Guilty
by Luis Adrián Betancourt
Translated from the Spanish by Donald A. Yates
Cuban writer Luis Adrián Betancourt has been for some forty years one of the most important contributors to and supporters of the crime-fiction genre in his country. He is the author of many crime novels and mystery short stories, all published in either Cuba or Spain. “Guilty” is his first work to be translated into English. Mr. Betancourt is currently at work on a P.I. novel set in Cuba in the nineteen twenties.
He did not like traveling by train because train trips were slow and boring. They brought back sad memories of farewells, absences, and inevitable emotional distress. In his teeming recall, the train evoked a tangled blend of distances and sleeplessness. All in all, an unpleasant experience.
But this time it would be different. He was coming back. Ignoring the hours, the miles, the stops, he was returning home, to the place where waiting for him would be Rosario, anguished over the lost years spent alone and deserted, Chela, well along toward becoming a young woman, unsuited now to a child’s dress, with her hair pulled back into a bun, and Ivan, with more curiosity than feeling for the father he didn’t remember and who, after so many years, was returning to his home.
They all were wondering what their lives would be like from now on living together. Antonio himself did not have a clear idea of his immediate future. He needed to sit down with them and humbly, without omitting any details, tell them the true story of that nightmare and ask them if, in spite of everything, he deserved another chance.
Soon after passing under the overhead crossings on the outskirts of Havana, it began to drizzle. Just as it did on that afternoon when a rainfall coincided with the funeral of Pancho Vasallo. The gravediggers had drunk a whole bottle of Bacardi and stumbled through the mud, cursing the weather and their task.
The sky was an unbroken gray. It had been raining gently and without letup for hours, like tears falling from above. Only the deceased man’s family and the two rural policemen on duty remained to the very end, unaffected by the rain that soaked them. Amalia had wept for some time, tormented by the thought that she was responsible for that tragedy and inconsolable over the loss of her beloved father.
Vicente, the agronomist, gave the eulogy, taking only five minutes to say that the man whom they now covered with damp soil had been, above all else, generous and a good friend.
By then, the killer had confessed. It was a simple matter for the authorities — a complete and spontaneous statement, leaving no doubts. Antonio meekly admitted his guilt. At moments it seemed that he had no interest in defending himself.
There was no need to waste time with interviews or questioning. The weapon had not been found, and no one suggested looking for it. Antonio was the only one to mention it, when he gave his statement, saying he had thrown it into the river. No one ever attempted to determine if Vasallo had been killed by a bullet fired from an old Parabelum. The confession eliminated any need to be concerned about proof.
The motive emerged from the testimony of witnesses present, all of whom repeated the same series of tedious facts. Their statements were so similar that a single one of them would have sufficed to satisfy the needs of the investigation.
The trial was carried out promptly, and since the crime was so recent and the victim so widely respected, a sentence of twenty years seemed fitting to everyone except Rosario and her children.
Standing as his sentence was read, Antonio learned with little surprise that he would spend the next twenty years behind bars, far from his family and his town. His gaze cast down, biting his lip, he came to the understanding that there would be many blank pages ahead in his life and that he would experience that death in life that is called solitude. He also did some figuring. By the time that he ceased to be State Inmate 33455, on his release, he would be fifty-three years old, his hair turned gray, and his body weakened. But in this he was mistaken.
After hearing his sentence, he was given a few minutes to say goodbye at the door of his house, while the dogs howled mournfully, as if they understood the role of those accompanying strangers. When he was leaving, Antonio said only one final thing:
“Wait for me.”
“We’ll wait for you,” his wife replied. And she embraced him. She could offer him no encouragement, for she could feel none for herself. The children remained asleep even at the last kiss. They had no way of knowing what that farewell meant.
Standing on the train platform, Antonio took a long, anguished look at the town, as if he wanted to preserve the image of that place in a corner of his memory.
That day the train was on time. The villagers whispered to each other as the prisoner shuffled by. His head was bowed, his hands bound. One of the soldiers helped him onto the train. The other one offered him a cigarette. His face looked out from the coach window until he was lost from sight.
Now, so many years later, the countryside had changed. That may have been the reason the trip back seemed to take so long. The soldiers with him were relaxed, giving little attention to keeping an eye on him.
They were almost there now. Antonio closed his eyes and remembered the morning many years earlier when he had first arrived in that town. It was July and the hives were full of decanting honey and the tomeguines were in full bloom in the fields and on the floor of the pine forests.
He found her strolling amidst the hovering bees and the flowers. He watched her come and go, fascinated by her fleeting smile. He attempted a flattering remark that made the girl smile again, and Antonio knew then that he would remain to live in that town for many years, perhaps for the rest of his life. They were married. There were happy times and others not so happy.
“I would have liked to start all over again,” he wrote to her from his prison cell, “and then I would not have wasted a single moment at your side. No one understands what he has until he loses it.”
It was something he had discovered when he least expected to. When it was too late to act on that understanding and he was being taken away on a train with only a one-way ticket.
Rosario could not bear to go to the station, but she knew the time when the train would leave and the sound of the departure whistle confirmed it. That night she received an unexpected visitor. Lorenzo Puente indicated that he was there to offer her assistance. She reacted with distrust, suspecting that he was intent on taking advantage of the situation. He did not rate favorably in her estimation.
Lorenzo had not been a particularly good friend of Antonio. He had never wanted to give him a job on the Vasallo ranch. It was easy to see that the nature of their relationship was based on casual circumstances and shared interests, but in no way was it a true friendship. It was rather that life had led them down similar paths of parties, drinking, and casual women. In truth, they had been more like accomplices than friends. The last thing she found out about that superficial connection had ultimately turned into a public scandal.
Rosario was embarrassed by what people were saying. Antonio wanted to save the marriage, begged her forgiveness, and in the end she once again forgave him. She said her reason was the children, who were innocent of any blame. They decided to work to keep the family intact at whatever cost. But for now there was nothing he could do. The matter of Pancho Vasallo’s daughter did not emerge in Antonio’s confessions and he persistently denied any suggestion that it was relevant. But the death of the old man indicated otherwise.
In view of all this she cautiously let Lorenzo speak his piece.