“What do you think of my story?” asked Gómez de la Peña when his wife left the room, after she’d poured their coffees.
“More of the usual,” responded the Count, looking for the precise, meaningful adjective that would seem inoffensive to the man who might lead him to Miguel Forcade’s past, which is where he tried to move him on to. “And why did Miguel come to see you after what he had done to you?”
“As far as was possible, Miguel and I were friends. Perhaps you know that friendship doesn’t prosper when power is at stake: anyone could be a regicide and Miguel had all the qualifications to become my successor. But even so I trusted him, in as much as you could trust anyone, obviously. And now we were both nobodies he came to see how I was and apologize to me for what he’d done.”
“Is that all?” persisted Manolo, making himself comfortable on the edge of his chair.
“I think so… Unless he wanted to see what the life of a deposed leader was like… That’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Did he by any chance tell you why he’d stayed in Spain?”
Gómez de la Peña smiled wanly and shook his head.
“I didn’t ask him directly, but we did have a good chat… And he said nothing in particular: only that he’d anticipated what would happen three years later, and knew the development programmes weren’t going to work… In short, a display of prophetic gifts I found unconvincing.”
“And didn’t he say why he’d returned to Cuba?” continued the sergeant, not deigning to look at his boss.
“He just told me his father was ill. He was very old. I even thought he’d died.”
“And you believed him?”
“Was there any reason not to, Sergeant?”
“Perhaps, as you knew him well… And didn’t he say where he was heading once he left here?”
“He left at about seven, or just after, because it was already dusk. He said he wanted to see a relative of his, but didn’t mention who. But he did say it was very important to him.”
“He said it was important to him?”
“Yes, I’m sure he did.”
“Did he say he was afraid of returning to Cuba?”
“He said something of the sort. But I tried to reassure him. After all, a thousand others have done what he did… Lately it’s almost become a fashion, hasn’t it? And he had no cases pending or anything similar. As far as I know, he didn’t take anything with him.”
“Not even one of those objects he expropriated in the ’60s and which could fetch as many dollars as that painting?”
“Not as far as I’m aware. But I didn’t check his suitcase at the airport, though chance would have me accompany him that day.”
“And do you remember if anyone in Customs checked it?”
Gómez de la Peña looked at the ceiling before answering.
“Forgive me, Sergeant, but I’m moved by your naïveté… As a leader, Miguel Forcade left through the diplomatic channel.”
Manolo elegantly assumed his moving innocence and continued. “So no one checked anything and he could have taken out whatever he wanted.”
“Forgive me, Manolo,” interjected the Count, troubled by his subordinate’s naïveté and by his own for thinking a mere copy of a Matisse could be on that privileged wall in that equally privileged residence, permanently enjoyed by a logically privileged civil servant, who in some safe spot in the house must also possess, in his own name, the documents crediting him as the owner of the building. “Tell me, Gerardo, but please tell me the truth: did you give Miguel Forcade the house where he used to live?”
The old dethroned minister restrained his smile, but didn’t banish it from his face entirely: “That’s what you’d expect, I suppose?”
“Yes, in the same way you assigned yourself this house.”
“True enough,” admitted Gómez de la Peña. “Just as it’s true I assigned all the houses abandoned by the gusanos for several years, in Miramar, in Siboney, in Vedado, in the Casino Deportivo, and so on and so forth… It was our turn, after all. The judgement of history, a reward for our sacrifice and struggle, the time of the dispossessed, you remember?”
The Count took a deep breath to relieve the tension. He felt a desire to twist the neck of that expert in cynicism who had enjoyed the socio-historico-politicomaterial privilege of giving, granting, conceding, deciding, administering, distributing favours from his position as a trusted leader, and in the name of the whole country. He felt his arrogant confession of the way he wielded power to be an insult: he created networks of compromise and debt, corrupted all the byways where he left his slimy tracks. It was no doubt because of people like Gómez de la Peña that he’d been in the police for more than ten years, deferring his own life, to try to dent their overbearing complacency and, if possible, make them pay for some of the crimes that could never be paid for. But this bastard’s slipping from my grasp, he thought, as he observed the pyjamas that represented the comfortable sentence he was seeing out: a remoteness from power that, nevertheless, didn’t deprive him of a house in the best part of Havana, of the Soviet car he kept in the garage nor even a Matisse worth three and a half million dollars, which he’d legally acquired – and no one would ever know if that was true – for five hundred Cuban pesos, for personal enjoyment and the morbid game he could play with his visitors. If only I could catch you out some way, you son of a bitch, he told himself, trying to smile as he spoke: “If you can bear to be frank yet again, please answer a further question: don’t you think it’s really shameful that you’ve got a painting worth millions hanging on your wall, one you bought using your position, when down in the city there are people who spend their week eating rice and beans after working an eight- or ten-hour day and sometimes without even a wall on which to hang a calendar?”
Yet again Gerardo Gómez de la Peña smoothed the pathetic camouflage over his embarrassing bald pate and looked the detective lieutenant straight in the eye: “Why should I personally feel ashamed, a retired old man who likes to look at that painting? From what I gather, Lieutenant, you don’t know this neighbourhood very well; there are houses just as comfortable as mine, with other equally beautiful paintings and heaps of beautiful African wood and ivory sculptures, acquired by more or less similar means, where Nicaraguan furniture is all the rage, where they call their servants ‘comrade’ and breed exotic dogs that enjoy a better diet than sixty per cent of the world’s population and eighty-five per cent of the nation’s… No, of course I’m not ashamed. Because life is as the old conga ditty says: if you hit the jackpot, go for it… And too bad for the fellow who doesn’t, but that fellow got well and truly fucked, didn’t he?”