The surrounding garden was a damp, bushy arbour, with a peculiar mixture of shrubs, flowers, creepers, exuberant trees and grasses, although all that floral disorder seemed exquisitely cared for, as witnessed by the tracery of clearly marked paths through the undergrowth that spread across the whole plot. The work of a hand both rigorous and tolerant in relation to the desires of plants was evident in that small tropical forest, where the Count registered the majestic crest of a silk-cotton tree, the dark, gnarled fruits of a mamey and the prehistoric miracle of two anonales, still laden with their violently green pomegranates, owners of delicate, white hearts divided into a hundred black seeds. As he walked along the path to the house, the Count came across an overgrown picuala and, as he passed by, he dared pick up one of its tiny flowers, which existed in a strange melding of colours, between red and white.
“Josefina loves the scent of the picuala,” he said, knocking on the door after he’d put the flower in his pocket.
The face of the old lady who opened the door was as exhausted from lack of sleep as the Count’s: the wrinkles around her eyes were a deep brown and her gaze was veiled by a grey mist from prolonged insomnia or several hours of sobbing. There were remains of white magnesia at the corners of her mouth, fit to turn Mario Conde’s stomach. The policemen introduced themselves, apologized for coming without prior warning and explained why they were there: to speak to the family of Miguel Forcade.
“I am his mother,” responded the old lady, whose voice seemed younger than her face. Much to the Count’s relief, the woman’s tongue executed a precise cleaning exercise and the white cream disappeared. “Come in and sit down, I’ll get his wife. My husband is the one who can’t come down, he’s feeling very poorly today. He is very sick, you know. And this has made him feel much worse, poor man,” she concluded, as her voice faded away, but without losing that youthful spark that so surprised the Count.
“And which of you is the gardener?”
The old lady smiled, as if some of her lost energy was flowing back. “He is… Alfonso is a botanist and that garden is his. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“A poet I know would say it is the place to be really happy,” said the Count, recalling his friend Eligio Riego.
“Alfonso would be delighted to hear you…” conceded the old lady, her eyes moistening.
“Who is it, Caruca?”
A voice emerged from the passage that must lead to the bedrooms and was soon joined by the figure of its owner.
“Oh, forgive me,” said the newcomer, in whose wake came a ruddy, frowning man, coughing slightly, with the dry, uncontrollable persistence of a smoker.
“This is Miriam, my daughter-in-law,” noted the old lady. “And this is an old friend of hers…”
“Adrian Riverón, at your service,” said the man, his cough erupting again.
Even before he said hello and introduced himself, the Count’s first reaction was to start counting on his fingers, but he restrained himself from a sense of arithmetic politeness: according to the report he’d read, Miguel Forcade was forty-two years when he left Cuba, so he must have been fifty-three when he died, right? But now he was looking at a blonde woman, perhaps with an excess of blonde, which he suspected might be the result of vigorous bleaching, with sturdy thighs barely hidden by shorts and prominent breasts under a thin top, poked by nipples set on perforating the material. But the Count also had to look at her decidedly youthful face, where (grey, green, or were they blue?) eyes glinted from between her curly black eyelashes: thirty at a pinch, estimated the policeman, now able to think straight again, swallowing, counting on mental fingers and calculating that in his forties before he left Cuba Forcade had married a woman not yet in her twenties. Basically, he shouldn’t give up hope, he started to speculate, before he called himself to order.
“I was telling your mother-in-law how we have come to ask a few questions about Miguel… I know it’s a bad moment for you, but we are very keen to solve this case as soon we can.”
“You are really very keen?” said Miriam, distilling irony, as she sat down in one of the armchairs.
Her friend, coughing again, swung round like a bewildered seagull trying to find his bearings and found respite against the high back of the chair Miriam had chosen, as if he felt a need to guard the young woman’s back. The Count’s gaze, inhibited by protectionist Adrian, drifted from those handsome legs, and it was only then the policeman realized he hadn’t carried out his customary detailed study of the scene and discovered, unusually, that the room merited the same scientific attentions he’d devoted to the woman. Because it contained the clearest proof of Miguel Forcade’s past as the deputy provincial director of Expropriated Property: furniture in different historical styles, mirrors in carved frames, porcelain from various eras, locations and schools, two enormous grandfather clocks, alive and kicking, a number of canvases with hunting and mythological scenes, still lives and nineteenth-century nudes – which could be dated by the area of flesh exposed – as well as a couple of – Persian? flying? – carpets and lamps that only had to cry Tiffany to prove that was exactly what they were: particularly one on a metal stand, in the guise of a tree trunk supporting a glass frond that was open and weary, perhaps from a visible surfeit of warm fruit ripening from red to purple. Impressed by the accumulation of so many undoubtedly valuable relics, the Count surmised their source to be the expropriation of treasures abandoned by the Cuban bourgeoisie and then abandoned again by Miguel Forcade when he inexplicably defected. A man who knew how to take his chances, he thought, corroborating this conclusion with another glance at Miriam’s handsome flesh, to whom he decided to return the ball soaked in irony: “It’s good to see how a family can bring together so many nice, valuable things, isn’t it?” And his hand described a circle that ended on the woman.
“I expect you’d be interested to know where it all came from?” she riposted, and the Count then realized she would be a difficult mouthful to swallow.
“Of course I would. It may help us find out that truth, an interest in which so much excites your suspicion.”
“I’m not suspicious, Lieutenant. I only know they mutilated Miguel and killed him, here in Cuba. And that’s a fact.”
The Count observed Miriam’s hardened face and the tears beginning to run down the old lady’s rotund cheeks. The silent maternal lament might disarm him so he concentrated on the beautiful widow.
“That’s precisely why we are here… And because this deed reeks of revenge we need to know more about your husband’s past… My colleague and I have a responsibility to find out the truth, and I think if you help us it will be much easier, don’t you?”
Miriam gave a long, tired sigh. She seemingly accepted the truce, but didn’t grant the Count the benefit of a momentary hesitation.
“What I think is hardly the issue now. Just tell me, what would you like to know?”
“Where did Miguel say he was going and why did he go alone?” asked the Count, looking into the young woman’s eyes, though it was the old lady who replied.
“From the moment he got here, he hardly went out into the street, because… well, you know the story: he was afraid they’d keep him here, or something similar, because of the way he left… But that Thursday he said he wanted to go for a drive, to see a bit of Havana, and that he preferred to do so alone, because Miriam was going to be at her sister’s, in Miramar. And he left here around five.”
Manolo looked at the Count, as if seeking permission and the lieutenant’s eyes acceded. He knew his colleague was more skilful in that kind of verbal enquiry and besides if he were silent he could study at leisure the riches gathered in that room: that’s why he looked at the Tiffany lamps again and then at Miriam’s eyes, breasts and legs, all hot and anxious because it was now he could best evaluate the woman: Miriam was surely a ripe fruit, her shiny, smooth skin, like a beautiful peel protecting all those fleshly assets fashioned over time: and now she was ready to be eaten, her flavours, scents and textures at their zenith, beyond which it was impossible to scale higher. Her disturbing, full ripeness risked possible degeneration into flab as soon as the climactic moment passed: in the meantime it could be a banquet for the gods. A pity the fruit wouldn’t fall into his hands, the Count concluded, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation, driven by the insistent gaze of Adrian Riverón.