through the studio window on a motor scooter.» Where is Sergei?'
'Not feeling well,' Arkady said, 'but I'll tell him you wished him a quick recovery.'
The monk was a whirlwind, dispatching hoodlums with a variety of leaps and kicks. With every blood-spraying kick Arkady's head throbbed, and when the gangster chief pulled on his glove Arkady stood.
'Aren't you staving?' his friend said.» This is the good part.'
Ofelia was late for the meeting with Muriel's teacher.
She rushed because she was convinced that the Italian with Hedy was slaughtered simply because he resembled Renko. She had gone to the medical clinic in time to find Lohmann, the salesman from Hamburg, still being examined and he truculently answered yes, his friend Franco had bumped his head a few days earlier on one of those stupid low doorways in Havana Vieja. Poor Hedy had not been too bright to begin with, and place, time, looks, names, a simple scrape on the Italian's head, everything had conspired against her.
Also Ofelia wanted to shower. She felt death lying like a film on her skin. If other people couldn't smell it, she could.
A footbridge led from the Quinta de Molina to the school, modern and airy with pastel walls covered with self-portraits of students in their maroon uniforms, skirts for girls and shorts for boys, and murals on the theme of 'Resistance!' featuring children with rifles downing hapless American jets.
Muriel's class had recently visited a banana plantation, and the classroom walls were decorated with paper bananas. Ofelia wondered where they got the paper. The school had one book for every three students, no new books in the library for three years, no chemicals for chemistry.» They learn in the abstract,' as her mother put it caustically; nevertheless the school was clean and orderly. Ofelia made profuse apologies to Miss Garcia, Muriel's teacher, an older woman with eyebrows as thin as spider legs.
'I'd almost given up on you.' The brows lifted to indicate exasperation.
'I'm so sorry.' Was there anything more self-abased than a parent meeting with a teacher? Ofelia wondered.» Is there something special you wanted to talk about?'
'Of course. Why would I have asked you in?'
'There's a problem, no?'
'Yes. A great problem.'
'Muriel has not been turning in homework?'
'She turns in her homework.'
'It's good?'
'Adequate.'
'She misbehaves in school?'
'She behaves normally. That was the reason she was allowed to go on the trip. But deep in her, in the soul of this little girl, is something rotten.'
'Rotten?'
'Festering.'
'She hit someone, she lied?'
'No, no, no, no. Don't try to get off easy. Deep in her heart is a worm.'
'What did she do?'
'She violated my trust. I took only my best students to the farm. To learn of the struggle in the countryside. Instead, she revealed herself as an anti-revolutionary and a thief.' Miss Garcia set a paper bag on her desk.» On the way back on the bus this fell out of her shirt. I heard it fall.'
Ofelia looked inside the bag.» A banana.'
'Stolen goods. Stolen by a daughter of an officer of the PNR. This is not going to end here.'
'Actually, a banana skin, no?' Ofelia lifted it from the bag by its unpeeled end. The skin was brown and blotchy, ripeness on the edge of rotting.
'Banana or banana skin, it makes no difference.'
'She had eaten it or not?'
'That doesn't matter.'
'You heard it fall. It's not likely you would hear an empty banana skin fall on a moving bus.'
'That's not the point.'
'Whose custody has it been in? There could be more than one person involved, there might be a whole ring involved with this banana. I will test it for fingerprints inside and out. We can do that. I'm glad you brought this to my attention. Don't worry, we'll get them all, each and every one. Do you want me to?'
'Well.' Miss Garcia sat back, and her tongue dabbed at the corner of her mouth.» It was in my custody, of course. I don't know how it got eaten.'
'We can investigate. We can make sure the perpetrators never show their faces in this school again. Is that what you want?'
Miss Garcia looked aside, the eyebrows settled, and she said in an entirely different voice, 'I suppose I was hungry.'
Now Ofelia felt even worse. There was no pleasure to be had in cowing a teacher who didn't even recognize she was slowly starving. Miss Garcia's problem was her revolutionary purity, she had to be the only person Ofelia knew who didn't have some small enterprise on the side. Next the poor woman would start hallucinating and see Che wandering the halls. Ofelia was so ashamed she couldn't wait to get her hands on Muriel.
Arkady opened the briefcase and laid the contents on Pribluda's desk, photocopies that were in Spanish, naturally, every word. If he'd only studied Spanish at school instead of English and German, which were only good for sciences, medicine, philosophy, international business, Shakespeare and Goethe. For sugar, Spanish seemed to be the key. Arkady tried anyway:
A document with the title 'Negociacion Russo-Cubano' with lists of names, Russian for the 'Ministerio de Commercio Exterior de Rusia' (Bykov, Plotnikov, Chenigovskii), Cubans for the Cuban 'Ministerio de Azucar' (Mesa, Herrera, Suarez) and a third of Pana manian mediators from AzuPanama (Ramos, Pico, Arenas).
A 'Certificado del Registro Publico Panameno' for AzuPanama, S.A., including a list of 'directores' with the same names as the mediators, Sres. Ramos, Pico, Arenas.
A 'Referenda Bancaria' for AzuPanama from the Bank for Creative Investments, S.A., 'Zona Libre de Col6n,' signed by the bank's 'Director General,' lohn O'Brien.
Face pages of Cuban passports for Ramos, Pico and Arenas.
Cubana airline tickets from Havana to Panama for Ramos, Pico and Arenas.
Room vouchers for Ramos, Pico and Arenas from the Hotel Lincoln, Zona Libre, Colon, billed to the Cuban Ministry of Sugar.
A long list of Russian commitments in funds and cash equivalents totaling $252 million for Cuban sugar.
A revised list after mediation by AzuPanama for $272 million.
A deposit slip of $5,000 in the name of Vitaly Bugai at the Bank for Creative Investments, S.A., Zona Libre, Colon, Republica de Panama.
In other words, the mediators Ramos, Pico and Arenas were Cuban, and the neutral AzuPanama was a creation of the Cuban Ministry of Sugar and the Bank for Creative Investment. Arkady's Spanish was nonexistent, but his math was fair. He understood that Cuba had defrauded Russia of an extra $20 million, one beggar stealing from the other. He also understood that the .Cubans' silent partner in crime was the pirate who owned Capone's boat.
Close up, Muriel's dark eyes had irises like solar flares, frightening glimpses of the eleven-year-old soul. Her interrogation was brief because she admitted to worse than her teacher claimed. She had bought the banana.
'The workers at the farm were selling them. I had a
dollar from Grandmother. We bought a bunch.' 'A bunch? Miss Garcia found only one banana.' 'Everyone in class hid a banana. She only found
mine.'
Ofelia's mother ticked on her rocker.» We got all the others, don't worry.'
'That's not the point,' Ofelia said.» You've turned my daughters into profiteers.'
