Now he’d satisfied the need for cold water that had almost dragged him from his bed, the Count began that Sunday morning by indulging in memories of his grandfather. Sunday was the day for fights in the most popular pits, and that was why he liked Sunday mornings. Not the dreary endless afternoons after a siesta when he would feel tired and sleepy till nightfall, nights weren’t any better, everywhere was packed out and he’d always take refuge at Skinny’s. However, there were other things that made Sunday nights tedious and drawn-out: there was no baseball game, and it was torture to hit the rum when Monday loomed menacingly. Mornings were a different story: Sunday mornings started with lots of hustle and bustle as in the story he wrote when he was at high school. It was a time to talk to everyone, and friends and relatives who lived away always came to visit the family, and you could set up a game of barehanded baseball and end up swollen-fingered and panting at first base, or play dominos or simply shoot the breeze on the street corner till the sun chased you inside. For some ancestral reason he couldn’t explain and because of the large number of Sundays he spent with Granddaddy Rufino or his band of sporting cronies, Mario Conde enjoyed Sunday at leisure in the barrio more than any of his pals, and after a cup of coffee he’d go and buy bread and the newspaper and generally never returned home till it was time for a very late Sunday lunch. His women had never understood that necessary ritual, why can’t you stay at home the odd Sunday, there’s lots to do, but Sunday is for the barrio, he told them, leaving no room for argument, when some friend asked: “Hey, has the Count left yet?”
And that Sunday he got up after slaking a dragon’s thirst, with memories of granddaddy still floating around his head, and went onto the porch after putting the coffee pot on to boil. He was still wearing his pyjama trousers and an old padded coat, and he noticed the streets were quieter than usual for a Sunday because of the cold. The sky had cleared during the night, but an annoyingly biting wind was blowing, and he reckoned it had gone below fifty and was perhaps the coldest morning of the winter. As usual he regretted having to work on a Sunday. He had thought he’d go and see Rabbit and then lunch at his sister’s, he recalled, and he waved at Cuco the butcher: How’s life treating you, Condesito? He too must work that Sunday morning.
Coffee bubbled up like lava from the innards of his coffeepot, and the Count put four spoonfuls of sugar into a jug. Waited for the pot to percolate all the coffee, poured it in the jug and stirred slowly, relishing the hot bitter smell. Then returned it to the pot before pouring the coffee into his thermos and serving himself a large cup of coffee. He sat in his small dining room and lit the first cigarette of the day. He felt terrifyingly alone and decided to ward off melancholy by thinking what to do with the list of guests at the deputy minister’s New Year party. He anticipated he had a number of tricky interrogations ahead, the kind he’d rather avoid. Zoilita still hadn’t put in an appearance – he’d not had a call from headquarters – and she’d been gone four days, like Rafael. He couldn’t go to the enterprise till the following morning, and that blocked one avenue he was keen explore. He’d not heard anything from the provinces, or from the coastguards, who could have contacted him at any time, so there was still no trace of the man who’d vanished into thin air. And what about the Spaniard Dapena? Mañana: the usual story. Hunting tit in Key Largo… But he did have work that Sunday and, sipping a cup of coffee that aroused his palate and intellect, he decided to give himself more time for thought: he wanted to put himself in Rafael Morín’s shoes, although he’d never before believed that was even remotely possible; he should feel what a person like that felt, should want what he wanted, which was a sight easier, and generate at least one idea about his startling disappearance, but he couldn’t. Rafael wasn’t one of the criminals he encountered daily, and it was giving him detective’s block. He preferred homegrown wide boys, smugglers of whatever, traffickers in the unusual and fences of the most exotic merchandise, he knew their habits and could discern a logic to guide his investigations. Not now: now I’m lost on the prairie, he said, crushing his cigarette end in the ashtray and deciding it was time to call Manolo and go out onto the street, on a Sunday that seemed ideal for shooting the breeze on street corners, catching a little sun and listening to stories told time and again by his old friends.
He poured himself a less generous second cup of coffee, thanked his stomach for sparing him a punitive ulcer, lit up again and walked into his bedroom, congratulating himself on the quality of his lungs. He sat on his bed, by the telephone, and watched Rufino, his fighting fish, embark on a solitary circular dance. He then looked at his empty room and felt he too was circling round and round, in an attempt to find the tangent to take him out of that infinite circle of anguish.
“We’re well and truly fucked, Rufino,” he said, then dialled Manolo’s number and heard it ring. “Hello,” said a woman’s voice as she picked up the receiver.
“Alina? It’s the Count, how are you?” he enquired fearfully, for he was familiar with that lady’s stress with telephones and before she could reply he jumped in: “Your son up yet? Get him on that phone, tell him I’m in a hurry.”
“Ah, Manolito. Hey, Count, he stayed over at Vilma’s, his current girl friend, you…”
A good catch, he felt like saying, but he took the easy option:
“Look, Alina, do me a favour. Call him and tell him to pick me up in half an hour. It’s urgent business. You OK? See you and thanks, Alina.” He sighed and hung up.
He drank his coffee slowly. Was fascinated by the ease with which Manolo switched girlfriends and persuaded them to let him sleep over. He, however, was enduring a long spell of solitary, and although he’d have preferred not to, he thought of Tamara, saw her in the tight-fitting tracksuit or yellow dress, marking out her knickers, and she was mouth-watering. Perhaps Manolo and the Boss were right: he should watch out for himself, and he thought he’d prefer not to see her or talk to her again, to keep her far from his mind and avoid frustrations like the previous night’s, not even the drinking session with Skinny had tamed his desires, and he’d finished off the night by masturbating in honour of that unforgivable woman. Only then had he been able to get to sleep.
This is where Rafael Morín came from, he muttered as he walked towards the room at the back. Fame and paint had long deserted the big house on the Avenue of October Tenth, now a creaking sweaty ruin, where each room in the ancient mansion was an individual home with a communal bathroom and washhouse at the back, flaking walls with generations of graffiti, an ever-present smell of gas and a long overburdened washing line on that Sunday morning. “The pit and the peak,” quipped Manolo, and he was right. That dark promiscuous rooming house seemed so remote from the residence on Santa Catalina that one could easily think they were separated by oceans, mountains and deserts and centuries of history. But Rafael Morín had been born on this shore, in room number seven, right at the back, next to the communal bathroom and washhouse now occupied by two women unafraid of the cold or life’s other contingencies.