As he breathed in the putrid stench of the bay, the Count realized why he had fled the Archive where the legal memory of his country rested: he really couldn’t care less whether he found anything. An unhealthy apathy had invaded him at the revelation of so much dead past, so much existence reduced to certificates, declarations, forms, extracts, protocols, registers, in duplicate and even triplicate, emptied of passion and blood: the whole devalued detritus of history without which it wasn’t possible to live but with which it was impossible to co-exist. The violent revelation that all was reduced to a piece of paper, numbered and filed according to entries of birth, marriage, divorce and death had been far too apocalyptic an illumination for his spirit on the eve of a birthday and liberation from work: the arid wake of nothingness left by being thirty-six less one day exposed to him the alarming futility of his efforts, as man, as human being, as supposedly intelligent animal. What could he do to hold off that pathetic, dismal destiny, as someone who considered his memory and memory itself to be a most precious gift? Perhaps art, as the unashamedly queer dramatist Alberto Marqués had reminded him recently, might be the remedy most within his grasp in order to escape oblivion. But his art, he knew already, would never enjoy the transcendence able to save him (art and myself, as Martí had cried on a day of despair; either we save each other or go down together). Or perhaps it would? he wondered, remembering that other genius who had committed suicide sure he’d failed artistically and whose novel then won prizes and recognition that were well and truly deserved. No. He’d never write anything like that, he shouldn’t delude himself, he concluded, and depressed himself a little bit more before standing up and walking along the old Alameda de Paula, Havana’s elegant eighteenth-century promenade, equally devalued by age and neglect, with its leonine fountain distressingly dry, before heading to the still distant mouth of the bay. It was inevitable his steps would take him past that mythical bar in the port, The Two Brothers, where Andrés had once lived his most memorable bout of drinking, and had learned – then communicated the experience to his friends – that having a whore as a mother doesn’t turn the offspring (necessarily) into the son of a whore, despite being born (as he had been) while his progenitor was still on the job… There were then more than temporal or labour issues that determined whether you were to be (or not to be) a son of a whore. The Count, on the other hand, had downed so much alcohol on binges others would find unforgettable and that he’d forgotten and blurred in terms of quantity and incident, cause and effect. And something similar happened with the sons of whores: he knew such a quantity that to classify them according to maternal trade and time of birth would have required a real investment in cybernetics. But the bar’s façade managed to activate the magnet: Lieutenant Mario Conde looked at the swing doors and found the bar semiabandoned at high noon, occupied by a few drinkers beyond salvation. Yes, he did like that place. But it was the deep, rancid smell of a place dedicated for over fifty years to the sale of alcohol that propelled him remorselessly into the cool, welcoming inner reaches – or at least so he thought – of that dirty, irresistible bar.
“What rum you got?” he asked the mulatto bartender as if it were important or as if it were at all likely he would be able to choose brands and quality in a down-at-heel bar where the only matter of true significance was the availability (or not) of any distilled liquid to drink.
“White Legendario, Padre,” the mulatto replied, flashing a golden gleam of his teeth his way.
“And what’s the damage?”
“A peso a tot, Padre…”
The Count sunk a hand deep into his pockets and extracted all the notes and coins he could find. Placed them on the shiny wood of the bar and managed to assemble three pesos ten cents. Put away the useless surfeit and looked at the mulatto.
“I’ll have a triple and don’t call me Padre again, I never even made it to altar boy.”
The mulatto looked him in the eye. Took the bottle of rum and poured four tots into his glass.
“I asked for a triple…”
“But the fourth is on the house. Padre… Reckon you’re in need, don’t you?”
The Count looked at the liquid filling his glass to the brim, its fake pearl colour and scent of perdition, and told himself that that mulatto, expert in handling alcoholics and melancholics, both depressed and desperate, was quite right: more right than lots of people in this world, and duly acquiesced: “Yes, you’re right, Padre… I think that’s what I need,” and downed a first gulp before he heard a voice approach from behind, and from an evil corner of his memory.
“Give me the same as this guy.”
Leaning on the bar, the Count felt a nasty shudder as the sound of the voice turned into a mental image. And thought: It can’t be, before turning round and concluding that yes, it could be and was.
“Don’t I get a salute, Lieutenant Mario Conde?”
Ex-Lieutenant Fabricio’s ruddy face tried to conjure up its usual sardonic laugh but the Count refused to give him the pleasure of the sight of his teeth. The last conversation they’d had, six months ago, had led to mutual recall of their respective mothers, before giving way to the liberation of violence: they’d set to punching each other in the middle of the street and even now the Count could feel the lacerating pain from the leathering Fabricio had dealt to his face.