoon, Conde checked through the telephone directory and discovered, to his amazement, that Silvano Quintero the journalist still existed and lived in Havana, and after ringing him they agreed to meet in his flat on calle Rayo the following day. What time? “Any,” Quintero replied, “I never go out.” On the other hand, it was more complicated to set up a rendezvous with Katy Barque, until he lied barefacedly and told her about a film a producer friend of his was planning and which would definitely use some of her songs and which, as she must know, would pay very well…
As if driven by a desire he couldn’t put down, Conde opened the old portable record player he’d brought from Carlos’s place the night before and listened to
Intensely, even alarmingly entranced, more convinced than ever that her voice stirred him that way because it touched a sensitive fibre in his memory, Conde decided to turn the disc over and explore the unknown territory on the dark side of the moon. That side of the 45 promised strong emotions with its title
While the record settled after a few initial turns and spluttered plaintively on track to the recorded grooves, the Count shut his eyes and held his breath, allowing his ears to rule over the rest of his senses. As in
