“Nothing new of note. We’re trying to find Zoilita, who’s still not put in an appearance. And tomorrow we’ll start at the enterprise to see if anything turns up there.”
And she crossed her legs and studied him as if he were suddenly a very alien being she was seeing for the first time. But he could only look at her legs and dress, nothing more than a very long white pullover revealing almost all the front of her thighs.
“Why did you leave that day at the baseball game?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, taken aback.
“Oh, nothing. I want to find your husband and find out why he went missing… And I want to know how you’re feeling.”
She made an effort to tame her impertinent lock and rested her head on the back of her chair.
“Quite at a loss. I’ve been thinking a lot,” she said before standing up. He watched her walk towards the library, and the mere sight of her brought to mind his masturbatory frigging of the previous night and he was almost ashamed he liked that woman, when she returned with two glasses and a bottle of Ballantine’s. She pulled a coffee table over and poured out two big chestnut-coloured shots, and the unmistakeably oak smell hit the Count.
“What are you scared of, Tamara?”
“Scared of?” she asked looking back at him. “Nothing. What about you, Mario?”
He felt the whisky’s dry heat on his tongue and thought he should take his jacket off.
“I’m scared of everything, every little thing. That maybe Rafael’s dead or maybe he’s not and that he’ll turn up and everything will get back to normal. That the years are passing me by, putting an end to any likelihood I’ll ever fulfil my dreams. That Skinny will die and I’ll be left alone and will feel even guiltier. That tobacco will be the death of me. That I don’t do my job properly. That I’ll be really lonely, incredibly lonely… That I might fall in love with you, Rafael’s wife, you who live in such a clean perfect world and whom I’ve wanted all my life,” he said and looked at Flora, so pristine and remote, and felt now he’d started he couldn’t stop.
The precise day his life changed, Mario Conde was wondering how destinies are forged. A few days before he had read Thornton Wilder’s novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and thought how he too could have been one of the seven individuals that destiny led to converge on the old bridge of the Vice-Regency of Peru at that precise moment, among millions of precise moments when its weary supports decided wearily to give way. The seven fell into the abyss, and he was obsessed by the image of seven individuals flying above the condors, and the strictly police investigation through which another individual sought out reasons for the impossible convergence of those men and women who’d never before coincided anywhere on earth and had now gathered to die on the bridge of San Luis Rey. He’d gone to the Psychology Faculty offices to tell them he was leaving the university and wasn’t yet thinking about Destiny, when the deputy dean saw him and asked if he was resolved to abandon his studies, and he said he was, that he had no choice. She asked him to wait a moment and went out, and he waited fifteen minutes and a man came and introduced himself as Captain Rafael Acosta, who started off asking him what’s your problem, my lad, and he thought what have I done to warrant an interrogation? It’s down to money, comrade; I need work right now. So why don’t you make an effort? the captain asked and he was even more at a loss. I need to work, he repeated, and I really don’t like the degree course, and they started talking and he started to be less afraid when Captain Acosta suggested he entered the Academy, because he’d come out an officer and would get a wage from month one. I’m not a party member, he’d said. Doesn’t matter, we know who you are. I’ve never been a leader, he’d said, I’m very laid back, and I love the Beatles, he thought, and again it didn’t matter. He’d never thought of becoming a policeman or anything of the sort, what on earth use will I be? You’ll find out later, persisted Captain Rafael Acosta, the important thing was to join, afterwards he could even study at university in the evenings, this degree or whichever you want to, and you’ll have time to think about it, and didn’t give it another thought: he said yes. Was that Destiny? he’d wondered ever since because he’d never imagined becoming a policeman, let alone a good policeman, as he’d been told he was, you need common sense, lots of common sense, a colleague explained, and they never assigned him to the Re-education Section, as he’d requested when he finished at the Academy, but to the General Information Department, classifying cases, modus operandi, different types of criminals, until he shut himself up in the computer room with an old file, read and reread papers and data, racked his brains till his head ached and forged a striking metaphor by joining two disconnected distant leads that had been rattling around loose in a murder case that had been under investigation for four years. Was that Destiny? he wondered now and remembered with pleasure his first stint in Criminal Investigations, when he didn’t have to bother about uniform and could wear jeans and even grew a beard and moustache after working the Boss round, and felt he was foraying into the world to right wrongs and was full of optimism. Those days of euphoria now seemed distant and had soon given way to routine, for that is what being a policeman is, they’d enlighten him, common sense plus routine, as he’d later tell new recruits, repeating Jorrín’s patter, knowing how to make a start every day, even though you didn’t want to start again and again. If it hadn’t been for Destiny, he’d never have discovered the case waiting to be solved by him alone, because he wouldn’t have said yes to Captain Acosta; because his father wouldn’t have died before he’d finished his degree; because they’d have given him literature and not psychology when he finished at high school; because he wouldn’t have enjoyed those books by Hemingway when he caught chickenpox late when he should have got it years earlier with all the other kids on the block; because he’d liked to have been a pilot, and they wouldn’t have expelled him from military school for launching a verbal and physical attack on a colleague who’d mercilessly mocked his desire to fly, and so on ad nauseam, because perhaps he’d never have been born or, Great Granddad Teodoro, the first of the Condes, wouldn’t have thieved or ever have landed up in Cuba. That was why he was a policeman and Destiny had placed him in Rafael Morín’s life and in yours, Tamara, a life so remote from yours, it was difficult to think they’d once thought they were equals. But life changes, like everything else, and he was no longer crazy and irresponsible, only as neurotic as ever, incurable, sad, lonely and sentimental, without wife or children perhaps forever, knowing his best friend might die, that nothing could be done for him, and carrying that pistol that weighed on his belt and which he’d only once fired away from the practiceground, in fact, almost sure he’d miss his target, because he couldn’t shoot anyone, yet he did shoot and was on target. But he could remember how on that precise day that changed his life he’d asked himself what is this thing called Destiny and got a single response: say yes or say no. If you can… I did have a choice, Tamara.
“Pour me another,” he asked, taking another look. She’d listened to him while drinking her whisky, and her eyes glazed over. She poured two more shots before admitting: “I’m afraid too”, and it was almost a sigh that rose from the depths of that armchair. She’d left her troublesome lock over her eyes, as if she’d got used to living with it, to seeing it before she saw anything else in the world.
“Afraid of what?”
“Of feeling empty inside. Of ending up on my back talking about cotton and silk, of not living my life, of thinking I have everything because I’m used to having everything and there are things I think I can’t live without. I’m afraid of everything and don’t even understand myself anymore, and I could quite easily want Rafael to be here, so everything could stay easy and orderly, as wish he might never reappear so I can strike out on my own, without Rafael, Daddy, Mima, my son even… And it’s nothing new, Mario, I’ve felt like this for some time.”